Give judgment for me, O God

21 November 2009

It's more than a year ago that former Nine reporter Christine Spiteri won a 'six-figure' settlement from the Nine network over a breach of contract claim (see reports Australian & Herald-Sun). I made a note of this case intending to come back to it because it demonstrates a feature generally of television news reading and reporting in Australia, a feature I have not observed in Dutch, Belgian, British or US television. (I watch Dutch and Belgian television on  http://www.bvn.nl/ via satellite).

I know nothing of the strength or weakness of Spiteri's case. Nor am I interested. What interested me is the following:

In her statement of claim, she alleged Nine's news director John Westacott told her: "You should work for SBS [the multicultural channel], you certainly have the name for it."

She also alleged Mr Westacott told female journalists: "To make it in this industry, you gotta have f...ability. To make it in this game, women have to be f...able."

Other female reporters have similarly accused Westacott, who has now 'retired' from the Nine Network. Still other female reporters stuck up for him. Westacott denied he said such things. How are we, the ordinary viewer, to know who is telling the truth? Bad news for Westacott: the evidence is well and truly on Spiteri's side.

I don't use the term 'f...ability', taking that as a sign of a typically crude male mind - and there are unfortunately many of them in the Australian media, a subject I will come back to in a following comment. Anyone who watches the Nine Network's news programs and bulletins cannot fail to see that the many female reporters, news readers and anchors, are almost exclusively young and good-looking, a few outstandingly so. Do Westacott and other Nine News executives think that only good-looking young women are capable of reporting and reading the news, and that women lose those abilities once they pass thirty years? Of course, they don't. The proposed 'f...ability' quotient explains it. But let's not pick on Channel Nine. The other commercial television stations reflect the same attitude. It's one TV news babe after the other. It is only the government ABC that thinks mature women are at least as capable of doing the same job. In defence of the leftist ABC, I have to admit their political agenda regularly coincides with ordinary notions of fairness.

A week or two ago I was reminded forcefully of this feature of Australian television while watching a female reporter on BVN doing a long report from Iran for NOS, the Dutch equivalent of Australia's ABC. The woman was in her forties, poised and articulate. It was a truly balanced professional report that informed the viewer. It was the sort of reporting that comes with education, experience and maturity. Unfortunately it is fact of nature that experience and maturity have an advantage over lack of experience and maturity - no matter how gorgeous the twenty-something girl is.

Australia's commercial television networks are run by people who are dominated by a f...ability mentality, a mentality that also explains the crudity, vulgarity and nastiness. This is one of the reasons so many people are turning off from juvenile rubbish they serve up.

comments: gerardwilson@dodo.com.au