{"id":4592,"date":"2012-01-05T18:59:19","date_gmt":"2012-01-05T07:59:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelwyres.com\/?p=4592"},"modified":"2012-01-05T18:59:19","modified_gmt":"2012-01-05T07:59:19","slug":"idea-show-current-affairs-on-current-affairs-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelwyres.com.au\/mwdc\/2012\/01\/idea-show-current-affairs-on-current-affairs-shows\/","title":{"rendered":"Idea: Show Current Affairs on Current Affairs Shows"},"content":{"rendered":"

It really irks me that the two leading current affairs programs in Australia – Nine’s A Current Affair<\/a> (ACA), and Seven’s Today Tonight<\/a> (TT) – never seem to actually show any actual<\/i> current affairs stories.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

They generally show what often don’t seem like much more than paid advertorials.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, these two programs finished fifth and sixth in the overall ratings for yesterday<\/a> – so there are plenty of people watching their rubbish “journalism”.<\/p>\n

Lets for instance take as an example, ACA’s fourth run of basically the exact same story:<\/p>\n

\n\n \n
How Many Times Can ACA Talk About Salt Therapy?<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/center>\n<\/p>\n

Same salt therapy business, same interview subjects. Over and over again – and not really a bit of hard nosed journalism in sight, right?<\/p>\n

ACA and TT often show almost identical stories, on the same nights, as ABC’s excellent Media Watch has demonstrated<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Though still excellent, even the ABCs “7:30<\/a>” has gone downhill a little since the departure of Kerry O’Brien<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Ten Network<\/a> came along in 2011 with veteran current affairs man George Negus<\/a>, with a bunch of talented journalists, and we actually got a decent current affairs program on network television for a while.<\/p>\n

Until it was cancelled<\/a>, because not enough people were watching.<\/p>\n

Because people couldn’t stop watching the drivel on Seven<\/a> and Nine<\/a>. They keep lapping it up.<\/p>\n

I remember when Jana Wendt<\/a>, Ray Martin<\/a>, Mike Willesee<\/a> and Mike Munro<\/a> variously hosted ACA, and it was real journalism.<\/p>\n

But that was long ago. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

It’s trash television.<\/p>\n

I hope “7:30” doesn’t disappear, because then we’ll have almost nothing left.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,309,312,555],"class_list":["post-4592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","tag-aca","tag-journalism","tag-junktelevision","tag-tt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelwyres.com.au\/mwdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelwyres.com.au\/mwdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelwyres.com.au\/mwdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelwyres.com.au\/mwdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelwyres.com.au\/mwdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelwyres.com.au\/mwdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4592\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelwyres.com.au\/mwdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelwyres.com.au\/mwdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelwyres.com.au\/mwdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}