Media International Australia

Everywhere broadcasting institutions are in question, and nowhere is their vulnerability more apparent than in television journalism, as the uproar over the ABC's National testifies. Studies of TV news have proliferated. Epstein, and Altheide on organisational imperatives; Gans on social class determinism; Tuchman's interpretative approach; McLuhan's ‘Happy Talk’; the polemics of the Glasgow Media Group; Windschuttle et al on news values; Nixon's ‘the evening news is a series of mini-dramas’ …

Dennis O'Rourke afficionados who have seen Yumi Yet, Ileksen, Yap… How Did You Know We'd Like TV?, The Shark Callers of Kontu and ‘… Couldn't Be Fairer’ will need no encouragement to see his latest film, Half Life. This documentary examines the long term effects of atomic radiation on people, but does much more than this.

The 1980s seem to be the time for a rekindling of interest in audience research. Marketers, advertisers, film and television production houses, and public funding bodies for film production, all seem unanimous in their calls for more and better research. In such a climate, academic research has a special and complicated role to play, and some difficult choices to confront.

A set of articles in Search has dealt with science and the media; for example, Parsons (1977) noted that scientists are generally dissatisfied with media coverage of science. A separate set of articles (in journals devoted to science education) has addressed the issue of students' perceptions of science and scientists; thus, MacDonald & Bridgstock (1982) examined the views of a sample of students at Griffith University, and found (as have many others) that the students' images are generally negative and stereotyped. More recently, however, attempts are being made to determine what relationships may exist between the presentation of science in the media on one hand and student perceptions of science and scientists on the other. That is, is it possible to draw causal inferences between images presented in the media and student images of science and scientists?

A small group of influential Australians — sportswriters and columnists — were able to indulge in their favourite intellectual sports of knocking, sniping, cringing and swiping at tall poppies when the inaugural Australia Games were held in Melbourne from 26 January to 3 February 1985.

AUSSAT is a further link in a worldwide revolution which is occurring in information technology. This new technology includes communication satellites, fibre optics, and the silicon chip, and their use in combination to reduce the ‘tyrannies of distance’, the rigidities of time scheduling, and the tedium of manual processing of information and materials.

Given the general predilection for technology as machines rather than the wider conception as useful knowledge (Macdonald, Lamberton & Mandeville, 1983), it is not at all surprising that the convergence thesis has been so influential. According to that thesis the two major driving forces in the most fundamental technological change human society has experienced are: (i) cost reductions, productivity or quality improvements, and new services and products largely made possible by advances in microelectronics, and (ii) the combination of computer and telecommunications technologies (OECD, 1981:11–14).

The following letter, sent to the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal (ABT), the Federation of Australian Commercial Television Stations (FACTS), a television channel and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), accompanies a petition containing the signatures of over 140 professionals (including child psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, psychotherapists, family therapists, and others) working with emotionally and behaviourally disturbed children in the Sydney Metropolitan area. The petition calls on the ABT, FACTS and the ABC to: 1. ensure that no news items or promotions depicting violent scenes be put to air at or close to children's viewing times, and 2. that when violent scenes are televised, suitable warning is given to parents or guardians advising that the item contains scenes which may be disturbing to children.

These ‘Peace Pages’ will be a regular feature in MIA throughout 1986 as a MIA and Australian Film and Television School (AFTS) contribution to the International Year of Peace. On these pages we list organisations and groups acting for peace and peace-related issues, as well as information on research, and plans for IYP. We rely on material being supplied to us — please contribute information in writing as part of your involvement in IYP. Post to MIA, AFTS, PO Box 126, North Ryde 2113. There are also book and magazine reviews and notes on peace-related publications in Henry Mayer's Book Reviews section of MIA.