More Notes 2

FRONTLINE

• The Media plays an integral role in shaping the opinions of contemporary society and people expect the media to report truthfully on any and all events, and rely on media regulations to enforce the truth within current affairs journalism.
• Frontline, with its caustic satire and teasing verisimilitude deconstructs and subverts the ‘truth’ behind our media programs commonly characterized by authoritative intelligent anchors, closed narrative structures, live crosses, ‘noddies’ and reconstructions, all of which are heavily parodied in the show.
• By foregrounding the juxtaposition between the construction process and the end result of the news, achieved through contrasting language and film techniques, Sitch and Gleisner show the duplicity of the truth presented and allow responders to question the nature of the truth represented by the media in general, who will go to extraordinary lengths to achieve ratings, money or entertaining stories.

‘THE SIEGE’

• The Siege explores the manipulation of truth in the desire for ratings, and provides a critique of the media’s overt challenge of laws pertaining to the ethics and moral responsibility of presenting the truth.
• The siege unfolding in this episode is representative of the verisimilitude present in much of the series, as the events in this episode are reminiscent of the 1993 police siege at Cangai. This sense of reality is further enhanced by the use of fly on the wall camera techniques, low definition hand held cameras and reference to real TV personalities such as “Mike” Munroe which lends credibility to Frontline’s critique of the media
• The opening of the episode reflects the media’s exploitation of this truth. Brian, instead of taking into account the seriousness of the siege at hand, is merely determined to “milk” the story, for “at least half an hour”
• In order to achieve such a goal and the high ratings desired, the story is heavily dramatized and sensationalized. Thus Marty crouches when reporting on the scene of the siege, to “make it look like he’s in danger” when in reality he is 5 km away. This emphasis on ‘image’ is a constant theme in Frontline —the Chaser Segment ‘Experts in Current Affairs’ explores similar sentiments—add Chaser Bit (George…it’s at the bottom of this doc.) allowing the audience to gather that the image presented is of greater importance to the truth itself, which like Marty’s story is kept in the dark so “no one will see”
• ‘The Siege’ also explores the conflict inherent between ethical responsibility as outlined by the AJA, and the presentation of the truth.
• This is explored in Brook’s unethical and ironically “unscrupulous” invasion of a distressed mother’s privacy where we learn that Brooke’s concern is not for a distressed mother but for the necessity of having a ratings winning human interest story.
• This flagrant disregard for ethics and the truth is further satirised in Mike’s interview with the gunman, which poses both ethical and legal issues. Rather than try to diffuse the situation, the team make the event more volatile and potentially fatal for the sake of enhancing their public image and scoring a ratings coup, as Brian arrogantly announces in the end “we bloody creamed ’em”
• Thus the satire in this episode is condemnatory of the lengths the media will go to achieve good ratings and interesting television. The epitome of such satire is seen in the conclusion of the episode in which Brian’s premise that “everyone was safe” is repudiated by the gunshots heard of the second siege. This pessimistic ending allows the audience to see the necessity of ethics in the media and allows them to question whether or not the media really has “gone too far”

‘WE AIN’T GOT DAMES’

• We Ain’t Got Dames demonstrates how the desire to please a particular demographic of viewer undermines the truth they convey and satirises the willingness of current affairs programs to sacrifice the big issues for trivial stories and a sensationalized image to gain greater ratings.
• Certain legal safeguards for the misrepresentation of truth demand a level of proof and responsibility rather than scandalous and malicious storytelling, however the frontline team follows a very loose ratings winning formula of sensationalized innuendo and superficiality.
• For example, in order to make the show less “blokey” emphasis is placed on pandering to a stereotyped female audience, which according to them “aren’t interested in politics”
• As a result of this parochial view of both the truth and women, Mike is re-moulded in the promo to epitomize someone who is “soft and fuzzy” in order to better appeal to the female audience.
• Ironically this manufactured image is used by the creators of the show to juxtaposes Mike’s ‘off screen’ bumbling persona and thus again the highlights the importance of image in conveying and in this case undermining ‘truth’.
• Furthermore, the overtly sensationalized re-enactment of the “Check up or chat up” story shows the audience, a truth that doesn’t exist, satirizing the fact that simplistic stories are given inflated importance, and stories with substance like Mikes sweatshop story are often given “major surgery” to give them a wider appeal
• —a similar sentiment is explored in the episode Smaller Fish to Fry in which a fridge repair man is falsely and sarcastically pointed out as “public enemy number one” in this episode the creators of the show use ‘real life’ media program to force the audience to question why current affairs programs don’t go after the “big fish”
• The interview with real life personality Sheryl Kernot in We Ain’t Got Dames highlights the shows satire as well as lending credibility to the point the creators of Frontline are attempting to make—the denial of Kernot’s real opinion about a highly political event the “fairfax inquiry”, alludes to a greater denial of truth in Frontline as each are done to appeal to a wider audience.
• Mikes desire to talk about simplistic issues such as family life are used to reinforce that what Frontline perceives as truth is given priority, because if they showed a woman with political opinion, they would be contradicting their own stereotype and would thus lose ratings.
• Thus Sitch and Gleisner express throughout this satirical series, that news is sanitized and editorialized to the point that it becomes an expendable commodity.

‘CARLETON’S 15 MINUTES OF VERY SLOPPY SAUSAGE’ by Mike Secombe SMH 02/03/02

• Sensationalism and manipulation of the truth is highlighted in the SMH article
• The article discusses Carleton’s 60 minutes story of July 1995, when he covered the then recent news of the massacre of Muslims by Serbs at Srebrenica in Bosnia.
• Carleton and executives of Channel 9 were accused of plagiarism and misrepresentation of the truth in the story, as they added the voice of a Czech born Channel 9 staff member to masquerade as a Serbo-Croatian voice.
• Carleton further admitted to standing beside an anonymous mass grave whilst claiming the bodies being exhumed were victims of Srebrenica. The truth of the matter was that the ‘real’ gravesite was nearly “150 kilometres away” and the one pictured contained no Srebrenican bodies--misrepresentation of truth or image over substance and flagrant disregard for ethics
• Ironically, Carleton attempted to defend himself saying that 60 minutes was reluctant to spend $100 000 on a story that “no one was interested in” when they could fill in the same amount of airtime with a story on Madonna for a “quarter of the price”-shows the business like nature of current affairs and the manipulation of truth by ‘those above’—Sitch and Gleisner explore similar sentiments in episodes like Playing the Ego Card in which the executive Ian Farmer ruthlessly outlines his ideals “Mike Moore has the networks 100 percent support …right until the day we sack him”
• As Mike Secombe the author of this particular article put it “Otto Von Bismarck, once famously observed that the laws were like sausages; it was better not to see them being made. Had he been around today he may well have included tabloid current affairs into that”

The Chaser ‘Experts On current affairs’

• Explores journalistic standards or lack thereof
• Stresses the current affairs shows tendency to prefer image rather than truth
• It only appears to be ‘expert’ the chaser team undermines current affairs journalism by replacing ‘credible’ experts with a dog and drawing comparison between the credentials of both.
• Satirises current affairs attempts to gain credibility through use of ‘experts’
• Experts who read books, experts who use a mouse, experts who flip pages, experts who walk
• This can be connected to ‘the siege’ in their use of a police ‘expert’ with a beard
• They satirise current affairs tendency to falsely represent people by using a dog in the same position