News Corp
Rupert’s Top Ten
Message to The Australian subs’ desk: Have the week off guys and plug these into the paper over the coming few days. The production instructions are in brackets next to the headlines. Pick up wires from there: (more…)
ABC
Nowhere Man
Chris Uhlmann wants you to know he’s a non-partisan, straight down the middle journalist. One of the stars of the reinvented post-Kerry O’Brien current affairs show “7.30” (apparently ‘Report’ is superfluous now), Uhlmann represents the new, bland, board-approved face of the public broadcaster’s current affairs coverage – as in whatever Read more…
ABC
The Last Commons
Five hundred years ago, English capitalist farmers began a process known as “enclosure of the commons”, the forced and wholesale appropriation of public land – formerly used by villagers for arable farming. Now corporate forces, led by Rupert Murdoch, and agents of the political Right are attempting a similar manoeuvre on public broadcasting – the broadcast commons. The ultimate price is our democracy. (more…)
Craft Standards
Noise Vs Signal
First it was the nightly weather, then the finance report and now it’s politics. There is a creeping conspiracy in television news of people standing in front of charts, taking the daily temperature – of meteorology, of markets and of members of parliament – and trying to persuade us that it all means something. (more…)
Craft Standards
The End of the Affairs?
A truism about journalism is that it consists of applying six basic questions to issues of public interest: Who, What, Where, When, How and Why. In breaking news, journalists often will deal with the first four questions fairly readily. The last two are sometimes harder. Decades ago, public broadcasting sought Read more…
ABC
7.30 Something
After a build-up bigger and longer than the advertising campaign for Avatar (where were the 3-D glasses?), ABC Television’s revamped current affairs flagship 7.30 Report went to air for the first time on Monday under its “new generation” hosts the televisual Leigh Sales and Chris Uhlmann.
As expected, there was a new set – leaving the flame-haired Leigh up on her feet, weather and finance presenter style, and accompanied by an animated slideshow over her left shoulder. While the graphics were a welcome addition in explaining number heavy stories (why has the ABC never used them before?), the actual package was depressingly formulaic, reflecting a style that hasn’t changed in television for 40 years. (more…)
Advertising
Hitting Them Where it Hurts
The previous post Radio Ga Ga looked at the ever deteriorating standards in Australian talkback radio – including inciting racial hate and prejuidice, cash for comment, distortion, lies, breaches of the rules of contempt and a general absence of any respect for the ethics of journalism.
Craft Standards
Radio Ga Ga
As people marvel at the immediacy of news via the internet, it is easy to overlook the fact that old fashioned steam radio has been doing this for 70 years or more. The words come out of the announcer’s mouth and they are worming into listeners’ ears in real time. And therein lie the potential problems.
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