Last night’s Media Watch explored a campaign by radio shock jocks Steve Price on 2UE and Chris Smith on 2GB to give the ABC a touch-up for their coverage of the burial of the Nias helicopter crash victims. What I found most interesting about the story was not the stuff-up by the ABC in handling the telephone complaints, or the conflicts of interest of the presenters, but the fact that only 98 complaints were received!
During the last election On Line Opinion had 1,524 responses to our long 17 question survey (with 4 of those questions requiring paragraph length responses). Perhaps we’re more influential than Sydney talkback radio, or maybe the influence of shock jocks is actually over-rated. I imagine if we ran a questionnaire on the ABC’s handling of the funeral, we’d generate more than 98 responses, plus present them to the ABC in a form that their complaints department could easily deal with, while simultaneously completing a research report that examined just why respondents thought what they did. If you doubt me, check out On Line Focus.