I did something very unpopular on Twitter today. I questioned the validity of a story’s national importance.
There is no question the fire in the nursing home at Quakers Hill in Sydney this morning is newsworthy. It’s horrible that anyone died, let alone the confirmed 3 elderly occupants that died as a direct result of the incident. Many more are currently in hospital being treated for smoke inhalation and some as a result of existing health problems exacerbated by the fire. Emergency crews attended the scene promptly and performed their jobs admirably – the fire was extinguished as quickly as possible, patients were evacuated promptly and attended to by nursing home staff and paramedics on scene. Those that needed to be taken to hospital were.
Breakfast television fell over themselves to cover the ensuing chaos outside the nursing home live to air (in NSW & Victoria, anyway). Both Sunrise and Today had a reporter on the ground, helicopter in the air and cameras capturing footage as fast as they could. ABC Breakfast also crossed to the event and ran stories on the situation.
While I don’t question the importance of the story – for the brekky shows to run it as their lead at each break is not outrageous, even if the story ran for 5-10 minutes – I do question the need to drop all the other stories for the morning and go to rolling coverage. Apart from the emergency services press conferences delivering timely, factual updates, little else other than “colour” was added to the coverage in between. Footage was on endless loop (including shots of residents of the nursing home in beds on the footpath… it seems offering them respect and dignity was outweighed by the need for good vision); reporters were having to repeat the little information they had ad nauseum as they and the show anchors ad-lib narrated what we were seeing on screen. Little new information came to light across the morning except for that from the press conferences.
It was disaster porn at its finest, and heaven forbid we shouldn’t have every last detail/piece of footage shoved down our throat because it is “important national news”. The networks have become very good at covering these events in 2011 (sadly there’s been too many of them).
The President of the United States was in the country yesterday. Breakfast television went LIVE live (i.e. live into all states independent of timezone) to ensure we all saw his car drive to the War Memorial, park in a tent, then 15 minutes later drive out again. LIVE. If this nursing home fire held such national significance that the same breakfast television programs should go to rolling coverage of the event, why didn’t the breakfast shows go LIVE live? Why was the rest of the country subjected to delayed press conferences and helicopter camera shots of the hole in the nursing home roof for the 20th time? Why did we need to see the frail and elderly occupants of the home that weren’t injured or being treated by paramedics sitting on chairs or in beds on footpaths in their sleepwear?
Because the breakfast shows committed early to the tragedy and couldn’t back out. Segments were cancelled and cast aside, and you could hardly come back from the coverage to cross to the entertainment reporter talking about something frivolous. Once the shows decided they were in on this coverage, they were all-in. They had to fill the time.
Was the fire a big story? No question.
Was the fire a national story? Likely, though each state will give varying weighting to it. I doubt the story will lead the bulletin in Melbourne or Brisbane, though if nothing else happens of note today the story will lead most 5pm/6pm state bulletins (though it certainly won’t be the 3-5 minute epic that it will be in Sydney tonight).
Did the journalists & crews on the ground do a good job given their task? Absolutely.
Was it a bad judgement call to go live on rolling coverage on a very Sydney-centric story on a national breakfast program that delivered the content delayed to all other states? I’d offer yes.
We live in a hyper-connected society, where TV news competes with radio news competes with online news for our attention. Who got the story first and covered it the best is as integral as who got the scoop interview or broke the facts about it. Tragedies make for good TV especially when you can have a reporter on scene and lots of crisp, HD camera footage (scaled down to SD). Breakfast television is a hotly contested battleground, despite the low viewer figures comparative to prime time. Whoever gets our eyes first is likely to retain them, so it’s important that they get our eyes in the first place.
Viewers shift in and out of breakfast television. The day is starting, and people are off to work or school and only catch glimpses of the news and stories around it. When the brekky shows go all-in on stories like this, people stop to watch for much longer. It’s compelling. It’s the same reason people slow down and rubber neck at car accidents. The general public have a morbid fascination for wanting to see tragedy, so it makes for “great” television when covered well.
It’s a sad indictment on humanity that this is what news producers think we would prefer to see.
Hi there!
Long tim listener, first time commenter.
100% agree with you on this. It was disaster porn at it’s worse. I think the coverage it got was blown way out of the water.
Let’s break it down!
Yes. It’s terrible what happened.
No. There is nothing else going on in Australia now that Obama is gone for them to cover
Yes. The coverage was overkill
No. We didn’t need every news source out the front giving us a live feed of dazed and confused residents
Yes. I have stopped watching Morning TV. It’s just too much to stomach
No. I won’t be upset if they keep Koshie in Europe.
I feel much better now!
I fully understand why you feel like this. What truly upsetted me this morning was the extreme close ups of the faces of the nursing home patients, some in wheelchairs, most in beds or ambulance trolleys. I can only imagine most of these patients would be in some sort of shock and would have no idea their distraught smokey smeared faces are being beamed into everyones living rooms. I felt the same when the Christchurch earthquake occurred. Yes, show the ‘story’ but don’t milk it for all its worth and don’t take the dignity away from the victims who have already been through an ordeal.
I agree. If that were me or it were my family the last thing I would want would be a camera doing a close up on me, let alone a whole troop of them across the street.
Good article! You write so well that it’s a shame to see you use an euphemism for “died,” and “passed” is an euphemism.
Fair call – fixed, John. Thanks!
I agree wholeheartedly. I was appalled at the images of the elderly victims shown over and over again. Having to live in a nursing home is bad enough without the added indignity. What I found astonishing was the constant plea for relatives to not come to the home – all the while showing saturation coverage. If I saw my elderly relative sitting on the footpath or beng put in an ambulance I would not be calling a 1800 number. I would be getting to his or her side as quickly as I could.
As a non-watcher of breakfast television, it all passed me by. Radio coverage and evening news was sufficient for me. A very sad story.