A Current Affair passes off Today Tonight story as its own
A Current Affair screens an interview on the schoolyard bully saga, without ever telling the audience it lifted it from Today Tonight.
- Published by David Knox
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- Filed under News
All bets are off in the war on watermarks and news footage.
Last night’s episode of A Current Affair threw down a new move in the 6:30 war by screening a full segment produced by Today Tonight.
The segment, introduced by Tracy Grimshaw, featured an interview with ‘Ritchard’ the second boy at the centre of a now infamous bullying video. The story by James Thomas (pictured) of Today Tonight had aired just minutes earlier on Seven.
Nine swiftly turned it around and played 4:30 minutes of the 8:30min Seven story, blurring out the Today Tonight watermark and neglecting to tell its audience the story was lifted from its competition.
It wasn’t fronted by any ACA journos.
It followed A Current Affair interviewing ‘Casey’ on its Sunday edition -some of those excerpts were used by Today Tonight without Nine watermarks.
Use of a rival’s footage falls under Copyright Fair Dealing, but must not be excessive. In television it is common to at least include some repackaging and extra comment by journalists.
But last night Nine simply ran lengthy footage without embellishment. Anybody watching Nine would have assumed James Thomas had filed the story for ACA.
This comes at a time when both networks have been protective of their content, branding their footage with elaborate watermarks to identify their content. Of late, both have been guilty of disguising or dropping rival watermarks.
Nine even released a cheeky YouTube video slapping Seven for “stealing our footage.”
“As you might appreciate we work very hard to bring you exclusive footage and vision,” Nine said last month.
Now it has not only matched the act, it has moved beyond.
A Seven spokesperson told TV Tonight, ACA‘s misrepresentation of the story to its audience was a new take on copyright Fair Dealing.
“A Current Affair has no class. We already knew that. But Nine’s desperate, scrambling same night tape turnaround of Today Tonight‘s programme reveals they’ve now found a new level to which to stoop,” said the spokesperson.
TV Tonight believes the move also reflects poorly on ACA host Tracy Grimshaw, who is left to front a decision made in the media frenzy of a story over schoolyard bullying. Would Nine be happy if Sunday Night replayed 60 Minutes footage and passed it off as its own? Of course not.
The saddest aspect of all is that it includes the schoolboys, two minors who have been portrayed as hero / villain in the media because somebody uploaded a schoolyard incident to YouTube.
Nine declined to comment.
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- Tagged with 60 Minutes, A Current Affair, Sunday Night, Today Tonight
74 Responses
Well ACA have lowered the bar. It’s only a matter of time before TT stoops to the same level. Especially if there’s no consequences for their actions.
Those shows really are disgusting.
Why give both ACA and TT a miss and catch the Dog Whisperer on ABC1
After watching both sides of the bullying story, I can’t believe a kid that age was allowed to have his eyebrow pierced. And after seeing his parents on Today Tonight, all I can say is it’s no wonder he has turned out the way he has.
TT is usually just as bad as ACA. But this is definitely a new low that ACA and Channel Nine have stooped to.
for the people still talking about TT blurring the 9news watermark and putting an exclusive watermark during the brian mcfadden story, you’ve got it all wrong. the exclusive watermark is refering to their story, which featured exclusive interviews with brian mcfadden, and wasn’t to do with the actual footage used.
with last nights story on ACA, the story from TT was aired without any edits, voice overs, or any kind reference to the fact it was TT footage and story. at least when watching the brian mcfadden story, you knew the footage was from another network, even if it was blurred!
Tracey, dear… it’s time to move away from Nine.
Anyone know when her contract is up?
This would be the perfect time for Negus to move to 6.30.
ACA & TT are Garbage!
Agree with Peter A. This is exactly why George Negus needs to be moved to 6.30. These two trash programs need real competition, and we want an alternative to this crap and some serious journalism. Come on Ten. At the moment i turn the tv off at 6.30, but if George Negus was on i’d be watching.
In a word: Pathetic.
Protest by watching SBS World News Australia instead!!
Well done David!!! I’m glad you’ve taken such a hardline with this revolting act of “journalism”. Why is it if I were to write an article and copy the majority of it from another newspaper I’d be fired but on TV it’s fine? If Today Tonight were smart (I know, big call), they’d do a story about ACA tonight.
I’m so sick and tired of these shows. It’s the same “news” cycle every month. Meats, bras, TVs, Muslims… They recycle the same damn stories every month. On Firday ACA redid a story from a few months back about Jews trying to build a religious barierer around a suburb, which in reality is rather unseen. But ACA made it seem that the Jews were trying to segregate themselves from the community (which really isn’t the case, in fact it’s the exact opposite!) and that it would be a rather visible barrier (its not). What really annoyed me was the fact that they used the exact same establishing shots, footage and music from a couple of months back! Pathetic!!!
Copyright Act’s Fair Dealing allows a proportion of content to be used in the case of News and Review (as utilised by this site). How much is ‘fair’ would need to be tested in court on a case by case basis. The fair thing to do is acknowledge the source and embellish it, or give your own take on it. ACA did neither unfortunately and I think this only confuses the audience. I feel it went to far in the heat of the bullying saga.
How will we ever know the story we are watching is produced by the show that is presenting it?
Surely this is plariarism. If School studnets and Uni studnets and other work places can’t do it… why can journalists.
Or are these shows not really classes as journalism?
Ray Martin left ACA due to the content of the programme. I wonder if Tracey Grimshaw has the same journalistic standards as Ray? Or even Jana Wendt? Surely we should find the answer to that in the near future.
Wherefore art thou, Frontline?
What’s the legal situation here?
Given that ACA ran the story by a different reporter from another network – who put the time and effort in creating it – wouldn’t ACA have to pay the reporter for the story?
Surely this reporter would have grounds to sue ACA for pinching his story – TV is certainly a strange game indeed.
Both are grubby shows, they deserve each other. I would say the two leads are more than happy to front the shows that they do.
Ten needs to have 6pm News and 6.30pm Negus, and do away with 5-6pm News and find other things to fill that timeslot. At the very least put Negus on at 6.30pm.
But then again, both shows get a Million plus a night, so maybe what the Aus. viewers want is grubbiness, and as much of it as possible.
This Australian commercial “current affairs” genre is a complete farce.
Poor journalism, poor ethics, poor production values, weak presenters, and a perception that winning the ratings at all costs justifies stories that do not represent the real story and in some cases encourage the existence of racism and xenophobia in this country.
“Win the ratings at all costs” does not mean “make up the facts to grab people”.
But it does to the executive producers of these faecal slime productions.
The sad thing is there are enough morons out there who keep watching this garbage, which unfortunately is a sad reflection on Australia.
I think some people are missing the point of this article. ACA didn’t just use little snippets from the TT story they pretty much ran the whole story from TT and made it look like it was their own.
Does James Thomas get paid double for appearing on 2 networks?
Wow. I remember when I used to watch A Current Affair for real, in-depth and interesting segments and interviews. I haven’t watched the show in years, but this seems like a new all-time low.
Thank goodness for ABC!
That link you point to of the nine youtube video doesn’t work David.
The saddest thing about these comments is how many admit to watching ACA or TT. Haven’t watched either for years and this epusode vindicates that decision.
Wasn’t it ACA who started the war when they ran a Sunday night edition to focus on the Japanese Earthquake, but decided to use the opportunity to play a Hey Dad story – because 7 was planning to run one on the Monday night?
The shows are always the same anyway,so why not just run the same crap on both shows ?
I find it funny a Seven spokesperson says “ACA has no class”.Did this person not see or read about TT harassing Abigail last week ?