Thread: Does the ABC give a "damn"?

Did your wife tell you to stop shouting at the TV, and to stop telling her about it as she doesn't care either?

My wife does.

Still better to watch ABC/24 or SBS news than any other pathetic attempt to report anything of real news.

Lack of resources are to blame. Years ago, the TV crew sent to cover a story would be the reporter, the sound guy and the camera guy. These days it's the reporter and the camera guy, and there are moves to give the reporter a videocam on a tripod and eliminate the camera guy as well. (I think the hold-back is that editing is still quite time consuming - as soon as easier-to-use professional level NLE comes along, the cameraman positions will start going)

In radio, you used to have the on-air journo and a producer. The producer position for a segment has been mostly eliminated, with the journo now responsible for getting all the behind the scenes work done as well - which cuts into the time formerly used for doing some actual story research (ie actual journalism) so you could ask smarter questions than "What can you tell me about xxxxxxxx?".

Listening to ABC News Radio reminds me of the time I spent mucking around on a mostly volunteer based community radio station - wrong stories cued up, dead air, hasty use of generic promo spots to patch gaps in the programming and other signs of too many jobs to do and not enough resources to do them well.

As for the website - it's not like radio, where you have hourly news deadlines, or TV where your deadline is 6.30 for the 7pm news (or 3pm on a commercial network, so you can start advertising the content of the days news from 3.30) - you are expected to get content up there ASAP, so if this means copy-paste straight off the AAP feed, then that's what happens.

Such an age old excuse, lack of resources, it covers everything in the public "service".

Lack of taking responsibility for one's own actions would be closer to the mark IMHO.

No pride in doing a good job, too busy maneuvering for the next promotion perhaps?

Oh, the headline is a transcript of Lateline, no AAP involved, purely ABC.

Originally Posted by Waldo

Still better to watch ABC/24 or SBS news than any other pathetic attempt to report anything of real news.

I agree, I'd still rather watch the ABC or SBS news than any of the other sensationalised, celebrity watching, bleeding hearts prestented by braindead newsreaders that any of the other channels have to offer. Long live the ABC and SBS.

Ahhhh...

ABC program transcripts are provided for the ABC by Media Monitors, a commercial news monitoring company.

Media Monitors are the ones who don't give a dam about spending the time required to work out which damn dam to use. The fact that the people who do the Media Monitors transcription typing from the audio source are in Kuala Lumpur and are not native english speakers probably doesn't help, either.

"Transcripts on this website are created by an independent transcription service. The ABC does not warrant the accuracy of the transcripts."

And it's not necessarily "No pride in doing a good job, too busy maneuvering for the next promotion" - often it's more the case of looking out for the functions that are made as very explicit goals in performance agreements. All too often it's easy for performance agreements to be written valuing some easily measurable quantity over quality, especially if quality is a hard to define measure. By the way, you spelt manoeuvring wrong.

Originally Posted by Master Splinter

Ahhhh...

ABC program transcripts are provided for the ABC by Media Monitors, a commercial news monitoring company.

Media Monitors are the ones who don't give a dam about spending the time required to work out which damn dam to use. The fact that the people who do the Media Monitors transcription typing from the audio source are in Kuala Lumpur and are not native english speakers probably doesn't help, either.

"Transcripts on this website are created by an independent transcription service. The ABC does not warrant the accuracy of the transcripts."

And it's not necessarily "No pride in doing a good job, too busy maneuvering for the next promotion" - often it's more the case of looking out for the functions that are made as very explicit goals in performance agreements. All too often it's easy for performance agreements to be written valuing some easily measurable quantity over quality, especially if quality is a hard to define measure. By the way, you spelt manoeuvring wrong.

Then it isn't a "lack of resources", rather using the wrong resources. Ultimately the ABC is responsible, they may not "warrant" their content, but they are responsible.

I relied on "external resources" (forum spell checker) for the spelling, I should have known that it always uses the US spelling, even though I have it set to UK English. So the spelling isn't "wrong", it is foreign

You obviously feel strongly about "our" ABC, are you employed there?

No, I don't work for the ABC, but I have enough contact with journos - both ABC and Fairfax/News Ltd/Rural Press - to understand the lack of time they have to do their 'real' job (ie finding and reporting news and not just regurgitating press releases or AAP content).

It's actually using a case of using the resources you can afford. If you don't have the budget to keep a few dozen transcribers on staff (or if you prefer to look at it in a whole of government context, if it is something that the government of the day decrees 'is not a function that you are funded to perform' * ) then you have no option but to get it provided by an outside source.

I'm not sure how the ABC could compete using local staff on a 'words per dollar' basis with a company that gets its grunt work done in a country with an annual average income of 3,500 ringgits ($1,150) per annum. Note that I'm dearly hoping that the ABC gets a bulk deal on its transcriptions and doesn't pay anything close to Media Monitors once-off rate of around $300 per transcription.

The ABC could probably improve quality/reduce cost by setting up their own dedicated transcription unit in a low-cost country, but I can just imagine the 'government sends jobs offshore' headlines from this.

I find it a sad commentary on our society that the largest circulation papers in Australia do more actual analysis, research and commentary on sporting activities (which are entertainment, not news) than on any other two topics combined. The commercial media in Australia spend more money securing the rights to major sporting events than their entire newsroom budget. Bah humbug!


*Also known as 'an industry lobby group that is a campaign contributor has made noises to its tame minister that its members are being denied a chance to put their snouts in the government trough because a number of government agencies have in-sourced a particular function (usually due to excessive price gouging/lack of service/lack of quality from the external providers)'.