… SACK YOUR PROMO WRITER!

Repeatedly during Tipping Point Australia on Nine Brisbane last night (Tuesday) came the news promo for Nine News Queensland at 6pm that a multi-billion dollar blowout of a light-rail construction project on the Gold Coast would “be worse than the Gabba rebuild”.

The last two plugs just before 6pm were voiced by Andrew Lofthouse (above) and the MGH is not sure he’s totally blameless over this total bullshit piece of non-journalism.

And why do we say that? How can there be a multi-billion blowout for something that is not going to happen regardless of who wins the October 26 election. The Miles government axed the controversial Woolloongabba Cricket Ground rebuild of some $2 billion plus. It’s being tarted up under the government’s plan. That, dear BUGgers is not a rebuild. Things need to be torn down before they are rebuilt.

If the LNP wins, a Gabba rebuild has about as much chance of happening as any nightly Nine News Queensland bulletin not having a story on rampant, out-of-control youth crime that has all Queenslanders shaking in their boots and more than ready to elect David Crisafulli as Premier. In other words …. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

The promo, as stated above, was factless, illogical and totally unprofessional. MGH could argue that Lofthouse has been around long enough that he should have had a lightbulb moment at being forced to do the voice-over for such rubbish. If not him, was there no one in the bloody studio to put the kybosh on such nonsense?

One of our MGH compilers turned to his partner during Tipping Point and said bluntly: “The actual news item will not mention any Gabba rebuild!” He was spot on.

The report was about the stage-four, 13km extension of the Gold Coast tram network to the airport at Coolangatta, with the cost possibly blowing out from just over $3 billion to $7.6 billion. That the Miles government has ordered a lengthy, complete review and cost analysis might have been more newsworthy – and praiseworthy – to Nine were it an LNP administration.

So who writes these pre-bulletin promos and why should they be given the boot? Well, they’re not a journalist’s arse wipe for beginners. We have over a long time picked apart these pre-6pm promos that often come across as anti-Labor, pro-LNP talking points. And, yes, they are often not repeated in the actual bulletins, which we guess is to someone’s credit.

We are totally unamazed that Nine newsroom executives haven’t given a tinker’s cuss over time as to the damage these promos do to their reputation. Some of them sound as if they were penned at LNP HQ and phoned through. What can we say? Nine Entertainment Co. chairman Peter Costello must be proud.

And in this particular case, how many Tipping Point viewers stayed on for the news? All they heard was the repeated suggestion that the Gabba rebuild – the Palaszczuk government original plan since discarded by Miles and never to happen – has blown out to BillyO.

Objective achieved and Peter Costello must indeed be very proud.

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