What is with the media and their obsession with Hicks?...who REALLY cares?

It's one massive PR campaign and the one person I agree with is Hicks' old man when he said they just should've put him on a normal flight in economy where no one would've known.

Is the Australian media THAT bored?. You've just got to think about all the trivial topics that come through the box and how the media 'go it' like a jack russell on a beef flavoured chew toy...eventually someone has to take it off them and throw it out.

How do they decide that I'm really, really, really, really...and next week I'll STILL be really, really, really interested in Hicks and what he's wearing and eating and his haircut and what colour his poo is?.

What happened to real investigative journalism?, is it only the realm of 60 minutes and channel 79's (7 and 9) 30 minute trash shows at 1830?.

How about they chase a story on something like Howard lying for the last decade?...or how someone had some decent intel on the dodgy dealings of Peter Beattie but she's in prison and we'll NEVER hear what she was blackmailing him about...I'm interested in that...but Hicks?...wait till he 'gets out'...it'll be insanity.

Terry Hicks was being interviewed by Lee Lin Chin on the SBS last night (Saturday). His comments were disturbing. He is still trying to portray his son as nothing more than a misguided larrikin who has done noone any harm. This is so far from reality that he should not be given any more air time or print space.
David Hicks is responsible for his own situation. He went to Afghanistan and he was taken into custody because he was there. There has not been the same fuss about the other Guantanamo Bay inmates - why is their situation any different? Supporters of David Hicks would have us believe that their man is different and that the big bad US should never ever have "incarcerated" any Australian. One of the main players actually told me that "everyone else in GB is a terrorist".
One of the problems has been that some powerful people have been involved. They have seen it as a means of shifting public opinion against a government they do not like. They have done this either knowing that their stated view of international law is not actually the law at all or so much in ignorance of international law that they should not be members of the legal profession. David Hicks is being used and it is time the media refused to be used too.

It just shows up that the media are short on imagination and long on wind. It really isnt that big an ordeal. I couldnt give two hoots whether he serves his sentence in Oz or Cuba, particularly given that there is only 9 months left to serve.

The only real obsession the media has is to sell advertising space.
Hicks is just a way to achieve it.
Social issues are not really important. For example, one day they will tell us to immunise our children and the next day it will warn us about the potential dangers of immunisation.

Anyway, Hicks himself wasn't the real issue - it was the Government's attitude to the Rule of Law and how it is defined in relation to our international interests plus what degree of protection it offers it's citizens.

"the real issue was the Govts attitude to the rule of law and what degree of protection it offers its citizens."

Would people care about the rule of law and Australias protection of its citizens so much if the person in question was a serial killer who had killed a dozen women or so.

I doubt it. And if they only care about the rule of law in some cases and not others then they really dont care about the rule of law and protection of citizens in general like they say. No this is political point scoring against John Howard and America.

5 full pages in our state paper this morning suggests the obsession really has gone too far. Very little was said about the $520,000 to bring him home...and virtually nothing has been said all along about the cost to the taxpayers...he is still being treated by the media as if he is just an innocent larrikin. Almost nothing has been said about what international law really says about the issue either. If the media were to give an accurate representation of this story David Hicks would be seen for what he is - and that is definitely not harmless. He will be a danger to Australia for the rest of his life if for no other reason than he has the capacity to divide the community while he (and his father) are given so much media coverage.
The media has a lot to answer for here - their pursuit of the story has nothing to do with justice or human rights.