The Nine Network uses its chief media whore to promote '60 Minutes'

The TV promos have just started on the Nine Network. Over the coming weeks we are going to be presented with all Nine’s stars peering and grinning out of the idiot box. Channel Nine will, of course, pick its beautiful people to front the promos leaving the few unfortunately less attractive in the background. This is the usual way: the beautiful people are there to attract us to the programming for the coming year – just as during the year mostly pretty twenty-something females are chosen to front Nine’s news program.

The Nine Network has long thought its audience is stupid and won’t watch its programs unless it appeals to not what is between the ears but what is between the legs. My apologies to readers for putting it so crudely, but how else would you describe the tactic? What else explains the disappearance of women from the TV screen once they pass the thirty years mark? It is the same tactic that finds busty skimpily dressed blonds on the front of mechanics' magazines

One exception to the beauty rule is Richard Carleton. We will not be so uncharitable as to say that Carleton is a TV Quasimodo, but he is hardly in the category of his colleague on ‘60 Minutes’, Tara Brown, whose reports always include a journey several times around her pretty twenty-something face and blond hair.

No, Richard is no pin-up boy, and at least he can’t be blamed for that. But contrary to Nine’s beauty rule, there he was featuring prominently the other night in the '60 Minutes' promo for 2003. And what pictures did we get of Richard? None other than pictures from the attempted media assassination of Archbishop Pell. None other than the pictures of the most venal, unconscionable, manipulative journalist who oversaw the most disgraceful exhibition of public bigotry and character assassination that has ever appeared on Australian television – an exhibition that laid the groundwork for the criminally-minded to attempt to score an easy fifty thou'. There he was badgering the man whose character is the very opposite of his, a man who is known for his common decency, honesty and integrity.

You see, Richard Carleton fronts such a high-rating program like '60 Minutes' because of the type of person he is, not despite it. He is there because those who hired him are of the same type. He is there because his bosses think that he is going to attract an audience in the same way that big breasts and shapely legs do. He is there because the ‘60 Minutes’ people think they have cottoned on to a form of bigotry that can be exploited with impunity. None of this has anything to do with honesty, decency and integrity.

I refer the reader to my three comments that followed Carleton's efforts on ’60 Minutes’ (go to the homepage). I then suggest the reader go to the web site of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council for their criticisms of Richard Carleton’s programs on the Israeli and Palestinian conflict. The criticisms in their Review section are strikingly similar to the case I made against Carleton and ‘60 Minutes’. Go to the following page:

http://www.aijac.org.au/review/2001/264/carleton.html

The AIJAC's case against Carleton's report on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is rock solid. It shows the same sort of overwhelming bias and manipulation of people and information that was exhibited in his programs on Archbishop Pell. The AIJAC has challenged Carleton and '60 Minutes' to respond to their criticisms. All they have got is a pompous, cop-out reply from Richard Carleton citing a trivial and unimportant mistake in the AIJAC's criticisms (they got a name partly wrong). Carleton won't respond substantially to the criticisms because defending truth and decency is not part of the game for him. The game is ratings and dollars in his pocket.

Once upon a time, the Nine Network was the network for the family. The family could always rely on a good selection of programs to entertain the whole family, programs that would not challenge traditional community and family values. That time has well and truly passed with such programs as the vulgar, degrading, crude ‘Sex and the City, backed up by an infotainment program like ‘60 Minutes’ that has no qualms about tearing down a figure that supports traditional community and family values.

‘60 Minutes’ is still to provide proof that David Ridsdale, the accuser of Archbishop Pell, is not a stooge for the homosexualist movement and that he himself is not living in a homosexual relationship in London, from where he was flown in to help Carleton and ‘60 Minutes’ prepare the media assassination of Archbishop Pell.