The Iranian refugee saga shows how hypocritical the media can be

In 1979, 18-year-old Ukrainian woman Liliana Gasinskaya put on a red bikini, climbed through the porthole of a Soviet cruise ship docked in Sydney, swam to shore and asked for asylum.

The media, particularly Sydney’s tabloids, were outraged against the “girl in the red bikini” and called for her to be granted asylum in Australia, despite there being little evidence that Gasinskaya had any real fear of persecution. The Soviet Union had loomed as an existential threat to the West, and here was brave little Australia’s chance to curry favor with the Kremlin.