Photo: © 1999 AP Photo/Luca Bruno
Sometimes I’m the guy monitoring the 7PM Project’s Twitter and Facebook accounts. The banter is usually fun, but if you’re the faceless lackey behind any large corporation’s online presence, it helps to have a thick skin and not take anything personally. Social media brings out the worst in angry people. At least abusive Tweets mean someone’s watching the show, and I like to think that every angry outburst vented on our Facebook page means one less person who will track me down and put a bomb under my car.
One of the most common accusations levelled our way is “That’s not news.” It has a few variations: the demanding “Call THAT news?”, the comparative “Children die in a fire and you think a new flavour of bubble gum is news?”, the nearly-always-capitalised “WHO CARES?” or the snootiest of them all, the knowing “Slow news day?”
These opinions even pop up in the 7PM Project office. Recently, some fashionista tried to convince the world that the Man Scarf was an entirely new innovation called the Marf. If you ask me, the fashion industry is the most pointless waste of time, space and money on this earth, and should be paid no attention whatsoever in the hope that it goes away. “Not news!” I cried, but I was outvoted.
So why would a news show run a story that is not news?
Well, firstly, because it might not be news to you or me, but it is to someone. I never thought that much of what was reported about Lindsay Lohan and her on-again, off-again DJ girlfriend Sam Ronson was ever news. (Or are they on again? Oh, that’s right.. I DON’T CARE.) Yet tales of their adventures sold millions of trashy magazines. Similarly, to my disgust, there are entire TV channels built around fashion industry ‘news.’ No doubt they gave the arrival of the Marf the kind of coverage we gave the death of Michael Jackson.
In fact, this blog entry was prompted when I read an article on the Sydney Morning Herald website. It discussed a falling out between Israel and its strong regional Muslim ally, Turkey. Fascinating stuff, if you’re into Middle Eastern politics. “Not news,” according to a website commenter. He backed up this insight with racist slurs, which is probably why his comment was later deleted. But, credit where it’s due, he slagged off both sides of the debate – a refreshingly impartial voice in a heated argument.
Nonetheless, I was gobsmacked. If a major political development in a long-running international conflict isn’t news, then what is? Yet this guy had felt so strongly that the story was Not News, he’d taken the time to click a link reading ‘A shift in Arab Street's dynamics as Turkey and Israel fall out’ and open up the page so he could declare it to be Not News. Now that’s commitment. (Unfortunately his extra click may have been the one that caused SMH web editors to check the page stats and say “Wow, popular topic. Memo: more stories on Turkish-Israeli relations.” But at least he gave it a go.)
It’s because different people have different ideas of News that The 7PM Project runs stories like these. (I’m talking more about Marfs than the Middle East.) We try to discuss what viewers might be talking about in their lounge rooms - the topics that are reflected in newspapers, talkback radio, popular web links, and in our own forums. When I hear “Lady Gaga,” I’ve tuned out by the second “ga,” but I’ve come to accept that if someone’s saying her name, people are talking about her again, and that makes her news. Which people? Dunno. Probably the bloke who didn’t like the Turkey-and-Israel stuff.
In a show like ours, there’s another reason for the Lady Gaga story. Even on the darkest of days, we need to find stories that we can have a laugh about. They’re the days when I have to admit the “not news” accusations grate on me. Which real news story would you like a few gags about? The child kidnapping? The terrorist bomb blast? The lack of support services for the mentally ill? If we were wholly a satirical comedy show, sure, we could come up with a few angles. But as a mostly-news show, we try to respect certain boundaries of taste. That’s when the farmer who named his cow after his ex-wife starts to look pretty appealing.
And anyway, if you’re on the hunt for places to scream “Not News!”, then it’s not like we have the market cornered. Commercial networks are obliged to chase ratings – sorry, but that’s how it works – so if viewers prefer spurious celebrity gossip to in-depth analysis of economic policy, then expect more Lindsay Lohan, less Lindsay Tanner.
On top of that, across news media at large, the nation’s newsrooms are being stretched thin, and more and more column inches and TV minutes contain stories born from press releases with something to sell. Furthermore, the incessant demand of 24/7 news coverage now regularly causes the situation where a vague idea leads to media discussion, which morphs into Speculation, quickly growing into a Crisis… none of which has anything to do with what’s actually happening. I’m still trying to figure out just how a poll result showing Julia Gillard to be significantly less popular than Kevin Rudd has somehow become a leadership crisis for the PM. Call THAT news?*
So next time our panel is having an animated discussion on whether men or women are better at burping on demand, and you turn to your companion and superciliously honk “Slow news day?”, spare a thought for us. It probably is.
If we’ve judged it right, your companion will let rip a magnificent burp.
* UPDATE: Since this piece was written, Kevin Rudd HAS suffered a genuine leadership crisis, in that he's no longer leader. That's why a I'm an opinionated hack on an obscure corner of the Internet, and not Ten's man in Canberra. But it was interesting to hear the number of times faction leaders and various other figures cited "media speculation" as a catalyst for Kev getting the chop, even though his popularity figures were no worse than John Howard's (and numerous other PMs) at this time in the political cycle. Once again, Not News has become News.
