American Media Fumbles Reporting of Australian Bushfires

Over the past couple of weeks, the Australian states of New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria have been victims of serious bushfires. In an attempt to report on the bushfires, the American media have failed spectacularly.

The American media outlet, NBC News, misrepresented a map of Australia which detailed all fires in the country at any given time. According to NBC, every fire on the map represented a bushfire. Moreover, they also allegedly stated that the whole of Australia was New South Wales.

NBC has taken the image from a Geoscience Australia product called Sentinel. Sentinel is a national bushfire monitoring system which uses satellite data to enable emergency service managers and other users to identify fire locations across Australia.

At any given time, the map will show hazard reduction burns, bushfires which pose no threat to life or property, plus of course much more serious bushfires like the ones we've seen this week.

That's the mistake which NBC appears to have made. They've taken every fire on the Sentinel map and assumed they are all part of the current emergency.

NBC has also more or less assumed that the whole of Australia is NSW, which is disturbing given the network spent pretty much the whole of the Sydney Olympics camped on the Opera House steps.

www.news.com.au...

If that isn't enough, Time Magazine has also fumbled their reporting on the Australian bushfires.

An earlier version of this article misstated that New South Wales is in southwestern Australia. It is in southeastern Australia.

• An earlier version of this article misstated the name of the executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. She is Christiana Figueres, not Christina.

• An earlier version of this article misstated the name of a former Prime Minister of Australia. She is Julia Gillard, not Gilliard.

All of which begs the question: Is it that hard for these supposedly reputable American media outlets to write a story getting a few basic facts right about little old Australia?

What's also despicable on Time's part, is the headline of the above article. 'Climate Change Affects Australia's Epic Wildfires - No Matter What Prime Minister Says' was the title of the article. And here i thought that journalists were meant to be objective...

www.news.com.au...

- Daas.

Once again the American MSM shows they have no idea about Australia, or journalism for that matter.

Even the most rudimentary research would give them the proper facts, but I guess it's not important. To the American media we're still a backwater nation full of dangerous animals and beer swillers who say crikey whenever we get the chance.

The fires are pretty bad though, my aunt lives in Sydney, and my grandparents live a few hundred miles west, and they sky is blanketed with smoke in both places. What's just as upsetting is kids as young as 11 have been charged for starting some of these blazes.

A large part of this is because real journalism is actually deader than disco.

The internet has basically reduced journalism to a near valueless field and we're paying the price for it. As much as it's tempting to call this an American issue, it really isn't. I've seen utter nonsense even from local news sources.

Pinke
A large part of this is because real journalism is actually deader than disco.

The internet has basically reduced journalism to a near valueless field and we're paying the price for it. As much as it's tempting to call this an American issue, it really isn't. I've seen utter nonsense even from local news sources.

I think the internet's affect on journalism falls into both the negative and positive. It allows for faster news. We get the news as it happens, not the day after. The speed of the news, on the internet though, does have some negative affects. The continuous publishing of material all day is bound to take its affect on those journos who rush the stories out.

I don't blame the internet entirely though. I think it falls down to the media outlets themselves. A lack of proper editing, research and gatekeeping are all to blame for these stuff ups, in my opinion.

reply to post by daaskapital


I agree completely in most senses.

Overall its a mix of declining profits, bad management and meeting demand. They don't really hire traditional journalists any more it seems. Even some of the larger news articles seem to mass googlefests referencing other sources. Actually you're really really really lucky if they provide references these days. They used to have the excuse that they didn't have the space ... I'm not actually sure what the excuse is now!

I'm afraid you're talking about media reporting in a country where 'man on the street' interviews could label Australia as North Korea and Tasmania as South Korea .....then have people accept that as accurate for a map and comment on the staggering size of the North compared to South. (sad sigh)

How can they get reports of a brush fire right on North Kor....errr...Australia?

At least they got the name of it right. Err.... Sad times..

:facepalm:

That's good old fashioned American accuracy for you there. I.E welcome to inaccurate as hell. I'm not really surprised, but it's embarrassing.

Perhaps the person who made this thread about Australia and New Zealand are out of position got the same information from the news channels

www.abovetopsecret.com...