Source: "WHO" 5th January 1998
"You mean I’m the media expert? What about Lachlan and Jamie ?" asks Paul McDermott, the irreverent host of the ABC’s media quiz show, Good News Week. But former Doug Anthony Allstars comedian warms to his task with amused gusto, predicting that all post-millennial media will turn tabloid. For example, he says, it’s quite likely that even The Sydney Morning Herald will have a page-three model. But why stop at breasts? "Breasts? Why don’t they have genitals !! And surely, in this day and age, they could have a male starkers."
McDermott, 35, believes media standards will also regress. Even now, the Sydneysider says that "there are so many arms of the media; from popular magazines, to sport papers, there’s political journals, radio, television news and documentaries. It’s such a generalisation to talk of the media in one broad sense. But ... yeah, it sucks."
McDermott argues that television is one of the more insidious news mediums. If a newsreader appears "credible and honest and is obviously not a woman or gay and they don’t appear to have and problems or hang-ups and are a white middle-aged male, they are going to be believed."
McDermott sees a time when we’ll get all our information from computers ---- "beige-coloured boxes" ---- a development he would lament. "It’s not a very romantic notion," he says, momentarily serious. "There’s something about getting black ink on your hands."