Crikey

Vale Sunday, no one watched. Even for its last program, Sunday was basically ignored by viewers, as they have been doing for the past three years or so. Sunday was watched by 158,000 people yesterday morning, Insiders on the ABC at 9am averaged 173,000, Inside Business, 148,000, Offsiders, 130,000, But Weekend Sunrise at 8am won easily with 440,000. Landline on the ABC at Noon also did better than Sunday with 223,000 viewers. — Glenn Dyer

Seven slightly ups Cons Media stake. According to this morning’s Australian Financial Review Kerry Stokes and the Seven Network now have 5% of Consolidated Media Holdings, but they haven’t and didn’t buy any of the three million shares that were traded in the market last week. Seven still remains at 4.82% and won’t be making a substantial shareholding notice (the first) for Cons Media because it hasn’t bought any shares, despite the assertion in the AFR, which is believed to have come from the CMJ/Packer camp. — Glenn Dyer

Nine bones the early News? A day after Sunday departed and 10 days after boning Nightline, the Nine Network seems to have killed off another news service. The 5am News didn’t appear today. In its place was a repeat of The Nanny (which have already been to air many times on the Ten Network a decade ago). Nine only started the 5am news a week or so ago amid a boast from CEO, David Gyngell, about catching rival Seven Network on the hop and forcing another change. Nine had pushed the start of Today back to 5.30am, and Seven finally responded by starting an early news at the same time. After The Nanny repeat, Today started at 5.30am on Nine. The TV programs had the early News down to start at 5am on Nine all this week until Friday. If the early News has gone, it might hurt Nine’s in-flight Qantas News. I saw one edition of the early News last week with a Qantas logo displayed in an on air graphic behind the newsreader’s shoulder. It looked as though Nine was merely recording the in-flight Qantas News and then turning it around at 5am. — Glenn Dyer

Seven wins the week. Another win for the Seven Network last week with its highest share and the second highest winning share of the ratings year so far. Seven won with 29.4% (28.6%) from Nine with 27.0% (25.9%), Ten on 20.0% (21.1%), the ABC with 18.1% (17.0%) and SBS with 5.5% (7.4%). Seven won all five metro markets. — Glenn Dyer

A challenge to confidential sources: In his Salon blog, Glenn Greenwald writes deals with one of the most controversial issues of journalistic practice:

The death of government scientist Bruce Ivins has generated far more questions about the anthrax attacks than it has answered. I want to return to the role the establishment media played in obfuscating the anthrax investigation for so long and, at times, aiding in what was clearly the deliberate deceit on the part of Government sources. This is yet another case where the establishment media possesses — yet steadfastly conceals — some of the most critical facts about what the Government has done, and insists on protecting the wrongdoers. Obtaining these answers from these media outlets is as important as obtaining them from the Government. Writing about ABC’s dissemination of the false Iraq/anthrax story, The New Republic’s Dayo Olopade wrote yesterday : “Pressure on ABC to out their sources should be swift and sustained.”

The Washington Monthly’s Kevin Drum argued yesterday that despite the need for journalists to use confidential sources, “the profession — and the rest of us — [are] better off if sources know that they run the risk of being unmasked if their mendacity is egregious enough to become newsworthy in its own right.” Drum added: “I’d say that part of [Ross’] re-reporting ought to include a full explanation of exactly who was peddling the bentonite lie in the first place, and why they were doing it.” Nonetheless, Drum said: “In practice, most journalists refuse to identify their sources under any circumstances at all, even when it’s clear that those sources deliberately lied to them.”

Irritable Lolita syndrome: A Crikey reader pointed this out to us: ”The cover of yesterday’s Sunday Times’ body+soul liftout (in all the News Sundays) has a full page photo of what appears to be an under-16 girl child, sitting on a bed in a nighty, looking sultry, above a headline that reads “Forbidden Fruit”. How do they get away with it? Well, our would-be Lolita is holding a glass of orange juice, and next to the “Forbidden Fruit” heading is a subheading in a much smaller typeface, which reads “why fructose can cause symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome”.

Death of newspapers chapter XXVII:  “If one of the great attractions of the newspaper was that it brought people together to rub noses, how can it compete for readers’ time with sites like Facebook, which can also give you a real-world news dump if that’s what you crave? Thanks to the Web, no interest need be esoteric any longer. Right now there isn’t a Facebook group about one of my favorite topics, “meth mouth,” but there is sure to be one a couple of minutes after I post this piece, with meth heads, dentists, and social workers networking through it. ” Slate’s Jack Schafer has a new theory to explain the decline on newspapers’ social relevance.

No idea: Grim tidings for fans of New Idea from the publicity folk at Pacific Magazines this morning … “Media Advisory: New Idea is not on newsagent shelves this morning. It’s a first for us not to be out on Monday. But we’d like assure readers that there’s no problem. New Idea will be available on Tuesday and we’d like to advise readers that it’ll be worth the wait. We have a few surprises in store.” Hang in there people. So does New Idea have pix of any the following: Sunday Rose Kidman/Urban, Indigo Packer/Baxter or the Jolie/Pitt twins (to name the three most obvious names in magazine-land that would delay a mag like New Idea from hitting the stands as scheduled.

McCain and New York Times still at war: It is a tradition at many kitchen tables to yell at the newspaper. At John McCain’s kitchen table, it is becoming a tradition to yell at one paper in particular: The New York Times. The latest dustup between the Republican presidential candidate and the “All the News that’s fit to Print” big-name newspaper centered on the editorial board’s back-to-back criticisms of McCain, one dispatch accusing him of taking the low road and another contending that he was playing politics with race. The second editorial, which appeared on the Times Web site, said McCain’s ads conjured up loaded racial images and raised the specter of O.J. Simpson. “The presumptive Republican nominee has embarked on a bare-knuckled barrage of negative advertising aimed at belittling Mr. Obama,” the editorial board wrote. The response from the McCain campaign was equally cutting. Read more of this article by Devlin Barrett at Huffingtonpost.com.