Excuse me sir, I purchased this Riot, but when I opened it, there was only a small protest inside

Australia's media have been having a field day with the shenanigans of Australia Day. In fact it is a tribute to the alertness of Australian media, that they are constantly caffeine-eyed vigilant for any sign of dissent, disaffection or civil disobedience, that they largely already have the story written before the event it's about actually happens.

 I, in fact, recall an anecdote about some students going to a morning protest here in Dickensian Victoria. Some had tuned in the telly from home to see if there was anything in the news about it. Channel 10 (I believe it was) had a piece, complete with footage, of how the protestors had turned violent and attacked police. Anxiously they phoned the only one of their friends going to the protest that they knew had a mobile (90's students right? Could barely afford a week of 2 minute noodles, so a luxury like a mobile was rare). The phone rang and rang. Biting nails, the student waited for the call to be picked up, finally a curious 'hello?' is heard. 'OMG!AREYOUALRIGHT?THETVSHOWEDTHE COPSBEATINGEVERYONEUP!' 'Um, yeah we're fine, there's no cops here yet.' came the confused answer.

The TV news had decided to just write the story, patch in old footage and run it, even though they were never there and no police related violence occurred. And why not? It's blisteringly easy to report on protest in Australia. All media outlets hate protestors, all political figures of both parties hate protestors, unless they're making life difficult for the other party, and finally because of decades of lazy, shithouse reporting, the Australian public hates protestors, even when they have no fucking idea at all what it's all about. In fact, I have been privy to many comments from co-workers, inconvenienced by a protest that held up traffic, and made them 20 minutes late. The quality of these comments is savage, and disturbingly psychotic 'They should all be fucking murdered!' 'They should be raped and murdered!'

This is the classically Australian response to a protest that makes you late for a job you don't even like.

The Australia Day Tent Embassy controversy is continually described as a riot. Australians seem to have a funny idea of what a riot is. Let the Greeks, or French, or Russians, or English teach us what a real riot is. Those guys are all about the hurling bins through bank windows, making molotovs, throwing bricks at cops dressed like the robot guys in THX 1138, rolling cop cars over. The serious biz. Those guys are hardcore, serious, full-on. Calling our wee protests riots in comparison is highly fucking laughable.

Look, I'll do us all a favour and provide a handy glossary and 'write-your-own' protest report.

GLOSSARY
Press Term: Definition
Rioter: A person holding a placard or chanting. A person who maliciously throws their face at a police officer's fist.
Terrorist: An actual Rioter.
Professional Protestor: A person who turns up to one or more protests. Also known as 'the Usual Suspects' even though none of them look like Kevin Spacey.
'Protestors turned violent...': Protestors took exception to being punched in the stomach/face/back of the head, called scrote/c*nt etc by police.
'[Area] was plunged into Chaos/Turmoil': Traffic was inconvenienced for anywhere over 15 minutes.
'Police took orderly control of the situation': Police hit anything that moved - young, old, male, female, healthy, on crutches/in a wheelchair and held up traffic for 3 hours +.
'No arrests were made': There was no legal basis to make any arrests because no-one had actually done anything illegal, but please by all means go onto The Punch or Murdoch Press online forums and rant incoherently how every single one of them should be beaten/raped/murdered/jailed to show everyone what a democratic and orderly society you live in.
'[X] arrests were made': if 20 arrests are made in a group of 2000, that's 1% of the protestors. When you consider charges will later be dropped against maybe 18 of them, then the percentage of those arrested, charged and arraigned drops to 0.1%. But it sounds better to say 'x arrests were made' than 'the protest had a crime rate lower than all of Australian society throughout its entire history.'
'The protest turned ugly...': It doesn't really matter what happened. This is just a set-up for you to joke 'I'll say! Look at that minger there!'.
'Police maintained a strong presence': There were ten policemen to every 1 protestor. Claims of a heavy-handed response are thus, unjustified. True, there may be ten, tough, fit, healthy young men and/or women to one weedy unfit student or an old lady, but you never know if that student or old lady might secretly be the reincarnation of Osama Bin Laden, Dracula or the Terminator.

Now, let's write our own protest news report. It's easy!

The Write-Your-Own protest news report

"Scenes of [chaos/turmoil/unrest] struck the [streets/CBD/centre etc] of [insert location here] [today/thismorning/this afternoon] when [protestors/rioters] in support of [insert cause here] clashed with police. Police maintained a strong presence to contain the violence."

"The protest turned ugly when [insert any kind of provocation here]. Police were provoked to respond with force to contain the protest, and took orderly control of the situation."

Insert comment here from some dirty hippy lefty feral, no-one will believe or listen to. For bonus points ensure they have dreadlocks, look like a hippy, aren't caucasian or belong to some organisation that people have been primed to distrust as an insidious communist front. Cut the comment short before they can make a point or disprove anything your report has said.

"Claims of police violence were denied by [insert name of shill here]."

Cut to spokesperson - senior police officer, minister, etc.

"The officers present responded in a [calm/orderly/responsible] way to what was a [dangerous/volatile/harmful] situation. Accusations of police brutality are unfounded. [Bonus extra ministerial comment] The police have my full trust and I accept that they acted in a reasonable manner. This is what happens when [professional protestors/the usual suspects] get involved and make a bad situation worse."

Cut back to reporter.

"[No/x number of] arrests were made."

Wasn't that easy? And what's even better is you can run these off as forms, and fill one in the day before a protest or maybe just cross out some options on the day, hand it back to your editor and - ta-daaa! - the rest of the day off to get pissed and shmooze with other journos.

Let's face it, in a country where the media is so damn chickenshit and lazy, stories like these write themselves.