Opinion: Media hysteria more dangerous than little crocs on golf courses
Published Tuesday April 14 2015, 10:00am
So a golfer was bitten by a crocodile while out on the links in Port Douglas yesterday.
Not a big crocodile, not a big bite, and by all accounts, it was brief accidental encounter between man and reptile that happened after the golfer went looking for a lost ball in a pond.
Yet, going off the stories in the Cairns Post, the Courier-Mail, and even the Australian, one could be forgiven for thinking that a five-metre dinosaur had lunged from the water’s edge and ripped an innocent golfer limb from from limb.
The mainstream media does like to sensationalise, because there’s always plenty of interest in stories involving crocodiles.
Locals also like to know what's happening with crocs in their community.
Newsport’s articles on the sighting of a large crocodile at Four-Mile Beach and the removal of a 2.5-metre croc from Reef Park Lake were among the site’s most-read and most-commented on pages last year.
But there’s potentially serious impacts on a tourism-dependent little town like Port Douglas from the runaway reporting of big-city news services.
The southern cities seemed to have reduced Far North Queensland down to crocs and cyclones, overlooking the rapidly growing economies and populations of our vibrant cities and towns.
But that growth is threatened when big-city media whips up hysteria about animal incidents or weather events, potentially dissuading travellers to choose somewhere else for a holiday.
And if the mainstream media is willing to turn a minor incident into a front-page story, what happens if there’s an actually serious croc attack in Port Douglas?
You might as well hang a ‘closed’ sign over the front of the whole town.
There's thousands of residents and hundreds of businesses in Port Douglas depending on tourism, and every time there's media hysteria from down south, those residents and businesses suffer as a result.
There’s another angle to consider as well, which is the community’s perception of crocodiles.
Local conversation on crocodiles in Newsport’s comment sections reveals two main camps - those that believe crocodiles and humans can co-exist peacefully if boundaries are respected, and those that argue the animals pose too much danger to residents, children and pets and should be removed or culled.
Both sides have valid points, and those points should be argued.
Only through robust local conversation like this can the community come to an understanding and make properly thought-out decisions regarding crocodiles.
In the mean time, let’s all keep a cool head while talking about our toothy water-dwelling neighbours.
And maybe, let’s think twice about wading in after lost golf balls.
