I thought there was a thread for the trashy tabloid current affairs shows but while the search function is full of references they pretty much all seem to be
in other threads.
Today Tonight is on the ropes after losing a case in the High Court and being found to have breached the Trade Practices Act.
The facts are pretty amazing. In 2003-2004 TT did a series of programs on an investment scheme called Wildly Wealthy Women, where you paid two women $3,000 and they told you the secrets of how to become millionaires through investing in property. TT claimed that these women made millions of dollars through property investment, one of them owned over 60 properties, and the other had bought over $1mil worth of property using her own money.
Turns out none of that was true. But even more interestingly, TT had entered into a deal with the women, under which WWW asked TT to run a series of 6 programs. The agreement was that TT would run the stories in exchange for "exclusive" rights. The marketer who brokered the deal was going to get a commission for every woman who signed up to the scheme.
And what of the "wildly wealthy women" themselves? Turns out that one of them had assets of less than $65,000 when the first story ran in October 2003, and the second one definitely did not have over 60 properties. The only thing likely to make them wildly wealthy was taking $3,000 a head off people to tell them how to become wildly wealthy.
Okay, Seven didn't actually make any money from the WWW themselves, but they did get the benefit of an exclusivity deal for running what were basically advertisements in the middle of a "current affairs" show. And it appears they made no attempt to verify the claims they were making about these women and how successful they were.
Still, what do you expect from Today Tonight?
The good thing about the decision is that it means TT and ACA are going to have to be much more careful with checking their facts before running these sort of advertorial puff pieces - which they do quite a lot. It really is a shame that these programs which set themselves up on the one hand as "consumer watchdogs" going hammer and tongs after some shonky operators are quite happy to promote the businesses of other shonky operators and give them publicity they don't really deserve, as well as the suggestion of credibility from being endorsed by TT.
Article
High Court judgment
Today Tonight is on the ropes after losing a case in the High Court and being found to have breached the Trade Practices Act.
The facts are pretty amazing. In 2003-2004 TT did a series of programs on an investment scheme called Wildly Wealthy Women, where you paid two women $3,000 and they told you the secrets of how to become millionaires through investing in property. TT claimed that these women made millions of dollars through property investment, one of them owned over 60 properties, and the other had bought over $1mil worth of property using her own money.
Turns out none of that was true. But even more interestingly, TT had entered into a deal with the women, under which WWW asked TT to run a series of 6 programs. The agreement was that TT would run the stories in exchange for "exclusive" rights. The marketer who brokered the deal was going to get a commission for every woman who signed up to the scheme.
And what of the "wildly wealthy women" themselves? Turns out that one of them had assets of less than $65,000 when the first story ran in October 2003, and the second one definitely did not have over 60 properties. The only thing likely to make them wildly wealthy was taking $3,000 a head off people to tell them how to become wildly wealthy.
Okay, Seven didn't actually make any money from the WWW themselves, but they did get the benefit of an exclusivity deal for running what were basically advertisements in the middle of a "current affairs" show. And it appears they made no attempt to verify the claims they were making about these women and how successful they were.
Still, what do you expect from Today Tonight?
The good thing about the decision is that it means TT and ACA are going to have to be much more careful with checking their facts before running these sort of advertorial puff pieces - which they do quite a lot. It really is a shame that these programs which set themselves up on the one hand as "consumer watchdogs" going hammer and tongs after some shonky operators are quite happy to promote the businesses of other shonky operators and give them publicity they don't really deserve, as well as the suggestion of credibility from being endorsed by TT.
Article
High Court judgment
