60 Minutes Essay

An ill judged segment of an episode of Channel Nine’s weekly show – 60 Minutes – caused a story that was supposed to focus on the heartwarming journey of recent quadriplegic Alex McKinnon into a character defamation of Cameron Smith. Early in 2014, McKinnon was playing in the National Rugby League competition for the Newcastle Knights against the Melbourne Storm, and was faced with life in a wheelchair after fracturing his C4 and C5 vertebrae. It took eight minutes for McKinnon to be stretchered off the field, before Smith – the opposition captain – is seen consulting the referee about the incident, and questioned whether a penalty should have been awarded. Fast track 14 months, and 60 Minutes dedicated the entire program to the journey of

Is he f---ing serious? Wouldn't you just shut up? It's f---ing ridiculous," said McKinnon. He then went on to claim Smith had never reached out after the incident, before Hayes asked McKinnon’s father if he could ever forgive Smith, provoking him into an angry response, and admitting what he did was “unforgivable.” I chose this case study, as the story instantly turned into an attack on Smith – defaming his character. What made it worse, was that Smith was not offered a right of reply until an entire day after the show was aired, possibly because of the money and ratings they would generate with a separate response interview from him. A large factor for choosing this story is the fact checking that 60 Minutes failed to do before blatantly defaming Smith. 60 Minutes failed to explain that there were four lifting incidents earlier in the game that went un-noticed by the referees, and that Smith was questioning why they were not penalised. They also failed to point out that Smith did not say a word to the referee for the full eight minutes that McKinnon was being assisted off the field, that Smith was one of the two people that spearheaded of the RISE FOR ALEX foundation, and that Smith wore McKinnon’s jersey number out of respect in the RISE FOR ALEX round