At 7.30 this morning a beautiful little boy was found wandering along Kyeema Street, Bald Hills.Police were called – and they took him to the police station. You can just imagine the little bloke’s distress. He’s about 18 months old.
The police put out urgent calls to the media. Our radio station started saturation coverage of the calls for the little bloke’s parents.
At 9.30 police put out another bulletin. They put out a digital photo of the little bloke. All media outlets had it.
But clearly his parents didn’t listen to the media.
Police eventually notified us that they’d “located” his father at 11.30 am. At 11.33 we were advised that police were “talking with the father”. I’m sure the appropriate questions are being asked.
We live in an age where pretty much everyone in our town has a mobile phone. Most people have a phone which can receive photographs.
If every phone in Brisbane received the text message describing the boy, someone who knew someone who knew someone would definitely know the boy and his family.
The technology to send mass SMS messages is the easy bit. That’s already there.
So there are two ways to go from here. One way is this:
Hold a seminar
Talk about the problems
Talk about the privacy issues
Talk about the intrusion into people’s phones
Talk about who owns the image of the boy
Talk about the cultural issues involved in capturing the image
Talk about the implications in publicising the family’s neglect
Get the Family Court involved for an opinion
That’s one way to go.
The other is the Jeff Kennett approach. Find a strong minister in the government who will say JFDI.
This is not that hard. I’ll let you know what the police minister in the Bligh government plans to do today.
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