This week has been another week jam-packed with stories about the media.
All of which will be hard to compress into tonight’s edition of Media Watch.
- Today Tonight‘s interview with former escort, claiming she told ACA not to use her story. / ACA response.
- Four Corners story on people smugglers living in Canberra / The Australian criticises ABC / ABC responds.
- Christian lobby complains about Sunrise broadcasts from gay marriage events.
- ACMA rules that Nine scripted anti-pokies law into sports broadcast.
- Talkback host Bob Francis suspended in Adelaide.
Ans that’s without throwing in the ongoing concerns in the print newspaper industry from strikes and outsourcing to fights for the seats on the Board.
I still believe we need more than the 13 or so minutes allocated to covering the multiple issues in the industry today and that a longer form version of the show, including with interviews, deserves a place on ABC News 24.
When News24 first started they used repeat Media Watch with Four Corners over the weekends, but then that channel started getting attacked by MW itself. Not long after that The Quarters was picked to sit alongside Four Corners & they haven’t looked back since. :/
Having worked on Media Watch in the past, i know that it is not a high funded show – and those 13 minutes are the most legalled, scrutinised and triple checked tv of any abc program, incl 4 Corners. If people want 30 minutes, they will have to have another 10-12 minutes of the host editorialising and maybe one more item of a couple of minutes of new content in addition to the 13 minutes of the regular show. Each item needs to be so researched. Hours of radio has to be transcribed, reams of newpaper and online trawling occurs, and sitting through endless hours of drivel from news/current affairs shows. Media outlets and journos need to be emailed, phoned, faxed whatever, and then responses have to be waited for, then woven into a narrative. Every i is dotted and t crossed with the exposition of each item, and some structure for the host’s pieces. Maybe an interview or two every week might fill a half hour, but believe me, no-one is idle on that team – it is one of the tightest units in television.
Yes! Either 30 min or 2×15. They won’t need to hire more research staff as they could just get all the stories from the web. Oh, wait…
Yeah this needs to be at least 30 minutes long but maybe a better way to go is either have extended stories online or show a longer version on ABC24.
Given some of the rubbish ABC News 24 is showing (Planet America being one of them), MW definitely needs an extended edition on News 24.
The ABC seems to cop it as much as anybody else. Maybe that’s why they don’t make it a 30 minute programme.
This show needs 1hr. ABC please do this! Either that or 2 1/2 hour shows a week. There is too much going on out there and this show always misses so much because of lack of time.
I agree. Give it a half hour show please.
Absolutely! Can’t agree with you more. It is stunning that there is no longer version of Media Watch on ABC24!
If there’s one aspect of MW that I don’t like. It’s that Jonathan Holmes tends to reveal his own bias, especially on issues like climate change. He does also make snide comments towards others which I find unprofessional, or at least stooping to the level of those of whom he is critical of. I think these things are letting down MW, which is supposed to be seen as a media watchdog.