The angry letters, he notes, did not prevent Sheehan from expressing his own views. And his article stirred sympathy as well as rage. He was lifting the lid off suppression of information. And I thought that was more important than a single article. It's absolutely untouchable on the issue of discrimination or race.
Some readers think such caution diminishes the book.
Sheehan's polemical intent sits uneasily with his efforts to maintain a detached reporter's standpoint. You can complain about abuses, but the real issue is how to do it better. That ambiguity, as well as making the author a shifting target, leaves him seeming to support incompatible views. Which Sheehan fully expected to happen. I think left-wingers read the book and think, Here's the thinking man's Pauline Hanson.