Tabloid TV at its exploitative worst

Why the media and their cheque-books are on the nose

Subscriber email – August 3
 

We gave Today Tonight a big spray last night for broadcasting that appalling interview with distraught security guard
Karen Brown, but the rest of the media is also not exactly covering itself with glory either.

The entire press pack camped outside Brown’s house over the weekend were looking for the exclusive interview and Crikey has obtained copies of some of the letters and notes that were faxed and stuffed under her door.

The losing parties, in this case Channel Nine and Fairfax’s Sun-Herald, turned around and fired up outrage over the fact that Brown was speaking to their rivals before speaking to police when that is exactly what they were aiming for as well.

And what about Ray Martin’s form going on Neil Mitchell’s 3AW morning program suggesting Nine was not getting into the bidding war over Karen Brown when it now appears Ray’s program offered $130,000.

Was Ray not aware of this letter sent to Brown’s partner by ACA producer Emma Martin?

 

 

Crikey can also exclusively reveal the tactics employed by the Sydney Sunday tabloids to persaude the distraught security guard to speak to their paper. Check out the notes left under her door.

 

 

It seems Ben Johnson’s tactic of sucking up to Brown with “I think you
deserve a medal” and a reference to “that mongrel’s grandparents” was
effective, along with a cheque for $7000 from Porsche driving Sunday Telegraph editor Jenniffer Cooper.

Fairfax’s Sun-Herald may not have offered any cash but the
page 9 lead they produced on Sunday was all about the outrage of Brown
talking to media outlets before she spoke to police. If this was so
important, why didn’t the note left under Brown’s door by the Sun-Herald reporter suggest she speak to the police before speaking to the Sun-Herald.

You then have the on-going issue of how the media has reacted to the
murder charge against Brown. The Parrot was clearly crossing the
boundaries this morning with his Channel Nine sermon which you can see
here: https://www.2gb.com/

Brown has been charged with murder yet the Parrot is telling hundreds
of thousands of Sydney-siders and potential jurors thing like this:

“Last night on television, I saw some of the most horrific and
demoralising pictures I have seen for a long time. They were pictures
of a security guard called Karen Brown. Last week, Karen Brown was
minding her own business as a security guard, on duty in western Sydney
at a hotel in Moorebank.

Into the fray came a young man, a 25 year old by the name of William
Aquilina. Karen Brown had the weekend takings of the Moorebank Hotel,
reportedly to be somewhere between $30,000 and $50,000.

Well, in the world we live in, with the bias seemingly in favour of the
criminal, Aquilina believed, apparently, that he had the green light.
He allegedly bashed her about the head repeatedly while wearing knuckle
dusters before ripping the hotel’s takings from her hand and taking off
to a getaway car.

The car was allegedly stolen. And the bloke allegedly walked
casually to the stolen vehicle. Nothing to fear. No haste needed. The
rest is history.

Karen Brown is a security guard. She was armed. Bleeding and bashed,
she walked to the car, pointed the gun at her assailant and allegedly
pulled the trigger. Aquilina died in hospital a short time later.

From that point on, last Monday week, police have been waiting to
speak to Ms Brown. They were unable to, due to the severity of her
injuries and state of mind. Tests proved last week that she had a
fractured skull, a broken nose and only partial vision in one eye.

Well, the media hype began, with a focus on the real criminal.
Aquilina was a loving and caring man. Except that we also learnt that
he smoked cannabis, took amphetamines and moved on to cocaine and
heroin.

Karen Brown then spoke to the media before she spoke to the police.
And we saw extracts of that last night. A broken, destroyed,
demoralised, diminished woman, weeping and shaking over the fate that
has overtaken her.

When, in reality, this woman was just doing her job, collecting the
hotel takings, taking it to a secure place and she’s bashed up by a
bloke using a knuckle duster wanting her money and enjoying the
sanctuary of a world where crime does pay and where you can make your
getaway whenever it suits you in someone else’s vehicle.

But Karen Brown is now charged with murder. Yet, Karen Brown spoke
to the media because she knew the world she had now entered. She knew
she would face prosecution and she knew, with a fractured skull, a
broken nose and only partial vision in one eye, she had a long line of
medical bills that had to be met.

And, in these circumstances, who cares. We should all rally behind
Karen Brown. The risk is, if we don’t, someone close to us could be
getting the knuckle duster, the fractured skull and the broken nose
tomorrow.”

 

ends

Finally, it was interesting to see Richard Ackland defend Brown’s chequebook journalism in The SMH today. Read it here.

And Today Tonight has also been appearing more regularly
on Crikey’s chequebook journalism list recently, which might explain
why they’re going so well in the ratings.

Seven buys its way back into the ratings battle

On Sunday, the Seven Network couldn’t get much lower, battered to
its lowest national and Sydney market shares for years of 18.6 per cent
and 16.9 per cent respectively, with Nine zooming to a share of 35.9
per cent nationally and 34.3 per cent in Sydney. Driving it was the
performance of the telemovie The Alice, the News, Backyard Blitz and 60 minutes. Seven had been bounced out of the game.

 

But twenty-four hours later on Monday night, thanks in part to the controversial Karen Brown interview on Today Tonight, Seven came within a whisker of beating Nine nationally, and trumped its bitter rival in Sydney.

It was a stunning comeback on the back of a piece of grubby cheque-book
journalism, which will be justified by the result. And Nine’s ratings
report reflected the result, playing up the good performance of National Nine News, and playing down its loss in Sydney.

Nationally Nine finished with a 28.6 per cent share, Seven with 28.1
per cent and Ten with 21.8 per cent. But in Sydney, Seven slid past
Nine to win 29.1 per cent to 28.1 per cent. And while the Karen Brown
interview obviously helped push Today Tonight into second place, there were strong performances by Seven News, Home and Away and The Great Outdoors, the last two winning their timeslots.

So what were the rankings? Nationally Nine News was tops with 1.65 million viewers, followed by Today Tonight with 1.57 million, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire with 1.54 million, then Seven News with 1.53 million, Home and Away with 1.42 million (again helped by TT running overtime) and The Great Outdoors with 1.41 million. Seventh was A Current Affair and Ray Martin’s fourth dip at the Azaria Chamberlain story. The ABC’s Australian Story was eighth with a strong 1.31 million, Frasier was ninth and a Friends repeat was tenth with 1.30 million.

 

Seven’s win in Sydney was driven by Today Tonight, which beat ACA by nearly 32,000 viewers – 488,744 to 456,928 – to finish on top, and The Great Outdoors, which was second ahead of Nine’s Who Wants to be a Millionaire and Nine News.

 

Elsewhere, Seven finished a close second to Nine in Melbourne,
Brisbane and Adelaide , while Seven headed Nine in Perth. With the ABC
having a strong evening with a share of 18 per cent nationally, Ten
slumped to a low of 21.8 per cent.

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Tabloid television at its exploitative worst
Subscriber email – August 2

The word ‘exploitation’ came to the fore tonight as ‘Concerned Naomi’ and ‘Serious Ray’ peddled their wares to viewers of Today Tonight and A Current Affair respectively.

Certainly Today Tonight’s subject matter was closer to the program’s title than was Ray’s drag through the Azaria Chamberlain case of 1980.

Concerned Naomi cynically exploited a poor befuddled person called
Karen Brown, who is now accused of shooting dead a young man alleged to
have assaulted her as he tried to steal the money she was carrying.

After witnessing this poor person’s hesitant, stumbling performance on Seven’s Today Tonight, you are left with just one question. Why did she do it and why did Seven allow it to go to air?

Sorry, so sorry, why are we being so obtuse? Of course Seven would put
it to air. It was cynical. The host had all the charm of a cobra eyeing
its prey. Karen Brown had all the vulnerability of a mouse before a
cobra.

She and her lawyer explained that the interview was done because the
family of the man she is alleged to have shot, John Aquallina, had had
publicity from Channel Nine’s A Current Affair last week. So?
Is tit for tat a reason to do an interview and allow a person who has
been badly affected by this terrible event to be exposed to a
non-caring, ratings driven TV current affairs host? Sorry Channel
Seven, you could do better. And likewise Ray with the Frank
Cole-Michael Chamberlain confrontation/meeting.

A grubby battle of chequebooks and egos. Nine offered Karen Brown
$130,000 and failed to secure the interview. Seven won it with $100,000
and Naomi. Only the question remains why? The police have been
antagonised. Likewise the viewing and reading public in Sydney.

Silly, senseless cheque journalism has its victims. And it’s not the
networks, the hosts or their reporters. It’s the people paid the money
or given their few minutes of fame. Not good television, not nice human
beings! There is every chance Karen Brown will spend even longer in
jail courtesy of this sordid episode.

After playing hard to get over the weekend, Brown finally allowed
herself to be interviewed with police this afternoon, when she was
formally charged with murder.

The police did not try to block the screening of tonight’s interview
with Brown, putting the onus to comply with the law back on Seven.

That $100,000 isn’t really looking like money well spent any more. A
defensive Peter Meakin, head of news and current affairs at Seven told
the ABC radio’s World Today,
“Well we can’t run elements of it, I think it’s fair to say, but it’s
not that everything she says is in contempt of possible proceedings.
But we are taking legal advice and we will, you know, honour that legal
advice”.

Meanwhile another subscriber writes:

While Seven may have paid $100,000 for the security guard story, I’m not sure if the Sunday Tele would have.

The bylines on Sunday’s splash were Ben Johnson and Warren Owens. Ben
is a (talented) cadet who normally does the weddings pages. Word is he
got the story through sheer persistence – old style sticking notes
under the door stuff – and Warren, who knows the barrister (and every
other barrister in town) backed him up.

If the Sunday Tele had paid for the story, they would have stuck Neil
Mercer or one of the other highly paid “guns” on it, not the most
junior cadet in the building.

The only problem with this defence is that The Sunday Tele plugged the TT interview that went to air tonight.

Meanwhile, this morning on the ABC Radio,
NSW DPP Nicholas Cowdery QC expressed concern over the media’s
involvement in the case and the potential to interfere in the justice
process. Indeed, although any juror who saw Brown’s teary performance
night will certainly remember it as they sift through all the evidence.

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Disgraceful chequebook journalism from Seven and Nine
Subscriber email – August 1

The growing intensity of the competition between Seven’s Today Tonight
and the Nine Network’s A Current Affair is clouding the judgement of
the producers and managers of both programs and the networks. It is a
silly tit for tat exchange of chequebooks that is not nice and is
imperilling the sorting out of one particular senseless crime and the
lingering Azaria Chamberlain disappearance.

The various people involved in the program, Peter Meakin at Seven and
John Westacott and David Gyngell at Nine, should know that in both
cases, the civil good, ie the community, should come before ratings.
It’s clear in the current events they have no understanding of that.

Take Nine’s ACA. All weekend they’ve been promoting a
confrontation/meeting between Michael Chamberlain and Frank Cole, the
elderly Melbourne man who claims to have shot a dingo at Uluru that had
the body of a young baby in its mouth.

We don’t know whether that was the case. We only have the untested word
of an elderly man who may have been struck by the attraction of
prolonging his 15 minutes of fame. On Friday, when news of the coming
meeting with Michael Chamberlain spread, it was reported widely that Mr
Cole had refused to speak to police about his claims.

Then Sydney lawyer, Chris Murphy (a rent a mouth, as well as a smart
advocate) popped up in some Sydney media reports as saying that he
represented Mr Cole and that he would now speak to police.

No details of when or where, or whether he would speak to them before
or after meeting Michael Chamberlain. Well, it had to be after because
he’s already done the segment and by Friday evening, Nine was beating
the drum loudly. And he’s already done himself a disservice and so has
the Nine Network, which earned themselves this negative front-page story in The Sunday Herald Sun.

So we now have the situation that Mr Cole will have spoken to Nine at
least four times, without talking to police to tell his story. That is
not good enough and if he is not willing to tell police, how can we
take what he says seriously? It’s becoming a tawdry ratings booster for
a struggling program and a struggling host in Ray Martin who remains
besotted with the Azaria Chamberlain story.

Over at Seven, they are just as culpable thanks to the story about
security guard Karen Brown which will go to air tonight, following today’s splash in The Sunday Telegraph
which looked like an on-sale from Today Tonight. Check out the story on
the SMH website early Sunday afternoon that shows the network in a very
bad light and unable to work out where its public responsibility lies.

This is a story that ACA has already tested with an interview with
members of the dead man’s family last week. It is a harrowing tale on
both sides. A bloody, unprovoked attack on the security guard, and her
violent, but terminal response.

Rather than talk to police about the events of last week, she has
spoken to the Seven Network Today Tonight, which has failed in its duty
to be a responsible current affairs show. So has the Network. Now it
seems that security guard will be charged with murder as you can see
here.

There should have been NO money paid and she and her handlers should
have been told that they should be talking to the police. It is very
damaging to the family of the dead man not to have some explanation
from Ms Brown as to her actions. They at least deserve that.

The police are the only way to go, not a current affairs show which has
NO interest in a rational and full exploration of the events. Talking
to the media is her way of softening and framing public opinion to
support her actions. That is wrong and the question of the level of her
response needs to be explored by police in an investigation, unhindered
by the spinning efforts on TT.

It is another tawdry step down the road of tabloidism by both programs.
The people involved in ACA and TT should know better. How would messrs
Martin, Westacott, Craig McPherson (the producer of TT) and Peter
Meakin feel if one of their relatives was involved in a similar
situation and the person who survived chose to talk to the Telegraph or
a TV program, before providing as full and complete explanation of
their actions to police?

That remains the question, not a silly rush for ratings!