★★★★★ 0/5

But Anna, why was he even there?

4
Leave a comment

As the song goes, “you’re riding high in April, shot down in May.” Or in the case of current affairs, you’re a saviour one day, and an “operator” the next.

Today Tonight this evening ran a follow-up piece on its Thursday story which told viewers a “soon to be married nerd could be just the man to about to turn television in this country on its head.”

Reporter James Thomas yesterday told viewers they didn’t have to pay to watch Foxtel if they visited a website where software is going cheap. But viewers and websites today pinpointed the fact that its ‘self-confessed geek’, was selling software that is available for free elsewhere.

By Friday the hero became villain. “Why pay Jamie a dime when you can in fact download pay TV and other programming for absolutely nothing? Zippo,” said Thomas.

By the time the report was over, TT had wiped its hands of its ‘self-confessed geek.’ There was no explanation as to why he had been used in the first place, or why the reporter didn’t have all the facts. Didn’t anybody ask him where he got this marvellous software from or how much he was making from it? By my reckoning the geek was pretty smart to con TT into the free publicity (nerds take note!). And poor Anna Coren is left to read the autocue, left, like Naomi Robson, to defend the show’s tactics.


60 Minutes came unstuck earlier this year when its story on a father-daughter incest case missed the fact that an earlier baby by the couple had died not long after birth -clearly a much bigger oversight.

Meanwhile TT had spun two stories out of the one miracle cure for subscription TV, without having to explain why it had presented such a dodgy story. Did it only distance itself from the first story before Media Watch and print journalists could have a go?

And in the looming battle between TiVo and iQ2, Anna neglected to tell us whether we shouldn’t pay for Seven’s new PVR too. Would we believe her?

4 Responses

  1. Pete Blasina is no guru he has no idea about anything techy related this story just prooves what a fool and how he has no idea about this stuff at all

  2. Can’t wait to see this one Monday (we see TT the next week day after the rest of the country) or maybe I’ll just check it out for free on YouTube LOL

    Good point about TiVO and BTW I’d rather pay the extra $15 per month to Austar than $699 the ch7! But wait I already have a LG unit that does more and it can play DVDs.

  3. Did they bother to offer an apology to all the loyal TT viewers who shelled out their hard earned each on this scam?

    TT should have to refund every one of their viewers who got sucked into this, as there was no doubt thousands of them.

    Truly one of the worst journalistic efforts I’ve ever seen. Pete Blasina should lose his job over this too, if he were really a geek in the know, he would have heard of the free TVU player before.

  4. I love our TT side swiped the issue tonight – very clever.
    made the guy to look like a con man while they remain smelling like roses.
    7 has some real clever clogs working there!

Leave a Reply