★★★★★ 0/5

Seven vows legal action over ACA “theft”

"Channel 7 will be pursuing this to the full letter of the law," says Today Tonight's Executive Producer.

42
Leave a comment

The Seven Network is vowing to pursue legal action over A Current Affair running lengthy content from Today Tonight.

Nine’s programme ran a report by Today Tonight‘s James Thomas on schoolyard bullies which had aired just minutes earlier on Seven.

In a statement Today Tonight Executive Producer Craig McPherson has said, “You would have to be delusional to suggest what ACA did on Monday night is acceptable. There are times when both programs, the 6pm news even newspapers lift and use images from other outlets on certain stories. Day to day media is very robust and immediate.

“To actually lift, lock stock and barrel a report from your rival outlet is unprecedented. Let’s put this into context. This is not lifting images, this is journalistic theft. ACA lifted James Thomas’ report. From start to finish it was TT‘s James Thomas’ script, voice over, interview, cut aways..the whole report dropped into their rundown 10 minutes after they recorded it off air and ran it as their own.”

“It would be like the Daily Telegraph re running a report, verbatim from its rival on the same day.

“We all work under pressure. As do most of the workforce. But to have a brain explosion like that cannot be dismissed with arrogant, smug rhetoric.

”Channel 7 will be pursuing this to the full letter of the law. ACA created TV history on Monday night for all the wrong reasons.”

A Nine spokesperson has told TV Tonight, “An unctuous Churchillian lecture on journalistic ethics from the EP of Today Tonight. Now we’ve seen it all . This from the same honest broker who at 6.30pm last – 25 minutes before ACA‘s alleged offence – actually led his own program with great slabs of the ACA bully interview – all totally unattributed. As he and his program have routinely done literally scores of times previously.

“The hypocrisy is towering and transparent. Today Tonight confecting outrage about non-attribution of any story is very much like Jack the Ripper complaining about an increase in knife-related crime.

“They can have their day in court if they desperately want it. But only if they want to be publicly buried under a truckload of cases of their own un-attributed use of others’ material over the past two decades.”

In case anybody has forgotten the interviews with the boys were supposed to reiterate the fact that bullying  is bad.

42 Responses

  3. Tracey Grimshaw should desert this sinking ship. I don’t know how she can present this rubbish night after night. It wasn’t like this when Jana Wendt hosted ACA. Ray Martin got out when the b.s stories started flowing out. I’m not a fan of Nine, but I have a lot of respect for Tracey and I just hate to see her fronting this crap.

  5. @Secret Squirrel, you have hit the issue on the head. Whilst both programs steal 30 second grabs of footage from each other all the time, it is absolutely unprecedented for a network to run almost five minutes of an interview conducted by a reporter on another station and claim it as their own by cropping the originating station’s watermark and placing their own in its place. It was completely extraordinary, given that the interview had aired only minutes earlier on Seven. How it is not considered blatant plagiarism and stealing is beyond me. I have been watching current affairs shows regularly since I was a teen and I cannot recall anything like this before.

    How would Tracey Grimshaw have felt if TT lifted a five-minute segment out of her interview with, say, the Beaconsfield miners or Matty Johns and his wife, and aired it on their show mere minutes after it had aired on ACA, displaying the Seven watermark? Nine would be squealing like stuck pigs and threatening all sorts of action. Their response is typical smart-alec rhetoric, very disingenous and patronising to both their audience and Seven.

  7. @ jayjay I completely agree Seven seem to be getting more and more cocky about everything; it was this exact attitude that saw Nine go from winner to loser – Seven have a strong schedule but the antics off screen is pathetic.

    I’m not a fan of Nine and I’m not a huge fan of Seven’s behaviour in the news – I hope they both sue each other and run each other into the ground in the process.

  9. Wow, look at the Nine fanbois that have come out of the woodwork. Have any of you that are saying how great ACA is and how evil Seven are actually read about and understood what has happened here?

    Sure, both TT and ACA have been guilty of stealing pics and brief snatches of footage from each other and other sources, as have both of their “News” programs.

    However, Nine through ACA have take things to a new low by lifting some 4½ minutes of footage (video *and* audio) in its entirety, exactly as it was broadcast earlier that night on TT. The only work they did was to blur TT’s watermark and superimpose their own.

    If you can point me to even one instance of TT doing this same thing, I will be very surprised. Meanwhile, back on planet Earth…

  10. I am lucky I am not home for such crap.In an ideal world you would have How I met your Mother or Family Guy on 7 at that hour and over at 9 A good 80’s or 90’s sitcom of some sort would be a lot better.Today Tonight and ACA are in the book about things bogans like by the way.

  12. I’d call the content both those shows produce “gutter journalism” but it’s not even journalism. It’s utter rubbish. Unfortunately 7 and 9 are showing this rubbish at the time a lot of people are returning home from work… I for one watch World News Australia at 6.30. It’s news.

  14. As a regional viewer I do not watch TT or ACA, because firstly they are both rubbish, the second is that ACA is on at 7pm in regional QLD and that is my Home And Away time lol and TT is on at 5pm the following weekday and its outdated. I wish 7QLD would show the 4:30 News in full to 5:30pm, 5:27pm to be exact and forget about TT all together. At present it cuts to Matt White straight after the 4:57 weather, then i switch to Ten News.
    I must give 7 credit though the transition between the end of the weather and the start of TT is excellent, probably beacause at present the 4:30 News is not live in QLD but come the start of April would like to see how they make the transition between the two programs. (Sorry that was a bit of topic)

  16. I think 7 is opening a can of worms here. This could go back and fourth forever. People will turn off both and go looking for alternatives. I think 7 is suffering from the cockiness that saw 9 fall from grace around 5 years ago. You don’t remain number 1 forever

Leave a Reply