EFFIE BATEMAN | Lifestyle | Contact
A journalist at the ABC has been fired this week after committing a grave breach of protocol: interviewing a millennial who is both normal and relatable for a story about the rental crisis.
The reporter, 30-year-old Leslie Trenton, is said to have “completely disregarded decades of public broadcasting tradition” by featuring 33-year-old high school teacher Emily Long, in an investigative piece about skyrocketing rent and housing insecurity.
Speaking to The Advocate, Leslie reveals she was informed that the woman she interviewed was too ‘normal’, and that she clearly wasn’t a good fit for the ABC.
“Yeah apparently she was too relatable”, she says, with a shrug, “she wasn’t living with her parents while she did up a three million dollar home, she didn’t have some weird job, like being a crystal shop owner or studying a PHD in African dance.”
“No coloured hair or giant piercings, stuffed unicorn toy collections, or seven kids and a pitbull.”
“Or complaining that she can’t afford a two bedroom house in Bondi on her own.”
“Just your average millennial who’s struggling to get their foot on the property ladder.”
Leslie says the ABC told her that the whole point of interviewing ‘relatable’ people on the rental and housing crisis was to make young people all look like whinging, entitled idiots and not to actually find people having very real struggles, because those are the articles that get clicks.
“Yeah, I knew I should have interviewed the bloke who rescued disabled pigeons.”
More to come.
