I was pleased to see News Corp’s Courier Mail use their newspaper today and their social media platforms to make a plaintive call for the Indonesian Government to not kill the two Australian drug traffickers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.
While I prefer to see newspapers focus on reporting news, in this instance the front page call is a reflection of widely held community sentiment in Australia. It humanises a newspaper which often negatively meddles in politics.
With a headline like that it looks to me like they are still meddling in politics. I think there is an equally wide community sentiment that could be summed up by simply removing the word “don’t” from the headline.
It is certainly a divisive subject with strong feelings on both sides of the argument.