ABC TV Media Watch on 31 August 2009 featured an assessment of last Saturday's Tweed Daily News exploitative front page, which targeted a vulnerable person with a disability and allegedly resulted in that person's hospital admission.
Media Watch received no answer when it contacted Tweed Daily News with the usual invitation to supply justification.
What could the newspaper say? After all: by taking advantage of the confusion and distress of an ordinary person; by needlessly identifying him in a frontpage photograph and exposing him to condemnation, ridicule or gossip; by focussing on the supposed alarmed reaction of its female journalists; the newspaper was only obeying APN News & Media's Readers First guidelines which in practice pander to ignorance and dumb down the news.
With circulation figures and advertising income the principal drivers for this 'new' journalism, what better way to boost its supposed Saturday circulation of 10,000 sold papers than having a full monty on Page One.
The Media Watch presenter called the 120 year-old Tweed Daily News a wretched little rag.
Perhaps he should have also taken APN to task for the very flawed publication philosophy it has foisted on its editors, may of whom cannot always walk the frequently fine line between exploitative and ethical news reporting.
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