4 December 2007

Rubbish standards of reporting [Calwell Doctor Crisis]

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Both the ABC and the Canberra Times have recently regurgitated Nick Tsoulias’ rubbish about how he is a small businessman who has been effected by the Calwell doctors move and how Calwell desperately needs a doctor, rather that the truth that he is the greedy landlord whose unacceptably high rents drove the Medical Centre to move down the road to Isabella – not to a “Super Clinic” as Nick reckoned.

Neither of those news outlets made any attempt to verify the accuracy of Nick’s story and just printed it, obviously. So we see that the local news services will swallow any crap that’s fed to them and serve it back up to us as news.

I’m not surprised that the Canberra Times would do this, given the standards they maintain, but I am a little surprised at the ABC.. Obviously 11 years of the Howard Govt has had it’s toll on the standards there as well.

[ED – Just to re-iterate the views expressed are the opinions of the poster. For the record you’ll find almost all local journalism is a matter of running the line of whoever is putting forward the line until you hear something different from something else. If a journo’s got four stories to cover that day do you think they’re going to door knock just in case someone somewhere disagrees?]

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Jus keeping an open mind, afew things to consider.
1) Calwell Doctors moved to Issabel Plains as they intended to. After attending several auctions in the year they finally became their own landlords and purchased the Isabella Plains property. As people do not know the full story, or are real-estate minded or have any knowledge of even today Federal Government policy that of both Labor and Liberal Governments classify many parts of South Tuggeranong including Lanyon as rural and as Federal member for Canberra mentoned at the Tuggeranong Community Council meeting, that the Federal Government policy is available even today.
The rents at Calwell Shopping Centre are actualy considered to be fairer than that of any major Group Centre in Tuggeranong and I challenge any1 that has the guts to comment here to actualy see if they can rent any shop at any other similar site for the same rentas that of Calwell-you’l be laughed at.The Calwell SHopping Centre mangement and owners gave to the community a year free rent to Bendigo Community Bank with no charges for outgoings. The current traders have been there since opening in 1991 and are doing very well The truth of the matter is we are not desperate for Doctors-we are helping our community-like a shopping centre should do-interact with the community and take its concerns serious. The media have been very good to Canberra and in particuler with the Community Bank project and with our Doctors concerns in South Tuggeranong. For the negative comments-that is your opinion and we value critics but not hypocrits. Do something for the community and don’t go by gutter talk!!

A healthily cynical attitude would probably be a good start.

This has also been covered here

It’s about the resourcing caf.

And yes I’ll be the first to agree that far too often journo’s are woefully ignorant of their subject matter, but that’s usually a function of employers treating them like interchangeable parts.

It takes years to get adequately across all the issues in a community and there’s very few media outlets willing to invest in building that kind of knowledge.

It’s a shame but no-one’s willing to pay for news so that’s what they get.

If a journo’s got four stories to cover that day do you think they’re going to door knock just in case someone somewhere disagreesdo some actual journalism?

Fixed that for you.

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