Journal
1907 K Thu 27 Sep 2001
This afternoon I watched a video "A Dangerous Life". I bought it for $5 last Friday. It caught my eye because the script was by David Williamson, an Australian who has written some very good plays. Another interesting aspect is that it is the story of how Marcos was ousted in the Philippines in 1986. Perhaps this will be useful for my Monday night classes on "The Church in Asia".
Its a good story, but it is a "made of TV" movie, with a limited budget. There is good use of actual footage of "people power" in Manila, so a lot of it is like watching a documentary.
The Australian has a Media section on Thursdays with some interesting stories. Natasha Bita wrote in "Undercover agencies" about women paid to visit bars and ask men to buy them drinks, as part of marketing campaigns. "You can never, ever tell that we're doing it" is the claim. Frightening. In case anyone is wondering, I have not received any money for what I write here, or who I link to.
Another story "Come in spinners", by Ed Charles, begins: "Confession time. I used to be a PR consultant. ...". Its an interesting story about Issues Management. It quotes Jim Macnamara, who wrote a book on public relations I read earlier in the year: "The media is a channel. Equally, the media is the world's leading database. If something is not in the media it's not an issue."
A third interesting story was by Sandra Lee. She described an email, which I also received: "In an email which snaked its way around the world, CNN was accused of using 10-year old footage and claiming it had been filmed on September 11 showing Palestinians celebrating the Tuesday's catastrophic events." She concludes:
Interestingly, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat condemned the gleeful demonstrations and, not surprisingly, CNN's chief news executive Eason Jordan called the rumours "baseless and ridiculous". The footage was real, and anyone who doubted it doubted the credibility of the Reuters crew in East Jerusalem who filmed it on Tuesday in the early hours after the attack.
Two days later, the Brazilian student sent a correction email, admitting he had been wrong.
I haven't received that one yet.
Neither have I.
Copyright J.R. Lilburne, 27 September 2001. Last modified 28 Sep 2001.
Link to www.theaustralian.com.au
Sandra Lee's article on the email - scroll down to end of second article