ray martin slams media for dumbing down

lets hope his peers show some spine and back him up...

Channel 9 dopey to downgrade news - Ray Martin
October 18, 2008 08:10am
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TV networks "AWOL on journalism"
Channel 9 decisions "dopey"
TV news: ABC, SBS "merger" and more

COMMERCIAL television has abandoned its commitment to news and current affairs, with The Australian and the ABC among the few media outlets still investing in quality journalism, Ray Martin said last night.

The TV stalwart, in delivering the annual lecture in honour of the late ABC broadcaster Andrew Olle, said Channel 9, where he worked for 30 years, had made a "dopey" decision this year to dump its best news and current affairs programs.

"Business Sunday got the chop first. Given the state of the world right now, how prescient was that?" Martin said.

"Then Nightline was flicked. Saddest of all, the Sunday program was ingloriously dumped, despite picking up five Walkley Award nominations last year.

"Sunday was a vital part of the cherished Nine brand, until it lost both its budget and its biggest backer in Kerry Packer."

He said Channel 10 was journalistically lightweight and that Channel 7 owner Kerry Stokes did not back his public support for strong television journalism with on-screen results.

"The three commercial networks have gone AWOL when it comes to journalism," Martin said.

"Out to lunch - except for the excellent nightly bulletins, the redoubtable Sixty Minutes and, every so-often, the much-maligned 6.30 nightly current-affairs shows.

"That's all there is on a regular basis," he said.

Martin said Rupert Murdoch's passion for newspapers allowed for an investment in quality journalism, "which is why we get the most comprehensive and the most insightful coverage of, for example, indigenous affairs in the pages of The Australian".

But he said an unwillingness to invest in journalism elsewhere had seen "sackings and forced redundancies, newspapers closing and TV programs dumped".

Yet there was a market for news. "If Tony Jones's new Q&A program (for the ABC) - even with politicians on the panel - can beat The Footy Show, well, who knows? It might mean there's an audience out there."

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24514586-2,00.html