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The Hamster Wheel takes a sly dig at Fairfax

Cheeky Press Release for The Hamster Wheel has a go at media who cut and paste Press Releases. Perish the thought!

Regular readers to this site would know all about lifting stories, aggregation, Press Releases and assorted means of assembling stories.

After all I am constantly quoting sources, putting Press Release copy into italics and acknowledging originators of content. Sometimes it’s a bit tricky to know the exact place a story began if your primary source doesn’t attribute too, but you do what you can….

So I’m amused -very amused- by the latest copy for The Hamster Wheel from those rascally Chaser boys. If you read all the words in CAPS you will see that it’s a sly dig at Fairfax.

The Chaser team UNFORTUNATELY mourns the death YOU of journalism. The new show CAN’T examines how JUST the media works or, in most cases, COPY doesn’t work. Why AND do we get the news PASTE we get? And inside THIS the frantic rush PRESS of the hamster RELEASE wheel, has the race to INTO be first replaced YOUR the race to be right?

COPY Join the Chaser team BUT as they step inside the new media IF paradigm where Edward R. Murrow YOU has been replaced by Karl Stefanovic; where ACCIDENTALLY press releases are DO the new Deep Throat; IT and where the most popular ANYWAY online news story every day usually JUST involves Kyle Sandilands or PRETEND a penis… assuming IT there’s a difference. WAS The Hamster Wheel where breaking news DELIBERATE reaches breaking point.

The Hamster Wheel IF runs for 8 weeks and YOU sees the return of the full Chaser WORK team Andrew Hansen, AT Chas Licciardello, FAIRFAX Chris Taylor, JUST Craig Reucassel and DON’T Julian Morrow, plus writer Dominic Knight.

New segments on EXPECT The Hamster Wheel include:

• At Work With A Julia a situational SUBEDITOR comedy that follows the abject failures of an unlovable redhead

• Keeping Up TO FIX with the Jones’ Conspiracy IT Theory your weekly guide to unhinged rants of Alan Jones; and

• 30 seconds UP of poetry read by FOR regional Aussie rules footballers playing lawnbowls, to YOU fulfill all the ABC’s charter obligations.

And I know how they feel….

For instance, today’s Media Diary in The Australian (that’s News Ltd. not Fairfax) has lifted copy from my write-up of the Channel Seven launch without the slightest sign of attribution. For a column about media practice and news, it’s kinda disappointing….

Update: The Australian has now attributed.

The Hamster Wheel begins 9:35pm Wednesday October 5th on ABC1.

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