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Wednesday 10 June 2009

Channel Ten should apologize...

... for being fucking hypocritical twats with their coverage of The Chaser's sick kid skit. Here's the original skit (and admittedly it is near the knuckle so if you think you might be offended just don't fucking play it - I won't say sorry):


Here's Channel Ten's piece (and again, if you're easily offended it's probably best that you just don't play it):


Now is it me or did Ten News show virtually the whole fucking skit anyway (if you didn't play the clips just take my word for it)? And if so does that mean they're as bad as The Chaser and should also apologise? I mean, I missed the show and the only reason I saw the content that had offended so many people was because I saw it on Ten News. And if journalistic licence justifies showing the whole thing despite the offence it causes* then do The Chaser team really need to apologize? Could they not have just shown a few stills or a heavily edited down version to illustrate the story? Fuck no, not remotely salacious enough to run it that way. Show more or less the whole thing cut into two or three chunks and let people who missed it think there was more to it, and mix in angry and offended viewers. The way I see it anything The Chaser have to apologize for applies to Ten News as well.


UPDATE: It also occurs to me to wonder how many of the people currently going crazy about this actually saw it when it was broadcast and how many, like me, only caught up with it after the event because of the shit hitting the media driven fan. If, as I suspect, most people didn't see it in the first place then how much responsibility do the rest of the media have for making it more widespread? Even if they didn't do a Ten News and show the thing virtually in it's entirety the media as a whole (plus Rudd et al) has made a huge beat up of the issue and consequently it's a lot bigger than it would have been if The Chaser team had just been quietly bollocked for it.


* The other thing is Channel Ten's spin that the skit makes fun of dying children. Did it? I'm not sure. Whether it was or wasn't I'd say it's neither their best stuff nor even particularly funny, but even when I saw it on the news it didn't come across to me that the sick kids themselves were supposed to be the butt of the joke. Then there's the point made by Mediawatch that it's not exactly new, and that being the case where was all the uproar last time? Finally, I get offended by lots of TV - usually whenever Kevin Rudd or Malcolm Turnbull is on - but I've never once been moved to complain about any of it because when stuff that offends me appears on my screen I reach for the remote and it goes away. Is it that hard to switch over to avoid TV you don't like?

2 comments:

Shibby said...

That's the news for you.

You know they don't really care.

Angry Exile said...

Mmm, yep. The commercial networks here are very competitive with each other, though usually Nine get on my tits most. I'd blog about Today Tonight except that I'd have to watch it, and that would probably result in the TV getting shot. By contrast ABC is a bit like the Beeb, which shouldn't be seen as a compliment.

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