Little Bogan Lost: Examining Media Treatment of the Jaidyn Leskie Murder Case

Abstract

In June 1997, 13-month-old Jaidyn Leskie disappeared from Moe, a rural Victorian town. His body was found in January 1998. Through a discussion of three presentations of ‘loss’, this paper contends those involved in the case were constructed by the media as ‘bogans' — powerless outsiders — because they defied categorisation within narrow conceptions of ‘normal Australian society’. While Jaidyn himself was a ‘lost child’, his family and associates were likened to a ‘lost tribe’, whose alliances, feuds and kinship networks became exotic, exploitative entertainment. Lacking rhetorical tools to ‘explain’ such a distinctive culture, media coverage constructed bogans as victims of failed social policy: their culture ‘caused’ by economic downsizing, unemployment, drug use and single parenthood. Finally, when members of Jaidyn's family accepted money for media interviews, they were painted as ‘losing their innocence’. This reveals insecurities underpinning the concept ‘bogan’: evidently, bogans were not supposed to engage in media manipulation themselves.