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TV news isn’t fake but too often it isn’t news

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There it was yesterday. A plethora of Australian journos standing mic in hand in front of the Champs Élysées or the Eiffel Tower reporting on the French presidential election.

The trouble was what they were doing was not reporting. Or to be more precise, they started with a little reporting and then moved quickly on to speculation and opinion.

Welcome to Australian media’s version of the Kon Tiki tour. With elections looming in the UK and the French National Assembly in June and elections in Germany in September, it’s all aboard the bus. When you get there, don’t worry so much about factual reporting. Tell us what you reckon.

On last night’s ABC News at 7.00pm, the ABC’s European correspondent, Lisa Millar, spent the first five seconds repeating the result and then moved full steam into divination. To be honest, it wasn’t her fault. She faced questions posed from the desk in Sydney from newsreader, Juanita Phillips, all of it demanding a “What do you reckon?” response.

Ms Millar spent the bulk of her report waxing on what might happen by Christmas and beyond.

Full column here.

 

456 Comments

  • Henry Blofeld says:

    The very cool and unflappable Sarah Huckabee Sanders has been standing in for Sean Spicer as US White House Press Secretary, Mr Insider, while Sean has been “otherwise engaged”. She has done a fabulous job too imho. Sean has at times got himself in a bit of a tangle and POTUS Trump may replace him with Sarah soon as he wants a “headkicker” in there to deal with the many negative questions arising. The glass is always half empty with so many of them.
    http://tinyurl.com/mgpqck6

    • Jean Baptiste says:

      Great link Henry. She sounds as equally inveigling, sleazy and fork tongued as the Donald.
      You did read the link.?

      • Henry Blofeld says:

        I sure did and yes there was some criticism of Donald but none we hadn’t heard and none that would affect in any way the brilliant performance of POTUS TRUMP! Cheers

  • Bill Grieve says:

    What a weird two weeks away , stayed with someone who is still living in the 60’s , I’ll have to consider buying a laptop if that bloody happens again, WW3 could have happened and I won’t have even known…

  • Jean Baptiste says:

    Carl on the Coast

    And this is how the wholly “owned” media subsidiaries of the vested interests attempt to control public understanding of AGW. By hiring shrill shills like Tucker Carlson. He wears his cognitive dissonance like a Tee shirt message. “Paid To Be Stupid.”

    http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/02/27/tucker-carlson-and-bill-nye-science-guy-clash-climate-change

    Do I think deniers wilfully attempting to obstruct public awareness of man made climate change should be jailed?
    There will come a time a time when they will be, if they are that lucky.

  • Henry Blofeld says:

    A Duds a Dud, Mr Insider, and PM Turnbull sure is one. The Coalition has slipped further behind in Newspoll, trailing Labor 47-53% in two-party terms, despite a pragmatic budget that moved the government onto ALP ground in a bid to win back voters.
    http://tinyurl.com/lcex4pj

  • The Bow-Legged Swantoon says:

    B’MAN – sorta bass-related; Tony Levin on the Chapman stick. Worth also looking at his work on Warr Guitar with King Crimson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGdUlRRQm4Y

  • BASSMAN says:

    Milton says:
    MAY 14, 2017 AT 12:33 AM

    Don’t agree with U on Bowen. He will never be PM agree but also like Shortish has shocking delivery…talks too fast…bloody jibberish gets all his words mixed up but has delivered more economic policy than the Looters have in 10years. So good in fact they have STOLEN most of it. He came up here last election for a community hall bash. I destroyed him on facts. Will admit though he was preaching to the converted.

    BANKS:- I heard the cat from the Comm. Bank say all of Scum’s new taxes will be passed on to customers and share holders. Good one Scum!

    Lao Tzu says:
    MAY 13, 2017 AT 8:52 PM
    Is the state of debt at panic level as you infer Lao? Will the world end tomorrow? The Liberal’s manic obsession with budget surpluses, debt and deficit, as a means of beating Labor about the head to win successive elections over the years, is unique to Oz. It doesn’t happen anywhere else in the world. It happens here because the Liberals love to govern on a fear agenda. Fear of debt; fear of refugees; fear of terrorists, the dogwhistle…fear of ANYTHING! I scour the world’s papers daily. We have a heap of radio stations, newspapers, shock jocks, TV news running a 24/7 death and die tirade on debt and deficit, whilst developed countries with much worse debt than ours hardly ever mention it in their media or radio waves. It never makes the headlines. Yep we are certainly unique…AND…we have a AAA credit rating thanks to Labor saving us from the GFC. That said, we will continue to hear about it day in and day out adnauseaum and flagellate ourselves incessantly down to our last cent. Madness

    Bivalve….back to that stupid ‘waste of money railway’ I am against that will probably never be built-$10billion. I guess the taste of Howard’s last railway is still in my mouth. Remember the one he built through the guts of Oz to save two Un National party seats. It cost a BILLION….Looters then sold it for $100million. DING!

    Beaudesert, not far from where I live received $5.7million worth of Un National pork over the years in $600,000 drabs for a railway that was never used. It stopped running in 2004 but the money kept pouring in! This was during Howard’s time! It was in all of the papers up here to save the seat of Forde.

    On 1st July the deficit/budget repair levy on high income earners will be stopped-a loss of $3.4billion. This $4.3billion could have been used to fund the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Why not keep this rather than hit low income earners with an increase tax hit with a new Medicare levy? Also, why would you get rid of a budget deficit levy when the deficit levy is twice as bad as it was when it was implemented? What does this mean? Somebody on $500,000 gets a $4,000 tax cut. A millionaire? They get a $16,400 tax cut…and so it goes. Do they need it? Er not really! And…..the pay cut to penalty rates still stands and comes into being the same day that the millionaires get their tax cut. These are some of the lowest paid workers in the country.

  • BASSMAN says:

    We all love a great crime story on this blog. Of course we don’t endorse it. but just listen to this. Australia’s most wanted murderer (he decapitates 19yr old girls then cuts off their fingers-a cruel lowlife) who the cops cannot catch. He is a master of disguise and moves around freely in bush communities…even with $100k on his head. This is up there with Dickie Fidler’s stuff. Graham Potter is the bloke. Click on the link/download…riveting stuff and have a listen.

    http://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/nightlife/potter/8522624

  • Carl on the Coast says:

    Jean Baptiste says:
    May 13, 2017 at 9:31 pm

    “No Carl. You want to believe I’m just joshing. That’s called denial.”

    So, …. we now have “belief” being “denial”, JB ??

    I think you’ve either been over-indulging in George’s 1984 again, or you’ve been simultaneously attempting to grapple with your AGW graphs and the “104 iris hypothesis”.

    But the obvious and more important “human fingerprint” question is – did Ljungqvist really break the hockey stick me old mate.

    PS. I’ll leave the matter of the Great Lakes temperature fiasco for another day.

  • Henry Blofeld says:

    Conservative British PM Theresa May on target for a massive landslide election win, Mr Insider, as fool Socialist Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, fails to get any traction at all. In fact in an act of total political stupidity he’s calling for the Nationalisation of many areas of UK life! Amazing that he gets any support imho but as we see even here on your august blog there are a couple of “Arthur Calwell’s” trumpeting failed Socialism. Strewth. Hollande another Socialist flop gone in France too.
    http://tinyurl.com/lqxmvz9

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