The beauty of a spin-free media interview

mick says:

12:41pm | 04/01/12

Surfers are crazy.  Sharks do not worry them, even when they are attacked.

There was a helicopter tracking a 4 metre shark at Copacabana this morning hovering over the same spot for nearly half and hour and circling for another half an hour.  Like the local we breed em tough.

The sad reality in the attack is that the state government has all but abandoned the Central Coast.  Not only do we not get a shark watch but the area (apart from the Terrigal money pit) shows signs of poverty and the local council, despite being unaccountable and wasting ratepayer funds, is bullet proof as no government entity or statutory body has any intention of intervening or stopping the carnage.  Give me 10 rounds with a shark any day.

fairsfair says:

02:03pm | 04/01/12

I can’t listen to the footage, but by the tone of this article I am assuming he was responding to this event in a rational, normal manner.

A spearfisherman was fatally wounded at Opal Reef about five or six years ago and I remember a lady boarding our boat for a day of diving advising that she wouldn’t go out there if we were diving at Opal Reef. If we were, she demanded we change our course for the day. Did she not think that sharks would also be at the other dive sites? Many oceangoers are so out of touch with the realities of venturing into open waters and if they are, they reason it away with random sh*t.

I think that is a good thing. For if we were really conscious of the risks that face us each day in life, we would never get out of bed (and then we’d freak out there about dust mites and air quality). While attacks are unfortunate and I really feel for the people who meet their demise in such a way (and their loved ones) - you can’t live your life in constant fear.

What I don’t like about our society lately (and I am not sure if this is generated by our cynical view of the manner in which “news” is presented to us), is that when something does happen to someone others are waiting to blame them and almost bully them for being a victim of an accident or event. Eg - surfers are idiots for getting attacked by a shark. Fatal car accidents would not have been stopped by the installation of guard rail - its all the driver’s fault, even though ten cars have already gone into the river at that spot this year and there are identified issue with the road surface. You house was flooded - suffer, you chose to live in a flood plain even though this was a freak event.

The fact of the matter is, we all take calculated risks in life each and day - such as dipping our toe in the ocean or driving to the train station on a Tuesday - sometimes it doesn’t go as planned and most people a prepared to just pick up and get on with life (where possible), but sometimes society doesn’t make that easy for them. The sensationalist nature of the media and the faceless soapbox that we all get on at times makes society seem a little bit sad.

On the news.com article today - most of the comments are centred on the surfer being an idiot and the volume of police who responded to what was no doubt a report of a “shark attack” of unknown severity at the time. Hey, I laughed at the fact one of them was wearing a bullet proof vest and thought the prospect of sharks with guns was funny - but how would my smartarse comment contribute to anything? I don’t think there is any room for stupid opinions when an article is based on absolute fact - like this situation. A surfer was bitten, he thankfully wasn’t too badly wounded, he removed himself from the water and alerted the authorities. He did the right thing and handled it very well.

Why do people have to have an opinion on that? Allowing “Jim Bob” from the Gold Coast scream “we are going to need a bigger boat” in a public context doesn’t really help the situation. So kudos to this dude for keeping a level head - I wish there was more of it.

cheap white trash says:

02:14pm | 04/01/12

And if a polly comes out and calls a spade a spade he is wacked from pillar to post.
Just imagine a Politician standing up in a press conference and telling you lot,ah Climate Change is Crap…............No Spin There.

Response???????????????????????

Fiddler says:

03:01pm | 04/01/12

Very Australian, well how a lot of us used to talk twenty to thirty years ago, before carrying on like a pork chop became the fashion.

I picture him as a young Alf Stewart