Can anyone explain why the media is ignoring, or at least
paying very little attention, to a survival story that is as extraordinary as
Beaconsfield?

Long after they were given up for dead, three men are found alive after
being adrift at sea in a tiny dinghy for 22 days. This yarn should be everywhere
but, except for a briefflurry of media attention yesterday, the story has all but died.

Why? And why is it so when there’s still plenty of attention being paid to
Beaconsfield with Ninemsn
still carrying a banner that screams FREE AT LAST over follow-up yarns
on the ordeal of Todd Russell and Brant Webb? I am not in any way
wanting to diminish what Russell and Webb went through but at least we
knew they were alive for much of the time they were trapped, whereas
the three men found in the Torres Strait on Tuesday had been missing
since April 17, with the search for them given up two weeks before they
were found.

The names Todd Russell and Brant Webb have been etched into the nation’s
consciousness, where as few people have ever heard of John Tabo, his son John
Jr, and 16-year-old nephew Tom Tabo, despite the fact that their survival
story is equally amazing.

What does it say about us that we can be completely consumed by the ordeal
of two white men but when three blackfellas experience an ordeal of comparable
scale, we don’t give a rat’s?