Brickbat One: More Time Wasting By "Current Events" Folk
ANYBODY over the age of 35 remembers Danny "I Bashed a Tranny" Bonaduce from his time on The Partridge Family. His story of hitting rock bottom before clawing his way back to a form of respectibility has been told countless times over the past five years. Channel 9's Richard Wilkin's interviewed the diminutive redhead on A Current Affair last night. So what is so interesting about Bonaduce? Some new, exciting project? An earth-shattering confession that'll rock the entertainment industry? The benefit of his wisdom? Not really. Just an overview of his life (which,as mentioned, has been done to death so many times over the past five years by every media avenue available to man). So freaking what? This is news? I don't think so. Surely it had nothing to do with his being a judge on the Channel 9 reality show My Kid's A Star which aired the same night? Surely not! To be fair, he wasn't on last night's episode, but the question begs to be asked is it current affairs or infotainment? You be the judge...
Brickbat two: Can I Have Some Editorial With That Please
MX Magazine is a quick read on the train on the way home. Sydney's free give away will never win a Pulitzer Prize, but there is the odd snippet of interest and it usually leads with the topic of the day. Lately, my pet hate has started to creep in....advertorials dressed as editorial. Next time the promotor of 80s icons-turned-hasbeens Boyz II Men gives you the detes on their next tour, tell him to take out an ad. Putting the contact number to get tickets at the bottom of the "editorial" doesn't help in the credibility stakes.
A Bouquet: Some Balance...At Last
Well done Channel 7 on giving some balance to cabbies. On Tuesday night Today/Tonight did a sting on taxi drivers and how much they overcharge unsuspecting visitors to these fair shores. Seems upward of 50 percent take advantage of naive tourists, especially for those that English is a second language. Last night, they went into bat for cab drivers and the perils they face every night when dealing with drunken, violent passengers. It may not have been balanced in the traditional sense (after all, they were two unrelated stories, albeit about the same industry), it did show a programme willing to explore the pitfalls in one of the most thankless jobs going.
SMACK! Biff! Bang! Crack! Kapow! No, this isn’t a remake of the 1960s camp version of Batman, it’s an ode to days gone by on the footy field – a time where lifting legs, a sleight of fist, or a good bare-knuckled brawl was interspersed with the odd try and hard-hitting tackles..
When former Newcastle Knight-turned-TV-personality Matty Johns’ alter-ego Reg Reagan called for rugby league to “bring back the biff”, I for one wasn’t unhappy. Not PC to say so, I know, but there’s nothing like a good stoush on the footy field to sort out the boys from the men, and, funny as it sounds, it’s a good way to settle a game down if things have started to get a bit niggly. Usually the two instigators of the brawl get 10 minutes in the sin bin, the other players take stock of the situation, and the game continues in a more conventional manner.
Yet, the Powers That Be that run all major sports in the world – whether it be football, cricket, rugby, basketball, as well as the minor sports such as rugby league and AFL – have decided that coming down hard on such infringements will clean up the game and all will be well. Their argument is a strong one. My little fellas both play football (that’s soccer to you heathens who misuse the correct term!) because my wife doesn’t want them to get hurt. Administrators of the more physically harder sports such as AFL, League and Union, know that a boy’s fledgling career is influenced by the kid’s mother. In my wife’s case, she believes when they hit their early teens they can make the decision for themselves, but until that time, it’s her call. This gives soccer a foot in the door, something that other codes realise is hurting their game.
One of the champions of the clean-up has been the media. Newspapers, radio stations and television newscasters, along with commentators of the game, have always had to be seen to do the right thing. League’s Phil Gould is one who breaks the mould by occasionally bringing up the “old days”, but his is a lone voice in the corridors of League headquarters or the games’ changing sheds.
Some of these media folks are also driven by those upstairs, not least because they have a vested interest – News Ltd has stakes in both Brisbane Broncos and Melbourne Storm – and if advertisers see dirt in the game being converted into rating points coming down, then TV stations see their bottom line starting to get hit. I am also sure there are those in the fourth estate who genuinely want the dirt out and would rather see a game settled within its rules.
So after this rant, what the hell is your point, you might ask. Well it’s this: I have no problem with a bit of fisticuffs on the field, but I do have an axe to grind when it comes to gratuitous violence. Granted, it can be a hard beast to define. At its most basic it is violence for the sake of violence. I don’t think footy field antics meet the criteria because most involved in such incidents rarely do it for the sake of it, and don’t really know a blue is on until the first punch is thrown. Television is a whole different kettle of fish. I’m sure I could easily show television programmes with graphic violence, and I could show you television programmes where violence is inferred, but never seen, but the outcome to the viewer is still the same. So is the former gratuitous? Dunno. That’s not even my point. Barry Hall is.
As anybody who follows AFL knows, Sydney Swan Barry Hall laid out Perth opponent Brent Staker with a left hook that would have done Mike Tyson proud. Even in slow motion Staker’s eyes took a sickly turn to the heavens the split second he was belted, and I’m sure his already scrambled brain was even sicklier after he hit the deck. Now, here is my problem. I have seen that incident literally 50 or 60 times. Why? Because they keep showing it on the news. Again, not a bad thing in itself. However, am I the only one who thinks that when watching the story on commercial news channels that seeing that hit no less than five or six times EACH time the story is shown, is being gratuitous? I think so. I’d go so far as to say it is irresponsible of the new’s producers to show the incident over and over again. It serves no purpose other than to sensationalise the story; it shows a man king hitting another man, and it shows the obvious distress such a hit can cause. It meets the definition of gratuitous and it’s hypocritical of current affair shows on those same channels that chastise others for doing the same. We only need one pic of the shot guys, anything else it trying to get at small grab at ratings. Worth it? I think not.
I HAVE a bee up my butt about so-called “current affairs” programmes at the moment – specifically Today/Tonight and A Current Affair. For those unfamiliar with these two shows, they are Australian programmes that follow the 6.30 evening news on Channel 7 and Channel 9 respectively. Both take hot topics of the day, some of which have been given the once-over-lightly treatment on the preceding news, and try and give the subject matter more in-depth coverage. I’ve never really been a fan of these types of shows. There is never enough time to encourage a more thorough, robust discussion on any subject, with most given only 6-8 minutes of coverage.
Being a news junkie, and having just arrived to these shores, last night I thought I’d give both shows a look – hopping between channels and letting go of the remote once a particular subject caught my eye.
Today/Tonight started off with a piece on successful restaurateur turned TV chef Gordon Ramsay; of particular interest the amount of cussing he did on his Channel 9 programme Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. To be fair, the story was accurate in that the somewhat excitable Ramsay does indeed expound an expletive or 10 during the show, so you might think reporter David Richardson has a point. However, it became clear within the first minute it was a hatchet job. Why? Because Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares just happens to run on the opposition Channel 9 network.
As well as disingenuously acting outraged at Ramsay’s conduct, Richardson employed one of the more annoying tactics used by reporters making mountains out of mole hills. One of Richardson’s interviewees was food personality Libby Travers who was asked a series of questions. In a voice over Richardson said Travers was very angry at Ramsay’s swearing on national TV. However, HE asked the leading question, but the way the voice over was phrased, made it sound like she was offering an off-the-cuff opinion. To me, this is dishonest. It is ok for the person being interviewed to offer up an unsolicited honest opinion, it is quite another to ask a leading question then make out it was unsolicited. Some may think I’m being a pedant on this point, I don’t care. There is a subtle difference between the two, and at the end of the day it is misleading because it is attempting to give credibility to the reporter’s view. And when the reporter’s view is so obviously biased, it matters.
And don’t think for one minute that was Richardson was acting on behalf of outraged viewers at Ramsay’s conduct. This was payback for another incident a couple of weeks ago from A Current Affair (which I’ll get to in a minute). Richardson gives about as much of a toss for Ramsay’s demeanour as John Howard gives for the Stolen Generation – bugger all.
And this is the main plank for my rant. What is the line between a news story and having a crack at the competition. If Today/Tonight had been any more transparent, Richardson would have been a piece of Perspex.
Now before Channel 9 acts all pious about the Ramsay non-story, a few weeks ago it was their turn to act silly. A Current Affair’s reporter Ben McCormack decided to take it upon himself to be the champion of former game show contestants on the now defunct Channel 7 programme National Bingo. Apparently the show was cancelled with some of the pre-shot episodes not going to air. So what you might say. Well it turns out that some contestants of these programmes won prizes. A clause in their contract stated they would not get paid if the show did not go to air, so they missed out.
Along comes Sir McCormack with his shiny microphone and decided to hassle Channel 7’s talking heads David Koch and Melissa Doyle – like they have anything to do with it – live on their morning show Sunrise. More annoyingly, not only is this a beat up on the competition, but it was just as dishonest as Richardson's piece. As a viewer I was lead to believe these contestants had been seen by a couple of million people on the gigglebox and Channel 7 hadn’t paid up.
Channel 7 then ran a story the following night explaining the clause. If McCormack is indeed the award-winning journalist his bio claims him to be, surely that little nugget would have been of interest to the viewer. Is it fair, that these people were not paid out? I don’t know. That is not for me to decide. What I do know, as a viewer, I want ALL the information available so I can make an informed decision on the merits of a story, not cherrypicked gen from a biased reporter from the opposition. Of course Channel 9 had to do another piece the following night on how the contestants were coerced into signing the contracts, yadda, yadda yadda. What a snore fest.
Surely these shows would much better serve the public by giving us stories that really matter. I know CanWest doyen Izzy Asper once said (and I’m paraphrasing) “television programmes are those annoying things in between ads”, but have the Powers-That-Be become that cynical? The cheapest shot is the best shot, we’ll dump real stories in favour of this pap? And don’t even get me started on hosts editorialising during the gaps in between (although there is a case that these are not straight news shows, so therefore they have that right).
Whether it’s the reporters, producers or owners driving these stories, they all need to grow up. Airing your petty professional fracas on national television is not only pathetic, but it is boring, boring, BORING. How about some real news next time, huh?
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