Historic News Events

Discussion of historic news events and how they were covered in Australia.

Major events may be broken out into a separate thread - if you have a compelling reason for wanting to create one, please PM a staff member.

No disaster porn, cheers.

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This was a massive story back towards the end of 2005 when a 25-year-old Vietnamese Australian man was executed in Singapore for smuggling nearly 400 grams (was it?) of heroin into the country whilst awaiting a flight back to Melbourne, Australia.

My recollection from that morning was that Chris Reason and Adrian Brown were in Singapore in the lead-up to the execution, and that the former (as well as Nick Etchells from Melbourne) was reporting into Sunrise when the deed was carried out.

Seven’s morning news was presented by Jennifer Keyte from Melbourne, while Seven News Sydney that evening was presented by Ian Ross, who started the bulletin along the lines of “Singapore government have been condemned for the execution of Vietnamese Australian Van Nguyen”.

Obviously with this news event being from a very long time ago (13.5 years ago) it was very difficult trying to find any news coverage. The best I could get was this National Nine News Melbourne opener from November 24, 2005, eight days before the execution:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6Xgojr5E1M

Perhaps @anthony78977 might have some footage from around this time? Apologies in advance.

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Next April will mark a decade since the biggest scandal in Australian sporting history - the Melbourne Storm salary cap scandal.

I remember watching Nine News Sydney that evening and they had reporters from the likes of outside NRL Headquarters, Melbourne and even Parramatta, whose team the Eels had been beaten by the Storm in the previous year’s Grand Final.

This is Nine News Queensland’s coverage of the scandal:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFFoQqg1YlM

There was a video on YouTube of how Nine News Melbourne covered it, but it has since disappeared.

@anthony78977 would you have any coverage of this news event anywhere? Would be interesting to see how Seven News and Ten News in Melbourne covered it.

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Don’t have Ten News on that day unfortunately!

Looking back, didn’t realise it was such a large event (probably cause I don’t follow NRL).

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30 years today since the release of the Fitzgerald Inquiry Report provides an opportunity to compare current affairs coverage on the networks at that time.

From that night

7.30 Report with Quentin Demster
ACA with Jana Wendt from Brisbane
Hinch also from Brisbane (with a trademark attack on ACA for paying for an interview)
Plus TVQ also ran a special report covering the release.

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Very long time ago? Strewth way to make a guy feel old!

I clearly remember the day this happened and the news a few weeks later when Constable Taylor died from her injuries.

Credit: Oldnewsaus

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5 years

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Today marks a decade since Sydney woke up to the horrific news that the Lin family had been murdered. This came eight years and eight days to the day since Sef Gonzales murdered his entire family nearby, and as a result was given multiple life sentences.

Would anyone have any coverage of the Lin family murder? All I recall was that a ticker appeared on the bottom of the screen as I was watching an AFL game between Carlton and the Sydney Swans on Channel Ten (it was actually a Fox game) saying there had been a horror murder.

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Special edition of 7News Perth on MH17

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Media Watch roundup of the Port Arthur massacre.

Pro tip - don’t read the comments. They basically all claim the usual false flag/Martin Bryant is innocent conspiratard nonsense.

The high view count (at least for Media Watch videos from the Littlemore era) is likely a result of this being linked to various nutjob forums.

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Channel Nine Coverage of the War on Iraq in 2003:

Promo:

Updates:

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Interesting finds.

CNN

High view count?
Conspiracy postings?
What are you talking about? From your description, I was expecting 5m views, not 15,000. And I saw only a handful of conspiracy posts.

By the way, Littlemore’s criticism of the coverage is so juvenile and laughable. He criticizes Ten for using a “sports reporter” to do a report. What an elitist wanker. Is that really the best you can come up with? Bill Woods was a better and harder-working journalist than you ever were. Also, he goes on and on and on and on about what he calls their coverage of “records”. Um, hardly, look at it yourself - it’s called giving context.

22 years ago today since Princess Diana passed away.

This is how Channel Nine covered her death on this day in 1997. They were the first to report that she had died.

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7 interrupted an AFL match to cover the death of Diana

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Nine and Ten’s coverage of the 9/11 attacks aired during Nightline and Ten late news. NBN News had a simulcast of ABC America’s coverage before switching to national coverage at 1am AEST.

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ABC News commemorating tomorrow’s 20th anniversary of the East Timor intervention…

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12 October 2002 - Bali was hit by a terror bombing, killing 202 people. Out of 202 people, 88 were Australians.

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