… out to get the Polish Princess

Watch the lead-in to Channel 9’s 6pm Brisbane news service last night and you’d be forgiven for thinking: what has that corrupt, incompetent, spendthrift, dishonest Labor government of Annastacia Palaszczuk’s done now?

“Flood outrage”, declared news reader Andrew Lofthouse’s voiceover, “the broken promises leaving a Logan family to watch their property slide into the river.”

At top is the image the station showed in plugging the story. Doesn’t leave much to the imagination, does it? The Polish Princess has broken promises ….. AGAIN!

This important news story deserved a further plug before an ad break some 25 minutes in: “Lies and broken promises …. Queenslanders living in limbo months after the February floods.”

LIES! Palaszczuk again, presumably?

Finally, Josh Bavas gave us the story …. “a Logan couple has been left devastated after the State Government reneged on an offer to buy back their flood-affected property. Now they’re worried their property will crumble away beneath them if nothing is done to fix the damage from the summer floods.”

The story is fair enough. Bavis explained that the couple two weeks ago received email confirmation from the Queensland Reconstruction Authority that they had been approved under a house buy-back scheme.

Bavas: “This week they were told the department had changed its mind”. The department had found the earlier floodwaters had not entered their house… “a small but important distinction according to the state government”.

The MGH accepts the couple is perfectly entitled to be pissed off. Someone at the QRA has stuffed up and given them false hope for one of two possible solution to their very serious situation.

If the QRA had gone ahead with a buy-back, Josh Bavas might have had a great follow-up yarn as to whether the couple were happy with the offer. Ditto if the QRA or other appropriate government body agrees to undertake some riverbank stabilisation work to save the property they’ve bought between the Logan River and a nearby creek.

But we’re more interested in how the story was framed and promoted.

Right at the start of the bulletin, a photo of the Premier and the message “Slipping away”. Really, Channel 9? Never miss the opportunity to put the boot in, right?

The mid-program extra plug about “lies and broken promises”. Lies? Really, Channel 9? Care to tell us who lied? The MGH suspects Channel 9 knows who it was!

The MGH has noticed over recent months that some people at Channel 9 really have it in for the Palaszczuk government. Well, they’ve got two more years of slipping it into Palaszczuk ahead of them as they appear hellbent on ridding the state of the Polish Princess.

Let’s just hope they don’t completely trash their brand and any claims to professionalism and journalistic integrity in the process.