'http://thefailedestate.blogspot.com/2011/05/journalistic-principle.html

.....The intention appears to be to create a more low-to-middle brow Nine Network-lookalike that focuses on car crashes and crime and, in terms of politics, old fashioned adversarialism for its own sake. Look at the rebadged '7.30', which this year cast aside the crumpled but substantial Kerry O'Brien for the rather more marketable Leigh Sales and her sidekick, political correspondent Chris Uhlmann.

It was the latter who this past week trumpeted his 'interview' with Bob Brown, full of warmed over Murdoch talking points, as an accountability exercise. The whole interview (in which Uhlmann hardly let his subject answer a question) was based on a misrepresentation - that Brown wants the coal industry shut down overnight. Responding to criticism by viewers that he had not let Brown get a word in edgeways amid his hysterical interjections, Uhlmann's response was that the Greens leader needed to "harden up" (a phrase that would have sounded appropriate coming out of the mouth of Tony Abbott, a politician much closer to real power and one whom he incidentally had given an armchair ride to in an interview the week before).

The sad truth is the louder journalists thunder from their bully pulpits about accountability and the public's 'right to know', the less savoury are their their real motivations. Scratch a little below the surface and you will find the grandstanding is really about a need to generate hits and ratings or attract eyeballs in an increasingly competitive marketplace. It's about branding themselves as players in the political game. It's about impressing their bosses or their fellow journalists. It almost always has nothing to do with the wider public good. And the most telling evidence of this self-interested pantomime is that journalists themselves cannot bear the slightest scrutiny of their own behaviour without squealing like stuck pigs.
 

http://thefailedestate.blogspot.com/2011/05/journalistic-principle.html


Sad when you can not tell the difference between the  ABC Headlines and Journalistic reporting , and ACA ( or today tonight ) or commerical sensationalistic rubbish in which is the road the ABC seems to be  going down.

  The point to this whole topic is Uhlmann showed this in his interview with Brown when he made the question more important than the answer, why?

When did the question become more important than the answer.

Bob Brown really was destroyed by Chris Uhlmann on ABC's 7.30.
No amount of spin silly will ever change the fact.

cods wrote on May 23^rd, 2011 at 10:19am:



Hi cods, I could be better, few problems, hence I will copy a reply from a comment that sums up pretty well my answer  ; 

written by Bushfire Bill, 
   Penberthy doesn’t get it about Uhlmann. It wasn’t the interview questions so much as the rudeness and the hectoring that put people off.

I realise they only have a fixed, limited time to get the interview done, but that doesn’t mean they have to cram a lifetime’s worth of gotchas into 5 minutes.

Not having paid much attention to Brown’s position on the coal industry, I was interested to find out more. Listening to that interview did not achieve that end. All I came away with was a combination angry/frustrated feeling that Uhlmann’s virulent style had wrecked yet another chance to inform the public.

On the most basic level, when two people are talking over each other and the camera’s only on one of them, it’s virtually impossible to comprehend either of the speakers’ words, the one attacking or the one defending.

But Fox News has a stock market program where each raving looney gets a window tiled within the image space. You can see all 9 of them shouting at each other, but that doesn’t work either.

The only solution is to ask questions and then let the interviewee answer them, as Tony Jones did with Malcolm Turnbull. It was a textbook case of polite, but persistent interrogation and how coaxing out an answer from a reluctant interviewee can be achieved.

Smart-arsed gotchas don’t cut it, from either a technical or a social angle, especially from one so un-telegenic as Uhlmann who most definitely has an overly trumped up view of himself as kingmaker, and breaker.

Indeed, the very idea that interviews have to be punchy and aggressive in order to pass as “worthwhile”, that the interviewee is there always to be hoisted on his own petard, hung by his own words in a very public execution, to my mind is wrong. all you end up with from this approach is an interviewer with a certain gift for thinking on his feet ripping to some hapless bod who’s volunteered for the slaughter. Very often (and Red Kerry used to do this a lot, too, towards the end) we see the interviewer pointing fingers, accusing, lecturing and hectoring the poor sod opposite. the interview becomes about the interviewer, not the subject matter at hand.

Quote:




veggie now you have some idea what the right has complained about for years with Kerry OBriens style... you probably thought he did a good job on them... but when the boots on the other foot its not quite the same... yes let them answer something Kerry never did..only if it was a big gun and then he could still be nasty..

I havent had a good look at Uhlmann yet so cant really say.. however he does like an answer.. not another oh well its the media.. as Uhlmann pointed out he said it....

like it or not brown is trying to turn the media into the vampire.. how dare you ask too hard questions..

he knew he would create a headline and thats what he wanted he didnt want anyone looking too deep into how he reacted...lol..

veg you have to admit.. brown has flown under the radar for so long...

and now he has to face reality... he is having an effect on our everyday lives.. this isnt about a tree or a whale..this is you and me.. it will effect each and everyone of us.. yet with still no evidence that it will change a bloody thing and that annoys me..


if someone was going to cut off both my legs because they thought it would help me to live longer.......

I would appreciate them discussing it with me first.. I think I should have a say in  it.. and if I wish to listen to a second or third opinion... I think I should be able to do that without being cursed into oblivion..

Flying Binghi wrote on May 22^nd, 2011 at 11:07pm:



Im glad you know how to re-quote, otherwise i might suspect you had something to say.

cods wrote on May 23^rd, 2011 at 10:19am:


Can you remember an instance when Kerry was unfair to a Lib, or a lab. A quote maybe?

For me, the fact that the interview involved BBrown holds little relevance.

.


And in other news of muppets blaming Murdoch...



Heh, looks like Al Gore might be panicking about the collapse of his carbon trading empire..

"Al Gore hits out at Rupert Murdoch's News Corp

Former US vice-president Al Gore has hit out at Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, accusing it of "an abuse of power" by forcing his liberal TV station off air in Italy because it did not fit in with the media giant's "ideological agenda"...."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/may/19/al-gore-rupert-mudoch-news-corp