mike carlton

Well, back from holidays: Cornwall is wonderful!

Here's something that has been sitting on my chest for a while.

Sydney journalist and talk-back radio host Mike Carlton has for a couple of years lampooned the Jensens in his Sydney Morning Herald column on a Saturday. His satire is based on Anthony Trollope's Barchester Towers and takes the form of a mock parish newsletter. It would be amusing if we were not the target! I have wondered long and hard how to respond. Carlton is impervious to letters, of course and refuses to meet up to discuss it. Somehow, humanising your targets takes the fun out of tearing them down in public, doesn't it?

The premise of the entire lampoon is the charge of nepotism that Herald journalist Kelly Burke aired some time ago. The source of the charge was Rev John Cornish, the former head of Anglicans Together. He grumpily commented in this way on the appointment of my uncle as Dean of St Andrew's Cathedral and then my mother as a member of a women's ministry committee and my appointment to Moore College. I rang up John Cornish and asked him what evidence he had about my appointment to suggest that it was nepotistic. Of course, he had none, but that did not mean that he issued any kind of public apology - nor has he since. My mother's position is not a job at all, but membership of a committee on which several other women sit, and she receives no payment. My uncle - who is widely regarded as one of the more successful rectors in Sydney in the 80s and 90s to say the least - was not the first person asked to be the Dean, but in any case would have deserved consideration on merit alone. (Cornish's gripe was with his churchmanship). In any case, no-one who knew anything about it saw the Dean's job as anything but an extremely difficult task with little thanks. Anyhow, it doesn't matter now: Cornish's slur has gained a life of its own, and appears everywhere in its distorted form as fact. I hope he is happy.

This is what is galling about Carlton's method. He is an 'opinion' writer. His business is not to report but to comment on the news. He evidently has not the time for his own research or fact checking. All he does is read the SMH and go from there. And that's the problem! As anyone with first hand experience knows, the SMH is notorious for publishing inaccuracies and perpetuating myth. Carlton's fatuous comments are then built on this. It is ignorance by convenience because the facts would get in the way of his satire. He refuses to speak with any of us face to face because it would spoil the fun.

A recent example: the Herald published a distorted, incomplete and one-sided account of an upcoming defamation suit against an Anglican rector, and linked it bizarrely to the women's ordination debate. Because it was a lawsuit, it was impossible to respond to the inaccuracies at all. And yet Carlton has the temerity to use this as material for his latest squib, further cementing in the public's mind the orginal distortions perpetrated by the paper.

I have to say that it hurts to read it. I don't say that we ought to be spared criticism but it is hard when it is based on such baloney. It is hard when you meet people whose view of me and my family has been coloured by this. And it is hard when Carlton is in such a position of power and a far larger platform for expressing his views than we have. Where is the right of reply?

What comforts me? Well, Carlton's attacks on the Howard government (of which I am no fan) seem to be wildly out of touch with most Australians. He is one of those baby boomer journalists who think they invented sliced bread and that their opinions are self-evidently true - and yet can't see how out of touch they are with most people. I also have to remember that the journalist's ravings are like the wind: here today but wrapping paper tomorrow. And also, I remember that a few barbs from the likes of Carlton are nothing compared to what Christians face in the Sudan right now.