12 replies to this topic

[TimC]

Monica Attard is gone along with the EP.
Attard was just finding her feet on MW.

[Tim]

timmy, on Sep 19 2007, 07:04 PM, said:

Attard was just finding her feet on MW.

..looked pretty comfortable to me.

[TimC]

Well she wasnt the best host MW ever had, Monica's first year she seemd to cautious, but she greatly improved this year. Give the gig to Jana Wendt or Mary K.

[Mediawatch]

i would like Liz or David to come back, Mary would be a nice change though

[TimC]

From Crikey:
Media Watch v The Australian: bring it on

Yesterday, in its editorial column and in an article in its Media section, The Australian accused Media Watch and me of hypocrisy. The paper attempted to compare an article in The Australian, which Media Watch criticised last Monday, with some news stories I filed nearly four years ago. It was a bogus comparison.

More significantly though, The Australian did not attempt to address the issues Media Watch raised about the newspaper’s front page article that it published two months ago.

In that story The Australian named two girls, one now 13 and one 16, both from a small Northern Territory community. It described their s-xual history when they were 12. In the case of the younger girl, The Australian described on its front page how she had an abortion when just 12. It went on to name the school she’d soon be attending in a different community. The other girl had her photo published on the front page.

The only response from The Australian to the criticism of its identification of these girls was to insist that both had had consensual s-x when they were 12. Really?

Instead, The Australian responded by alleging I had supposedly identified the victim of a p-edophile in Bali about four years ago.

That is of course nonsense, but highlights The Australian’s ignorance of both ethics and Bali in these cases. We referred to the 15-year-old boy as Ida Bagus. Overexcited, The Australian insisted we’d named him.

The problem for The Oz is that Ida Bagus is not the child’s name. It’s the prefix to his name meaning “the good”. Ida Bagus is tacked onto the name of every single male Brahmin in Bali. There are rather a lot of them.

We chose that honorific precisely because it did not identify the boy. Just as we carefully masked his face in the TV stories so no ABC viewer could identify him from our pictures.

That’s a stark contrast to the way The Australian showed the unobscured photograph of one of the Aboriginal girls it publicised as having been pregnant at 12.

The Australian also suggests that we identified the boy by naming his Aunt. Again the ABC chose not to use her full name – just the honorific Ida Ayu (the female equivalent of Ida Bagus) and part of her extremely common family name Lestari.

When The Australian gets to the point of suggesting that I tripped up by naming the province where the boys lived (province that is, not village or street) and suggests that would make a “possible identification more likely”, its story begins to look as thin as boarding house soup.

Bear in mind that in Indonesian media the two victims were fully identified by name and picture, in newspapers and on television. Despite that the ABC chose to give them the level of anonymity they would have had in an Australian context.

There’s a simple test here. I could take two Crikey readers at random and give them The Australian’s story on the two Aboriginal girls, and the stories I did in Bali on the paedophile prosecution there. What would happen if I challenged them to find the respective victims?

I’d suggest they could bowl up to the two girls in The Australian’s article within a day going on nothing more than what the paper published.

I’d be most surprised if they could find the boys in my stories at all.

Note too, that when Media Watch pinged The Oz for recklessly naming these two Aboriginal children, we made sure we didn’t identify the pair ourselves.

When The Australian’s Editor Chris Mitchell put together his “get square” he proceeded to again name the two girls, to repeat all the facts he says identified a boy in Bali and to name two other girls who talked about their s-x lives in the movie Cunnamulla when they were just 13 (again Media Watch referred to them but didn’t name them).

Media Watch’s story last Monday raised the important issue of whether The Australian was paying enough attention to protecting two Aboriginal children, whose s-xual history at a tender age is now on the record for the rest of their lives. It’s worth a read.



http://www.crikey.com.au/Media-Arts-and-Sp...ring-it-on.html

[g66453]

Monday night... I've just made myself watch Media Watch again. How awful is this year's presenter, Jonathan Holmes? Thank goodness the 9:20pm timeslot means little kiddies are tucked up safely in bed! I mean, every aspect of this guy's presentation is flawed... the way he leans forward into the camera, neck skewed to one side, that flesh-tingling grimace that he confuses for a smile... it's like watching one of those animated buzzards from the old Looney Toons cartoons. And someone should tell him there is an 'a' between the 'd' and the 'y' in every day of the week! It's Sunday, not Sundy, Monday, not Mundy, Tuesday, not Tuesdy, and so on. We're talking about 'Presenting 101' here and a substandard performance that wouldn't last five minutes on regional TV. This is supposed to be the national broadcaster's critique of all things media... a program that has historically been savage in its condemnation of mediocrity on the commercial networks. But really... Jonathan Holmes? Out of all the potential talent with the national broadcaster's ranks, the ABC has somehow managed picked another dud after poor old Monica's laborious run the previous season. Put him back behind a desk as an EP of the 7:30 Report and get him off our screens!

[aamslfc]

g66453, on May 26 2008, 11:00 PM, said:

How awful is this year's presenter, Jonathan Holmes?

I'm not the biggest fan of him either. He just comes across as smug and arrogant, and seems to present with a 'holier-than-thou' attitude.

In fact, Media Watch isn't the show it used to be. Nowadays it just seems like a big anti-News Limited rant session or a Fairfax bitchfest. I mean, some of the issues that MW 'investigates' are really non-issues - small misprints, editing errors or other minor issues that have no relevance or importance and general stuff that Joe Public couldn't give a tinker's toot about.

Yes, last week's bit about the pro-Israel stance of the SMH was appropriate, necessary and highlighted something that may not be evident prima facie to readers. However, that was about the only really important or interesting piece MW had last week (and probably for the year to date).

Actually, on that issue, I might send a bell to MW notifying them of the disgusting disclaimer the SMH put on one of the opinion pieces they published a while back. It was a pro-Palestine piece that raised some valid points and dealt with relevant issues re: Israel and Palestine. Yet the SMH, for the first time (certainly for the first time since I began reading the SMH), slapped on a disclaimer at the bottom of the article that stated "This article is the opinion of the author and doesn't reflect the views of the SMH" (or words to that effect). this nonsense came just before they canned their Middle East Correspondent's final piece for "editorial reasons" (i.e. wasn't pro-Israel enough).

If MW can vigorously pursue the SMH for their sickening 100% pro-Israel stance then it might just regain its credibility and relevance. Otherwise it's just a waste of time and space and money.

[g66453]

Don't expect too much joy from MW or the ABC in general. Word has it that ABC MD, Mark Scott - less than 2 years into a 5 year term - is manouvering to return to Fairfax from whence he came... only instead of being in the lower middle management ranks as he was in his previous time there, he thinks he has a shot at the top! Fairfax has been getting a lot of exposure within the ABC with lots of positive mentions from Scott when talking to senior management about how the ABC should be reinventing itself in the digital age. Even MW ran an extraordinary puff piece on 'media convergence' a few weeks back that had Fairfax repeatedly referred to in glowing terms and Fairfax talent getting the lion's share of the grabs! Scott allegedly promised the ABC board that he'd be a two-term MD - Lord knows it's been a while since the national broadcaster has had one of those - but the rumour is gaining strength that he wants to return to the commercial newspaper fold and join his better heeled cousins in the $2M+ a year club. Put money on him not serving one full term... regardless of where he ends up going.

Edited by g66453, 30 May 2008 - 05:58 PM.

[Kevin]

I don't mind the current host, but Attard fit the role better IMHO.

I think Media Watch has lost it's touch though. I was watching some old Media Watch videos on YouTube last week and they contained much better content than what the show contains today.

[TimC]

Bit of news on The West.

http://www.abc.net.a...ts/s2283450.htm

Edited by seddon, 24 June 2008 - 04:31 PM.

[Kevin]

Fantastic program tonight too... blasting ABC News for wonderful name super errors across 3 states, having a go at Nine for delayed cricket coverage (combined with crosses to an actual live match before returning to the delayed match) and then having a dig at News Corp's latest comments about online news sites being pathetic when it's own newspapers and websites have enough mistakes of their own

[Spiral Media]

Kevin, on 06 July 2009 - 07:38 PM, said:

Fantastic program tonight too... blasting ABC News for wonderful name super errors across 3 states, having a go at Nine for delayed cricket coverage (combined with crosses to an actual live match before returning to the delayed match) and then having a dig at News Corp's latest comments about online news sites being pathetic when it's own newspapers and websites have enough mistakes of their own

i think you meant tennis? Wimbledon? You've been in the states too long .

But yes, a very good program tonight.

[Kevin]

Spiral Media, on 07 July 2009 - 06:14 AM, said:

i think you meant tennis? Wimbledon? You've been in the states too long .

Sorry, yeah that is what I meant. Nine = cricket usually. The Americans must be having an affect on me already