5 April 2006

ACT grows again, courtesy of ABC

| Spectra
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After briefly annexing Goulburn a couple of months back, the ABC have now even more bizarrely located the NSW state electorate of Monaro within the ACT. Is this some kind of systematic plot to expand our borders (presumably on the premise that if you report something often enough, it becomes fact)? Or is it simply that the ABC budget no longer extends to buying a map with state/territory boundaries?

Oh, there’s something about the water agreement in there too.

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Too right, Thumper. The old joke is that NSW stands for Newcastle Sydney and Wollongong.

I still think too that the ABC is hiring some dumb people, although brainless journos are also commonly found in commercials (exhibit A: 2SM; exhibit B: 2UE).

This story was probably compiled at ABC central office in Sydney, which could partly explain the gaffe. I seriously doubt ABC Canberra would have stuffed that up.

No problems with the ABC. Problems with the newsroom editors editing skills. Time to watxh more Sesame Street you dolt.

You could well be right, although I have to say that these are the only two examples I can remember where places not within the ACT have been said to be so. It’s one thing to be parochial in your reporting, it’s another to get your basic geography just flat-out wrong.

I was mostly just pointing it out because I thought it was funny, but I wonder if it does reflect some real problems within the local ABC here.

It’s probably got something to do with the fact that they’ve had some short-staffing issues in the last year or so – courtesy of a newsroom baby boom – and they’re mostly filling it with people who already have ABC experience, but not necessarily a brain.

Also it reflects upon the sad but true attitude of many Canberra-based media outlets that they only serve the ACT so everything may as well be geographically adjusted to reflect that fact, when actually their licence area is much wider and covers the southern tablelands as well as the Snowy region.

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