Friday Night Journo Fights – Sovereign People.mp4 from Media Factory on Vimeo.

Welcome to Friday Night Journo Fights – where we king hit, bullshit! In this segment we use our humour and satire skills to take on the sovereign people movement. Sovereign people are a group of people who believe that the government is a corrupt and illegal organisation. Due to this, they believe they can simply “opt-out” of the law and use this logic to flaunt Covid-19 restrictions. We created this segment in response to the growth of this movement. When we started work on this project, sovereign people were a small and scattered group. However, over the course of the semester- this movement has gained traction and we’ve been seeing more and more people declare their own ‘sovereignty’. Sovereign people pose a real threat to the safety of others- they are spreading fear and misinformation that sadly, a lot of people are believing. We were all passionate about combatting this misinformation, so we decided to try and challenge it through the power of satire. We learnt a lot whilst writing and producing this segment. A key takeaway we had was that satire is a powerful form of public pedagogy and when done right, it can tackle social issues in a way that encourages people to actively learn about, reflect and act on what is happening in the world around them. Because of this we decided that it was important that our piece was factual, as well as funny. Right from the start we agreed that we wanted to ensure that this segment didn’t legitimize the sovereign people movement in any way. During our segments whilst we present sovereign people’s views and beliefs, we also make sure to aptly king hit (debunk and satirise) them. 

This piece was produced during lockdown, and we learnt a lot about how to effectively collaborate remotely (and how to use a stack of books as a tripod). During this semester we managed to write, film and edit a media piece without ever meeting each other in real life. What started as a few Google Doc Brainstorming sessions and countless Zoom meetings, somehow turned into a fully-fledged piece of comedy news that we are very proud of.

We hope you enjoy it! Stay safe out there,

 Jack, Stephanie, Niamh and Maddy

This work was written, filmed and produced on Wurundjeri Land