“The cesspit of journalism”: if you land a gig on A Current Affair or Today Tonight, that’s probably it for your career. I mean look at Matt White. Poor guy went from Sports Tonight sports reporter to host of one of the worst shows on Australian television.
I wouldn’t be this happy if I’d gone from a cushy sports presenter roll to host of Today Tonight.
Just like soapies, I recon the producers behind these two piles of shit have a set out story line for the entire year. “Okay Johnson, this month we’re doing a shock expose on the water content in generic supermarket products! Now get cracking and while you’re at it, find a dodgy conman who did a bodgy job on the home of a disabled child whose parents are on welfare, and facing court for driving without a license!”.
Sometimes the two shows even conveniently play off the same topic in the same week to ‘compete’. How two piles of shit can connect together and make ‘competition’ I have no idea.
Media Watch is a great place to see the almost weekly occurrences of bias from the two shows. There was a recent story about people mansion squatting which ended up with a TT reporter getting punched in the face (deservedly) with ACA right there to watch it all unfold. Throw in some dubious fact finding and reporting: RATINGS GOLD PEOPLE!
These kinds of shows are really just scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of news stories. Most of the time the puff pieces you are watching are paid advertising for a company or product. These are never declared to the viewer in the form of a disclaimer or anything, because they package it in a convenient story-form that shows how any one particular product is making life better for some jerk.
For some reason this doesn’t count as blatant advertising.
Gordon Ramsey hating on Tracy Grimshaw was fascinating. Far gone are the days of Jana Wendt; now Channel 9 just plays people off against each other on live television.
OH NO SHES SO OFFENDED! WHAT A CONTROVERSY! SHOCK AND HORROR, YOUR FAVORITE TELEVISION PRESENTER GOT CALLED HATEFUL THINGS, OH NO! Who cares? I certainly don’t.
Does it look like a give a shit?
Their tactics get much much worse than the usual boring con-man story. The Chaser covered one story where the journalist would ask a person questions, only to immediately cut them off before they could answer, and interjecting a follow up. Finally, where there was an obvious answer given, it immediately cut to a voice-over where the journalist simply summarised.
You don’t hear any of the answers straight from the persons mouth in that segment.
When they aren’t manipulating you into believing shit that generally isn’t true, they’re trying to sell you something. Who could honestly do this kind of work and be happy with their career?
To the several prospective journalists I know that read this column sometimes, please don’t end up there! (2016 Sanitation Edit: And myself – please no.)
Even The Chaser apologized in the end. I won’t.
What I’m trying to say is, current affairs shows aren’t even worthy of being on in the background while you cook or something. If you can switch the intellectual part of your brain off for 30 minutes, great go ahead – but the shows are aimed at selling their wares to the lowest rungs of society which don’t really have that part of the brain active to begin with.
I can’t stand them because of their posturing and how they beat up the most pathetic stories every day of the week. I’d love to see them disappear into the ether, because that’s where they belong.
Sam Hates Everything 
Well said mate. Current Affair shows truly are quite shit indeed.
LikeLike
The “A Current Affairs” is full of rubbish. The program, and its producers and presenters, promote lies and poor unsubstantiated biased opinions. They go to extreme lengths to lie, twist and turn the truth to how they want to sell their story at whatever price they can to brainwash the public. They sneak around and ambush people to get their video shots. They selectively edit material that were obtained in unscrupulous manners in order to meet their sensationalism agenda. The program creates more tension among members of the community, and provokes unnecessary public anger and outrage by airing stories presented in their own predetermined slant with reckless disregard for the truth or obligation to fairly present all sides of their stories. Time and time again the program was found to have breached broadcasting codes of conduct by relevant Australian authorities. Yet they persist to delude and mislead the public just so that they can get viewers to watch their sensationalised stories in order to appease their paying advertisers during prime time television periods. They have absolute disregard for the relevant Australian authorities concerning television broadcasting, and absolute disregard to their viewers’ need to be informed in a fair and unbiased manner. To say the least, their approach to news and journalism is insulting and criminal. I appeal to the public to recognise that what we see on television is heavily laced with bias, that we should not believe what we see on television, and look into the issues presented critically before we adopt any knee jerk reactions in voicing opinions towards any persons targeted by the A Current Affairs Program. I prefer to think that there are many sides to a story, and not simply the A Current Affair’s biased side of the story.
LikeLike