There was a stunning story in the news this week, about 13-year-old Austin Appelbee, who swam four kilometers through rough waters to save his mother and two siblings after the family had been swept out to sea.

It was an inspirational story of courage and determination, which, I was surprised to discover yesterday, also has a faith component to it.

When speaking about his swim, Austin had told journalists that he’d prayed to God, that he’d thought about his Christian youth group, and sung religious songs in his head. But since before yesterday I’d only encountered the story on the ABC, I wasn’t aware of any of this.

It was only when I saw Christians on Twitter referencing the story that I started to do some digging, and found a whole other aspect that had seemingly been ignored.

Prayer during the swim

“I don’t think it was me who did it, it was God the whole time”, Austin is quoted as saying in The Australian. “I kept praying and praying, I said to God ‘I’ll get baptised, I’ll get baptised’.”

I’ve found three print stories and two videos (embedded in the stories) on the ABC’s website about this amazing swim, and the only one that includes anything about his faith is the long unedited video interview with him, and that doesn’t include the above quote.

A missing perspective

Perhaps it’s not surprising to many this aspect of the story was ignored, given longstanding criticism the taxpayer-funded organisation has received for perceived bias against Christians. But it’s hard to justify the exclusion.

If we’re exploring what gave Austin the strength and courage to complete his ordeal, surely it seems reasonable to acknowledge his own account of that motivation and mention his faith, even if one doesn’t share that faith themselves.

I could point out that Christians make up a significant portion of the population (and ABC’s stakeholders), but the omission would be just as egregious (if ironically less likely) if Austin had been a believer in any other religion.

Commercial outlets follow suit

One might also note that outlets like The Guardian and The Sydney Morning Herald don’t mention his faith either, but those are commercial media outlets. The ABC, as a publicly funded broadcaster, operates under a different mandate and as far as I know, there’s no East German-style government policy requiring the censoring of all positive mentions of religion in the news.

Even the BBC mentions that ‘it was prayer, Christian songs and “happy thoughts”‘ that kept the 13-year-old pushing on.

A lost opportunity

As it stands, it seems Australians have sadly been robbed of an opportunity to reflect about the role faith can play in helping people in times of crisis.

With the number of stories of distress we see in our news each day, I think that leaves all of us worse off.

• Michael McVeigh is Director of Publishing and Digital Content at Jesuit Communications. He has worked across digital and print publications Australian Catholics, Eureka Street, Madonna and Pray.com.au. He is a former president of the Australasian Catholic Press Association and member of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference Media Council.
• First published in Eureka Streeet Plus. Republished with permission.