JG Estiot is the President of TELNEM, a media-watch group based in Melbourne, Australia. His weekly column below is posted every Monday by 9pm and reflects on news coverage from the preceding week. Unless otherwise specified, his comments are based on the daily monitoring of ABC, Nine and Seven TV news in Victoria. JG is not a member of a political party, special interest group, sporting or professional association other than TELNEM.
jgestiot@netspace.net.au
When reporters tip the horse they ride
We all win on Melbourne Cup day
Franca Arena's hanging was not a suicide
A 727 disappears from radars and TV screens
Interest rates : Half the story
Irving, the victim of journalistic incompetence
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When reporters tip the horse they ride
There is a conflict of interest in the news
media which is seldom discussed. In recent years, the commercial
TV stations have put more than a few sports people on the payroll.
At first, it makes sense: the experts report on the
sports they know best. So we have the likes of Shane Warne
reporting on cricket, Greg Hall reporting on horse racing
and so on. The networks benefit both from the high profile of
the athlete and the many contacts he/she has in the sport. The
benefit to the viewer is getting the story straight from the horse's
mouth.
On Monday (Melbourne Cup eve), it was from the jockey's
mouth. Simon Marshall filed a report for the National Nine
News. The awkwardness of having to interview fellow jockeys was
a minor problem. More problematic was the section of his report
recorded during the pre-cup parade. No time to wave at the crowd,
he was on air. This was a rather unique situation where the reporter
was both covering the event and the being event itself.
The commercial TV stations are obviously working
hard at getting the audience as close to the action as possible.
Eventually, they will find a way to get one of the competitors
to report live as the events unfold. To a certain extent, they
are already doing it with "race-cam" during car
racing.
In the Simon Marshall report, the stickiest part
was the tips. How can a jockey who is competing in a race the
next day tip any other horse but his own? Simon obliged and tipped
his own horse. As he put it: "how can I go past my
mount in the big one?" You cannot. This conflict of interest
raises more questions. Does a team player moonlighting as a reporter
have an ethical obligation to disclose team tactics to
his audience? Where should his allegiance be? To his team or to
the public? The transition between sport and broadcasting is not
easy. The Seven Network has demonstrated with one of its sports
presenters that an ape in front of a script is not a substitute
for a trained professional. It could well be that being on both
sides of the camera is not possible, even for the best of them.
Watch out for that tennis
It is around this time in the year that the Seven
Network opens up its news to tennis promos. With the Australian
Open in sight, be prepared for a surge of trivial tennis bits.
The slow build-up will reach fever pitch by next January, it
is the same every year.
We all win on Melbourne Cup day
Here is how the National Nine News started on Tuesday:
"Good evening, it was a Melbourne Cup that afterwards everyone
felt like a winner, even if you didn't back Saintly." The
nasty anti-gambling stories of a few months ago have all been
forgotten.
Pauline still on the menu
Pauline Hanson cannot win. On Monday, she produced
facts to answer the allegations that she was to blame for inciting
racial incidents in Queensland. Her action was described as "broadsides
at Aborigines." It seems new standards are created every
day. It is not an incitement to racial hatred to claim Pauline
Hanson is to blame for an incident she has no relation to. But
for her to answer such swipes is an attack on aborigines.
When the smoke cleared, the farcical attempts to
keep her into the news continued. On Seven, a speech by the Governor
General (with no mention of Pauline Hanson) was described as "a
thinly veiled attack on Pauline Hanson" by Glen Milne. On
the ABC, whenever the topic is immigration, multiculturalism,
Aboriginal or racial matters, Pauline Hanson is associated with
the story, one way or another. Even if it is to inform us that
"Pauline Hanson was not mentioned" (7/11/96). The following
day, Craig McMurtrie continued to put fuel on the fire and once
again brought Pauline Hanson into the picture: "despite his
(John Howard) best effort, the Hanson debate lingers still."
No wonder, with McMurtrie, it'll never stop.
Observers would have noticed the progression in the
way the news media has dealt with Mrs Hanson. About six weeks
ago, she was routinely called "maverick MP Pauline
Hanson." It then became "Anti-immigration MP"
to be later upgraded to "Anti-Asian immigration MP."
She is now routinely referred to as "Anti-Asian MP
Pauline Hanson".
Franca Arena's hanging was not a suicide
Franca Arena has ruthlessly
exploited media opportunities in the past. As a seasonned politician,
she knows what the journos want to hear, and she usually delivers.
This time around, however, she is feeling the other side of the
stick.
When retired Judge Yeldham committed suicide
early in the week, she was immediately named in the news reports.
The imputation was she had caused his suicide by naming him in
Parliament in relation to the Royal Commission investigating paedophilia.
At Nine, they were quite blunt about it: "…Mrs. Arena
comments cost Judge Yeldham his life."
Common sense points to another reason for the suicide.
Judge Yeldham had received a subpoena to appear before the commission
just a few hours before his death. This is more likely to be the
cause for his unfortunate decision. Even if not guilty of being
involved in paedophilia (as he fiercely maintained), his double
life as a closet homosexual was almost certainly going to be exposed
before the commission. Franca Arena was clearly not the reason
for his suicide.
The Nine Network takes on SBS
Top mark to SBS World News for its report (Sunday)
on the allegations raised by the Nine Network. The Sunday
program alleged various breaches and rorts by SBS. Rather
than avoid the news critical of its operation, SBS took up the
challenge and put together a well balanced report. In reply to
Channel Nine's claim that SBS refused to answer any of the allegations,
SBS made clear it had send many pages of information that the
Sunday program did not use. Somebody is lying.
As a footnote to this story, the claim by Nine that
SBS does not follow its charter. In time, this may prove to
be true. However, to be fair, one should add the commercial networks
have been breaching their own guidelines for years. There is something
hypocritical about Nine turning into a media "Zorro".
Rather than pick on SBS, I suggest Senator Alston investigate
the television industry as a whole. A major review - particularly
of the self-regulated commercial networks - is unavoidable.
A 727 disappears from radars and TV screens
What does Channel Nine do when a plane crashes off
Nigeria with 141 people on board? It reports on the already
beat-up TWA flight 800 story. ABC does better, it mentions
neither.
In recent times, there has been extensive debating
in the news media on racism. So far, none of the analysis and
various theories have included the news media as a possible influencial
source of racism, an active ingredient, rather than a mere reflector
of community values. Could there be an element of racism in the
manner the news is reported on Australian TV? A cyclone in India
with a reported 1000 dead, 2000 injured and 100,000 homeless barely
rates 30 seconds. That's a fraction of the attention Shane Warne's
spin finger gets when it is bruised.
For the record, Seven did report the Boeing 727 crash.
The bottom line
Stuart Littlemore in his
Media-watch TV program exposed the ABC for the practise of filming
men from the waist down to illustrate a story on prostate
cancer. It seems the ABC is still short of visual narratives when
reporting on men's issues. In a report about the effect of divorce
on men (6/11/96), the ABC news did it again. Almost 30 seconds
of the film was taken with such shots. Is the subliminal message
that men have no head when it comes to such matters?
Interest rates : Half the story
On the 8/11/96 Nine reported the Commonwealth bank
decision to cut its rate on credit cards. That was half the story.
A non-bank lender is going to market its own card, undercutting
the banks by up to 3%.
As blind as a bat
It seems our news people are so concerned with trivia,
allegations and mud throwing that they miss the really big stories
when they happen. Not so long ago, the CSRIO accidentally released
a virus intended to exterminate rabbits. At the time, there was
a lot of speculations about the dangers of releasing such a virus
and more specifically the dangers of it crossing species and infecting
humans. This week, it happened. A dangerous new virus crossed
species from bats to humans. A woman is unconscious in intensive
care as a result. The commercial networks ignored the story (no
pictures of the virus attacking the lady) and the ABC did run
a reported but avoided reopening the old can of worms.
Irving, the victim of journalistic incompetence
David Irving, the British
Historian who challenges some of the claims made about the holocaust,
has received a rather rough treatment from the Australian
media this week.
On the TV news this week, he was largely portrayed
as someone who claims the holocaust never took place. As
we will see later, this is entirely false. Apart from that, the
media somewhat choked on this story. There obviously are influential
pressure groups breathing down tender and exposed necks. Initially,
the bulk of the media coverage centred around discrediting Irving.
The "maverick" or "controversial" labels duly
applied.
When the Masters realised that the whole thing had
backfired and that he was in fact getting a lot of publicity,
they pulled the plug. This was embarrassingly obvious on the ABC
news. The next day, all mentions of Irving had been surgically
removed from the news. The story had mutated into a piece on Gerry
Adams and Sinn Fein. Interestingly enough, the Irving side of
the story was dropped on the day claims were made the Australian
Government had bowed to Jewish pressures. A day later, the whole
thing was dropped. We can see the puppets, show us who is pulling
the strings.
On Friday, Glen Milne (Seven Network) reported
David Irving as claiming the holocaust never existed. Mr Milne
was aware of an Irving interview conducted for "Today Tonight"
by Jill Singer. He used some of the footage for his report. Let's
take a look at part of this interview:
DI: I have a criminal record because I uttered
a sentence as an historian, in Germany four or five years ago.
I uttered an opinion about an historical fact which the Polish
Government has now admitted is perfectly true.
TT: You have been refused entry from many countries,
including Canada, Germany, Italy, South Africa...
DI: It's a domino effect, let me explain. I have
a criminal record in Germany for speaking - as it turns out the
truth - the Canadian Government ordered me not to enter Canada
because I had a criminal conviction. Because I am denied entry
to Canada and deported from Canada, then Australia...
TT: What about the contempt of Court in England?
DI: (laugh) One Friday afternoon, I am sitting
working at my typewriter and three West End Central Police Officers,
who were my friends, turn up and say mr Irving, we are very sorry,
we have got orders to take you to *Pentonville prison for three
months, for contempt of Court. Contempt of Court, not to a Judge...
Extraordinary system of justice... It's all part of the same global
campaign to silence me.
TT: You are not being silenced and the fact is,
I know a lot of people are talking about freedom of speech issues,
your views are freely being expressed here and will be broadcast
tonight. Can we have a look at some of the important historical
truths as you see them. Was there a master plan to exterminate
Jews?
DI: I don't think so. I have not seen (short inaudible
section)...The German historical profession who are the experts
in this are now divided down the middle, half of them support
the David Irving case that there was no central Adolf Hitler order
for the extermination of the Jews and the other half rather cling
to the old traditional view. But it is an interesting debate.
TT: Do you think that the only thing that would
convince you would be to see a written order by Hitler.
DI: No, I would like to see a reference to a written
order by Hitler. It would be equally valid, I think, if someone
had written in a diary that the Fuhrer had given such an order.
Anything like that of sufficient quality, something which meets
the necessary criteria, a war-time document. But there is no such
document.
TT: Mr Irving, you refer to the holocaust myth.
What do you think the myth is?
DI: The word "holocaust" has rather
been pumped up since about 1970. You don't really know what people
mean by the word "holocaust." If they would define what
they say, I'd look at it piece by piece. What we know is
that the Nazis killed hundreds of thousands of Jews on the Eastern
front. They machine-gunned them into pits. That definitely happened.
But I don't buy the rest of the holocaust myth which is the story
of the gas chambers, the factories of death, the conveyor belts
and the electrified swimming pools and all the rest of it. I just
don't buy that and I have not seen any evidence in the archives
those things ever existed.
TT: And where do you think all the tattoos come
from with the holocaust survivors? A bizarre form of body decoration
perhaps?
DI: The tattoos? Oh, there is no doubt of people
being in the Nazi concentration camps. As I say in my latest book,
there is no doubt that Auchwitz was a very, very brutal slave
labour camp with an appalling fatality rate. They had tens of
thousand of people dying in Auchwitz there is no doubt at all...
TT: But weren't they deliberately killed? at Auchwitz...
DI: We British were decoding the daily reports
of the Commandant of Auchwitz. We have these in the British Secret
Service archives and there is no reference to anybody being gassed.
There is a lot of reference to people dying of typhus and a few
people being executed by hanging or shooting. This is the official
British historians report on that.
Mr Milne is not the only one to display an immunity
to facts. Jill Singer who conducted the above interview introduced
Irving as "the historian who says the holocaust did not happen."
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