KEVIN HUME Consultancy

'I worked at 2UE for a number of years and was required to do Open Line programs. I too had any number of callers ringing in to express their disapproval of Vietnamese migrants, their detestation of Cambodians at Cabramatta, their hostility to homosexuals around Oxford Street. But I discovered a fascinating thing. That you could not judge the depth of the opinion by the intensity of its expression. Indeed...the more passionately someone stated a view, the more superficially they held it...It was almost as if they were ringing up to rehearse ideas, or to gain an announcer's approval. And it made me realise what many studies have shown: that whilst there are some people who are implacably prejudiced in this country, just as there are others who are determinedly progressive, the mass of Australians are somewhere in between, neither one thing nor the other. And here lies an opportunity and a danger.' Phillip Adams 'The Role of the Media' reported in Without Prejudice (as above).

'Studies indicate 80 to 90% of viewers can't remember what they saw on the news the previous night.' Reporter Helen O'Neill quoting Associate Professor Phillip Bell, Department of Mass Communications at Macquarie University in The Sydney Morning Herald's Pink Guide 16 - 22 July 1993.

'Talk radio can now deliver casual round-the-clock slander with impunity since, for one thing, there is not much public support for aggressive reporting anymore. For years, there has been an effective campaign by political conservatives to depict the press as a false messenger spreading negativity and poisoning minds with leftist bias. Political "hosts" on round-the-clock news stations repeat the message tirelessly. Through the conservative right's vast talk-radio amplifier, journalists who challenged the (Bush White House) "script" were accused of bias, unpatriotic motives, and even treasonous intent.' Russell Baker in 'Goodbye to Newspapers?' in The New York Review of Books August 16th 2007