Nine News has plummeted to lower depths by attempting to lie to its audience and offering a safe haven for conservative politicians and the Right-wing media. Darren Crawford reports.
AS EXAMINED in IA recently by the brilliant Michelle Pini, Nine News Melbourne was busted in late January for crudely digitally enhancing Victorian Animal Justice Party MP Georgie Purcell’s breasts and falsely exposing her midriff for a TV news piece on its nightly news bulletin.
Ms Purcell, the youngest female member of the Victorian Parliament, had spoken against the annual duck hunt in Victoria and her stance had attracted the ire of stale, pale, conservative males from across the political spectrum. And, of course, Nine News Melbourne was all over it.
The segment in question featured a Photoshopped image of Ms Purcell in the promo where her breasts had been enlarged and the dress she was wearing in the original photo cropped to appear as a crop top and skirt, exposing her bare skin.
When confronted about the image, Nine News Melbourne doubled down on the misogyny and sexism involved and claimed that ‘automation by Photoshop’ was to blame. In other words, AI (artificial intelligence) did it.
Now, while blaming AI may seem a convenient excuse as it can’t answer back (and doesn’t really exist in that form — yet), what Nine News Melbourne has failed to confess is that AI only designs content, be that images or text, based on instructions provided by a human.
In other words, if that image wasn’t digitally enhanced by a human using basic Adobe Photoshop (which it probably was as there is no such thing as “automation by Photoshop”) and was altered using AI, then it could only have done so using select terms, input by a human into the program such as “make her breasts bigger” and “change her dress into a crop top and skirt”.
So why would Nine News Melbourne lie about this?
Because Nine News, across the country, hopes that the average consumer of their programs will know bugger all about AI or how it works and that those same viewers will not question anything that is presented to them that is not pro-conservative and/or anti-Left.
In other words, they think you, the viewer, are as thick as a brick and on “their side”.
Crackerjack, anyone?
At about the same time that the above was happening in Melbourne, Nine News Gold Coast was also getting in on the action of misusing technology to lie to its viewers.
Word got out on the morning of 1 February that perennially-under-investigation-for-corruption Gold Coast Mayor, Tom Tate, was going to be featured on Nine News’ flagship A Current Affair that night, in a story related to the ongoing saga of the Surfers Paradise Bowls Club.
For those of you playing along at home, about a decade and a half ago, Tate and his business partners took advantage of an elderly group of lawn bowlers in Surfers Paradise who had gotten into financial trouble and offered to “help them out”.
That form of assistance ended up including Tate’s consortium buying the greens from the members for a vastly reduced rate, before kicking them out of their own club and attempting to purchase other nearby blocks such as the publicly owned Bruce Bishop Car Park to amalgamate the blocks and build a second casino on the Gold Coast.
Recently, A Current Affair has been practising some real journalism and was following up on the sale of the last remaining piece of the bowling green to a private developer — a sale that the City of Gold Coast had allowed to take place in late 2023 at well under its market value, leading again to more calls of potential corruption against Mayor Tate.
Mayor Tate, who claimed that he had done nothing wrong as he had stepped out of the room when the vote took place in chambers (make of that what you will), had previously tried to purchase the block as one of the last remaining pieces of his potential amalgamation.
As per standard media calls, a handful of Gold Coast volunteer community groups and other media outlets had been alerted around mid-morning on 1 February that the Mayor would be featured on A Current Affair that night. Rather than promote the story on the dodgy Bowls Club land sale, Nine News Gold Coast took a different approach.
When is a poll not a poll? When it is a Facebook post!
Around lunchtime, a post appeared on the Nine News Gold Coast Facebook page asking the question: ‘Who do you think will be the next Gold Coast Mayor?’
According to information on the post, respondents could make their choice by selecting an emoji for each mayoral candidate, selecting “like” for Tom Tate; a “heart” for Lavinia Rampino, the former Gold Coast Show Director; “care” for marketing wiz Danielle Dunsmore; or the “wow” emoji for Virginia Freebody, the Coolangatta Laundress, as pictured.
So, imagine the surprise when at the start of the 5:30 PM Nine News Gold Coast Bulletin, the newsreader claimed: “Tom Tate is the front-runner to hold his spot in the city's top job, according to a Nine News poll.”
What followed was 90 seconds of pure unscientific waffle, using statistics that the “journalist” had lifted from the Facebook post, but presented as undeniable fact that Tom Tate is the “overwhelming favourite” to be re-elected as Mayor of the Gold Coast.
At the time of the story going to air, a quick look at the Nine News Gold Coast Facebook page revealed that only 86 people had responded to the actual post with 66 people “liking” Tate, six clicking a “heart” for Rampino, six “cares” for Dunsmore and one “wow” for Freebody (it is unknown if she “wowed” herself).
At the 2020 Gold Coast City Council Election, over 250,000 people were registered to vote. A basic knowledge of statistics would inform any professional that for a statistically valid result of a poll of a group of 250,000 people, over 2,300 people would need to be interviewed and asked the same question — that’s way more than 86 emojis.
The LNP protection racket
It is unknown how any professional presenter or journalist could reveal this information as being “scientific evidence” that Tate is the “overwhelming favourite” to be re-elected (and keep a straight face while doing it) based on 86 emojis. However, it is clear why they are doing it.
Under the stewardship of former Liberal Treasurer and the man who was too scared to be Prime Minister, Peter Costello, Nine News has been openly running a “protection racket” and safe haven for conservative politicians and Right-wing media through its various newspapers, TV and radio stations for the better part of a decade. It’s a ruse, like Uncle Rupert’s tactics on Sky, that involves tried and true tactics to suck people in using blatant lies.
Here is how it probably went down on 1 February: 9 AM: Media call received from A Current Affair advising about the Bowls Club story to air that night.
10 AM: Mayor’s Office calls Nine News Gold Coast and asks for help to counter the negative story on A Current Affair.
11 AM: Rookie reporter/cadet journalist/work experience kid told to create a Facebook post that pretends to be a poll.
4 PM: Rookie reporter/cadet journalist/work experience kid, although disappointed with only getting 80 odd votes, rolls with it anyway and destroys all credibility by over-hyping basic facts and blatantly lying in recording the story.
5:30 PM: Story airs and stupid L-NP supporters get sucked in. Nothing to see here, move along.
7 PM: A Current Affair goes to air, truth revealed.
Tom Tate’s got form
Tom Tate is renowned for threatening and abusing the local media, either by refusing to answer questions or belittling journalists in public and threatening to remove access to the Mayor’s Office.
Tate’s former chief of staff had run secret social media pages in which he threatened local community members and media representatives before being sacked after a Crime and Corruption Commission investigation in 2020.
In 2017, Tate also unsuccessfully tried to sue ABC’s Mark Willacy of Four Corners after its exposé, ‘All that Glitters’, revealed Tate’s dealings with the Surfers Paradise Bowls Club and his links to Chinese investors. In the opening of the latest Bowls Club piece on A Current Affair, host Ali Langdon starts the segment by stating that Tate had also abused her journalists in compiling this story.
It is not known whether Tate’s office threatened the rookie reporter/cadet journalist/work experience kid at Nine News Gold Coast, but hey, he’s got form.
You’re going to need more than emojis and AI to survive in this world, Mr Costello.
While you might be able to fool your average L-NP-supporting, TV-watching, elderly white-shoe-wearing retired property developer here on the Gold Coast, Mr Costello, the tide is turning against both you and Uncle Rupert around the rest of the country.
Every time you present one of these “exclusive Nine polls”, a little more of your organisation withers and dies. Ultimately, as is already happening, people will stop buying your product and stop watching, listening and reading, which means a lesser number of people are watching, listening and reading about your advertiser’s products as well.
As for the AI, your audience isn’t that dumb, so stop treating them like they are. Sexism and misogyny may be commonly practised in the Liberal Party (just ask ScoMo and the boys), but out here in the real world, we’ve moved on. Unlike ScoMo and the boys, next time you get busted Pete, put your hand up, apologise to the woman/women concerned and own it.
As for Tom Tate, regardless of the ongoing protection racket, he’s going to need real votes, not emojis, to win this election. Good luck with that.
Darren Crawford is a surfer, environmentalist, sports coach/administrator and academic. He is also vice president of Save Our Spit Alliance. You can follow Darren on Twitter @Darrencanplay.
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