Media tart

Today (actually the last few days) I embarked on something new - media releases.

QUT news story

I've always been the type to be annoyed by mainstream/popular media. Sensationalism, misquoting etc - it all annoys me to know end. And the fact that the lack of education of most of the population (often through no fault of their own) is preyed upon to make money in that way just makes it worse.

So all this flooding is of course actually quite sensational, but nonetheless, they still try to make it even bigger. "areas as big as nsw" flooded, "one in 100 year flood" etc. These are the types of lines that get used. Everyone wants to feel that their life, their story, their situation is important, newsworthy. I understand that. But the 1 in 100 year thing really annoyed me - this is even dangerous. I've actually heard people say that they aren't worried because we've already had a big flood. Or worse still that they won't take any notice of the BOM or the police because we are having "another 100 year flood" so obviously they don't know what they are talking about and aren't worth listening to. So this news story was born.

An interesting part of the process was finding out how the actual text comes into existence. I'm sure it isn't always like this but this was my experience. I wrote a one page rant first of all and sent it to QUT media services. Then I had a chat on the phone with someone from their and then a new version of what I wrote came back. It had been changed into the style of an interview - quite weird to see your own words requoted back at you. Then a couple more iterations and a couple of corrections and then release to the world.

Good news is apparently some outlets including AAP have picked up on the story so it might start to float around the same media I am secretly whining about soon!