Channel 7's current affairs program Sunday Night returned today with a story about the much publicised kidnapping of American girl Jaycee Dugard by convicted felon Phillip Garrido. Unsurprisingly, channel 9's 60 Minutes covered the same story.
The arrest of Garrido and the details of Dugard's captivity have been unfolding in the news this week as more and more information comes to light about Garrido's possible involvement in other crimes.
The interesting thing tonight was watching how the two programs told their respective stories.
Sunday Night was first at 6:30pm and used home video, court footage, video of the abduction area and, most importantly, an interview with Jaycee's then stepfather Carl Probyn. He told the story of the day Jaycee was abducted and her reunion just last week with her family.
The story of Dugard's arrest in 1976 for the abduction and rape of Katie Callway Hall was also told with comments from Hall and the investigating officer on the case at the time. Overall the story was well put together, tightly edited and made good use of image and sound.
Then we had 60 Minutes at 7:30pm on channel 9.
With the earnest intro including the "as you’ll learn, the evil Phillip Garrido has been bad for a very long time" precursor to what was in store, there was no doubt that 60 Minutes was again going to give us the same old story.
Reporter Tara Brown told us what had just been shown on channel 7 but with a one-on-one interview with Garrido's 1976 victim Katie Callway Hall. Besides taking the victim to the storage unit where she had been repeatedly raped and abused and asking her if it was painful to be there, the gratuitous use of 'dramatic reenactment' was possibly the most disturbing aspect to the story.
Do we really need to see some bad overracting to understand how a persons head is slammed into a stearing wheel? After a 'reenactment' of Garrido tapping on Hall's car window, we had Hall in-studio stating that Garrido tapped on her car window ... is this necessary?
The 60 Minute story basically confirmed that the program is past its prime. I'm not at all suggesting that Sunday Night is the epitome of reporting, but it was leaps and bounds ahead of the shock-tactic-superstory that 60 Minutes served up.
It seemed that the focus of Sunday Night was to tell a story - and that the focus of 60 Minutes was to keep viewers watching. What they fail to realise is that if they tell the story well, they don't need to bribe the audience with humiliating interviews and shakey, constructed drama.
The arrest of Garrido and the details of Dugard's captivity have been unfolding in the news this week as more and more information comes to light about Garrido's possible involvement in other crimes.
The interesting thing tonight was watching how the two programs told their respective stories.
Sunday Night was first at 6:30pm and used home video, court footage, video of the abduction area and, most importantly, an interview with Jaycee's then stepfather Carl Probyn. He told the story of the day Jaycee was abducted and her reunion just last week with her family.
The story of Dugard's arrest in 1976 for the abduction and rape of Katie Callway Hall was also told with comments from Hall and the investigating officer on the case at the time. Overall the story was well put together, tightly edited and made good use of image and sound.
Then we had 60 Minutes at 7:30pm on channel 9.
With the earnest intro including the "as you’ll learn, the evil Phillip Garrido has been bad for a very long time" precursor to what was in store, there was no doubt that 60 Minutes was again going to give us the same old story.
Reporter Tara Brown told us what had just been shown on channel 7 but with a one-on-one interview with Garrido's 1976 victim Katie Callway Hall. Besides taking the victim to the storage unit where she had been repeatedly raped and abused and asking her if it was painful to be there, the gratuitous use of 'dramatic reenactment' was possibly the most disturbing aspect to the story.
Do we really need to see some bad overracting to understand how a persons head is slammed into a stearing wheel? After a 'reenactment' of Garrido tapping on Hall's car window, we had Hall in-studio stating that Garrido tapped on her car window ... is this necessary?
The 60 Minute story basically confirmed that the program is past its prime. I'm not at all suggesting that Sunday Night is the epitome of reporting, but it was leaps and bounds ahead of the shock-tactic-superstory that 60 Minutes served up.
It seemed that the focus of Sunday Night was to tell a story - and that the focus of 60 Minutes was to keep viewers watching. What they fail to realise is that if they tell the story well, they don't need to bribe the audience with humiliating interviews and shakey, constructed drama.
