So, let’s see … in the last seven days the Australian share-market lost ground on each consecutive day with no recovery in sight … the Australian Embassy in Kabul was attacked by the Taliban in a guerrilla-style attack … one child has died from malnutrition while you were reading this sentence … someone, somwhere has made an amazing discovery ... Yet, the “buzz-iest” news item in the Australian mediascape over the last week was the story of the Victorian party-boy Corey ‘I don’t take my sunglasses off indoors or outdoors’ Delaney, whose contribution to the newsworhiness-starved staple of the mainstream media has been … well, what exactly? Delaney, who, according to a www.news.com.au opinion piece today, ‘has outraged the world after throwing a party’, has been the winner of current affairs programs and online news rating games alike, while the country has spiralled into a raging debate over weather Corey needs a slap, or just represents the archetype of Australian “Larrikinism” in action.
In either case, the question that sabotages my ability to digest this ‘exciting event’ is -- how has Corey Delaney managed to ‘outrage the world’ (or find a spot in every self-respecting news-bulletin in the country, for that matter)? Do media practitioners really believe that Corey’s antics are of any concern to the rioting Kenyans, the Pakistanis on the brink of a civil war, the Iraqis right in the middle of one, the separating Kosovars, the Ukrainians currently blocking a Polish border? And if they do, would they consider it terribly offensive if somebody suggested it to them that something was really, really rotten in the state of (news-reporting) Australia. (I assume their recollection of memorable literary references is not as rusty as their news judgment, of course).
Have we, as a nation, really lost a sense of perspective? Or has the rating-chasing imperative of commercially-driven media decided to do away with our sense of perspective for us? Personally, I find it offensive (not to mention tedious) that those parading under the banner of owning the mainstream media space would consider the Delaney story a valuable use of anyone’s (and that means mine too) ‘information-time’.
Secondly, if the media is completely driven by capturing the type of audience that would find this story worthy of a news bulletin, wouldn’t it be easier to do some serious audience segmentation and create a “national brat news” bulletin for those who think Corey Delaney is news? Commercially, it would make a lot of sense. Two distinct audiences, two lots of happy customers, two lucrative marketing opportunities.
And, no, I do not want to be told that I have the choice of hitting the remote, the info super-highway or any other odd ‘hittable’ thing that would make me get my “serious” news-fix somewhere else. Because it won’t.
The whole (scary) point of this incident is that the Delaney story is but one sad example of the dumbing down of news reporting and delivery that has plagued the media space for a while now. Although the number of news delivery platforms has multiplied beyond anyone’s grandmother’s wildest dreams, the commoditisation of news and process-driven news production environments that are keener on chaining their journalists to desks than on quality reportage, has already ensured that our news staple is becoming less and less nutritious. The rise of the adolescent culture as the key value-driver of the current media advertising game is not helping either. Sound judgment of what makes news (rather than money), is the only thing we got going for us if we care about preserving some semblance of wanting to actually be informed, as opposed to info-tained as a society. Does Australia care? It doesn't seem to. But it should.
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Comments
Right on the money
Tamara hits the nail on the head. Australia's media is desperately poor. Corey Delaney's 'story' was 'junk news' at its finest, as as cheap and disposable as a burger and just as intellectually satisfying. Commercial TV stations exist to deliver viewers to advertisers, rather than good programmes to viewers, and so such cheaply produced pap to fill the brief moments between car adverts is only to be expected. SBS, leaning heavily on ITV news in Britain, does a decent if 'politically correct' job on a low budget but the commercial networks barely even try to provide a news service beyond traffic jams in Sydney and the latest hair and love traumas of Nicole Kidman (remember Nicole Kidman?). This is a free society though and the viewer decides what gets the ratings. Commercial TV will deliver what people want to watch - if people wanted two hour documentaries on land rights in Pakistan they'd get them, but, let's face it, they'd rather watch Desperate Housewives and ego maddened chefs shouting at cowed pimpled youths misfrying bacon.
More depressingly 'serious' newspapers are hardly any better, despite their pretentions to real quality. Papers such as the Sydney Morning Herald lift most of their foriegn news reporting and analysis straight from London's Daily Telegraph or the L.A. Times and seem to barely muster a foriegn correspondent of their own while the TV news is wretched in the extreme. To be fair, the ignorance cuts both ways of course, Australia media may trumpet the importance of Australian events to the world to a ridiculous degree but I would wager that barely one person in a hundred in Europe or the U.S.A. could name Australia's new Prime Minister. If the world doesn't matter to Australia then Australia doesn't matter to the world.
Perhaps TV and newspapers are simply irrelevent in the internet age. Anybody interested in politics, international affairs and current affairs simply dives into the vast swathes of information available at the click of a mouse on the internet. The computer user decides what's important, rather than the TV news editor, and those who want to be well informed are now much better informed than ever. Nobody with a broadband connection sits down and watches TV.
A big disappointment
To talk a bit more about this Corey Delaney though, while I totally agree that this kid is in serious need of a kick up the behind, the situation lends itself to yet another nature vs. nurture debate. Clearly, he didn't adopt this kind of attitude on his own. I am sure his parents are humiliated beyond belief, but where is their role in all of this? The "stuff authority" attitude hasn't developed out of thin air. This guy clearly has had no respect or regard for anyone other than himself for some time - but where has this line of thinking come from? What have his parents (and other relevant authority figures, his teachers, for example) done to knock the wind out of his sails and remind him who is boss? At some point he has been given the option to think he runs the show.
I can honestly say when my friends and I were 16, we didn't have the audacity to tell our parents where to go when we'd had enough of them. If we did, it was at our own risk - and we were reminded pretty quickly of where we sat in the food chain. 16 = still technically a child = you don't get to make your own rules. Of course we did stupid adolescent things and white lied to our parents. That is not unique to any generation. Yet we somehow knew where to toe the line - and we rarely dared cross it because we knew our parents would stick to punishment rather than simply talk about it. That would mean missing out or going without.
It might be an extreme line of thought, but are we staring in the face of a new revolution, not dissimilar to the rise of the punk scene back in the 70's? They may not share the same distinctive physical characteristics (yet), but this aggressive, rebellious, anti-authority sentiment is frighteningly real. While the punk phenomenon was heavily political, any sort of revolt against the powers-that-be was applauded. Corey could be just the tip of the iceberg.
Spot On!
I absolutely agree with your comments Tamara. I saw this story from you, and just had to say "Thankyou!". This is something I have been saying for some time.
Surely this type of "dumb" news that seems to fill our News today, isn't the stuff people really care about, and from talking to others, it would appear it isn't!
Thanks again for standing on a limb, and writting this article.
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