CFMEU to launch video news app in bid to circumvent media
One of Australia’s largest unions will tomorrow launch a mobile news app aimed at bypassing the mainstream media and allowing them to present a union perspective to its members, Mumbrella can reveal.
The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union CFMEU news app has been developed in conjunction with a public affairs and research company Essential Media Communications and comes after the union invested in the creation of a news studio and developers to create the app.
“There is a conspiracy of silence in the mainstream media to getting a union point of view across. I’ve been around a long time now and I’ve never had as much difficulty getting a straight union piece in the press,” claimed Tony Maher, national president of the CFMEU.
“We’ve always been a bit innovative. All unions have a real problem with how to communicate with members and get around the mainstream press this is a good distribution method,” he said.
“Our membership have smartphones and they’ve all got the TAB app, the AFL app, the NRL app and that’s where they go for things they are interested in. If there’s a union app then that’s the way to get stuff to them.”
The CFMEU Mining and Energy app will offer access to union and industry news and alsocontacts and information about union campaigns. It is available for free from the iTunes app store and Google Play.
“It’s a bit of a trial and my gut feeling is that there is a role for it,” said Maher.
“Apps and the web require us to keep the content up fortunately we’ve put some financial resources into this. Together with EMC we’ve invested to build a studio in Sydney so we can do a weekly news read — it’ll be short, a couple of minutes, no union officials just the newsreader with an ‘around the grounds’ of what is happening in the union.”
Nic Christensen
“I’ve never had as much difficulty getting a straight union piece in the press” – maybe that’s because it’s NOT the job of ‘the press’ to run straight union pieces!
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Single version of the truth
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Hey Jack b Nimble
I’m afraid you will have to take off your middle class linguistic glasses for a sec. A straight union story means one that is not bent, you know, no bias. It doesn’t mean exclusive or only a story running their line.
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Jack. We know. It’s their job to push the line of big business, the miners and the banks … and those who they support and know will support them in return.
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I wonder what their coverage of senior union members corruption charges will sound like. ‘Once again the ruling elite have created fictitious rumours and trumped up charges against our glorious leaders’….or something like that
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The CFMEU App. You’ll download it, you’ll read it, then it will demand money from you.
If you don’t pay up, and don’t do what the App tells you, it’ll go on strike then smash your face in.
Oh, and it knows where you live.
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James: to me, a “straight union story” means straight from the union’s perspective, no context or balance.
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It’s not the job of any journalist to run a “straight [insert interest/client] story”. If the CFMEU wants to have ONLY its side of the story printed in a newspaper, there is a thing called an “advertisement”.
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how long do you think this will last?
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