Oh no! The New York Times is angry at us about the Voice

How the New York Times tried — and failed — to explain the Voice to American readers

Bad news, Australia. The New York Times is mad at us.

I know, it will be hard to collect yourself and go on with your day after hearing this fact.

Readers who have access to an employee assistance program should consider placing a call to help get through these difficult times.

But the problem, you see, is that Australia voted no – and by a good whack, too – to the Voice to Parliament.

Rather than this being an example of a nation weighing up the pros and cons, thinking about the risks of tinkering with the constitution, and debating the best way to help Aboriginal Australians, to hear the New York Times tell it, the vote was an exercise in “crushing Indigenous dreams.”

Jacinta Price Parents speak as the results are being counted for The Voice to parliament referendum. Picture: Sky News

Oddly, the report by journalist Yan Zhuang about the result failed to note that, among other things that every electorate with a more than five per cent Indigenous population voted “no”.

And, ironically for a reporter who earlier claimed that “Trumpian misinformation” was threatening to scuttle the Voice, there was precious little reference made to the misinformation peddled by the Yes campaign.

Yes campaigner Thomas Mayo pictured speaking before the results came through at the Inner West for Yes event, Wests Ashfield Leagues Club, Ashfield. Picture: Damian Shaw

A more sceptical journalist might have noted that the AEC pinged Yes campaigners for misleading tweets and signage, that by the time of the poll only 59 per cent of Aboriginals (and not “more than 80 per cent”) supported the Voice, that somehow a “yes” vote wouldn’t endorse moving on to a treaty, and much more besides.

This omission was in keeping with the current fashion which sees those who claim to be the biggest fans of democracy have a tantrum every time a vote doesn’t go their way.

When we win, it is because we were on the side of angels.

When the other guys win, it must have had something to do with Trump. Even in a country a world away from Washington.

This is not the only time the “Grey Lady” as it is called in America has managed to get Australia comprehensively and weirdly wrong.

As bad as this is, the New York Times has done worse with its clueless foreign correspondents.

Peter Sarsgaard (as Walter Duranty) in the movie Mr Jones. Picture: Robert Palka

In the 1930s, when Stalin was starving out Ukraine, Timesman Walter Duranty said that reports of famine were bogus as he cheered on a brutal communist collectivisation.

“Russia today cannot be judged by Western standards or interpreted in Western terms,” Duranty wrote in one report of a series of reports covering up the crimes of Stalin and the Soviet Union (for which he eventually won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize).

A century later, the Times is just as clueless even if the subject is happily more banal.

Back in 2017, correspondent Sam Sifton tried to explain Australian suburban life to Americans thusly:

“Bunnings … is a large Australian hardware chain that offers space in its parking lots on weekends so community groups can raise funds selling sausages from the company’s grills. They call these events — wait for it — ‘sizzles’.”

Sizzles! How quaint!

July 12, 2022: Jason Chigwidden with his daughter Summer, 5, at Bunnings Mile End sausage sizzle which are set to cost Australians an extra $1. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe

Now, Australia is being defamed on the world stage for the crime of voting No to a narrative that was fed them by just about every major corporation, bank, airline, church, synagogue, mosque, sporting code, and school because they rejected official identity politics at the polls.

This shouldn’t matter much but the fact is this more than a theoretical problem for Australia.

If the local paper in Muncie, Indiana, or Hokkaido, Japan, has a crack at us, it’s not that big a deal.

But the New York Times still sets the agenda for almost every other newspaper and television newsroom in the US.

So, their reputation matters to our reputation (which already suffered something of a hit during Covid for our draconian lockdowns).

If anyone is reading this in the US, please take this report in the New York Times with the same sized grain of salt one needs for the rest of their reporting.

Originally published as Oh no! The New York Times is angry at us about the Voice