An Aboriginal family in Australia’s north west are now seeking legal advice after WA Today published images of their innocent children in relation to a story about child prostitution.
The newspaper has since removed the image from their online story, but the image still remains on the hundreds of social media links that were shared after the original story was published. The newspaper has since stated in their six line apology that the photo was intended to be a generic photograph of Kimberly children.
Now the question has to be asked, would this ever happen to a white family? Lets say for example there was story in Perth that a white girl was prostituting herself for money because (lets say her drug addicted mother) was not able to feed her. Would WA Today just go and grab a generic photo of some random white kids to use as the cover image for the story? You know that would never happen right? They might take a picture of the house, they might take a picture of the street, but they would never, not in a million years, grab some random white kids picture (that clearly shows their faces) for that image.
WA Today have stated in their apology that it was an error. This was not an error, this was a reflection of a very common attitude in Australia that Aboriginal are of a different standard, and not to be awarded the same level of respect that white people receive. As one commentator said on the Blackfulla Revolution Facebook page, ‘They are treating us like zoo animals”. We find it unbelievable that people with these attitudes would be working in such a position in 2017. We will be following the case closely and will keep you updated on the final outcome.
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