Frontline :: essays research papers

â€Å"Frontline† exposure of current affairs programs makes a mockery of journalistic integrity. Through humorous portrayals of important issues, and clever imitation â€Å"Frontline† makes veiwers aware of ridicule towards journalistic integrity. While current affairs programs are based on real life stories, which are enhanced to ‘make good news’, Frontline is based on the making of these stories. Frontlines purpose is to inform the audience of the life behind a current affair program but more importantly its main focus is on entertaining the audience. This is achieved in many ways, primarily by bending real life situations out of contempt to journalists uprightness. Current affair programs do not take stories as they are and simply present them with the facts, they are sensationalised and enhanced to bring more entertainment value to them, however this is not widely known throughout the general public. Furthermore it’s exactly what Frontline did with â€Å"The Siege† and â€Å"Dessert Angel† when it complemented certain factors of the story to make them sound more entertaining than the boring facts. By ‘enhancing’ the facts and manipulating the truth it made the stories more presentable to the audience as a form of entertainment and mockery in regards to journalists. This was spoken about in the â€Å"Dessert Angel† episode when Marty shows Stu how anyone can be turned into ‘good media fodder’ Frontline is aimed at being a comedy program and therefore has a main purpose of comedy and entertainment rather than informing. Most nightly current affair programs struggle to get articles for each night. Most with three or four articles a night have a very tight and limited time schedule to prepare each night. Therefore with such a limited time they are unable to really concentrate on the serious analysis of some current affairs programs. ‘Frontline’ exaggerates and exposes this concept in the episode ‘Desert Angel’, where ‘Frontlines’ integrity is taunted as it secures an exclusive with Australian aid worker Jessica Steckle, whom a week before was given a funeral by the team at Frontline with Mike providing the eulogy. The issue is made humorous with the bidding war scene directly following Mike’s adamant speech that the team at ‘Frontline’ do have ethics and integrity. Whilst the episode maintains its criticism of current affairs programs and journalists by indicating that ‘bidding wars’ and ‘chequebook journalism’ are ri fe though-out such programs. In ‘The Siege’, ‘Frontline’ again tackles an exceptionally topical issue, and interspersing ironic humour to signify their criticisms.