Channels Seven and Nine (Australia) think deaf people should drown.

[sami]

Recently, Australia has been hit by some severe natural disasters; in particular, Queensland was hit first by flooding, and then by the worst cyclone since at least the '70s. Cyclone Yasi was, in terms of the raw power of the storm, a more severe storm than Hurricane Katrina.

Accordingly, there were a lot of evacuations and preparations to try and minimise the death toll. The Queensland Premier was frequently on television giving updates to vital information about evacuation centres, risk levels, safety warning, etc.

In order to disseminate information effectively, she appeared with a sign language interpreter at her side.

However, as documented by Media Watch, our major networks decided that it would be more important to show more footage of the floods and storm, or just to zoom in for a tight closeup of Anna Bligh, cutting the interpreter out of the shot.

Channel 7's excuse? "For technical reasons we were unable to show you the person signing that media conference and we do apologise for that."

Stupid and craven.

Comments

[lilacsigil]

An unsurprised BOOOOOO! to Channels 7 and 9, but good on Anna Bligh for taking an interpreter - they were really determined to get everyone to safety, and it seems to have worked. I also appreciated the warnings that reminded people to check on neighbours who were recent immigrants, elderly, disabled or non-English speakers.

[sami]

Yeah, it made me sort of proud of my country to see the shots of the evac centres, where the prevailing mood of the evacuees appeared to be "boredom".

Although obviously this means we don't get to make snarky comments about Queenslanders for the foreseeable future, on the bright side that dude bitching about how people from Sydney should be exempt from paying for government rescue efforts because it's more expensive to live there reinforces our prejudices about Sydney, so we have them to mock.

[willow]

I laugh bitterly at the excuse 'There were difficulties getting the camera man to know to include the signer' - because that reflects a problem in camera operator training and media staff awareness and responsibility towards inclusiveness. And it is STILL A CRANIAL ISSUE.

There's someone doing sign language and the CAMERA OPERATOR gets to decide the signer is unimportant unless some PR or other executive staff person tells them the signer SHOULD be included?

Really?

[sami]

The cameraman deserves about 40% of the blame, probably, and the rest to the director, who should have yelled at him to stop that immediately. Unless the director told him to zoom in on Bligh, in which case the director not only needs to be fired, but he needs never to work in television again.

The really awful thing is that this isn't your normal case of being stupid about inclusiveness. It's not, like, a variety program they were dealing with. It was vital information about a situation of extreme peril to many thousands of people. The Premier's office had thought about this, and recognised the importance.

The press conference opened: "Clearly we want to make sure that everybody is getting the best information as quickly and as efficiently as possible so we thank our signer. Well good evening ladies and gentlemen..."

SHE OPENED WITH ACKNOWLEDGING THE SIGNER. The first words she spoke were acknowledging that the signer was an important contributor to their efforts at disseminating information and thanking her for being there.

:angry flailing: goes here.

(But credit to Bligh and the Premier's office, mind you, for having made sure of finding an AUSLAN interpreter in the midst of the chaos that was going on at the time.)

[willow]

Oh yeah, I totally get that. That it wasn't precisely a normal thing for her to appear with a signer and even so SHE MADE A NOTE OF IT. But the ablism was still so strong, that the camera persons thought nothing of excluding an individual signaled out as IMPORTANT.

And Camera People don't work alone these days, there's at least a tech with them, and there likely was a reporter there to ask questions.

[sami]

My point with noting the signer was more that that should surely have counted as an explicit message to the broadcasters that the signer's presence was important.

Regarding the normality of appearing with a signer - it's not really normal at all for a state premier to be making press conference statements like that. I have no idea if Anna Bligh would normally bring one; in general, if a press statement isn't urgent, it's fairly customary just to issue them in writing anyway.

Taking to television for extended public statements just isn't really how Australian government disseminates information. This was unusual, and the context was of an unprecedented crisis in public safety, so it was a case where it was a matter of urgency that the information get out as far and wide and as effectively as possible.

The Queensland government apparently put at least half a second's thought into what was necessary for getting the information out. The TV networks apparently didn't...

[apatheia_jane]

Even abc24 was a little slow on that - early on in the flood reporting, you could see that there was an extra person moving her arms around just off camera, and that was about it.

[sami]

Yeah, ABC News24 got a mention in the Media Watch report too. One of the things that's great about Media Watch is they don't exempt the ABC from criticism.

[niqaeli]

It's pretty difficult, without speaking to the technicians and/or the director, to determine whether a camera shot's zoom/angle was a decision made on the tech side or the director's side. But given that, from your description, they were also cutting to footage of the floods and storm, there was inarguable directorial ablism at work.

If the zoom did come down as an order from on high, the camera operator(s) might've been in deep shit for not following the director's orders. And while it is certainly true that in such circumstances telling the director to fuck off would be the moral thing to do, it might not be the job-preserving thing to do. But you can't actually tell whose decision it was without talking to the people involved. (And I somehow wouldn't be inclined to trust the word of the directorial staff on its lone strength, given the mealy-mouthed blaming of technical issues.)

If it was on the tech side, if the camera operators were truly unable to comprehend that the signer needed to be included in the shots and could not follow the instructions they should have been being given on the fly to bloody include the signer, then the camera operators need to be fired for absolute gross incompetence. I've run a camera for a TV station, on a live broadcast no less; I'd a headset on at all times communicating with the van where they were doing the editing. And while I did have a fair bit of discretion in zoom and angle, I also promptly responded to the director's requests for a particular shot. And if I hadn't, I'd have been thrown out. I was a volunteer, for an incredibly small American town's PBS station so, I'm pretty sure that the training I got and the my performance is nothing on what an operator for one of a major city's primary broadcast networks ought to have.

Ugh. That's some utterly appalling institutional ablism, no matter how you parse it. Especially when the address opened acknowledging the signer and the importance of the signer.

And attempting to shed responsibility for their editorial/directorial choices is just absolutely contemptible.

[apatheia_jane]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4aCPoY143k

Victorian Council of Deaf People response to the recent criticism in the media on the use of an Auslan Interpreter by Anna Bligh in the announcements related to the QLD floods and cyclones.

I can't believe that people would bitch about "squeaky wheels", or mocking the facial expressions and calling it distracting to have to watch in the midst of an emergency. Exactly - emergency! One that deaf people need to be informed about too!

[ironed_orchid]

Thanks for linkiing to that video.

[jadelennox]

I love how one of the commenters hits bingo with So the other 4,515,361 need their viewing experienced diminished for the sake of 1000, of which probably only 10% lived in flood effected areas.Sounds like a case of the squeaky wheel wanting oil !

"Need their viewing experience diminished"? Really? This is not an episode of Pop Idol, it's an emergency information broadcast. Your viewing experience of an emergency information broadcast is not diminished by not being able to see footage of rising floodwaters you've already seen.

Also, in fact, yes, you should oil squeaky wheels. That the stupid metaphor.

Also, how much do I wish that we had ASL interpreters at US important events. :-(

[kaz]

...that quote.

By their own maths, it's apparently fine if up to 100 deaf people die because they couldn't access the emergency information. So that our commentator can find the emergency broadcast entertaining.

I don't even...

[pauamma]

"Dear @stupid_networks:

For the next of 2011, I will be accompanied by a sign language interpreter for all my interviews, press conferences, and public appearances. You will only film the interpreter, not me, and you will not record sound for any of this. Any slip, no matter how short, no matter what justification you claim or think you may have, and you will be permanently banned from same."

[liss]

I actually twittered channel seven about this. Their response was that there was a technical failure with the cameraperson's earpiece, so of course they couldn't figure out to include the signer in the broadcast.