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A Current Affair passes off Today Tonight story as its own

A Current Affair screens an interview on the schoolyard bully saga, without ever telling the audience it lifted it from Today Tonight.

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All bets are off in the war on watermarks and news footage.

Last night’s episode of A Current Affair threw down a new move in the 6:30 war by screening a full segment produced by Today Tonight.

The segment, introduced by Tracy Grimshaw, featured an interview with ‘Ritchard’ the second boy at the centre of a now infamous bullying video. The story by James Thomas (pictured) of Today Tonight had aired just minutes earlier on Seven.

Nine swiftly turned it around and played 4:30 minutes of the 8:30min Seven story, blurring out the Today Tonight watermark and neglecting to tell its audience the story was lifted from its competition.

It wasn’t fronted by any ACA journos.

It followed A Current Affair interviewing ‘Casey’ on its Sunday edition -some  of those excerpts were used by Today Tonight without Nine watermarks.

Use of a rival’s footage falls under Copyright Fair Dealing, but must not be excessive. In television it is common to at least include some repackaging and extra comment by journalists.

But last night Nine simply ran lengthy footage without embellishment. Anybody watching Nine would have assumed James Thomas had filed the story for ACA.

This comes at a time when both networks have been protective of their content, branding their footage with elaborate watermarks to identify their content. Of late, both have been guilty of disguising or dropping rival watermarks.

Nine even released a cheeky YouTube video slapping Seven for “stealing our footage.”

“As you might appreciate we work very hard to bring you exclusive footage and vision,” Nine said last month.

Now it has not only matched the act, it has moved beyond.

A Seven spokesperson told TV Tonight, ACA‘s misrepresentation of the story to its audience was a new take on copyright Fair Dealing.

“A Current Affair has no class. We already knew that. But Nine’s desperate, scrambling same night tape turnaround of Today Tonight‘s programme reveals they’ve now found a new level to which to stoop,” said the spokesperson.

TV Tonight believes the move also reflects poorly on ACA host Tracy Grimshaw, who is left to front a decision made in the media frenzy of a story over schoolyard bullying. Would Nine be happy if Sunday Night replayed 60 Minutes footage and passed it off as its own? Of course not.

The saddest aspect of all is that it includes the schoolboys, two minors who have been portrayed as hero / villain in the media because somebody uploaded a schoolyard incident to YouTube.

Nine declined to comment.

74 Responses

  1. Just proves why Channel Seven and Today Tonight is far superior than Channel Eddie and ACA. I can’t stand Tracy Grimshaw. Awful interviewer.

  2. This is perthitic. Never seen such childish behaviour coming from both networks. Both Today Tonight and ACA have no class. To be fair Today Tonight began this war with their “exclusive” branding on a nine story. It would seem that both networks think it’s easier to “steal” footage and brand it as their own rather than working on their own stories. Today Tonight and ACA should both be disgusted with themselves. More then likely, this will lead to large ‘Exclusive’ or ‘ACA’/’Today Tonight’ watermarks being implemented across the screen for both programs. ACA’s move to Sunday nights is obviously to benefit themselves and my guess is we will se a Sunday edition of Today Tonight in the coming weeks.

  3. “A Current Affair has no class. We already knew that. But Nine’s desperate, scrambling same night tape turnaround of Today Tonight‘s programme reveals they’ve now found a new level to which to stoop,” said the spokesperson.

    Pot – Kettle!!!!!

  6. I havent watched either TT or ACA for years. Nowadays I’m watching TEN instead.

    This is but another example of why. Instead of being focussed on delivering us decent current affairs shows, with content we’re interested in, they’re focussed on each other and scrapping like brats in a schoolyard.
    Here’s a newsflash, TT and ACA – we dont care about which of you is first with a story. We are the ones you have to entertain, not each other. We are the ones that have the eyeballs on (or Not on) the screen the advertisers want.
    Forget each other, start catering to Our needs not your own, and you might end up with some credibility.

  7. David, to prevent the annoying shitstorm of people saying Shame on you seven! as they did last time you posted very clearly on Nine doing this… thought I’d point out an error:

    Nine even released a cheeky YouTube video slapping Nine for “stealing our footage.”

    So glad you picked up on this story. I was flabbergasted, having switched channels, to hear and see the same footage shortly after it aired on Seven. But then we nongs who watch this stuff have only ourselves to blame and can’t spell or punctuate, they say… Can’t wait to read more of that , too!

  8. I’m not sure Seven is wise to be claiming ACA has no class, as Seven isn’t really much better and I think viewers have as much distrust for Seven as they have to Nine. It was Seven who took Channel 9 news footage not that long ago, blurred out the watermark and put their own “Exclusive” tag on it.

    It was also Seven that ran that grubby story on Abigail last week.

    Seven and Nine really are as bad and as childish as each other so for Seven to throw around claims that ACA has “no class” just smacks of the pot calling the kettle black.

  9. Enjoyed last night’s TT story on the “A Country Practice” reunion.

    Then deja vu struck.

    Wasn’t there a “ACP” reunion (with interviews with the producer) last Monday on ACA?

    Please, Little Lachie M, please move George at 6 to George at 6.30 soon.

    I think you’d be very pleased with the ratings…

  11. Nine have seriously lost the plot! How stupid does this make them look? They release a Youtube video bagging Seven for stealing their footage and then they go and do the same thing less than a month later.

    This has to be an all time low. Kerry Packer would be turning in his grave seeing the sorry state of his beloved network.

  13. I don’t know for sure, but I felt whilst watching that Tracy Grimshaw wasn’t too happy about the use of the footage from TT.
    These poor kids are being used by both ACA and TT – I hope ACA and TT are prepared to cover the costs of psychologists to help both through this event.

  15. Another new low for that well-known channel for new lows, Nine. Absolutely pathetic, honestly, I am disgusted. I agree with a lot of other posters – some sort of regulation is needed to stop this outright fraudulent practice.

  17. It is beyond me why anyone bothers with either of these two programs. It’s just utter crap. Switch across to ABC News 24 and watch The Drum, instead.

  21. The behaviour of these children beggars belief. Why can’t they just grow up and behave like civilised adults?
    As for the schoolboys, the way their stories have been promoted, the way ACA & TT have slobbered all over them has been ridiculous and appalling. Take a look at how Salon.com has covered it. It’s not as much about the bullying as about the media embedding it as some sort of warped fame/sensation/viral hit type thing. ACA & TT are now internationally pathetic.

  23. This is terrible. Last week 7pm Project used seven’s footage with watermark giving due credit and it just made the size of the half screen watermark ridiculous. They need to bring in laws about blurring or cropping watermarks when footage is “borrowed”.

  24. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this story air on ACA last night!

    Replaying 4.30 mins of another networks yarn and replaying it as your own only moments later Must win a Gold Logie for “Best New Low In Fair Dealing”.

    Well done to all involved!

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