David Mackay

13 January 2009

Time for some fancy book-learnin' for the ABC

The first paragraph of a story about Matthew Hayden’s imminent retirement from cricket:

Under-siege Australian opener Matthew Hayden has called a press conference in Brisbane this morning amid reports that he is poised to announce his retirement from international cricket.

Really, ABC? ‘Besieged’ wouldn’t have worked?

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17 December 2008

Some PR advice for Vodafone

Vodafone’s in hot water today because one of their stores refused to sell a phone to a stay-at-home mother.

By itself, this is bad enough publicity. But it gets better:

Vodafone spokesman Greg Spears yesterday confirmed the no-housewives rule and said getting a man to buy the phone instead was the quickest fix.

Gender has nothing to do with it. It was clear from the story that Vodafone’s policy is not to sell phones to people with no income of their own, so why did their PR decide to pour petrol on the flames by saying that ‘getting a man to buy the phone’ was the quickest fix?

Good luck digging yourself out of this one, Greg.

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11 December 2008

Wotta lotta bollocks

This cringe-worthy video produced by Change.Gov features the ‘Innovation and Civil Society subgroup of the Technology, Innovation and Government Reform policy working group’ talking about service. Two quick observations:

• ‘Innovation and Civil Society subgroup of the Technology, Innovation and Government Reform policy working group’? How quickly they have become a creaking bureaucracy!
• if you can spot a single idea or coherent thought here in amongst all the weasel words, you win a prize.

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10 December 2008

I'm a one-man economic security strategy waiting to happen

From today’s Sydney Morning Herald:

A long-standing political tradition for targeting cash handouts at so called “battler” families with large mortgages, and ignoring young singles, may well have backfired. If the Rudd Government was really serious about encouraging spending, it should have given $1000 bonuses to young singles, or couples with no kids, to spend on the latest iPhone, coffee machine or a degustation dinner at Tetsuya’s.

Damn right. I could get through a free $1000 in about 45 minutes with a good tailor.

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10 December 2008

Peter Costello, film critic

The Age has staged a real coup in getting Peter Costello to review Australia. It’s an excellent review, and Costello’s an excellent writer …

The key to financial return is the American market. Conventional wisdom says that Americans are mostly interested in their own history and culture. So the movie opens by telling us about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941. Australia is at war and beef producers are competing to supply military contracts. Except by now we are back in 1939. America is not in World War II at this time. Luckily our English rose (Kidman) has been to see The Wizard of Oz. She can therefore sing some of the show tunes and this allows the movie to intersperse (quite humorously) American culture into the outback. America’s influence is right there in the Northern Territory. It’s just like Kansas.

And it’s all a little bit like Crocodile Dundee. But Australia has loftier ambitions. It will tell the story of indigenous Australia through the real star of the film — Nullah — a half-caste Aboriginal boy who the Northern Territory police are conspiring to make part of the stolen generations. Nullah’s mother is drowned and his white father wants to shoot him. I interrupt here to observe that if a child has only one parent who is a (white) homicidal maniac the authorities should be looking to take that child away from that parent — for his own protection. It can hardly be called stealing.

Read the review for yourself. And fingers crossed The Age can convince Costello to broaden his coverage as a critic — I for one would pay good money to read his review of Quantum of Solace.

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9 December 2008

The ABC joins the 'black is white' school of journalism

I wouldn’t normally think that the ABC would go in for the kind of journalism where facts don’t get in the way of a sensational intro. But then I read a story about an increase in elective caesarians, and it’s got me thinking.

It begins:

The number of pregnant women requesting caesareans for psychological or social reasons has increased 50 per cent over the past ten years … Obstetricians say the big increase has a lot to do with vanity.

(My emphasis.)

Then, and this is the killer bit, comes this exchange between reporter and senior obstetrician:

RACHAEL BROWN: Do you hear of many women requesting a caesarian for vanity reasons?
DAVID O’CALLAGHAN: In my experience what people term the concept of being ‘too posh to push’ is exceptionally rare. I’ve only heard a mere handful of women ever ask for that.

Eh? Didn’t the intro say it had a lot to do with vanity? Or was that just a catchy opening line that didn’t necessarily have any relationship to the facts?

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27 November 2008

Note to writers

During this time of global financial crisis and associated fearmongering, I present the following note as a public service to writers everywhere.

If you turn a sinking ship around, it is still sinking.

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13 November 2008

Not exactly a communications specialist

Here’s Kate Morgan, communications adviser to Gov. Sarah Palin, on the Governor’s environmental plans in Alaska:

“Other issues facing the state — what some people consider to be inaccurate — how would I put that — listings of certain Alaskan animals as endangered or what is that second term that they use? They’re at risk? No… That’s not the technical term. Anyway, there’s two listings there specifically dealing with polar bears and there’s also the issue with beluga whales. So there’s different things and the issue there is of course wanting to provide a substantive lifestyle for our first Alaskans here which are the indigenous people and also wanting to protect our environment wanting to be good stewards to that and to take care of the animals that make Alaska. What it is however if they are improperly categorized then that can run snags on other types of development that would benefit not only people of Alaska but the world such as depending on certain kinds of drilling that we do off-shore either or people are in a hurry to list groups of whales as endangered or at risk than that might impede the progress that we’d be making to free or to lighten the the load that America has us obtaining oil from overseas.”

(verbatim transcript via Women on the Web)

Anyone fancy a stint in Alaska? Applicants must be able to construct a clear and concise sentence.

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5 November 2008

Obama's last speech of the campaign

In Virginia, Senator Obama gave his last speech of the 2008 presidential campaign:

Seriously good speechwriting combined with flawless delivery. And that may be partly why he’s now President-elect Obama.

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