Independent Media

Variety Garage

Variety garage is an independent channel owned by a team of graduate filmmakers and young up-and-comers seeking to take over the world with irreverent wit, youthful quirkiness, and a passion for all things media. They showed the reason as to why Campbell resigned to be because he was busy being sexually involved with other men. They linked a news piece segment on his resignation with the picture of stranded motorists on F3 north of Sydney a few months back.

This was posted on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXWF5i_3AXM

The People talk

Crickey is an independent newspaper that targets to inform readers about politics, media, business, arts, sports and other aspects of public life in Australia. Crikey aims to be fair and open in its journalism. It is provides news, analysis, insider gossip, reviews and prescient tips about politics, media, business, the law, culture and national and international affairs. It is not part of a media empire. (Crickey website http://www.crikey.com.au/about/)

On the David Campbell Saga, the opinions that were posted on this site were majorly negative towards the invasion of privacy that channel seven exposed and one commenter Niall Clugston went as far as deciding to vote for the NSW government “I wasn’t intending to vote Labor, but now I’m inclined to, as a token resistance against this offensive nonsense.”

Link to discussion: http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/05/24/the-david-campbell-saga

Independent media has shown similar characteristics and the role of gossip across their news. The general public has been able to discuss on Mr. Campbell’s life having some supporting that this news was in the public interest and some disagreeing believing that it was private.
A major characteristic I noted was the way the gossip informally controlled behaviour in the society. Most news items and comments from the general public acknowledged that the content was private and not in public interest and rebuked the media’s interference in public official lives. This pressure on the media, specifically Channel Seven led them to have justify why they ran the story to the public. The gossip has hence contributed to maintaining the general public’s value for privacy against the media.