As a result of a self-enforced academic cocoon I have been in this past weekend, I arrived to this scandal quite late and was reminded of this fact when I was the only one who hadn't heard of it in class yesterday. The scandal illustrates the premium our community puts on truth when it comes to journalism, as although most of us are aware of the illusions of broadcast TV, we do not expect outright lies or fabricated scenarios that masquerade as the truth. The case here is the deception by Nine News with respect to the helicopter claiming to be reporting from near Beerwah, when it was in fact hovering over the channel Nine helipad. Channel seven, it keeping with the known rivalry between the two networks, caught the nine news in their lie and filmed the event and exposed the lie to the country. The scandal has resulted in the sacking, and possibly destroyed careers, of several Nine News employees, including Melissa Mallet and Cameron Price. The video below reveals the faked footage and claims of the Channel Nine by Seven News
The question being asked is why would they bother to lie about their whereabouts in the first place when they could have simply said they were returning from the site or something more akin to the truth. Such a silly lie has caused a lot of damage to the network's credibility and to the lives of the employees who have became scapegoats for the scandal. It seems such a ridiculous thing to cause so much hype but the underlying concern here is the concern of truth and the trust we place in journalists to report it.
This reminds me of the Stephen Glass fiasco which was about a talented reported who falsified entire stories and backed them up with faked sources, websites and individuals in order to present them as truth. It demonstrates the tremendous amount of pressure journalists are under to deliver amazing stories and be ahead of the competition and it shows the no matter how wonderful or promising a career can be, one mistake can bring it all crashing down.
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