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ABC’s Jon Faine treads a fine line with nowwearetalking
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Jon Faine, Melbourne’s 774 ABC morning presenter, is an intrepid interviewer, able to spot a conflict of interest at 20 paces. He’s on extended leave at the moment, on a much-anticipated car trip with his son Jack from Melbourne to London. And they have a blog up and running, melbournetolondon.com, which has generated a bit of controversy among readers over the last couple of days — but more about that later. While checking it out, Crikey noticed some interesting things. Like the supporters section, in which they write: “We do not have any commercial tie-ins or benefactors. We have been generously assisted with training and advice from many quarters.” They then note just where this help came from. For example:
No commercial tie-ins but a nonetheless nice spruik on a site bound to get more eyeballs than your average travel blog. The ABC’s Code of Conduct is stringent on endorsement: “ABC presenters must avoid any endorsement of any commercial organisation, product or service by themselves, their guests or contributors in ABC broadcasts or on ABC Online.” Of course, Faine is on holidays. He’s not blogging for the ABC or in his capacity as an ABC presenter — in fact the site contains no mention of Faine’s usual day-job — but many will come to the site because they’re ABC listeners. His travels have certainly been discussed at length on his program. Faine is also guestblogging for Telstra’s nowwearetalking site about his travels. Indeed, nowwaretalking claims that Faine “will be using a BigPond Wireless Aircard during his travels, to keep in constant communication with his family and listeners back home in Australia.” Telstra bundles it up neatly to read like an endorsement. There’s also a video where Faine is interviewed by nowwearetalking’s Martin Barr about the technology he’ll be using on the trip. Faine refers to mobile phones and a “broadband turbo card” though no brands are mentioned. It’s a fine line. Why shouldn’t someone, on their own time, be able to blog where he likes? We’re really such killjoys. Perhaps because they can’t control how the other party involved will present the information. Telstra is not exactly drawing the distinction. The bio for Faine reads:
And the nowwearetalking home page button promoting Faine’s blog is neatly juxtaposed between Telstra’s review of its iPhone — gee that’s likely to be unbiased — and a link to its discussion of future broadband technology.
While highly unlikely to affect how Jon Faine interviews Telstra on his show in the future, it may just affect how people perceive his interviewing. Margaret Simons has written in Crikey previously about the perils of journalists appearing on nowwearetalking:
She also noted that the site’s ultimate goal is ever apparent:
As for the other controversy, Jack’s recent post about cock fighting in Dili has got feathers ruffled. Crikey tried to contact Jon Faine but wasn’t able to reach him before deadline. |
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