My mum was telling me about watching the Robert F Kennedy speech given from the back of a truck in Indianapolis after Martin Luther King was assassinated. She was looking for heroes, the theme for one of her Joys World eps. This reminded me of hearing an ABC presenter talking to a reporter just after the (alleged) killing of Osama Bin Laden. The reporter was describing President Obama coming out to address the waiting press, reading the prepared statement and then....the media cameras being permitted to be turned on before he read the statement once more. I remember being shocked twofold while listening to this exchange: firstly, because I couldnt believe a politician would actually REHEARSE a press statement in front of the press like this and secondly (and more disturbingly) the fact that neither the reporter nor the ABC presenter seemed to think there was anything untoward in this. I remember too, being quite shocked when some years ago Sally Loan (is that how you spell her name?) was presenting Mornings on 702 ABC Sydney, and she launched a segment (still going today, I believe) called The Spin Doctors. Three spin doctors come in and discuss with Sally their ideas for how the events of the week should be spun to make various politicians, corporations, banks etc look good. I couldnt believe a journalist could sit there talking about manipulating news to give the preferred image to us, the dumb public. The public in fact SO dumb it didnt even matter if they sat around talking about how they were going to spin it ON RADIO. How does this make you feel? Do you think its just a natural evolution of information and how it is delivered and it doesnt matter? Or do you, like me, resent being treated with this level of contempt? It breaks my heart. (Great clip, apologies for the music...) m.youtube/watch?v=GoKzCff8Zbs
Posted on: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 22:30:51 +0000
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