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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.

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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

  1. Its not all they streal ! – Both ACA, and today tonight regularly lift low resolution archival video material, contained on our youtube channel – (for free) rather paying the small fee we charge to provide a broadcast quality copy. They will not even offer an aknowledgement of the source. Unfortunately this means that i am reluctant to put many clips online, and those i do, need larger and larger watermarks, to try to deter them (which they just crop out). Basically its “crapping” over the hand that feeds you, should they keep stealing clips it means we dont make anything to cover our costs and they wont have anything to steal!

    It doesnt surprise me to see them doing this same sort of thing to their rivals, there was once and old saying in the industry about never “S**T” in your own nest….but these two break this rule regularly.

    James Paterson
    Owner, Australian Television Archive.

  4. Seven are so far up themselves.This is the same network that pinched Nines footage of Brian McFadden after his recent airline incident and made no mention of it being Nines story.It even featured the Nine reporter in it.

  5. … and this is one reason why a recent Nine promotion made me sick!
    They had an “Honesty” promotion or something along those lines and they had that fool Grimshaw giving her 2 cents worth. What a joke!

  6. A typically of seven to steal footage from nine, so why can’t nine!! ? the seven network makes up so much rubbish within stories and the nerve of seven to interview the bully and not the victim is just wrong, the victim is the most important part of the story. the fact that the seven network promoted the bully first shows how low they go to get a story and truthly reflects. I believe the Nine network should be applauded on their coverage as they considered the victim first in the situation. on a lighter note, i couldn’t help but notice nine’s hitting the backbone of seven through stories such as the hey dad sandal, former stars in trouble, and re-packaged interview of shameful promotion haha. i know which network i see quality at.

  7. They both do it…………7 were the ones who took the ‘exclusive’ with that Sandilands guy and the pop star. They are as bad as each other, they have the same stories, they copy each other………and yet people still watch them?

  8. Rubbish TV programs bickering over the same garbage stories. When will they realise that if one of them actually aired some proper journalism that audience share may increase ???

  9. I hate both shows i really do but for Nine to do what they did was atrocious. Seriously that is just the lowest act they can do. I know Seven and Nine have done this to each other in the past but to take a whole story and repeat it 10 minutes later is the biggest low i have seen.

  10. Seriously, both are TT and ACA are as bad as each other. Lifting short “grabs” and blurring out logo’s is one thing… but to lift 4 and a half minutes of your competitors content and pretend it’s yours… that’s just plain wrong regardless of who did what first. All commercial networks need to start showing some “manners”. If it’s not yours, don’t pretend it is and if you use it Credit the source of the footage. Common decency it appears has gone out the window. The only winner here will be the lawyers! It won’t happen but both sides should call a truce and apologise to the viewers on the air.

  13. It may keep them honest for a bit, but both can launch counter claim after counter claim, and it will become to much of a mess, and not worth doing.

    Still I hope 7 network PLC & 9 network PLC, wake up and sort the two programs out, who are acting like kids in a sandpit.

  14. Nine should not have done what they did but then Seven does it too. Seven took footage from that Brian McFadden dilemma a few weeks back and claimed it as a Today Tonight exclusive. Its is a major disappointment that these networks would rather steal and look at each others back and risk losing viewers, which they have, instead of going their own way and doing their own thing. That is a reason why Ten should dominate but sadly they don’t. Because of the poor quality of these two nightly current affairs shows, it makes Neighbours a very high quality show and the only 6:30pm show I watch during the week.

    I sure wish Australia would switch to 10 or 11 at 6:30pm, it would be a very smart move and increase their IQ dramitically.

    Seven made My Kitchen Rules look like a Masterchef clone too. Ten should return Masterchef next year at the same time as MKR with a day’s head start and do Seven a lot of damage.

  16. Yeah it is an irony of the story that ACA and TT are no better than school yard kids, bullying each other on the playground with is our TVs!

    Media Watch should have a field day with this one next Monday night.

  19. The reference to Jack the Ripper and knife crime is in very poor taste, considering this is a story that could easily have been about kids pulling knives on each other. A big fat boo to you, Nine spokesperson. I find it supremely ironic that the two networks are engaging in bully boy tactics of their own regarding this story – mouthing off about each other, displaying scorn towards each other, being sarcastic and belittling, etc. I’m on Seven’s side with this one – it was theft, pure and simple.

  21. Is ACA suing for the wrong reasons??? ACA is a far superior show to Today Tonight….a recent example??? TT trashed Abigail last week whilst ACA did a story telling how it really was….that Abigail’s house had been flooded recently and that she had hit a low point in her life. Today Tonight proved that they will kick a celebrity when they are down just for ratings whilst ACA gave a more truthful account……Is this alleged legal action payback???

  22. look, theres a difference between using snippets of footage and repackaging it as part of a shows own story.

    the difference here was ACA just did a copy/paste job of the whole story, no repackaging, no effort at all on ACA’s behalf, except to cut out the TT logos.

  24. I thought there was meant to be honour amongst thieves.
    Hopefully the two shows will ‘legal’ each other to death and we’ll be rid of them both once and for all.

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