What the "professional" Australian journalists say
about (Australian) News of the Day

"No-one can accuse the News of the Day's Internet site of not making a distinctive contribution to diversity in the Australian media. You won't find court reporting anywhere else to match a recent opening paragraph which referred to spectators being "just metres from where the maniac sat" - the maniac being the accused whose guilt is still to be determined."

The "man" referred to was none other than Martin Bryant who everybody knew was guilty of murdering over 30 people at Port Arthur. A far more heinious, unreported crime was the mainstream media's, and in particular the tabloid's, total disregard of people's feelings at Port Arthur at the time.
To quote from our report soon after the incident: "And during it all a newspaper reporter read the private tributes written by loved ones on their bouquets left for the dead and published them on the front page of the paper. SHAME ON YOU!"

Other news stories on the site, which promotes itself as "Australia's first daily Internet newspaper", are attributed to "something we heard last night". As a result, the electronic daily has been able to report that Aboriginal bureaucrats supposedly "salted away" millions of dollars in Swiss Banks.

Here is a quote from that article: "Little John, you don't have to look beyond your Aboriginal bureaucrats in Canberra to dig up the reasons for that. What I heard last night during an open meeting with our local MP, Mal Brough, is that there are allegations of Swiss Banks holding millions of dollars of Aboriginal funds, salted away by those close to the top of the tree....

Now haven't "professional" journalists quoted politicians comments at least once this year.... ah yes, but maybe then they don't use the words "something we heard last night" - oh, that's all right then.

While the News of the Day may not place a heavy reliance on the traditional journalistic filters designed to avoid contempt of court and the dangers of reporting rumours, it has survived for over a year. Run by Scott Balson from Mt Crosby near Ipswich in Queensland, the professional looking electronic newspaper is located on Telstra's This is Australia Internet directory immediately between the ABC's News Updates and Microsoft/NBC's Australian News Page. Balson is not only the proprietor of the electronic daily, he is its sole reporter and editor. His venture into electronic news is intended, he says, to generate interest in other Internet sites his company, Global Web Builders, has created for a client list which includes several Queensland Government departments.

After over 100 years of reporting - what filters, talk about the pot calling the kettle black!.. or if you want a whole list of subjects filtered by the tabloids...

Interesting, however, that following this article we have been removed from the list of Telstra news links referred to above. Nice way to treat Australia's oldest on-line daily newspaper!

And as far as factual reporting is concerned when Mr Toohey phoned me I told him several times that I lived in Karana Downs not Mt Crosby - a name he kept on repeating to me during his short unsolicited phone call... but journalistic license applies even in the worst of stories!

Or how about this bit of "filtering" from the Fairfax stable, related, once again, to the Martin Bryant story....

Sydney Morning Herald, 6 July 96: "Front-page tabloid headlines in May, for instance, announced that 2,000 "violent and pornographic" videos had been seized from the house of the alleged murderer, Martin Bryant, after the Port Arthur massacre. Dickie revealed last week, however, that the video collection belonged to the previous owner of the house and comprised almost entirely musicals and old Hollywood classics."

In fact only four videos were of a "violent" nature - according to the Fairfax paper, The Sydney Morning Herald....

Extract from article: Censor slams tabloids over Bryant stories By MARK RILEY in Canberra - 29 June 1996. 'The woman who removed the videos told him the library was far from the collection featuring "violence and explicit sex acts, including bestiality", that had been described in the News Ltd tabloids, Melbourne's Herald Sun and Sydney's The Daily Telegraph.'

Toohey concludes:

While Balson's uninhibited approach to reporting certainly adds to diversity, his site hardly amounts to a significant source of news and analysis to compete with the output from the print media. Nor does anything else so far supplied by local content providers on either Internet or Pay-TV.

Well Mr Toohey you try to provide this sort of depth of analysis and interactivity to a commentary next time in the Australian Financial Review. Personally I find your comments to be boring and typically one-sided.

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