Terry Barnes

The truth about Australia’s controversial crocodile cull

A saltwater crocodile in the Northern Territory, Australia (Credit: Getty images)

The Northern Territory News, Darwin’s daily paper, is known worldwide for its front pages with headlines so cleverly lurid that they outshine the efforts of the Sun’s Kelvin McKenzie in his editorial heyday. Over the years, the newspaper has run front pages highlighting everything from UFO and mythical beast sightings to the bizarre behaviour of Territorians, who, if you go by the NT News, are no strangers to acting oddly.

But there’s one hot topic always guaranteed a NT News front page when it comes up: crocodiles. ‘I love crocodiles and anytime we have a good one we put it on the front page,’ a former NT News editor, Matt Williams, once said. ‘When we get a good crocodile story, we actually sell more papers.’

When it comes to crocodiles, people almost always are the authors of their own misfortunes

This week, however, the latest crocodile front page is not good news for crocs.

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