More to see on the next watch

Errol Simper, The Australian, 25-Nov-2004

PRESENTING the ABC's Media Watch is one of the more sensitive jobs in Australian television. The journalistic fraternity isn't always desperately comfortable with criticism. There's a tendency to say, in effect: "You wouldn't have done any better in the circumstances and you're spouting a load of idealistic drivel."

The journalistic fraternity can also be unforgiving. True, some practitioners shrug criticism off in fairly nonchalant fashion. Others don't. How many people are still not talking to other people as a result of a MW item? Perhaps a good many. There are dilemmas about tone, nuance, content and television's desperate desire to entertain. Go in too hard, for example, and there can be a problem of context. On the other hand, bystanders - like spectators gawping at a car crash - will be entertained.

There's some truth to the MW mantra: "Everyone loves it until they're on it." Equally, if you don't go hard there'll be those who ask why the program exists. If no blood gets spilt, the argument would go, there's no point in assembling the instruments of torture. In truth, a very great deal hinges on tone. There's no point in getting angry at a spelling mistake. Hint at dark and sinister media tricks over what transpires as an innocent mistake and you lose credibility.

Should it be too entertainment-oriented, critics would call it lightweight. Thus you can't laugh at serious plagiarism; you can't shake with fury at an ambiguous headline. Fine nuance also dictates how criticism gets received. Should someone believe they've been publicly humiliated over Sweet Fannie Adams, then resentment will linger. Should MW's "punishment" have more or less fitted the "crime", well, it's difficult to maintain the rage over little or no injustice.

David Marr, the latest in a line of impressive presenters - Stuart Littlemore, Richard Ackland, Paul Barry - bade farewell on November 15 (after three years) with a justified jab at chequebook journalism. The programs the telegenic Marr had primarily in his sights were Nine's A Current Affair and Seven's Today Tonight. It isn't, of course, anyone else's business whether ACA and TT pay hefty sums for their stories.

That must come down to whether their respective proprietors, Kerry Packer and Kerry Stokes, are happy to sign the cheques. The valid point Marr made was that, despite the cheques, both programs are screening to decreasing audiences. So, with respect, what's the purpose in paying, say, $30,000-$50,000 for a fairly ordinary story which doesn't even attract the teeming millions to justify it? Please keep your answers brief and address them legibly to MW's ever-inquisitive executive producer, Peter McEvoy.

Overall, McEvoy and Marr did some admirable - and often witty - work. It's fair to say Marr, 57, once with Four Corners - as Barry had been - found the right tone for most of the time. There were ups and downs.

There always is in any journalistic endeavour and the limited scribe would greatly appreciate it if potential correspondents would refrain from taking up their pens to point out any of his own particular downs! Arguably, the best work MW did during Marr's tenure was to graphically illustrate that opportunities for cash for comment - conflicts of interest, journalistic fraud, call it what you will - remain extant in commercial radio and that cash for comment continues to occur. A couple of recent MW tapes should be enough to convince the imminent "new" broadcasting regulator that more needs to be done to curtail it. It's neither high-minded nor absurdly idealistic to suggest presenters shouldn't be allowed to laud corporate or other interests in the guise of editorial comment when, in fact, their on-air support is being bought.

If you wanted to be critical you could venture MW may have gone a bit hard with its May 17 story about Rehame's pre-election monitoring of the ABC. An unfortunate consequence was that a well-meaning, industrious ABC director, Maurice Newman, subsequently felt the need to resign. Yes, it was more complex than a single MW item, but there's not space just now to sift it all through again. Perhaps everyone, Newman included, overreacted. Another criticism some might conceivably make is that, at least to a degree, MW turned a fairly lenient eye toward SBS's increasingly manifest shortcomings. The broadcaster, lately adorning its Saturday schedule with an hour of karaoke, is actually supposed to be a public broadcaster. It annually receives more than $100 million of taxpayers' money to this end and it may be time for someone in Canberra to issue SBS a warning. Maybe the warning should be along the lines: "If you don't revert to more scholarly content we'll divert that money to the ABC."

You'd probably have read elsewhere by now that SBS had its programming massively and embarrassingly disrupted on November 16, when it was stuck with an immovable "frozen image". Evelyn Waugh would no doubt have referred to it as The Great Walkley Awards Fiasco Revisited. SBS even has trouble nowadays recording its most impressive weekday offering.

Several editions of the PBS NewsHour (5pm), including the November 17 edition, have been incomplete - sometimes halved - due to unexplained "technical difficulties". Just how difficult can these things get?

Perhaps that frozen, locked image was symbolic. SBS should freeze its downmarket drift while it still can and before Canberra is further tempted.

There are, after all, other media organisations that would have views about uses to which the SBS spectrum could be put.

The Australian