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Local old person, John Solander (67) says that he didn’t know people could read news online until about a fortnight ago.
“I just thought that bloody thing was for pornography and terrorists recruiting, I had no idea that they were publishing news on it…” he said.
“Media Watch has been explaining a lot of this too me. Did you know the Daily Telegraph had a website? It’s got all their stories from the paper and a few others too,”
In its 29th year, ABC’s Media Watch is viewed by some as a watchdog of the Australian media, that investigates and exposes media bias and breaches of journalistic ethics and standards. The series, which initially presented a roughly even mix of amusing or embarrassing editing gaffes and more serious criticism, had over the years shifted emphasis towards the latter.
However it seems the beloved 10-minute program’s format is changing yet again.
“We’re transitioning from the ICAC of news to more of a Baby Boomer night school,” says Media Watch’s current host Paul Barry.
“Our national print media has essentially killed itself by expecting people to continue paying to read conservative opinion pieces in a world of online news,”
“It’s now our job to explain to the ABC viewers that there are alternatives outside of Chris Kenny and Ben Cubby…”
“The ABC used to be a safe space for hard news but Prime Minister Abbott thought he’d take out all his opponents in one hit by telling Turnbull to slash their funding… They’ve been copying stories from The Lad Bible and Junkee ever since,”
With Australia’s news media landscape currently limping through the uncharted territory that sits between the demise of print and commercial broadcasting – and the rise of online news ‘churnalism’ – thousands of Baby Boomers around the country now rely solely on the remaining 4-5 pages of hard news that can be found across the Fairfax and Newslimited daily newspapers.
“It’s hard because these people don’t want things to change,” says Barry, referring to both veteran journalists and Baby Boomers as a whole
“… but unless they want news presented by former Abbott staffers and racist ex-Dancing With The Stars contestants, they are going to have to figure out how to use Google Chrome,”
“Next week we will be talking about Instagram. What is it? and why does your sixteen year-old granddaughter have ten thousand followers?”
Ben Cubby is a dog.