It’s no surprise Fairfax was keen to replicate the success of the ABC’s Vote Compass which has received more than 560,000 responses this election already and reached 1.4m in the 2013 election. This week Fairfax Media launched YourVote, “a tool which allows Australians to assess their political leanings against the major parties’ positions on key themes”.
But if it was going to avoid accusations of cloning the ABC tool it probably should have been a little more careful with its language. The press release referred to “YourVote election compass”. Then, in the FAQ for YourVote, the article referenced “Vote Compass” instead of YourVote, something that didn’t go unnoticed by the ABC’s editor of interactive digital storytelling, Matt Liddy.
Hmm. @smh has launched a Vote Compass replica. Their own FAQ refers to it as "Vote Compass" — which it's not. pic.twitter.com/0VCPmALBHn
— Matt Liddy (@mattliddy) June 7, 2016
Fairfax’s Canberra bureau chief, Bevan Shields, hit back saying: “Different name, different partners, different publications. Think we should be fine. ABC doesn’t own all ideas.” Fairfax says YourVote is the Australian version of the original global Voting Advice application tool “Kieskompas”, from Amsterdam, and is built on “independent scientific methodology which is designed to resist political interference”. Fairfax says ABC’s Vote Compass is based on a tool designed for the 2011 Canadian election by Kieskompas.
The Weekly Beast took a closer look at the 30 questions YourVote had posed and compared them with 30 on the ABC’s Vote Compass. We found a couple were identical and 14 had very similar wording. Charitably that reflects the clear issues of the election campaign. (And that is very charitable.) Most of the questions were on the same topics, with just slight differences. Only a handful were actually different, for example on the Great Barrier Reef health and paid parental leave for new mothers. Here are some of the similarities we found:
Vote Compass: Marriage should only be between a man and a woman.
YourVote: Marriage should only be between a man and a woman.
Vote Compass: Terminally ill patients should be legally able to end their own lives with medical assistance.
YourVote: Terminally ill people should be able to end their own lives with medical assistance.
Vote Compass: Gender quotas should be used to increase the number of women in parliament.
YourVote: Political parties should use quotas to achieve gender equality in parliament.
Vote Compass: How much should Australia spend on foreign aid? YourVote: Australia should decrease foreign aid spending.
Fish tales in troubled waters
Speaking of the reef, this week Guardian Australia published a major report on the health of the reef, written by Michael Slezak. But the state paper in Queensland, Rupert Murdoch’s the Courier Mail, has often ignored the environmental disaster on its doorstep, much to the despair of scientists.
This week it left the issue alone in print until the US chat show host Ellen DeGeneres, the voice of Dory the blue tang fish, released a video message as part of a “Remember the Reef” campaign launched to coincide with the release of her latest film, Finding Dory.
On Thursday the Courier ran an article about DeGeneres and the reef on page three which questioned her motivation for doing the video: “Fishy timing: Ellen spruiks movie by questioning health of the reef”. The online version says “Disney is calling into question the survival of the Great Barrier Reef while unashamedly spruiking its big-budget Finding Nemo sequel”.
Digging deep for Kurt Drysdale
Programs like Nine’s A Current Affair often get a hard time for their tabloid TV tactics and sensationalism. But ACA gives back, too. Last week ACA viewers raised $700,000 in cash and donated $100,000 in gifts to the Kurt Drysdale appeal, which was set up for the 21-year-old who suffered a devastating injury after being tackled in a weekend football match playing for Cabramatta. The money will be used to rebuild his parents’ house so he can live at home with them.
Mastheads keep shrinking
Fairfax’s regional arm, Australian Community Media, has been getting rid of subeditors and photographers on its local papers for the past 18 months and downsizing its newsrooms across the country in what is the long, slow decline of the community newspaper business. Now News Corp has announced plans to close seven of its local Victorian newspapers at the end of the month. The staff on the Melbourne Leader, the Berwick Leader, the Brimbank Leader, the Free Press Leader, the Hobsons Bay Leader, the Melton Leader and the Wyndham Leader were given just three weeks’ notice that their papers would close. “News Corp Australia continues to reshape its business to meet the needs of its audiences and commercial partners, and is confidently investing in areas that will provide returns over the long term,” a spokesman said.
Playing monopoly
Over in Western Australia, although newspapers are not being shut down they are possibly merging, leading to an unhealthy monopoly by Channel Seven and the West Australian’s owner, Kerry Stokes. Stokes’s Seven West Media is negotiating to buy Rupert Murdoch’s Perth Now website and the Sunday Times newspaper.
At the moment Perth has two newspapers owned by two media moguls. But subject to regulatory approval, including from the ACCC, Seven West Media will own Seven, as well as the Sunday Times and the West Australian.
Seven West Media and News Corp already own the Community Newspaper Group in Western Australia. If the agreement is approved, the West Australian will share news content from Murdoch’s newspapers in the other states.
Creatures of habit
Streaming services such as Netflix, Stan and Presto have been very popular in Australia, with many of us signing up to the relatively low monthly fees. But the latest survey of our screen habits, the Australian Multi-Screen Report – from Regional TAM, OzTAM and Nielsen – shows we are still overwhelmingly watching broadcast television. Australians watch on average 85 hours and 12 minutes of broadcast TV on in-home television sets each month. That figure includes shows we watched back on our TV sets within seven days of broadcast. But compared with last year’s viewing patterns this is a significant drop of four hours and 16 minutes a month. We still watch more TV than we spend online: on average (31 hours and 12 minutes online).
Talking head-counts
The numbers are in for Wednesday night’s showdown between Bill Shorten on Sky News at the Broncos Leagues Club in Brisbane and Malcolm Turnbull on ABC’s 7.30. The total 7.30 audience across metro and regional on ABC and News 24 was 800,000. The Sky News People’s Forum across metro and regional was 34,000. In the host city Brisbane the official ratings figures showed an audience of zero. To be fair there would have been some people who watched, but the number just wasn’t statistically relevant to be counted in the sample.
