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Sun 7 May, 2006 01:44 am
Really, I can't believe it. Love him or hate him, he sure knew how to ask a tough question.
I am in shock.
Journalist Richard Carleton dies
Prominent Australian journalist Richard Carleton has died of a heart attack.
The channel Nine reporter was working in Beaconsfield covering the story of the rockfall which has trapped two miners.
He collapsed during a live press conference this afternoon with the mine manager in the small northern Tasmanian mining town.
Shortly before his collapse Carleton asked mine manager Matthew Gill: "On the 26th of October last year, not 10 metres from where these men are now entombed you had a 400 tonne rock fall. What is the strength of the seam or the wealth of the seam that you continue to send men into work in such a dangerous environment?"
Paramedics at the scene attempted to revive him.
A media manager at the site, Shaun Rigby, has described what happened.
"Richard threw a question in the middle of the presser," he said.
"[A colleague] and I - because we're here managing the media - basically just watched him to see where he was going to go because he asked the question and went away.
"I saw him and I said "He's down" and we rushed over there pretty much straight away and from then everyone saw what happened.
"The most important thing is the family for me right now because there are 200 media [people] and they've seen the whole thing. I just hope that everyone shows a bit of respect tonight."
Tributes
The Prime Minister has extended his deepest sympathies to his family and colleagues.
A spokesman for John Howard says the Prime Minister knew Carleton well and is shocked and saddened by the death of of the veteran journalist who Mr Howard described as a great television personality.
Journalist John Mangos told Sky TV it is a sad loss.
"He asked the question you were thinking but might be afraid to ask."
Channel Nine colleague Peter Harvey also told Sky TV he will be sorely missed.
"Whatever Richard was he was not a shade of grey, he was a primary colour," he said.
Carleton was born in Bowral in New South Wales in 1943.
He spent 25 years at the ABC working on such programs as This Day Tonight and State of the Nation and joined Channel Nine's 60 Minutes in 1987.
Carelton also worked for the BBC in London for two years.
He had a history of heart disease.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200605/s1632484.htm
The eulogies have been guarded at best. Apparently the journalism profession thought as little of him personally as I thought of him professionally.
I thought Ray Martin's semi impromptu piece at the Logies (Martin worked with him on 60 Minutes) was barely diplomatic.
Yeah?
I think he could be an insufferable prick, but I also thought he could be brilliant.
Here's what Crikey thought:
Richard Carleton's death highlights how much television current affairs has declined since the height of his career. Can anyone imagine a television current events program today including Carleton's famous “blood on your hands” question to Bob Hawke? These days, even extended interviews are tired cat-and-mouse games, all polish and world-weary evasion. Carleton had an ego, but he wasn't preoccupied with being nice. Nor did he have to field constant accusations of bias, nor minute by minute analysis of ratings figures.
These days politics is hardly ever covered on commercial current events programs, which spend their time exploring trivial diet stories, health scares and chequebook journalism. Ironically, though, going downmarket hasn't worked and viewer numbers for commercial current affairs are in long term decline. Surely we're overdue for a reinvention of the format.
Of all the practitioners of the art of TV current affairs, Carleton as a young man was one of those who showed how it could be done. He came to prominence in the 1960s and 70s on the ABC's This Day Tonight. TDT was a breath of fresh air – raw, irreverent and often funny – and at its peak was watched by 1.8 million Australians a night. To put this in perspective, the population has grown by more than six million since then, but A Current Affair and Today Tonight struggle to attract 1.5 million viewers.
The program on which Carleton ended his career, 60 Minutes, began in 1979 with pathetic ratings, but was allowed to hang in, bloom and grow. With its big budget, its road-tested American format and its star reporters, 60 Minutes led a revival through the early 1980s to the point where news and current affairs were reliable ratings winners. And 60 Minutes still tackles serious topics in an accessible way (as well as plenty of trivia as well) and gets around 1.6 million viewers on a Sunday night – beating Big Brother eviction programs by only a whisker.
Richard Carleton was one of the most talented television current affairs reporters of his times. Right up until the moment of his death he was asking the questions that encapsulated what everyone was thinking and nobody would say. And while his last years were not his best ones, if Carleton was born again today with the creativity he had as a young man he would surely not enter the tired and stale world of television current affairs. Or at least not without wanting to shake it up.
My opinion of Carleton are coloured by a 60 minutes story he did on Canberra.
Canberra is big on recycling - they have this thing called 'Revolve' where you can drop off and pick up discarded white goods, building materials, toys, anything (as opposed to shoving it in landfill).
The local authority advertised a 'curb side pick up' for Revolve. Carleton turns up in Embassy row (where all the foreign diplomats live) walks down the mansion-lined street, claiming it's a typical street in Canberra, pointing at the perfectly good refrigerators on the curb, saying Canberrans sponge so much of the rest of Australia that they can afford to throw working fridges out.
That complete misrepresentation to appeal to the preconceptions of those only too willing to have their biases confirmed on a show touted to be Australia's premier current affairs vehicle lost me any respect I had for the 'blood on your hands' question. He sold his soul to 9 to soothe his ego. It wasn't important. It wasn't truth. It wasn't even news. GIVE ME PILGER!!!!
hingehead wrote:My opinion of Carleton are coloured by a 60 minutes story he did on Canberra.
Canberra is big on recycling - they have this thing called 'Revolve' where you can drop off and pick up discarded white goods, building materials, toys, anything (as opposed to shoving it in landfill).
The local authority advertised a 'curb side pick up' for Revolve. Carleton turns up in Embassy row (where all the foreign diplomats live) walks down the mansion-lined street, claiming it's a typical street in Canberra, pointing at the perfectly good refrigerators on the curb, saying Canberrans sponge so much of the rest of Australia that they can afford to throw working fridges out.
That complete misrepresentation to appeal to the preconceptions of those only too willing to have their biases confirmed on a show touted to be Australia's premier current affairs vehicle lost me any respect I had for the 'blood on your hands' question. He sold his soul to 9 to soothe his ego. It wasn't important. It wasn't truth. It wasn't even news. GIVE ME PILGER!!!!
Can't cavil at that.
That canberra thing sure was sleazy.
Blood on your hands lives though, doesn't it?
Sigh.
What Labor has to do to get office.....
Sigh...
Did you see Paul Keating on 7.30 report last night?
Sigh.
What a twat John Howard is, and how stupid the ALP has been by not attacking him and how they blew the last election. He was in good form (except when he said 2.5 + 3.5 = 5).
He reiterated that the Libs benefited greatly from the reforms the ALP put in place, and that effectively they'be been asleep at the wheel since 96 - and that the govt deficit that Costello has finally paid off was a furphy (govt's run debts regularly in bad times - their economic multiplier effect was something I learnt in high school economics) and the that real problem is the current account deficit - particularly as it's happening when commodity prices are so high.
He bemoaned capital gains tax being 24% when income tax is at 43% - there both income, raise the former drop the latter...
He was pretty good - none of the prevaricating that's become the norm because pollies don't want to express opinions that might come back to haunt them.
Where's a defibrillator salesman when you need one?
I just found Alan Ramsey's fond piece on the SMH site:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/oh-how-he-loved-to-reel-them-in/2006/05/12/1146940738058.html
Quote:And then he joined the Nine network.
He'd have done so years earlier had it been possible. It wasn't. But when Alan Bond seduced Kerry Packer with $1 billion for his Sydney/Melbourne network in January 1987, the door opened for Carleton. Nine announced in August that year his decision to join the network (I'd argued he was selling himself short and was in Dublin when he sent me a telegram that said simply, "Tick, tick, tick").
In November, Nine announced he was replacing Jana Wendt at 60 Minutes, where his log-cabin mate from earlier years, Stone, was executive producer. Wendt went to A Current Affair.
And that was that. Carleton had quit journalism for the money and celebrity of Nine's entertainment machine. We all make our choices. Nineteen years later and 60 Minutes's titillation formula, a straight pinch from its American parent, still rates strongly.
Nice to have your uncharitable opinions confirmed....
Some of the crap circling in the media now is enough to make you sick. As seems to be the trend in Australia these days, when someone famous dies, they suddenly become a saint.
The Kerry Packer wankfest adds weight to your claim Wilso.
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