When Journalism Chooses Clickbait Over Accuracy
I wrote my first letter to the editor today. It was about some factual inaccuracies I noticed in an article on Victorian cults published in The Herald Sun.
The piece had one of those sensationalised headlines with words like “weird,” “wacky,” and “dangerous.” And, to be fair, the groups listed probably do fit those descriptions in many ways. But what worried me most about the section on the infamous Australian cult known as ‘The Family’ was the familiar, ongoing spread of misinformation – errors that have been circulating in the media ever since the group first made headlines in the 1980s.
These inaccuracies might not matter much to the casual reader, but they were still wrong. And it made me wonder where exactly the journalist had sourced their information. A quick Google search suggested the culprit: Wikipedia…
Again, most of the mistakes in the article could be seen as rather minor; things like the co-founder’s name, the number of children illegally adopted (listed as double the actual number), and even the location of where the police rescued the children (Lake Eildon, not Olinda). But the most disturbing error was a photo caption. A visual showing cult leader Anne Hamilton-Byrne – donning a big blonde wig and holding a chubby cat – was mislabelled as “Sarah Hamilton-Byrne.”
This was an error too wrong to not notice.
Sarah Hamilton-Byrne was one of the children who escaped from the cult’s Lake Eildon property in the 1980s. Later in life, she changed her name to Sarah Moore and became a prominent voice on behalf of the other child-survivors of The Family.
Until her unexpected death in 2016, Sarah dedicated herself to advocacy and medical work. She appeared frequently in the media as a spokesperson for fellow survivors, authored a memoir in 1995 titled Unseen, Unheard, Unknown, and pursued a career in medicine – working in general practice and psychiatry in Melbourne. She also educated refugee doctors and volunteered in South Asia, all while managing the lifelong trauma of her physically abusive childhood.
Sarah endured a troubled life, yet managed to bring a lot of good to others, especially through her work in underdeveloped countries. In her blog, she also spoke openly about the deep scars left by her upbringing under Anne’s strict rules, confessing that she wrestled with whether to love or hate the parent who had shaped – and haunted – her childhood. That is why it feels all the more disturbing to see her former name misrepresented as the very woman she had long struggled to escape.
Anne Hamilton-Byrne co-founded the Australian new age group ‘The Family’ in the 1960s
Reading this article in The Herald Sun (and similar pieces over the years) was a sharp reminder of how cults – or what religious scholars have called ‘new religious movements’ – often get the short end of the stick when it comes to reporting.
Religious Historian, Carole Cusack’s scholarly research on The Family highlights how limited information continues to circulate across the internet on this group, like that of an “echo-chamber.” Whereby the media is still largely dominated by cult stereotypes and generalisations which are recycled in short news items and podcasts.
So, how do we break this cycle? How do we ensure that reporting – especially on topics like cults and their “weird and wacky” subject matter – resists easy generalisations and innacuracies? Where the concept of brainwashing and mind control isn’t tossed around casually, and where the nuances of these groups are acknowledged, including the reality that some members may not view such groups as cults, but rather harmless communities.
To me, accuracy must be non-negotiable, especially in a paper read by most of the Australian public. Journalists have a responsibility not only to inform but to do so with integrity – especially when the stories they tell involve real people and real trauma. If we continue to rely on recycled inaccuracies, what does that say about our commitment to truth?