With only around 80% of news stories in the Australian media dedicated to the Erin Patterson mushroom trial, advocates are worried that there may not be enough content available to ensure ordinary Australians know what is going on with the case.
Analysis shows that there are currently only around 600 news reports and just 43 podcasts being produced about the case per day. It means that Australians are being left uninformed, or – as one Seven News reporter put it – like a well-stored mushroom, “Totally in the dark”.
Advocates say the lack of stories about the mushroom case shows a failure of the media. “It wasn’t even the lead story on the Guardian this morning! It was the second, third and forth. You could be forgiven for thinking that there wasn’t an important mushroom-based criminal trial taking place in this country right now,” consumer advocate Jeremy Thring said.
One Melbourne resident said he had to spend more than three seconds this morning scouring news websites before he could see any stories at all about the mushroom case. “That’s a long time to go without news about the mushroom case. What if I missed something important, like information about Erin Patterson’s Woolies receipts? I feel totally out of touch on this”.
Others say the national broadcaster should be doing more to fill the information gap on the issue. “I mean, the ABC is only putting out one podcast a day about this. One podcast per day! How on earth am I expected to keep up to date with the latest evidence on this very specific criminal case, if there’s only one pod from the national broadcaster in a 24-hour period? This isn’t some niche special interest story, this is mushrooms we’re talking about!” a Sydney woman complained.
Media organisations responded to the criticism, saying they were doing everything they could to provide more information. A spokesperson for the Nine network said they were looking to expand their Mushroom Division as quickly as possible. “We’ve got a team of only 200 on this, so we acknowledge that we’re under-resourced. Once we close what’s left of our Global News Division and reallocate those resources to the Mushroom Division, we’ll be able to scale up”.
