Unfortunate Imagery
Posted on 15. Mar, 2011 by Cameron in Australian media
Reading Zite on my iPad tonight and saw this headline:
Drilled down into the story to discover the young guy in the photo is actually NOT a victim (or perpetrator) of pedophilia, but is, instead, an Aussie in Japan:
News Corp’s Facebook Scare Campaign
Posted on 05. Apr, 2010 by Cameron Reilly in Australian media
This morning I ran a quick experiment. I searched through News.com.au’s site for stories that mention Facebook in the title to see what percentage of those stories had a negative slant. My theory is that large media companies such as News are scared about the amount of traffic Facebook is getting, as it’s decreasing their own readership thereby affecting the revenue they can generate from advertising. So they are running Facebook scare campaigns.
News Corp, of course, has even more reason that other media companies to be hatin’ on the Facebook, because they own MySpace, Facebook’s biggest competitor.
So – on with the results.
NEGATIVE STORIES
Facebook pedophiles stalk TV star, 11
Police probe students’ Facebook hate group
Spook’s wife in strife over Facebook post
Pupil’s Facebook slur against teacher
Facebook affair behind murder, suicide
Teacher dies after nude Facebook photos
Facebook used to organise Auburn racial riot – police
Nicole Kidman bullied on Facebook
Teenager fired from job via Facebook
Fake police Facebook page fools users
Premier Bligh writes to Facebook boss
Facebook removes kill-a-prostitute page
Teen’s death posted on Facebook first
Parents use Facebook to trap paedophile
Facebook deal forces computer clean-up
Rail bash teen’s mates turn to Facebook
Smiling in a bikini on Facebook costs Canadian woman her insurance
POSITIVE STORIES
Facebook extended to iPhone, iPod Touch
Pure Digital Sensia radio goes on Facebook, Twitter
Orangutan photographer a Facebook hit
Thief nabbed by Facebook detectives
So… out of twenty-one stories, there are FOUR positive stories (19%) and SEVENTEEN negative stories (81%).
The question is – does this show a bias in coverage?
Discuss.
TrueLocal Advertisers Deserve A Refund
Posted on 09. Oct, 2009 by Cameron in Australian media
I went looking for a house cleaner today and ended up on News.com.au’s TrueLocal site. I found someone in my area, clicked on their ad, then tried to send them an email. Up popped the below contact form. But I COULDN’T contact them because the verification captcha is broken. 
When I mentioned this on Twitter, @truelocal replied
@cameronreilly Thanks for brining it to our attention, it’s an issue from our end with Firefox3.5 and will thankfully be fixed v soon
Well that’s all fine and dandy, BUT, I asked, are you going to be refunding your advertiser’s funds? It seems to me like you aren’t delivering your promised services.
So far, no response from @truelocal….
It’s not acceptable when billion dollar media companies can’t get a freakin website to work properly. My suggestion? Stop hiring monkeys.
If I was a journalist for Fairfax, I’d probably do a story on this.
Bad news for newspapers
Posted on 01. Sep, 2009 by Cameron Reilly in Australian media, media 2.0
Bronwen has written a great piece explaining, once again, why newspapers (and the companies behind them) are at the end of the road.
Of course the argument for paid content is about defending commercial news organisations and not journalism. Problem is the two aren’t mutually exclusive anymore.
For starters, it excludes the competition from government subsidised media – SBS and ABC – who probably can’t wait for News Corp and Fairfax to start charging for their content. A senior news person at SBS told me just yesterday that he “WANTS those sites to charge!” – not because he believes in paid content, he doesn’t, but because it certainly brightens his future.
read more: bronwen clune » Blog Archive » Bad news for newspapers, great news for journalism.