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Socceroo Tim Cahill leaps - AAP Image/Dave Hunt
The whole Tim Cahill saga was an interesting sideshow to the end of Australia’s World Cup qualifying campaign for the 2010 World Cup. With a spot in South Africa virtually assured months ago, the final two matches lacked the drama of previous campaigns.
Thus a distraction filled the void.
In the first place, I didn’t think the story was a big deal in any way, shape or form. I read it and couldn’t have cared less.
From there the story was refuted, the paper dug in its heels and quoted a nameless source. Alan Jones weighed in, Cahill snubbed the post-match interview, and then a mystery email emerged.
I was not sure what to expect next, but I’m open for anything – even Bruno or Susan Boyle.
This whole exercise didn’t provide us with anything but an interesting case study of the media and how it operates in the 21st century.
Despite rumours of their demise, media organizations are still incredibly powerful entities.
They have the power to make or break people and they do so every day as a matter of routine. Their interpretations of an event and the way they report it affects people’s lives because at the end of the day, perception is as strong as reality, if not stronger.
A media organization will always claim that it is acting on behalf of the readers, viewers, or listeners, but at times there can come a point in the story when it is acting more in its own interests.
This is when things can get very tricky because hell really doesn’t know fury like a scorned media organization that has let itself off the leash.
It will take off the gloves and dig up your past or even run with something it said it previously wouldn’t.
Mind you, this is all in the name of the story.
It can harass and threaten or use a number of other means to make your life uncomfortable. Being followed by the paparazzi is just the icing on a very rancid tasting cake.
All of it in the pursuit of a big story – the huge headlines tomorrow.
Three-four weeks from tomorrow, people will only have a vague recollection of it. It will be all a haze and blur as newer stories have replaced it and hog the headlines and the airwaves.
If it’s not Gordon Ramsay or the latest Kevin Rudd gaffe, it will be the Chk Chk Boom girl.
Come back Matty Johns. I miss you!
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