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From working for the Nine Network for several years, I saw the conduct of ACA first hand throughout most of the 1990's, and I could tell several stories on what I saw. But one comes to mind immediately....
When ACA did a story on an alledged Sydney "dodgy" television repairman Mr Benny Mendoza and subsequent bombardments of promos labelling him a dishonest television repairman, he suicided three days later in his garage. This is well documented.
After much public back-peddling and spin-doctoring from Ray Martin, ACA and the Network, I was personally approached in the maintenance/engineering department approximately 2 years after this tragedy, by an ACA cameraman and ACA reporter asking me to induce a fault in a television for them to take to a local television repair centre - to repeat exactly the same story. I (and other techs) refused to do this, explaining that inducing an artificial fault in a TV could has the potential to cause further faults downstream in the TV, which may lead to the TV tech spending (justifiably) more time on the repair. The reporter could not comprehend this.
The best satirical representation of ACA/TT was Frontline by Working Dog Productions. Despite what the programs and their publicity machines said at the time, Frontline nailed the behavior of these tabloid programs perfectly. I urge anyone who wants an insight into how ACA/TT conduct themselves, get a copy of Frontline - especially Series 3.
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