Labor Party Member for Dobell, Craig Thompson, has been
all over the news lately due to a number of allegations of wrongdoing and a
Fair Work Australia Investigation. Politicians being accused of things is
nothing new but, according to an article by Kate McClymont and Phillip Coorey
published in The Age today, the way Channels 7 and 9 handled the saga may have
lasting ramifications for Australian media.
Channel 9’s A Current Affair aired footage of a woman who
claimed that Mr Thompson paid her for sexual services while she was working as
a prostitute. Channel 7’s Today Tonight then tracked down the same woman and
aired footage of her claiming she had never slept with Mr Thompson, was
mistaken in identifying him and had tried to retract her statement before ACA
went to air with the story. She claimed her request was ignored. ACA then
retaliated with more counterclaims and the whole thing basically devolved into
something reminiscent of a Jerry Springer episode.
By the time you get to McClymont’s and Coorey’s article
you’ve got a current affair about a current affair about a current affair! According
to McClymont and Coorey the furore caused Labor Party Member, Joel Fitzgibbon, to
call for greater government regulation of the media. Apparently there were
already reforms in the pipeline and this chain of incidents is likely to bring
them before parliament sooner and see politicians more inclined to vote for
stronger governmental control. While it remains to be seen whether this threat
is followed through on, it is still a scary prospect. How can we have a free
press if the government has a strong controlling hand in the media?
As you may have guessed from my previous posts I am a bit of a
documentary fan. The combination of learning something while being entertained is
just brilliant to me. You do have to be on the lookout for people twisting
facts to suit their agendas; but then that’s a useful life lesson to learn
anyway!
I recently found this short doco on the Aokigahara Forest
which lies at the base of Mount Fuji in Japan. Aokigahara is commonly known as
the suicide forest as it is the second most popular suicide spot in the world.
In case you’re interested, The Golden Gate Bridge is the
number one spot and it also has its own documentary called The Bridge. The film
makers set up cameras on the bridge for a full year – disturbing but beautiful
film.
I’d actually read about Aokigahara in some obscure
article I’d found in some obscure place a few years ago. While other places I had
an interest in faded, it somehow never quite left my mind. The article said
that if you ventured off the path you would undoubtedly find human remains. They
had some tastefully gruesome pictures of skulls, skeletons, and nooses in trees
along with some haunting narratives. I adore ghost stories and love visiting
haunted places. On top of that, it is a seldom visited place, particularly by
tourists, and most people haven’t even heard of it. I think travel is way more
fun and eye-opening if you get outside of the regular tourist spots.
So when my boyfriend and I planned a trip to Japan last
year, we worked Aokigahara into our schedule. The above documentary wasn’t out
at the time and we had very little information on the place so relied on locals
to give us directions. We got the strangest reactions from people. The owner of
the Ryokan we were staying in happily gave us directions for everything else we
wanted to see but when we asked about the forest his whole demeanour changed.
He insisted on knowing why we wanted to go there and kept saying there were
much better places to visit. After some polite and gentle persuasion we were
able to get a roughly drawn map which directed us to the forest.
Over the couple of days we spent around Mt Fuji we explored
much of the surrounding forests and lakes, went down into the lava caves and up
the mountain. Everywhere else there was a sense of lightness...
...but Aokigahara was
different.
We have a dozen shots of the weirdest mushrooms
It had a distinctly dark and oppressive feeling. We got there mid-afternoon
so we weren’t able to explore as much as we wanted. At the deepest point we
ventured in I found some strange ribbons tied to trees, leading off the path
and into the depths of the forest. Along one ribbon path we could see something
blue in the distant trees. By that time though, it was getting dark and we had
to leave or risk missing the last bus out of there.
With 15 minutes to spare we started hurrying back towards
the edge of the forest, the darkness growing deeper. Just ahead of us a part of
the path had sunken into a deep hole. As we drew nearer, something white
emerged from the dark earth. Frowning, I focussed on it. My boyfriend hurried
on oblivious but I slowed as I drew closer. It was round, white, half buried…
and had two sunken sockets staring blankly back at me. I screamed and leaped
backwards, yelling at my boyfriend, “there’s a skull!” We snapped the following
shots:
As it turns out, it was just a beautifully shaped rock
which only looked like a skull if you approached it from a certain angle – the exact
angle I had happened to unwittingly approach it from! While it was only a hoax
of Mother Nature, the scare I got was definitely worth the trip.
It was creepy watching this documentary months later as
we discovered for the first time the significance of the ribbons we found tied
to the trees and the other odd little artefacts we encountered.
Speaking of which, here is the last strange thing that
happened. We’d found this odd little sign with scrawled red writing on it that
we’d hoped to have interpreted. We snapped a shot of it with the same digital
camera we used for the whole trip. We were in a hurry to get back to the bus so
didn’t check the pictures until we were back in our room that night. Every
other shot we took during the whole break came out fine accept that shot which
came out like this:
Never before or since has that camera blanked out on a
photo.
The Gruen Transfer is always intriguing but, as a vegan,
I was particularly interested in this discussion on animal rights and the various
ways advertising can be used to create positive change in the world:
It’s good to see advertising being used to spread
positive messages and especially encouraging to see how effective it can be.
Greenpeace campaigns in particular often seem to bring about the desired
effect.
Particularly relevant to journalism was the live export
campaign run by Animals Australia. It was noted that “campaigns always work
best if they can piggyback a media event”. Since there was no media event,
Animals Australia created one by providing the media with their footage of the
cruelty suffered by animals in the live export process. This is an excellent
example of reciprocity – the media get the shocking footage which they can turn
into a compelling story and Animals Australia draw support for their cause. Normally
when you think of advertising permeating the media it’s in a negative sense
where they’re disguising ads for certain products as news stories. What Animals
Australia did is ostensibly the same thing but with one vital difference – the live
exports issue is worthy of being a current event; surreptitious marketing of
the latest dubious diet product isn’t.
Whoever came up with this campaign is a marketing genius:
The Anthon Bern Generous Store was open for one day only in Copenhagen and
customers exchanged the promise of a specific good deed for a generous box of
gourmet chocolate. The catch was, the good deed had to be publicly declared and
carried out. Customers posted their promised good deed on facebook and then
posted evidence of its completion with the Anthon Berg chocolates in the shot.
So the campaign captured the infectious spreading power of social media. And what
spread was a message of double-generosity – not only did Anthon Berg give the
chocolate away for no monetary cost, they encouraged people to be generous to
their loved ones. What a brilliant light for a company to portray itself in.
While I couldn’t help but note the cleverness of the
advertising campaign, I don’t want to be too jaded and suggest that the company
only had profit margins in mind. Hopefully the exercise reminds people of how
much nicer your world is when you’re generous – not just with your loved ones
but with anyone in need.
