Documentaries

Good evening and welcome to media watch. I’m Eli Brown and tonight we are discussing The Candidate an Australian story. In the 2007 Federal election Nicole Cornes was put under the spot light when she decided to run for Labor in the Boothby electorate. She was ridiculed by the media and made out to be down right stupid and a joke. The ABC’s Australian story reveals how Nicole Cornes was used as a ‘punching bag’ for the media in which the ABC tries to obtain sympathy from the audience. This documentary, through its representation of Nicole Cornes, as being a hardworking, law student who loves her family, invites the audience to feel sympathy and compassion for what she underwent. This representation of Cornes as a hard working, family person is made clear from the very beginning. The first image is of Nicole Cornes and her uncle herding cattle on his cattle station. The land looks dry and this is designed to show the hard work that she and her family have done over the years and how they have had to work together to overcome obstacles. In addition Caroline Jones introduces Cornes with such words as a “conspicuous … object of national ridicule” who has been through a “harrowing saga” and “very public humiliation”. These emotive words have been included to position you, the audience, to feel sorry for her. The program continues his representation of Cornes through a variety of methods. The constant images of her family and her working hard is showing that she doesn’t deserve what she got because she is just like you and me the producers also have made the reporters look shady and evil by showing them in black and white. The media have “crucified” Nicole through there representation … they have portrait her as the dumb blond “the girl next door”