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Seven News, “near Mildura.”

Seven News was nearly caught out when 3AW asked about the location of one of its reporters doing a live cross.

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Seven News was nearly caught out in a news report on Wednesday night when reporter Dean Felton fronted a story on the woman who had walked 20km in Murray-Sunset National Park southwest of Mildura.

Felton’s report had the appearance of looking like he may be on the spot, but carefully avoided any reference to his actual location.

That was enough to leave 3AW asking questions.

Yesterday on air Darren James asked Seven weatherman David Brown (who also reads on 3AW) “Do you know where he did his cross from?”

“Look he was on location,” said a puzzled Brown. “I remember looking in the edit booth thinking ‘Where the hell did Dean go to?'”

“There was a suggestion Calder Park,” said Tony Leonard. “It is a bit desolate out there but surely Channel Seven could stump up and get him a bit further up the Calder Highway?”

It was a close call but Seven was tactful with its on air presentation and weren’t caught out.

Last night in a careful follow-up story, Dean Felton was more fittingly on location with survivor Beth Lawrie – “Near Mildura.”

15 Responses

  1. David – and because we’re feed a constant stream of news all day many of us don’t even bother watching the 5 or 6 pm news. I watch some in the morning or just before bed, usually SkyNews or ABC24.

    I know they have to do more to get viewers back but maybe they should start with reporting the truth. Because also with the rise in Internet usage we know instantly when they lie to use, thanks to sites like this.

  2. Meanwhile, over on Ten, some blonde bimbo reading the morning news yesterday pronounces the word “indictment” as in-dickt-ment.

    All I can say is it’s sad indictment on Ten when a newsreader with Ron Wilson’s ability and experience is languishing on the scrapheap while the work experience kids attempt to read the news without butchering the english language.

  3. At least they described the location where the woman was stranded correctly. The Project said it was south eastern Victoria – the complete opposite corner of the State.

  4. Why do they bother sending reporters to locations hours or days after the actual event? Ch.9 seems hell bent on their reporters being anywhere out ‘on location’ for no particular purpose or relevance. I love it when the newsreader crosses to a reporter in the newsroom. Why?

    1. Archer: Live crosses have increased markedly since the rise in online reporting. News Editors are faced with the problem that we already know the news before we turn on at 6pm now, because we have been at desktops all day. So they try to offer fresh vision, which is usually in the form of the live cross.

  7. While on news services, another misused term is “exclusive”. Exclusive to Seven or exclusive to Nine, when the same story is on just about every news service on TV.

  9. TV news has been doing this for decades, as for radio, you’ll never know. People need to move on from this, is the actual story itself correct? Yes, they all are. Near is a subjective term, it’s ambiguous, means different things to different people. Dean has done a good job. If the chattering classes at opposition stations and the endless dump-your-thoughts online spaces wish to complain, go ahead, but all the people outside the media navel gazing simply want to know what happened in the world today among their busy lives and don’t care where journalists are standing.

  10. “Near” means exactly what? By dictionary definition Calder Park is not “near” Mildura. Any wonder commercial networks why I only watch ABC24 now. Please, stop the fake “locations” already! Helipads, carparks, bushes near some airport pretending to be a thousand km away, chromakeyed weather girls pretending to be where they are not, etc., etc.

    1. “Near Mildura” was used for the follow-up story when he was at Murray-Sunset National Park southwest of Mildura. As I noted there was no clarification for the first report so it was confusing but not misleading.

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