The Bluths are back in town

The fourth season of Arrested Development aired on Netflix last night, and after a bit of difficulty (being as Netflix is a streaming website only Americans can access) I finally got my hands on a copy of the first episode.

I had watched some interviews with the cast already and had heard that they were doing an interesting setup for each episode – essentially each character will be the focus of each of the fifteen episodes. Some scenes will be repeated as the audience views the same scene from another point of view.

After watching the first episode, I have to say that I do hope when I see this particular episode from other points of view that it looks better.

In this episode, we follow our original main character – Michael Bluth. As an avid AD fan, I have been dreaming of this day for years. But this was not what I was expecting.  The episode dragged on, and missed that spark the first three seasons had.

Michael had always been the centre (and strongest point) of what seemed to be TV’s most dysfunctional family. Watching him disintegrate into loserdom, I feel as if Arrested Development have lost touch with the crux of their cult glory.

Michael was always there to pick up the pieces when his family was so eager to tear everything down in their regular, subtlety hilarious ways. However in the first episode, it is pretty much painful to watch his son – the unfortunately named George Michael – try to ask his own father to move out of living in his college dorm for the whole episode.

In both storyline and in reality, the Bluths are back – and are in the worst shape ever.

One interview in particular (which can be viewed here) was with David Cross and Portia De Rossi. They told us in this interview that the episodes were longer.  I feel that they were trying to warn us.

Previously it was 20 minutes of packed in wit with a dash of dry humour. Instead, the first episode was a dragged-out 32 minutes worth of bland, depressing storyline.

Arrested Development has previously been punchy, clever, witty and full of inside jokes that run throughout the whole program – this was vaguely touched on by rerunning scenes from old episodes as flashbacks.

However, I have heard on the grapevine that you shouldn’t watch one and give up. That they aren’t supposed to be standalone episodes. The more you watch, the more a puzzle forms in front of your eyes. By golly, I hope so. I think the idea behind how the season has been designed, with interlocking story lines effectively looking at the same scenes from different points of view is sheer brilliance. I hope creator and writer Mitchell Hurwitz can pull this off.

The other side of the door.

Subsidiaries of Australian energy company AGL have been fined 1.55 million dollars due to the unethical and illegal practices of their door-to-door salesmen. 

Chairman of the ACCC - Rod Sims - believes these fines send a clear message to the companies that employ these salesmen. He believes the message is now loud and clear that door-to-door sales tactics need to remain clean and honest. He said, "The ACCC will not hesitate to take action to protect consumers in their homes from unscrupulous sales tactics and enforce compliance with the laws".

As a former employee of one of these subsidiary companies, I can tell you this: they don’t give a damn. Unfortunately, these types of companies have little regard for ethics or the law. The more sales they make, the more money they make and the better they look to their parent company.

Where I worked, disregard for clean marketing started from the beginning. Some of the training techniques they taught us were downright unethical, under the proviso of ‘just don’t get caught’. Of course, when somebody did get caught, the company totally washed their hands of them.

The thing was though, our managers were marketing geniuses, They had been wheeling and dealing for years, peddling all kinds of things from vacuum cleaners to solar panels (in Melbourne). They had the capacity to convince you that what you were doing was what the customer needed. They taught you to turn a no into a yes, no matter what.

They were good at it, I’ll give them that. However with such talent comes ethical responsibility, and I think they may have skipped that class.

They target the vulnerable – they considered commission housing to be “prime turf”, and put up ads in backpacker hostels. All their staff were either backpackers or young adults struggling to make ends meet. They knew if they didn’t pay these kids that they couldn’t afford to do anything about it – and so that’s exactly what they did.

The poor got poor and the richer got richer. After I quit in disgust of being paid nothing for six weeks, one of the other employees was digging around in the office looking for a copy of an old commission (that he had never been paid for) and he accidentally came across a document outlining the two million dollars the directors had taken home in the past financial year.

Eventually I came to my senses. I quit and took my case to the ombudsman, who initiated an investigation. The company I worked for told the ombudsman I had been fired (false), I had been charged with fraud due to conduct whilst working for them (false) and even provided a police report number to them for the fraud charge (also false). The police report number was actually that which had belonged to another employee, whose laptop was stolen from their office.  

The company had kept no records of start and finish times (which is illegal) which meant that the ombudsman could not compile enough of a case to take them to court, and recommended taking them to court myself. As someone who was still struggling to earn enough to eat, this was not an option.

My experience is not an isolated one. I have worked for a three of these companies, all marketing different products. I have witnessed manipulation, coercive manipulation of customers and staff, and sly marketing tactics in all of the marketing and sales companies I have worked for.

The ACCC will fine them, and they will stay clean for a few weeks. But it seems door-to-door sales companies will always return to swindling to make a quick, ill earned dollar. If the ACCC wants to ‘protect their consumers in their homes’, then without fundamental attitude change within this industry, we will hear stories of people being cheated in their own homes, over and over again. 

The return of Arrested Development

After a seven year hiatus, everyone’s most loved dysfunctional family The Bluths are back for another season thanks to Netflix. After it was cancelled in 2006, Arrested Development has received a cult-like following which has invoked the most asked question in interviews for the actors involved: When will Arrested Development be back?

Well it is back... tonight 15 episodes were uploaded to American streaming website Netflix as a special extra series. And when I get a spare half an hour, I intend to watch and review. So watch this space. In the meantime, you can view the trailer for season four here.

ETHICS IN JOURNALISM

This week we looked at ethics in journalism. Ethics being a code of principles which govern ones behaviour, they dictate how we should behave and what the ‘right thing to do’ is.  They are linked to our own morality and values and govern (all, not just journalistic) behaviour on theoretical and a practical level.

As journalists we sort through and present information to our society, and we must do so in a passive way that has as little effect on our sources as possible.  In relation to journalism, there are several bodies that examine ethics in relation to journalism. They are as follows:

MEAA (Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance)

AJA (Australian Journalists Association):

APC (Australian Press Council)

ACMA (Australian Communications and Media Authority)

ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Workplace codes of practice and conducts

The Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA) is one of the aforementioned acting Australian bodies that have a set standard for ethics in journalism. On their website, they have (what I thought to be) a very interesting and accurate description of what a journalist is and why we need ethical codes and practises.

“Respect for truth and the public's right to information are fundamental principles of journalism. Journalists describe society to itself. They convey information, ideas and opinions, a privileged role. They search, disclose, record, question, entertain, suggest and remember. They inform citizens and animate democracy. They give a practical form to freedom of expression. Many journalists work in private enterprise, but all have these public responsibilities. They scrutinise power, but also exercise it, and should be accountable. Accountability engenders trust. Without trust, journalists do not fulfil their public responsibilities.”

The MEAA principles outline that journalists should behave with:

Honesty

Fairness

Independence

Respect.

A full list of the MEAA Code of Ethics can be viewed here.

Some common problems in journalism is confidentiality, privacy, stereotyping and misconstruing information. As journalists we are self-regulated when it comes to ethics (the aforementioned bodies recommend but there is no law behind their codes) so we need to ensure we always act with the highest of integrity and respect for the rights of others.

War Reporting - A Grave Reality

This week we looked at war and crisis reporting. Obviously, war stricken places need reporters to tell the rest of the world what is going on. But as a journalist, it can be a dangerous part of our job description.

Marie (our lecturer) stressed right from the start – you do not have to do any job you don’t wish to do. Don’t let any future editors pressure you into doing something you are uncomfortable with, like reporting in a warzone.  You have to be made of strong stuff to be able to withstand the conditions, and if you think you aren’t (or don’t want to find out) then don’t go.

Nobody is ever 100% in a war zone, including journalists. Even though killing a journalist is considered a war crime by international law, in war zones there can be a loss of respect for all laws, so even then nobody is 100% safe. 

As a journalist one must be aware of the inherent risks involved in war reporting, and should be prepared for the experiences and risks it entails.

The risks for journalists, photographers, and anyone reporting in a warzone is real, if you do choose to take such an assignments, certain precautions should be made by ones management:

PREPERATIONS YOUR EDITIOR SHOULD TAKE:

It is sensible for editors to choose the most emotionally mature reporters to report in war zones, as often these reporters are moving from one traumatic scene to the next without any time to process what they have witnessed.  Before a journalist goes to a warzone, they need to be aware of the possible psychological implications the experience may have. When they return home, they need to be aware of their psychological state.

Editors should ensure their staff entering a warzone would have the adequate safety equipment when they arrive, as well as organise any guides or translators beforehand. The war journalist should also be covered by insurance in case of any illness, loss of life or disability due to their placement in the warzone for coverage. 

It is encouraged for press to wear white, as it is the recognised colour of peace.  The journalist themselves should make themselves familiar with the local customers and culture, as that may come in handy in a risky situation.

Other traumatic events that may be covered in the career of a journalist is disasters, severe accidents, health outbreaks and so on. Editors should always be aware of their journalists’ mental frame of mind, and be careful not to push them past their limits – it is within the nature of this career to be constantly on the move to the next big event, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we are dealing with the mental implications of the previous story we reported on.

Finally, here is an interesting interview with war photographer and journalist Chris Hondras leaves us with the chilling reality of reporting in a war zone – Chris Hondras was killed reporting in Lybia in 2011. The interview is titled ‘the reality of war reporting’, and Chris Hondras discusses the importance of war reporting – the dangers of it, working as a journalist and his own personal journey with reporting in warzones.

He states in the interview that “It's not really up to me to philosophize about how I wish the conditions on the ground were for journalists.
To me, the most important thing is figuring out a way to cover it, which is what war journalists do all over the world."

He is probably most well known for his photo that he took in 2011, of a five year old Iraqi girl after American troops mistakenly gunned down her parents at a checkpoint in Tel-Afar, Iraq.