Your ABC

[onetrack]

It has been said the greatest control the media can exert, is via the omission of news that is of the greatest importance, and which provides all the facts, and balance to the report/article.

 

This "bias created by omission" is overlooked in media news and articles, time after time. It can range from subtle news slanting, to outright blatant twisting of news and reports.

[Old Koreelah]

 I have noticed a distinct orthodoxy in the TV reports of incidents in which I have been involved. Reporters, editors and presenters seem to adapt the facts to fit their pre-conceived guidelines. We often wonder if they are reporting on the same event.

 

[nomadpete]

About reporting, editing and producing 'News".

 

Many years ago I worked in a TV operations centre in Brisbane. It was a distribution point that brought TV programme into Queensland and distributed it to TV network stations throughout the state.

Although the mainstream media delighted in bagging out Telecom, they nevertheless used that same provider to get all their newsfeeds from 'down South'. So I'd sit in a room filled with monitors, and see lots of news for all the TV stations, as it came through from all over.

A fair bit of news (particularly for commercial channels) came directly from US of A.

Much of that got an Aussie voiceover when it arrived, but all of it had been compiled and edited in elsewhere prior to coming here.

 

The interesting thing was when I got home and watched the news. Our local TV newsrooms took the news feeds and re-edited, sometimes changing the context by omission of critical words. Always shortening the content. Sometimes delaying a 'news as it happens' report by days.

What the public got to see often was distorted. Then I'd start thinking how much editing had already done by CNN (or whoever) before sending their news OS.

 

Is it any wonder that soshul meeja gets such a big following? But that Avenue is open to even worse manipulation. We truly live in an age of mass miscommunication. It has become really hard to decipher which bits of news is valid or even factual.

Edited October 28, 2020 by nomadpete

[old man emu]

8 minutes ago, nomadpete said:

It has become really hard to decipher which bits of news is valid or even factual.

So. Did you really work in a TV operations centre?

[nomadpete]

Are you accusing me of false news?

In answer to the question, yes. Not constantly but often enough to see the difference between one lot of news and the news that was fed to the public around the 1980's and 1990's. The television operations centre closed when TV transitioned to direct digital distribution to the TV stations (and now from TV station news editing to the public by internet). There is now little opportunity to monitor the feeds the way we used to.

[old man emu]

21 minutes ago, nomadpete said:

Are you accusing me of false news?

Unlike the Monkees,  "I'm a believer!" no longer. I've been Trumped up.

[Bruce Tuncks]

Here is an actual example of manipulation by omitting facts:

Many years ago I was in Sydney where there was a demonstration against Pan-Am for being war profiteers because they got first-class airfares for bringing dead GI's home in stacked body bags.

All the demo  signs made this perfectly clear, but what was printed in the media  contained no mention of this, and it was left to the reader to conclude that it was a random US company unfairly picked on. That is what I would have thought in Adelaide from the media.

The pictures were carefully selected to make the signs unreadable.

Now the paper could editorialize against the demo and still report it honestly, but they did not.

[nomadpete]

No doubt this sort of reporting still goes on. I don't blame the journalists. Most of them try to get the story straight.

Another incident comes to mind. Many years ago, my father worked for the only Telco and they went on strike because the vehicles provided had a problem with their brakes. Faulty manufacture of master cylinders. Well known at the time but not resolved with the car maker and whenever one failed, it was replaced by a new one with the same fault. And they kept buying the same make and model of car.

 

The media reported that the country was being crippled by irresponsible unionists demanding a pay rise. Dad fumed over that for months.

We still see careful cropping of pictures and editing of reports. The use of sound bites that don't even include the whole sentence usually lose the context of a comment. It's all done to sway public opinion.

[Jerry_Atrick]

I got my weekly fix of MediaWatch, and am happy to say, the ABC at least try and hold the ABC to account. Very interesting 2 segments on where the ABC has fell short.. Like to see others do that, too:

 

[old man emu]

Like Lazarus, this thread is raised from the dead.

 

I'm offended by the ABC's pandering to Political Correctness surrounding First Nations people. I listen to ABC radio unless I want to stream the local community radio and listen to songs about broken hearted country folk. On the ABC, the day's programming starts with that acknowledgement to ancestors. Then throughout the day, the announcers keep on telling us on which clan's ancestral homelands music was written on - even if the music is in the European classical style, written by a person educated in the European style. Otherwise they tell us something similar about where the music was recorded. If it was recorded by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, we are told it was recorded on "Gadigal land".

 

This past week ABC Classical has featured an album of music created by a both European and Indigenous musicians from the Darwin area. Fair enough, but who, other than indigenous persons from that area can understand the words? And the sounds of the singing remind one of sharp cries of pain. And if I hear another piece of Peter Sculthorpe's didgeridoo chirps, I'll shove the blood thing up the player's fundamental orifice. 

 

We joke about the knock of young Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah Witnesses at the front door, but the knock is not a constant battering, unlike the ABC which is continually battering this PC crap down our throats. It is said that if something offends me, that's my problem. Deal with it. But what do we say when many, many people feel offended.  Conduct or language to be offensive at law must be calculated to wound the feelings, arouse anger or resentment or disgust or outrage in the mind of a reasonable person. The question is: "Is it "reasonable" to resent having something rammed down your throat that you either disagree with, or at least are apathetic to? 

[onetrack]

I'm in full agreement with OME. I'm thoroughly sick of this "First Nations" stuff shoved down our necks constantly. It's worse than mandated prayer in schools. Even the "First Nations" term is a fabricated piece of buffoonery that has no relationship with how the original inhabitants of this country viewed themselves. Their view was all about the strength of their tribe, and they were in awe of stronger tribes.

 

Not much common ground there to say all the tribes were a Nation - they fought each other at every opportunity, and delighted in stealing weapons and even women from the other tribes.

They fought over territory borders, and where big fight actions were undertaken, and many natives died, that area became "taboo".

 

I used to live in an area in the W.A. wheatbelt were Aborigines never visited, or lived there - because the area was reportedly an ancient battlefield with big tribal losses.

Australia was in a state of constant civil war when the Europeans first arrived, and Aborigines taken from their "territory" were terrified when they were transported by Europeans to other tribes territories.

 

The other thing that gets up my nose is this "cultural warnings" rubbish. Alright, a few traditionally superstitious Aboriginals might not want to see images on a screen, that they believe are taboo - but when I open the Trove page, it has this cultural warning there, popping up constantly. It drives me nuts. Give me the ability to delete this "cultural warning", for all time!!

[willedoo]

I think I'm reasonably liberal minded, and am generally supportive of the Aboriginal cause. I've had a lot to do with them over the years in a work capacity, so tend to be a bit sympathetic toward them. But I'm with ome on the ABC overuse of it. I don't mind a bit of it, but in recent weeks it has been over the top, to the point of appearing scripted and corny. It doesn't annoy me in any major way, but I find the over saturation of it lately as being cringeworthy and I tend to feel a little bit embarrassed for the ABC. I'm not against it; just against too much of it. I mean, is it absolutely necessary for the guy doing the traffic report to acknowledge the traditional Aboriginal land he's broadcasting from.

[willedoo]

2 hours ago, onetrack said:

Not much common ground there to say all the tribes were a Nation - they fought each other at every opportunity, and delighted in stealing weapons and even women from the other tribes.

They fought over territory borders, and where big fight actions were undertaken, and many natives died, that area became "taboo".

onetrack, as I understand it, nobody is claiming all the tribes are a Nation, hence the plural term First Nations. Because of that tribal isolation, they are giving each tribe the status of a Nation in it's own right.

[facthunter]

Yes . I think overuse of it will be counter-productive if it isn't already. The convicts were transported here to get rid of them  by good old England and the orphans too and My Mob came from Scotland to basically escape poverty and religious persecution in 1860 OTA. No one was living very high on the Hog bar a few governors and large land holders who could pretty much do what they wanted to.  The'Originals' were too at each other to be united against the enemy. Best Guess at their numbers was about 300,000 so not to damaging to the environment for the around 65,000 years of occupation. When I see multicoloured babies in a nursery I would like the aim to be equal opportunity to get education and no discrimination either way for them all in principle. Religion(s) and Money threaten that as much as any "Thing" does. Nev

[willedoo]

They certainly know how to fight with each other. Even within the one tribe, there is often a lot of infighting and disagreement. I got to know them fairly well by living with them in a work camp situation for extended periods. The Aboriginal people were there as cultural heritage monitors, contracted to the energy companies that we were also contracted to. I would have two of them with me all day long, so it would be one machine operator, two CH monitors as a team working mainly on our own all day. In that situation, you get to know people fairly well.

 

One very noticeable thing was the lack of harmony between their people. Someone always had a beef against someone else or some other group. One of the biggest hurdles to Aboriginal advancement in this country is getting them to stop fighting with each other and come to some form of agreement and lasting peace.

 

Having said that, in the old days they must have had some sort of relationship with their neighbours in certain areas. Some tribes were fierce and downright hostile to anyone else, but others traded at tribal boundaries and sometimes got together for an event if they weren't warring. I remember coming across a big artifact area in far SW Queensland one time. It was mainly the remains of fireplaces strung out along one bank of a seasonal creek. There was literally hundreds of them, by far the biggest fireplace site I'd ever seen. There were far too many for the local tribe, even though it was big in it's day. My thoughts were that it was a place where possibly three tribes got together for an annual feast and ceremony. Maybe they would get together and swap a bit of stuff, like a swap meet.

Edited December 11, 2022 by willedoo

[facthunter]

Even NOW people from one tribe can't understand a word of those from say 600 Kms away. They also have strict rules about who they can fraternise with, among other tribes. . Nothing's improved in my lifetime as far as I can see. and I'm not laying BLAME on anyone but sniffing petrol, doing Grog and Porn can't be helping. Youth's rampaging through towns with nothing sensible to do doesn't work in any society.  Nev

[old man emu]

Willedoo gets the drift of my gripe. It's not the message nor the content, it's being incessantly hammered with the same message. Just like you get hammered by an ad that you see or hear over and over again. Like an ad that is clever, witty and amusing the first time you come across it, but by the umpteenth time it's no longer clever, witty nor funny, just annoying.

 

I suppose that my perceptions have changed since leaving the Big Smoke. I see in the town I now live in, three or four Aboriginal health centres, but only one for everyone else, and that has closed its books. But I'm told I could go to the aboriginal ones - and be as popular as a pork sausage - you know the rest.  I see some wrong things - like kids being discriminated against by football clubs. But on the whole I see more benefits showered upon one ethnic group than the others.