Media manners. . .

Caroline Wilson figures in two incidents this week which have raised my ire. Unusually for Ms Wilson, she's not the provocateur in either.

The other night, somewhat at a loss for something to watch (having Foxtel Platinum doesn't guarantee watchable programming!), I tuned into Footy Confidential (sorry, should be Classified) for the second time — ever. Perhaps, with Craig Hutchison involved, it should be renamed Footy Confrontational. Hutchison launched into Caroline Wilson with a question concerning her sharing the panel with Grant Thomas who, according to Hutchison, Wilson had arranged to be sacked from The Age.

I carry no brief or any great affection for Wilson. She plays for keeps. Nevertheless, she was clearly very discomforted by Hutchison's question. The question was asked with, I thought, malice aforethought — a trademark of Hutchison. With only the barren intellect of Gary Lyon to distract from him, and with neither Wilson or Grant Thomas particularly floating my boat, I won't be tuning in to Footy Confrontational again.

The second incident is a report in The Age of an interview of Ben Cousins*. In the report, Caroline Wilson suggests Cousins was unhappy about the line of questioning from Luke Darcy during a TV interview. Darcy has seemed like a very personable chap with some interesting, if not revolutionary, perspectives on the game. There has been a change in him however, as he has moved into interviewing. One suspects he is either being advised by someone or having questions provided to him. The net effect has been the emergence of another confrontational interviewer.

There are places, times and issues requiring confrontational interviewing, in my view. In neither of these incidents was a confrontational style warranted. Call me old-fashioned, but I regard that as bad manners.

* I did say earlier that I wouldn't mention Ben again until he played. He's playing tonight, so I'm anticipating by about 7 hours! :-) Best of luck, Ben.

Update: The Cousins interview screened at half-time of the game was pretty timid — none of the agro bits made it past the edit suite, it seems — with plenty of opportunity for Cousins to show his positive attitude, and mixture of humility, confidence and reality. Pity his teammates have made such a dismal start to the season.