A Current Affair rejects Malaysian journalists suggestions its report was ‘bad journalism’
The executive producer of Channel Nine’s A Current Affair has rejected suggestions by Malaysian journalists its report featuring two teenage girls who raised questions about the cockpit behaviour of two Malaysia Airlines pilots, one of whom was on board the missing MH370 flight, was hearsay and “bad journalism”.
In the report, two Australian girls described spending some time in the cockpit with the pilots some weeks ago as “a bit sleazy” and said that the two men -one of whom was allegedly First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid, who was on board MH370 – were smoking during the flight.
Yesterday Mumbrella Asia reported on comments made to a Malaysian online site with one describing the report as “hearsay” and another adding saying: “It made me cringe to see the way the girls told their story. It is bad journalism, but then again Australian media is known for such behaviour.”
As a keen aviation person -never the less it was a grubby piece of typical tabloid fodder from an already disreputable program;
it cared not at all for the pilot’s family;
on the basis of an CNN report on the same pilot, he was a competent pilot who sat aside a very experienced B777 captain on MH370
Of course it was grubby. At the moment there is zero evidence that this tragedy is due to a fault of the pilots. This segment clearly implied such, and is certainly grubby, given the bloke is not able to defend himself. As Alpal said, it gives no though to the pilot’s family, given they have almost certainly lost a family member.
[Moderated by Mumbrella for legal reasons]
It would be more of a news story if A Current Affair had been accused of GOOD journalism.