So the News boss at THEIR ABC has to tell his staff how to report news, but they were very highly paid expert journalists. Apparently NOT! From Election WON - Governing NOW: Wow. Head of news content at the ABC, Gaven Morris, feels the need to issue a directive to senior staff to instruct their teams on how to report facts and not editorialise or embellish their reports with words like; torture, mistreatment or violence. Does it need to be said? What level of journalists are working at the taxpayer funded ABC? Well with teachers of journalism like Peter Van Onselen I believe you Prime minister and Jenna Price to name a few, what kind of graduate is being produced? ...Head of ABC news content Gaven Morris ... instructed senior staff, including director of news Kate Torney and ABC News 24 editor Tony Hill, to provide advice to their teams about reporting on ‘’incidents at sea’’… ‘’As you know, we currently have a set of claims by asylum seekers our editorial teams are continuing to work hard to get an accurate account of and to verify,’’ he wrote. ‘’During this process all our output should reflect the basic facts before us … we don’t need to interpret them beyond what we know, nor should be [sic] editorialising or seeking to add adjectives or any flourish. ‘’We’re not seeking to describe or embellish the allegations with descriptions like torture or mistreatment or violence and we’re not reporting whether we have proved or disproved anything the media has previously reported - the allegations and responses stand for themselves.’’ I think the only way for a journalist to learn that an article or report must be factual is to hit them with a defamation lawsuit. A few of those and they will quickly learn that their reports need to be backed by fact.
Posted on: Sun, 02 Feb 2014 15:31:27 +0000