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

[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.