Mood:
mischieviousTopic: local news
A big page 3 story last weekend in the Sydney Morning Herald brought back some interesting memories of our 2 years at Media Monitors 1999 to 2001 inclusive of the 9-11 disaster. We had the night shift and what an unhealthy work cycle it really was.
The recent story was about email mischief by two staffers with a right wing shock jock:
1-2 Nov 2008 The naked truth of a shock jock duped - National - smh.com.au
But back then it was about an email to all state and federal govt politicians about a Media Monitors manager. But we get ahead of ourselves.
We met Bernard Rooney there at MM and we raised some $4,000 for East Timor in the inaugural 100 km charity Trailwalker in 2000 via workmates. In 2001 we went in the event again as pictured below middle shot with Bernard 2nd from right. Or on his back in the top photo.
And what was the email about? Well if memory serves a certain MM manager was doing a spring clean for the CEO, in one of those company wide job reviews. Now we quite liked Bernard. He was a solid kind of a worker but he'd been targeted for the chop.
The word on the shop floor was that he was being told to do work he hadn't been trained for and then told he wasn't performing to standard.
Then on the night of 9-11 we had our leverage. Seems this ruthless manager by the name of JH was seen watching the live coverage in the 2nd floor offices in the old Cleveland St Building. They were still a few years from moving into the Federal Police building a few blocks down the same street.
Our hero JH was heard to say "It's all dead news, no one wants to buy it." This was in house talk - the newsworthy importance of a story - often disasters like earthquakes or volcanoes - doesn't correspond necessarily to any of the big business and govt clients wanting to buy a copy. In short the people who run society want things directly naming them, or impacting their business in order to organise their PR and strategy.
As it was happening it was 'only' a criminal disaster story in a foreign country that no Australian client needed to get. No one knew who the companies inside were. Or how it would change the world.
We don't mind saying doing the Media Monitoring of every newspaper published in the country over that period, especially the Fin Review front page of The Falling Man, probably took it's toll and may have affected our thinking.
It was not so long after that that one of the readers died of a stroke as well, a disabled guy known to his workmates and friends as Skip.
So anyway if Bernard was about to get the boot (to restart a new career as a Greens Councillor at Canada Bay) a certain employee at MM thought the govt clients might like to know what ruthless managers were thinking as literally 3 thousand people were being murdered in the workplace at the World Trade Centre: "It's all dead news, no one wants to buy it".
There's no accounting for moral perspective, or tactless use of language.
The workers will have their satisfaction even if by internet cafe.
