Aside from subsequent media scrutiny over the decades since the Hoddle Street Shootings, on the very next day afterwards, Monday 10th August 1987, Melbourne’s lead newspaper The Age reported the specific crime event as a news story on its front page.
The news article was factual journalism. As such, responsibly in good faith, we reproduce what the journalists of that article in the The Age wrote. The reported journalists were Michael Carrick, Tom Noble and Peter Schumpeter. To these journalists’ credit and the newspaper’s editor, we are mindful of the narrow window of timing they had between when the shooter was arrested by Victoria Police at 10:16 pm on the Sunday night, so making the scene safe sometime after, and the newspaper’s deadline for submitted stories for its print-run. To their credit the story made the front page lead story for Monday.
This factual journalism is poles apart from the subsequent opinionated writings that were to follow – which this website documents separately under our menu header ‘Media Scrutiny‘.
Also to the journalists’ credit, back in 1987 – computers, mobile phones and Internet technology didn’t exist like currently. It was just typewriters then. This author recalls having had one of such typewriters at the time – a portable one of this same colour!
The Age article the following day:
[NB. The original extract has been made cryptic viewing on The State Library’s website, so we have had to reproduce it peace-meal]
Our Comments:
- This is journalism as the facts are coming in. It is true journalistic reporting.
- The Age newspaper editor’s heading referred to a “gun drama”.
- Subsequent media sensationalised campaigning would go on for decades to morph this “gun drama” to the media’s ‘Hoddle Street Massacre‘ branding.
- This uninformed hate campaign by the media against the shooter Julian Knight was driven particularly by the usual suspects – shock jock types – Radio 3AW, News Corps, the Nine Network, and others
- RMC-D Duntroon got away (by media cowardice) with inculcating one of its own elite career soldier recruits in Julian Knight by its institutional indoctrination by delegated in-barracks bastardisation abuse over a sustained 6 months.
- RMC-D Duntroon institutional indoctrination drove its career committed Army Officer cadet Julian Knight ultimately to a state of psychotic vengeance (but sadly upon the wrong innocent target).
- Had the Duntroon senior cadet tormentors not sabotaged Julian Knight’s own Holden Torana SLR5000, the convenient innocents along Hoddle Street would have been spared, so that Julian had the opportunity to drive back to Duntroon with his personal long arm weapons to deliver a payback message more targeted
Reference:
[1] ‘5 dead, 8 hurt in gun drama‘, Monday 10th August 2024, page 1, The Age newspaper, photograph created by Sebastian Costanzo, reproduced by permission by the State Library of Victoria’s Newspapers Collection, Home / Explore history / Rebels & outlaws / City criminals / ‘Hoddle Street Massacre’, https://ergo.slv.vic.gov.au/explore-history/rebels-outlaws/city-criminals/hoddle-street-massacre