Some of you BUGgers out there have probably cottoned onto the fact that over the years this column has sometimes had a go at media outlets without being armed with all the facts to back up claims of journalistic missteps.

Okay, okay! Delete “sometimes” and make that “often”! In our defence, we have neither the time or the resources or any great desire to get to the bottom of many matters and have to go without our ever-expanding gut feelings.

Today’s topic is a case in point and poses questions we can’t answer due to the restrictions mentioned above.

And they all relate to how and why the Nine Network and ABC TV news last night differed in its handling of vision of a police chase of an allegedly stolen van in Melbourne.

Excellent footage, by the way, which explains why the Nine News bulletin at 6pm led with that story. The footage from the Nine News chopper showed the van driver tumbling out through the window while the vehicle was still moving and bolting across the freeway only to be struck by the chasing cop car. Very graphic stuff (at left at top) as he got flung over the bonnet and sideways onto the bitumen!

Footage so good that it had to be run twice. We were surprised it wasn’t used three, four or more times as is often the case.

But an hour later, Aunty’s 7pm version froze the footage before the moment of impact between the cop car and the bolting man (at top, right).

As we said above, so many questions that we couldn’t….sorry… wouldn’t answer.

Did Nine News provide video to the ABC that excluded the money shot? Did they keep the best bit for themselves?

Or did the ABC get the entire 9 News footage and decided to spare their sensitive audience the shocking moment of impact? It’s not as if the stupid bastard was taken to four different hospitals.

Ooh, wah! Surely the national broadcaster didn’t just pinch the stuff?

No, it’s some sort of ongoing content-sharing deal between the networks and Aunty just forgot to give its private-sector mate a thankful mention?

One final thing. If we had kept this item for our Mediocre Bytes sibling, we could have at least urged newsreader Melissa Downes to have a word to whoever made her say “heart-stopping” seeing no heart was stopped, and that the bolting driver had “walked” into the path of the cop car. That didn’t happen either.

Accuracy still has a role in journalism, right?

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