No doubt pictorial representations of people of colour by white men are uniquely charged and problematic, indivisible from long histories of derogatory stereotyping such as blackface. And then there is the way a political cartoon can distil an idea, making it a medium ideally suited to the rapid, self-effacing churn of an increasingly social media-driven news landscape.

Under what conditions, other than renown, is it possible for the media to provoke displays of global empathy or mourning for people we have never met? The question is an especially fraught one at a time when mainstream media has lost much of its authority, and the prevalence of social media platforms has created new ways in which public grief can be expressed and policed.

The Australian fights its culture wars in a particular – and now well-documented – way. It plays the man, or the woman, instead of the ball. It goes in hard, and it targets individuals who aren’t necessarily prepared for a fight (or at least one that’s very public, very national, and very much on The Australian’s own terms).

A ‘good caricature, like every work of art,’ said the Italian Baroque painter, Annibale Carracci, ‘is more true to life than reality.’ This is why, I think, Bill Leak’s cartoons are so often failures. Like several pundits that take up column inches at the Australian these days, his views are so out of touch with the majority of the population that they can – in moments of ideologically charged rage – seem almost deranged.

Never has the requirement of specialisation been more prevalent than in the current Australian media landscape. Even when a story is written specifically about millennials, the resultant article will likely be written by a fifty year old. Why? Because millennials lack the requisite qualifications to write about their own lives.

It is uncomfortable that in 2016 there is such easily accessible quality research available online which highlights the complex and intermittent nature of mental illness, yet the vernacular within the media remains regressive and stereotyped. Furthermore, not only is the reporting often negative, it can also be misrepresentative.

Yesterday in its print edition, the Age ran a headline likening young South Sudanese-Australian men to animals. The headline – ‘Youths’ behaviour “like animals”’ – was, in part, a quote from a waiter at Brunetti, who had been supervising the café on Saturday night when the young men came in, scattering the furniture and, reportedly, terrifying all concerned.