It really irks me that the two leading current affairs programs in Australia – Nine’s A Current Affair (ACA), and Seven’s Today Tonight (TT) – never seem to actually show any actual current affairs stories.
They generally show what often don’t seem like much more than paid advertorials.
Incidentally, these two programs finished fifth and sixth in the overall ratings for yesterday – so there are plenty of people watching their rubbish “journalism”.
Lets for instance take as an example, ACA’s fourth run of basically the exact same story:
| How Many Times Can ACA Talk About Salt Therapy? |
Same salt therapy business, same interview subjects. Over and over again – and not really a bit of hard nosed journalism in sight, right?
ACA and TT often show almost identical stories, on the same nights, as ABC’s excellent Media Watch has demonstrated.
Though still excellent, even the ABCs “7:30” has gone downhill a little since the departure of Kerry O’Brien.
The Ten Network came along in 2011 with veteran current affairs man George Negus, with a bunch of talented journalists, and we actually got a decent current affairs program on network television for a while.
Until it was cancelled, because not enough people were watching.
Because people couldn’t stop watching the drivel on Seven and Nine. They keep lapping it up.
I remember when Jana Wendt, Ray Martin, Mike Willesee and Mike Munro variously hosted ACA, and it was real journalism.
But that was long ago.
Maybe if people were actually told about the world around them, they wouldn’t be so ignorant to it. It’s not the viewers fault – they’ve just been hoodwinked into believing that ACA and TT have some journalistic merit.
It’s trash television.
I hope “7:30” doesn’t disappear, because then we’ll have almost nothing left.