Is it my paranoia or does the Oz Press exaggerate, over-publicise anything not too good about Bali, looking for bad where it is not there, probably protecting local Tourism by putting down the opposition. Had the present unfortunate, sad Mom and Daughter died this way in Sydney, would there be the same brouhaha, day after day in the Press? The news is indeed saddening and our sympathy goes out to those poor people, but my question is still IMHO valid.
It sometimes makes me sad to see my Soul's home put down so much and so often.
Some years ago, we had the case of a Garuda plane landing at Perth International, when the Pilot tempoarily mistook the newly installed bright lights of Horry Mller Drive, for the runway. Correctly, the Oz-trained Jumbo Pilot signalled at 1,000 feet, "going around" and proceeded to land safely, in due course. The Oz Press published it in the sense of 'Idiot Indonesian pilot narrowly escapes crash'!
You can guarantee that had that been a Quantas plane, in this understandable mix-up, the head-lines would have read 'Oz pilot brilliantly averts disaster'.
Our jingoistic press protects our national icons to a stupid degree, sometimes not publicising near-disasters at all.
We were once coming home on a fairly new 767, starting on the down-run opposite Geraldton, when the airraft went into panic mode, dropping like a log, no power and, as the Captain eventually told us, we were 21 seconds from implosion which he averted at 17 secnds and got us back to normal. Lada Air ex Bangkok for Europe, a few months later, imploded with total loss of souls aboard, as it reached cruising altitude.
The problem was in the Electronics, which despite 4 redundant systems, signalled in both cases for the brakes to activate as "the wheels were touching the ground".
Thank God for the heroic Oz Pilot but bad marks to the Oz Press who never published a word of this near-fatal disaster. 3 or 4 days later, it was mentioned that a Quantas 767 was taken out of service in Tokyo, so something must have percolated through to the Quantas hierarchy.
Quantas 10 points, Oz Press -5! Forgive my negative posting on this fine sunny Sunday in W.A.
Picky Pete