• Melissa Sweet

04 March 2009Is the media stopping us from seeing the real problems and doing something about them, asks Melissa Sweet

SIMON HOLDING doesn’t look much like a couch potato. He’s tall and has the broad shoulders of someone sporty. But if you met him at a party he’d probably tell you that he watches television for a living. Or, as he sometimes puts it, he’s a “broadcast media observation engineer.” Actually, he spends his days in an office at the University of Sydney, methodically categorising the health-related stories appearing on Sydney’s five free-to-air television stations. He watches the news and current affairs programs, as well as a selection of other shows with a health element, from Biggest Loser to RPA. Since starting the job in May 2005, he’s digitally clipped about 17,000 stories and coded them into twenty-one main categories - such as health services or cancer - and about 250 sub-categories... Read the full article on our partner website, Inside Story >

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