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Wednesday, 24 October 2007
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Andrew Bolt casts some perspective on the raging worm debate questioning its accuracy and pointing out the facts in the decision to cut the live feed to Channel 9.
When the TV worm turned
Herald Sun, Andrew Bolt, October 24, 2007
SINCE you're all talking about the worm, let me say something about Ray Martin, too. I saw him on TV, damning the Howard regime for - he claimed with thundered brow - cutting Channel 9's controversial coverage of Sunday's election debate, forcing Martin and his team to pinch their feed from other stations.
"So much for free speech in Australia", he jeered. Attention, Ray. The issue at stake is not that of the right to speak, but of the right to a fair hearing. A hearing free for just a few minutes from Nine's spin - and yours.
Nine's disgraceful and, in my opinion, deceitful behaviour this past week also raises other issues.
Here's one: How honest is this Left-lurching station, and how trustworthy its most famous face?
Here's another: How much of the bad reviews John Howard got for his performance in this vital debate were manipulated by the media?
The immediate issue that has Martin on his soapbox is this: Howard agreed to debate Labor's Kevin Rudd on Sunday, with the coverage provided to all media by Canberra's National Press Club with one proviso.
As the journalist-run club told the TV stations: "Clean feed of the debate to be available to all media outlets on condition live broadcast is not 'wormed' or otherwise changed . . ."
Why? Because the Liberals wanted viewers to be free to watch Howard (and Rudd) debate and draw their own conclusions, without some TV station first trying a stunt to manipulate opinions.
Leave the worm and other ratings tricks until after the live debate was over.
So the deal was clear, I'd say, to any honest man. Take the broadcast and you've accepted the conditions. Sky News and the ABC were as good as their word. Channel Nine was not.
Didn't sign anything, it's claiming now. Ha ha. Fooled you.
In defiance of the conditions set by the press club, the station had a market research company handpick 90 "uncommitted" voters to give instant reactions through a handset to each syllable of the debate as it happened.
And off the worm went during Sunday's debate, with these "uncommitted" voters - under Martin's eye - rating Rudd through the roof and Howard through the floor.
So obviously was this worm of the species eisenia foetida - one of Red Worms so common here - that, at its most farcical moment, it gave Rudd a high rating just for drawing breath before he'd even begun to answer a question.
I kid you not.
Rudd hadn't yet uttered a syllable and the creature was standing on its tail, cheering.
By the end of the debate the worm couldn't have been happier with Rudd if it had spent the 90 minutes in his compost bin. It gave the debate to the Labor leader by 65 per cent to 29.
That was some margin. Compare it with the verdict of the Nine viewers who rang in with their own take.
Of the 48,000 callers, 52 per cent gave the debate to Howard, despite all the worm's work. Viewers of the worm-coverage on Sky News also gave first prize to Howard.
So, why did the "uncommitted" worm react so differently and turn so strongly against the Prime Minister?
True enough, Howard, now carrying more baggage than ever through Customs, was at times too grim, and his final questions to a smiling Rudd were like half-trackers to Ponting: Tell me, Mr Rudd, what will you do to help the battlers?
It's also true that for half the debate the Canberra journalists on the panel steered him on to topics of raging interest for Howard haters - reconciliation, global warming and Iraq - and well away from more practical concerns, such as hospitals, water and jobs for the next generation.
No wonder he found it a trudge.
Even so, did Howard really perform so very much worse than glib Rudd, who remained in that debate a man more of slogans than substance?
Continue reading at herald sun
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