The Hardy Experiments: a failure by the ABC

Marieke Hardy, defender of the literate, came under fire by The Drum because they chose to run an article that she had written that they considered to be in poor taste. Jonathan Green ran an “Editor’s note” on “The Pyne Experiments” four days after its initial publication, and removed the “offending” article.

The column, reproduced here, is admittedly not an excellent piece of online journalism, but it was public for four days before they chose to pull it. Any damage that it might have done would have been done by such time and, if nothing had been said, it would have stood as an ultimately throwaway column that one would forget immediately after reading it. By drawing attention to its removal, an issue has been created where previously no one had cared enough to be vocal about it.

Green’s note is condescending to Hardy:

“I feel I let her down this time, because the assault on Christopher Pyne she filed this week was not on a par with the main body of her work.”

This is not the same as saying “Marieke has done a terrible thing”; Green has transformed the issue into a giant mea culpa on his own part.

This editor’s note shows weakness on the part of Green, The Drum and the ABC to have simply kowtowed to the apparently invisible threat of Pyne. The fact that once something is published on the internet it never truly dies has been lost on Green, as evidenced by the fact that I was able to link to the original text of Hardy’s column.

It is almost admirable for Green to have attempted to own his mistake, and to deflect any blame from Hardy, but in completely removing a column that was asinine at worst, and condescending to its author, he has ignored the way that the internet operates and made something out of nothing.