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Good Night & Good Luck

By Janet Wilson September 14th, 2009

Bill Ralston blogs:

I mercifully missed the Qantas Awards but I understand TVNZ news swept almost all the telly journalism awards.

That, in itself, is a little odd because I find the standard of reporting and the stories run on 3News at least the match of TV ONE and I probably watch at least as much of 3 News as ONE’s.

Something annoys me about ONE news. It’s not the presenters, they’re fine. The set is good, the titles fine, the music OK. The reporters, by and large, are fine.

Then I began thinking about it. Actually, the content of the stories on TV ONE is not the problem. It is the packaging.

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Corruption; the Dark Enemy in the Sunshine State

By Janet Wilson September 14th, 2009

Just returned from some R & R in my old adopted home of Queensland.  Back in the 80’s they used to brag it was the State where the weather was “fine one day, perfect the next” – which is pretty much how you’d also describe corruption in The Sunshine State.

Like the weather, political corruption there seems to stay the same.

Twenty years ago Queenslanders saw the seamy side of their state in a ground breaking Royal Commission of Inquiry into Corruption headed by Tony Fitzgerald QC.

I covered the last 6 months of that Inquiry for the ABC.  Day after day cops turned state’s evidence and politicians squealed in what, for a young journo, was the gig of the century.

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Tell ‘Em What You’re Going To Tell ‘Em…

By Janet Wilson August 24th, 2009

Caught the PM on his regular Monday morning slot on TVNZ’s “Breakfast” programme using an old – but effective – trick.  It’s what’s called “Tell ‘Em What You’re Going To Tell ‘Em, Tell ‘Em What You’ve Told ‘Em, Then Tell ‘Em What You’ve Just Told ‘Em Technique ”.

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Politics & Populism; How Sarah Palin Won, Then Lost

By Janet Wilson August 6th, 2009

http://scavenging.wordpress.com/2009/02/

Where to now for Sarah Palin, the beveled beauty and former Governor of Alaska?  The criticisms against her are valid and true but let’s take a step back for a minute and examine how she gained media traction – for a little while at least – in last year’s Presidential campaign, as Senator John McCain’s Vice-Presidential running mate.

Just one year ago Palin was a media darling; she was plucked from the backwoods of that other Pacific Rim wilderness, Alaska.  According to ‘Vanity Fair’ (“It Came From Wasilla” by Todd Purdum, August 2009), McCain had only met her for a couple of hours before choosing her as his Vice-Presidential running mate.  Here was a fresh-faced, ‘hockey-mom’ with a pregnant teenage daughter – the perfect antidote to Hillary Clinton, who was embattled in the Mother of All Primaries.  Clinton was paranoid and media-hating and it showed.  For the Republicans Palin was, as ‘Vanity Fair’ says, “by far the best-looking woman ever to rise to such heights in national politics, the first indisputably fertile female to dare to dance with the big dogs.”

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Sex, Lies and No Key Messages

By Janet Wilson July 27th, 2009

Ok, given that there’s only six decent stories a year in the Land of the Long White Shroud, let’s start overseas shall we?  When it comes to Media Training 101 here’s a great example of What Not To Do.  The subject, South Carolina’s hapless Governor,  Mark Sanford, who told his staff he was going hiking on the Appalachian Trail, when in fact he was chasing beaver in Argentina.  A year before political junkies could have detected that the little brain was thinking for the big one, when he went on CNN to defend Republican Presidential candidate, John McCain’s policies. What’s wrong with this picture? Read more…

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