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ACA / TT war: “This should all stop now”

Tracy Grimshaw offers a truce, of sorts, for 6:30 shows to stop their own TV bully wars.

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A Current Affair host Tracy Grimshaw last night addressed the issue of using Today Tonight‘s footage earlier this week.

During an editorial Grimshaw even offered a truce to its rival, of sorts, to both stop using each other’s footage.

“Let me say I think it’s a shame that a valid debate about the losing and age-old battle against bullying in schools has been overshadowed by an unseemly public squabble over TV rights,” she said.

“Casey Heynes had a right to speak about his ordeal and his actions and he chose to speak to us. We were impressed by him, as were you. The other boy involved, 12 year old Ritchard Gale chose to speak to Today Tonight.

“We ran some excerpts from that interview as soon as possible after we heard from Casey on Monday night and our viewers heard both sides. Our opposition claims that use of their interview was not fair.

“If we wanted to bore you all stupid we could detail the countless times they have used our exclusive interviews and passed them off as their own… but it’s ok, we won’t.

“Suffice to say this should all stop now and we are happy for it to do so. Is Today Tonight willing to guarantee that it will never use our exclusive vision again? It’s over to them.

“In the meantime let’s please not be distracted for one more minute from the far more important issue of kids and bullying, because we all know that too many schools still accept it as inevitable. And far too many parents are powerless or clueless about how to stop it. Solutions need to be found because kids like the two we’ve heard from this week, are suffering.”

It’s certainly hard to disagree with the tenor of this editorial.

Viewers do want our 6:30 shows to quit their feuding. They know these shows -both of them- have used each other’s footage. And they know that bullying is a prevalent issue.

But A Current Affair hasn’t acknowledged the primary complaint: that it played an entire segment from Today Tonight, being 4:30min of an 8:30min story that it passed off as its own. This was unprecedented.

Both shows have a legal right to use excerpts from news sources under the Fair Dealing act in Copyright.

The problem isn’t in actually using a rival’s footage. It is in disguising or cutting around watermarks that communicate to the audience ‘this is sourced material.’

ACA‘s length and failure to embellish the TT footage was another problem.

None of these have been adequately addressed by Nine or Grimshaw, as they lean upon the truism that TT has been using ACA footage with regularity. It has, but is legally entitled to do so within a larger story.

TT‘s blocking of ACA watermarks (reaching a crescendo during the Brian McFadden story) was equally poor form.

That said, Today Tonight‘s on-going behaviour impacts far less upon its host Matt White than ACA‘s does on Grimshaw.

White rarely conducts interviews or editorialises to the same degree as Grimshaw. This is partly why it was necessary for her to address the issue on air. Good on her for acknowledging it. It can’t be pleasing to go from a Walkley Award to introducing a clip from the competition. She was clearly let down on M0nday night. Her skill in turning a negative into a positive last night is indicative of her experience.

So where does this leave us?

Actions speak louder than words. Get back to producing journalism. Observe Fair Dealing limits. Acknowledge sources. Listen to your audience.

And lastly… while audiences are jaded by that unseemly squabble, there has never been a better time for 6pm With George Negus to make the leap to 6:30.

42 Responses

  1. I said it at the time and I will say it again – Tracy should have never left the Today show. Her credibility is all but lost. One can only hope that with George now moving to 6:30 that ACA might drop the tabloid rubbish get back to real journalism but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

  2. Years ago a certain ACA used to have a host that actually did serious journalism stories and asked the tough questions now aca tt all just go for what sells its shallow and lazy fast food reporting with no substance at all. then they have the nerve to stand there and demand respect from viewers and the like. It seems that celebratey is far too popular now and people on tv just love the benefits of being one. do your jobs and stop the rubbish.

  5. I do hope that the team at 6[.30]PM maintain the integrity of their show. I noticed that they did a whole piece where George interviewed a school girl who wasn’t on Facebook (Stop the presses!), with him asking her variations of the same question over and over. It’s a slippery slope.

  7. I really liked Tracy, now she has become exactly like the rest of them. On Twitter attacking anyone that questions A Current Affair (even when it is impossible to defend it) by calling them haters. Her cred is getting blown apart more by the day. This ridiculous, self indulgent and hypocritical ‘editorial’ is the final straw for me. Tracy has gone over to the dark side!

    Same goes for Michael Usher, Ross Greenwood, what has happened to this network!? It seems the Stefanovic/Fordham bug has spread to the lot of them! They’ll all be hosting talk back radio in their spare time soon enough.

  11. Journalism? Really? Bra stories, Asians stealing ‘our’ jobs, cross promotions of current tv shows, cross promotions with supermarkets, poor tenants, poor landlords, scams, what you don’t know will kill you.

    Perhaps David was being ironic when he said get back to journalism? 😉

  17. I like Tracy Grimshaw, she is a class act…let down by a boofhead off air producer…from in the edit suite…as the face of the show she has to take the flack, but in a example like the other night, she wouldnt be calling the shots from the studio floor, so one should assume she knew little of the amount of time that was about to go to air from the TT story….you also saw this in the fact that on Tuesday night she apologised after another story, in regards to the fact that a warning should have been given re some vision used…. again a producers blunder…. iam sure there would be some butt kicking going on in the office during the day at them moment…no re George over at TEN…get him to 630 asap… as ACA only started going tabloid when TT started winning the ratings with their Tabloid rubbish…and again ACA producers panic’d and started the Tabloid rubbish as well…if George moves to 630…people will watch…because it is quality (for now)

  19. I also think Tracey Grimshaw’s comments were pretty ordinary. Instead of admitting they did the wrong thing she still tried to make TT look like to bad guys.

    We all know they’re as bad as each other but in this case ACA went too far in my opinion.

  21. Surely the solution would be as simple as introducing a law that says that watermarks cannot be removed. That way if one of the networks chooses to use another networks footage, the watermark is there for all to see. That way viewers know where the original footage came from and the original network is given due credit.

    I think there should also be a limit on the size and position of the watermark to stop the ridiculous situation where there is a banner right across the middle of the screen as we saw on the Brian McFadden story.

    Introduce a law that says the watermark has to stay and it has be small and has to stay in the top right hand corner. Surely this would solve the problem.

  22. From my experience of ‘fair dealing’ when i worked in tv, it is a subjective area, but one that still has some boundaries – and ACA seemed to go way beyond those bounds by turning around TT’s footage without proper attribution. I believe it was the sheer volume of content as well as the lack of acknowledgement that is the grievance that is rightfully being declared in this example. But They all do it. Even Media watch has to be scrupulously checked as to how it uses the footage – and yet it has the ultimate defence – ‘review and criticisim’ – two main features of ‘fair dealing’. Having been involved with MW, there are constant internal dialogues aobut how footage is used when re-played and taken from another program. Other shows are not so circumspect.

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