As we recently covered both here & here, ABC News Australia, to their shame, published an article last month that was little more than a mindless parroting of false feminist factoids on Domestic Violence, based on nothing but some outrageous claims from Domestic Violence NSW Director, Tracy Howe.
Here at Men’s Rights Sydney we feel strongly about such things, because this is how feminism’s lies and distortions become “common knowledge” in our society. A feminist makes a claim, the claim is repeated by the media, and before you know it, it’s considered a fact.
Evidence by citation is the term coined by Prof. Murray A. Straus for this. It is also known as the Woozle Effect. This effect can only exist if the media is not doing its job properly. Lazy, incompetent and often ideologically biased journalism is the vector which spreads this particular pathogen, and it is highly damaging to any efforts to achieve gender equality because it blocks the truth from reaching the public awareness.
The only way to combat this phenomenon is to put pressure on the media outlets to do a better job of fact checking, and to crack down on ideologically biased journalists. As we have seen many times over, feminists consider themselves unbeholden to any such standards. We cannot shame them into telling the truth because…frankly, they have no shame! But the media is a different matter. It’s supposed to at least seem accurate & impartial in its reporting, and that is a lever we can use to pressure them into doing their work correctly.
To this end, Men’s Rights Sydney have sent the following email to a host of media outlets (listed below) in the hope that one or more of them will bring the blatant falsehoods present in the ABC News article to the public, and the ABC will be forced to make the necessary corrections and apologies.
However, this is unlikely to happen if we are the only ones doing it. So I urge all of you to do likewise and to spread the word to as many others as possible. It would be great if you could write your own email from scratch but, if you can’t bring yourself to do that, feel free to use the email we are listing here as a template.
Editor’s note 1 – Please don’t just copy & paste it verbatim, that wouldn’t look good.
Editor’s note 2 – Obviously we sent a slightly different version of this email to the ABC themselves. It was substantially identical though.
To Whom it May Concern,
We would like to bring to your attention an article published by ABC News on their web site on Tuesday 6 May, 2014 (see link 1 below). This article contained the following falsehood (among others):
“Domestic violence is the leading cause of death and injury in women under 45”
This is completely incorrect & is an almost complete fabrication. In fact, if we were less charitable, we would be tempted to call it an outright lie.
The genesis of this factoid is a single VicHealth Study that found that:
“Intimate partner violence is responsible for more ill-health and premature death in Victorian women under the age of 45 than any other of the well-known preventable risk factors, including high blood pressure, obesity and smoking.”Even if you count that one VicHealth study as reliable (and its methodology has been questioned by many & its findings contradicted by later studies), it is still a long way from the claim that IPV is the leading cause of death & disability in women under 45.
According to the latest available data from The Australian Institute of Health & Welfare (see link 2 below), the top 5 causes of death & disability for women 15-44 are:
1. Anxiety & Depression2. Migraine
3. Type 2 diabetes
4. Asthma
5. Schizophrenia.
Violence, let alone the even smaller subset of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), doesn’t even make the list. Furthermore since, according to the Bureau of Crime Statistics & Research (See link 3 below), IPV prevalence has actually dropped over the past decade, IPV is likely to be even lower down the list now than it was when these figures were collected in 2003.
We feel that unsupported statements like this, that are supplied by ideologically run DV organisations to a far too credulous media, are all too prevalent these days. The media in general seems to have taken on a tendency towards blindly accepting anything that these organisations choose to claim, no matter how wide of the mark they actually are. These falsehoods, we believe, do nothing but contribute to an unwarranted fear of, & a feeling of justified hatred towards, all men which, in turn, manifests itself in society as discrimination. We feel that the ABC should publicly correct this particular falsehood as it is nothing short of extremely damaging propaganda & disinformation. Thus far, however, attempts to get them to do so have failed to elicit any action in this direction. We are hoping that you will bring this matter to the attention of your readers so that the ABC is under greater pressure to come clean & correct their error.
We have written an article about this on our web site which goes into a lot more detail. If you would like to read it, it can be found at the following URL:
Thank you.Sincerely,Men’s Rights Sydney
Media Outlets
ABC Media Watch – mediawatch@your.abc.net.au
ABC FactCheck – http://www.abc.net.au/news/factcheck/contact/
Independent Media Council – complaints@independentmediacouncil.com.au
Sydney Morning Herald – readerlink@smh.com.au
The Age – https://www.kampyle.com/feedback_form//ff-feedback-form.php?site_code=8954894&lang=en&form_id=43614##Form only
The Telegraph – news@dailytelegraph.com.au
The Herald Sun – readerlink@smh.com.au
The Advertiser – tiser@adv.newsltd.com.au
Courier Mail – readerhelp@qnp.newsltd.com.au
Thanks,
Men’s Rights Sydney
Mens Rights Sydney 
I note you change the stat from “death & injury” to “death & disability” to prove your point. how convenient… they are completely different things so the entire premise of your rant is misleading.
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theres also the fact that According to the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics & Research, the prevalence of DV has remained almost level since at least 2001, probably far longer. In fact, since 2001 it has actually dropped slightly, so DV is actually decreasing, not increasing.http://www.bocsar.nsw.gov.au/agdbasev7wr/bocsar/documents/pdf/bb61.pdf
also The “DV is the leading cause of death in women under 45″ canard was prompted by a single, largely discredited, study conducted by VicHealth. I say “prompted by” rather than “from” because, even if you count that study as a legitimate source, it didn’t even say what they claim it says. What it actually said was…
Intimate partner violence is responsible for more ill-health and premature death in Victorian women under the age of 45 than any other of the well-known preventable risk factors, including high blood pressure, obesity and smoking.
…which is a long way from what they are claiming.
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I’m not sure what it is about the fact that DV violence has remained constant that is comforting to you? it’s still happening at roughly the same (unacceptable) levels, therefore it’s not a problem? that argument is baffling.
I would also suggest avoiding a criticism based on semantics given how the stance above has been justified. I mean let’s exam your claim regarding the top 5 causes of death & disability then. if you had bothered to read the study (as opposed to just attempting to pick “facts” out of context), you would know only certain types of injuries are taken into account. the definition of injury that the entire report is based on presumes it has been treated at a hospital. meaning the report doesn’t bother to take into account anything that never made it there. by & large, DV cases don’t wind up in hospital so they naturally would be excluded from consideration in that particular report. furthermore, the report doesn’t discuss deaths that have resulted from DV as again, this doesn’t come under the parameters of the report. it seems misguided for you to throw that report up as if it supports your argument when it actually isn’t even talking about the same thing.
the govt research available completely refutes you. The Aust Parliament site, ABS, Dept of Families Housing & Communities, they all have pretty damning statistics on DV. if the best this site can come up with is “but it’s at roughly the same level,” then the only people you’re going to convince are the misogynistic idiots you market towards to.
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“I’m not sure what it is about the fact that DV violence has remained constant that is comforting to you? it’s still happening at roughly the same (unacceptable) levels, therefore it’s not a problem? that argument is baffling.”
Nowhere do we say that we find the levels of DV to be comforting. In an ideal world we’d like to see it reduced to zero, for BOTH sexes & all genders. Our argument is clearly that the claim it has suddenly reached “epidemic” proportions is an entirely false one.
The truth is that DV incidence has actually dropped over the past decade (at least) & this so-called “epidemic” is completely manufactured & is merely a tactic to garner publicity. Furthermore, it’s a tactic to garner publicity for female victims only. Male victims are, as always, completely ignored despite making up between 1/3 & 1/2 of all DV victims.
“the definition of injury that the entire report is based on presumes it has been treated at a hospital. meaning the report doesn’t bother to take into account anything that never made it there. by & large, DV cases don’t wind up in hospital so they naturally would be excluded from consideration in that particular report.”
You could say that about any injury. Most injuries don’t result in hospital treatment. There is nothing special about the injuries suffered through DV & other types of violence therefore it’s reasonable to assume that the proportion of injury caused by either result in similar levels of hospitalisation.
If you have reliable evidence to the contrary, please present it. We are not into ignoring evidence here.
“furthermore, the report doesn’t discuss deaths that have resulted from DV as again, this doesn’t come under the parameters of the report.”
Yes it does. The results are listed on Pages 92 & 93. Specifically in Table 4.13.
“if the best this site can come up with is “but it’s at roughly the same level,” then the only people you’re going to convince are the misogynistic idiots you market towards to.”
That’s a damn fine strawman you’ve got there. Build it yourself did you?
As I’ve said, where did we ever claim that we thought the current level of DV was acceptable? We didn’t. The entire point of this article is to refute the bogus claims made by the feminist run DV industry, in this case that DV has suddenly reached “epidemic” proportions as claimed by Tracy Howe & that DV is the leading cause of death & injury for women under 45.
Your continual attempt to claim that we think current levels of DV are just fine & dandy does nothing but reveal your biases in this matter. Even if we were misogynists as you imply, why would we be happy with current DV rates when we know that up to 1/2 of the victims are male?
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Paul you should inform yourself re hospital. While it is true not all DV injury cases front emergency departments when they do a report MUST be written. Here is the kicker though only for injuries to women. There are no protocols for reporting DV injuries to men who go to emergency departments. They must visit a GP and take photos themselves. Even then there is reluctance to accept the evidence by authorities.
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OK, so let me get this straight.
What you are claiming is that deaths caused by disease shouldn’t count because… why exactly?
The source we quoted lists deaths by all causes & injury by all causes. Maybe you need to cherry pick data to make your case but we don’t.
Of course, the fact remains that, even if we did disregard all deaths caused by disease, DV still wouldn’t make it into the top 5.
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If you examine the Vic Health report(s) you will find that you in fact are wrong in your comment.
“Intimate partner violence is responsible for more ill-health and premature death in
Victorian women under the age of 45 than any other of the well-known preventable
risk factors,including high blood pressure, obesity and smoking.”
In Victoria, intimate partner violence contributes nine per cent to the total
disease burden of women aged 15 to 44 years. This makes it the leading
contributor to illness, disability and premature death for this group,
outstripping other known risk factors including obesity, high cholesterol,
high blood pressure and illicit drug use”
By taking out of context parts of these statements they become highly misleading. Note it comprises 9% of total this is roughly in agreement with ABS statements that DV affects 7% of the population. ABS also states the number of women affected by DV is decreasing (30% involve physical violence the rest is non violent) but DV against men is increasing at the rate of 150% a year. Two studies by Monash and Curtin University show that about one third of DV injuries are sustained by men and they tend to be worse than those sustained by women. Women use weapons, knives, hot oil and water to make up for their lack of physical strength and broken bones and burns are common. Paul I suggest before you nit pick you do your homework. We all wish DV could be decreased but the present one sided approach is not going to solve any problems.
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Are you the same Bev who keeps Clementine Fraud on her toes in Daily Life in Fairfax? If so….LOVE YOUR WORK! Also,nice to see “Red Pony” being questioned on her misandry.
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Because, like Menz.
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Yes, yes, by all means please do resort to Ad Hominem. It really makes you look well informed & rational.
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