The Man Who Ran Toward the Fire

Let's start with what didn't happen.

Ben Roberts-Smith was never charged with a crime.

Not by the AFP. Not by the DPP. Not by the military. No criminal trial. No criminal standard. No "beyond reasonable doubt."

What happened instead is that two newspapers, from the safety of a Sydney office, with lawyers instead of rifles, took the most decorated living Australian soldier to a civil court where the standard of proof is "more likely than not."

And then they called it justice.

Fifty-one percent. That's all it takes to destroy a man in a civil court. No jury of peers. No criminal burden. No consequence for the journalists if they got it wrong. Just a finding. Just a headline. Just two media organisations who needed a scalp and found one wearing a Victoria Cross.

Here's what I know about men who run toward fire.

They are not gentle in the doing of it.

War is not a thing that produces paperwork and press releases. It produces split-second decisions in the dark, in the dirt, in a country twelve thousand kilometres from home. We sent him there. Seven deployments. We asked him to do things in our name that we don't want described at breakfast. And we gave him the Victoria Cross because what he did under fire was so extraordinary that the military pinned its highest honour to his chest.

Then the journalists came for him.

HERE IS WHAT THE MEDIA ACTUALLY DID

They found the most decorated living Australian soldier. A man who bled for this country in ways they never will. A man with a chest full of medals that prove, beyond any headline, what he was willing to sacrifice.

And they decided that man was their story.

Not because they found the truth. Because they needed to be the heroes. And the only way a journalist becomes a hero is if they take someone down.

They couldn't take down a politician. Too many lawyers. They couldn't take down a corporation. Too much money. So they took down the soldier. Because soldiers fight with rifles, not writs. Because the man trained to run toward the fire doesn't know how to fight a newsroom.

They picked him because they thought he couldn't fight back.

The journalists who ran this campaign have never served a day.

They have never been to Afghanistan. They have never made a decision under fire. They have never carried a mate out of a situation most Australians couldn't imagine surviving.

But they sat in their offices, with their lawyers and their legal privilege and their expense accounts, and they decided they knew better than the Victoria Cross committee what Ben Roberts-Smith deserved.

Then they picked up their award. Walked to the stage. Thanked their editors.

Called themselves brave.

THIS IS WHAT COWARDICE LOOKS LIKE NOW

It doesn't wear a mask. It wears a press pass.

It doesn't sneak in the dark. It files a story and waits for the algorithm to do the rest.

It doesn't face consequences. It wins Walkleys.

The same media class that has spent twenty years telling Australia its military tradition is problematic finally had a decorated soldier in the dock and weren't going to waste it. This wasn't journalism. It was a cultural operation dressed up as one. A trophy hunt that needed a trophy. And they found the biggest one available.

Ben Roberts-Smith ran toward the fire seven times.

The journalists ran toward him once, from behind a desk, in air conditioning, fully protected by the very legal system they used as a weapon against him.

And somehow they got to write the story.

Lest we forget who the real cowards are.

— Rico Holt  ·  ricoholt.com