GarryP

Anyone else think Australia is extremely poor at covering breaking news stories?

The Japan quake breaks, right before the 6 'o' clock news, but they still major on local ephemera. What they do cover is just feeds from other services, no intelligence, analysis, or anything.

What are they, three trained monkeys and a button labelled "Take feed" ?

Rambi

It's big news in The Age. It's big enough to get rid of the multichoice headlines.

Weebie

Not if you have Australian news channels on Paytv. When Australian news services get no money unlike the bbc what kidn of service do you expect.

GarryP

How difficult is it to hire reporters with brains? And where is the backup?

It's not difficult to cover where, how much, etc. for something like a tsunami - hell the coverage via the internet is much better.

It sounds like the anchors:
a) have never had to cover a real story in the lives as reporters
b) are sitting there alone, in the studio, with no support.

They remind me of Bart Simpson on that TV anchor episode of the Simpsons - "and here is Tiddles the cat, how does he feel?"

fish.01

6'oclock news are local news services...who better to cover it than NHK?

DeadVim

Yup, the great thing about modern technology is we aren't restricted to the drivel that Aussie TV spews out. Commercial TV is the last place I'd look for any kind of information.

These days you can chuck the NHK app on your phone and get the news from the source.

I agree, news coverage is pitiful and I'm glad to have other options.

fish.01

ABC News 24 is showing some NHK plus local Australian analysis, SBS is showing BBC world service with continuous coverage...seems more than adequate to me? Commercial channels only show state based local news...think local BBC news in regional UK....eg Look North.

jimbo_d

Eh? SBS have been doing a special broadcast with Japanese feeds and there's ABC news 24 doing good analysis on the free channels, if you've got Foxtel Sky & CNN & BBC etc are there too, what more do you want?

Amazulu

Rubbish and what a ridiculous post. It was all over the TV, Internet, radio just before 6pm. This is a pretty sudden event. Sky, BBC (getting it's feed from NHK), CNN, NHK etc have a much bigger presence in this area (bigger audience, massive budgets)

MissyB

Really? Must admit I didn't see it on the TV until way after 6pm (and we were watching TV!) and thought the same thing as GarryP.

I reckon they were too busy reporting about bl**dy Charlie Sheen!!

Rambi

The quake was just before 5pm Melbourne time. It would be hard to get anything out by 6pm. For comparison, BBC seemed to have started their reporting at 8am which is 7pm Melbourne time.

GarryP

But the point being made is that the news was happening at exactly the right time for the 'live' news services to cover it straight. What you would expect was them to clear the first ten minutes, cover the news as it happens, provide context and expected scenarios, all over the live feed which at the same time was showing the tsunami racing inland. Then they cover a few of the local canned stories, returning to an update for the end of the 30mins.

What they did do was ignore it till over half way through the broadcast, mention it for about 20 seconds, then move on to the sport.

There was loads they could have used to provide context, where it was, which areas were at risk of the tsunami and when, population density, aftershocks & risk of further shocks (which is actually still important), etc. None of that takes budget particularly - it takes an intelligent and informed team - a news team that can add something to what people already know. Most of this data was available, for free, on the internet anyway.

It seems obvious that they don't really have a news team, they have a 'human interest stories' reporting team that can manage light entertainment, but not what could honestly be called journalism.

Even ABC News channel just ran someone else's feed straight, nothing else, no comment.

Frankly, it's events like these that point up just how good (or otherwise) their news skills are. They were shown to be lacking, which probably means they aren't up to the job reporting stories closer to home either. If you are a news service and can't provide insight over and above what the common man already knows, what IS the point?

mulben

They must have a different SBS and ABC 24 with you , as here in the west its all they were showing and even ABC radio was talking about what you could see on ABC 24 . Your remark about the live feed is strange as it was from a copter and had heaps of comment.
Japan time zone is the same as Perth , so yes we saw it live as the clock on the Japanese network was the same as our time.

Ozzidoc

Right. The BBC's coverage wasn't great. Nearly nothing on the BBC website within 15 mins of the event. At about 1900GMT Friday, the World Service was really struggling to find anything to say; there was a guest in the studio who was doing google searches and searches of other new services. Really poor

DeadVim

Let's face it, if you're a serious journalist wanting to cover the big stories in any kind of depth then you would have hopped on the first plane out of Oz.

I love it here but I can see why there is a brain drain ...