Piranha
Sep 22 2003, 11:28 PM
This is not about what's making news, it's about how it's the news is reported. Not so much the typos, as the totally ridiculous, the incongruous, and the downright wrong. We can look at spin and promotion, and the effects on news selection and presentation.
Here's a start.
Channel Seven 4:30pm News, 22nd September.
Channel Seven has a crawler running "Headlines" across the bottom of screen. Yesterday's "headlines" included the following gems:
Debra Messing wins Emmy for Will & Grace.
Lleyton Hewitt on a High after Davis Cup Win.
Neither of those are newsworthy headlines. The Emmy story should have run been headed with either Everybody Loves Raymond or The Sopranos, who won the most awards. The West Wing would have been a stretch as the lead, but could have been spun as "West Wing Wins 4th Consecutive Best Drama Emmy". That's news. Running the Debra Messing headline was not news: it was self promotion.
Onto the Lleyton Hewitt story. It's not news, it's common sense. He won an incredibly hard-fought game semi-fina, coming back from 2 sets down. That was the story - but that was yesterday and guess which network reaped yooge ratings showing the match? Right. Seven. It wasn't news: it was self promotion.
devi
Sep 22 2003, 11:56 PM
I'd just like to put in a special mention for Dennis Shanahan and The Australian blatantly targeting Crean by beating up stories that are just plain fictional or not news and nobody losing their jobs. Eg. an argument at National Executive as the front page headline last weekend.
Piranha
Sep 23 2003, 10:10 PM
QUOTE (devi @ Sep 23 2003, 02:56 PM)
I'd just like to put in a special mention for Dennis Shanahan and The Australian blatantly targeting Crean by beating up stories that are just plain fictional or not news and nobody losing their jobs.
I'm seriously not surprised, devi. Not even a little tiny bit. I'm assuming you've alerted the other Mediawatch (the one on ABC) about this imbalance?
devi
Sep 24 2003, 01:42 AM
A small selection of what they have printed: that Jenny Macklin was putting up a leadership challenge; that Simon Crean was going to stand down; that Greg Sword was lining up numbers in Crean's seat to get himself elected. Anyone who knows anything about Victorian or Federal Labor knows that you would have to be simultaneously stupid, drunk and clinically insane to give any credence to any of those stories, but The Australian, supposedly a credible newspaper, went ahead and ran them even after they'd been told they were the stuff of fantasy. Mock if you like but it constitutes a campaign as far as I'm concerned.
Meowcat
Sep 24 2003, 01:50 AM
No mockage here. You make an excellent case.
Piranha
Sep 24 2003, 04:37 PM
QUOTE (Meowcat @ Sep 24 2003, 04:50 PM)
No mockage here. You make an excellent case.
Y-hey! No mockage from me, either. This thread is for news-mocking only!
BJC
Sep 24 2003, 05:46 PM
This is a letter in the Feedback section of Brisbanes "City News" newspaper.
QUOTE
I will vomit if I have to read (1) another story about how I can combine work, coffee, pilates and my sexuality for the ultimate in lifestyle; (2) what some cute, bright, young thing has done to overthrow the nasty white, male, corporate oppression surrounding us all' (3) any story with the words 'innovative' and 'food' in the same sentence or (4) how people have turned up to another piss-up to help some little Aussie battler. Who gives a stuff?
Riiiggghhhttttt.
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