Latest news with #Brace
News.com.au
25-07-2025
- Health
- News.com.au
‘We don't want to': Ten news anchors overcome with emotion
10News+ hosts Amelia Brace and Denham Hitchcock both became visibly emotional during Thursday's episode, following a harrowing report about starvation faced by children in Gaza. The head of the World Health Organisation this week described Gaza as suffering 'man-made mass starvation,' with a quarter of the territory's population now facing famine-like conditions and close to 100,000 women and children are experiencing severe acute malnutrition. 10News+ focused on the toll the crisis was taking on Gaza's children, among them Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq, an 18-month-old child in Gaza City who weighs the same as a three-month-old baby. Both hosts appeared choked up as they back-announced the disturbing report. 'Denham, no matter what side you're on in all this – and I think most people aren't on sides – there is no parent, no person, who can look at those images and think that that's OK,' Brace told her co-host. 'We don't want to show you those pictures, we don't want to have to tell you that story. But as journalists and as humans, we owe it to those kids to do something,' she continued, her voice faltering as she struggled to contain her emotion. Earlier, Brace had introduced the story by acknowledging that it was a topic 'we know you might want to turn away from … but we're asking you to watch, because we all need to know about it.' The hosts explained that the report would focus on the starving children of Gaza: 'Children who have no choice. Who have not picked a side, but who are dying because there is not enough food to keep them alive.' This week, 109 global aid and human rights agencies – including Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam International and Amnesty International – united to sign a letter warning that civilians and their colleagues within Gaza are 'wasting away'. 'As the Israeli government's siege starves the people of Gaza, aid workers are now joining the same food lines, risking being shot just to feed their families,' the statement read. 'With supplies now totally depleted, humanitarian organisations are witnessing their own colleagues and partners waste away before their eyes.' In their statement, the humanitarian organisations said that warehouses with tonnes of supplies were sitting untouched inside and outside Gaza, while people were 'trapped in a cycle of hope and heartbreak, waiting for assistance and ceasefires'. 'It is not just physical torment but psychological. Survival is dangled like a mirage,' they said.
Sydney Morning Herald
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘People are fed up': Why 10 News+ is going back to basics
If you read the comments under any story about free-to-air news and current affairs, you will find the same mix of complaints: Untrustworthy, too woke, too left, too right-wing and, inevitably, 'bring back The Drum '. So launching a new nightly news program, one that promises in-depth coverage and big-picture reporting, is a tough ask: How do you build trust with an audience that is already side-eyeing how news is delivered? It's a question journalists Denham Hitchcock and Amelia Brace hope to answer as the hosts of Network 10's new hour-long nightly news program, 10 News+. '[Building trust] that's difficult because that requires time,' says Hitchcock. 'But what we're saying from the start is that [trust] is at the core of this program, so you will see that in the reporting and the questioning and the topics that we choose, I think that will change people's opinions because we won't just be taking one side, we'll be questioning both sides equally, and when people see that, I think it will change their opinion.' Brace agrees: 'It is just about treating our audience with respect. People are intelligent. They do have their own thoughts and they do have their own opinions. So it's just about telling both sides of the story and then letting people decide what they think of that, not telling them what they think about it.' 10 News+ is at the heart of Ten's bid to reshape its early evening viewing. The state-based local news is broadcast from 5pm, followed by 10 News+ at 6pm, and then game show Deal or No Deal at 7pm. Gone is The Project, which finished last week after a 16-year run. In another bold move, 10 News+ will be broadcast on Spotify, as well as on YouTube and 10Play, in what Ten says is a 'world first for commercial TV news'. It is an everything, everywhere all at once approach. And it's also a sharp U-turn from The Project, which mixed news reporting with light entertainment and comedy. 'People just want their news straight up,' says Brace. 'There's been, I think, a drift in recent years towards opinion or sensationalism, and in some media even, I think bias. And people kind of leant into that for a while and enjoyed the change, but now people are fed up with it. 'They don't want to be told what to think or how to think. They just want their information and then they can make up their own minds. People are smart. They don't need to be told what to think.' So what does that mean in practice? On the basis of Monday night's first episode, it was an exclusive interview with Debbie Voulgaris, the convicted drug smuggler and Melbourne mother who is currently serving a 15-year prison term in Taiwan, and another interview with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Loading Both stories were longer than most standard news segments and, apart from covering a shark attack on the far north coast of NSW, the show steered clear of the kind of local fracas that are grist to the daily news mill. It's an approach, says Hitchcock, that melds the best of Australia's big TV news hitters: 7.30 and Four Corners on the ABC, 60 Minutes on Nine and Spotlight on Seven. 'Our show is a hybrid of almost all of them,' says Hitchcock. 'We'll see a story in our first two days, I'm pretty sure it'll be Monday [the Voulgaris story], that will be a story that 60 Minutes, Spotlight or Four Corners would kill for. So we're hoping viewers will come to us because they'll get the news of the day, they'll get the things that matter, but they'll also see something fresh.' Brace, 37, and Hitchcock, 48, come to 10 News+ as familiar faces from Seven and Nine, respectively, where they built their reputations as foreign correspondents, with stints in the US, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. They both began their careers at Seven – Brace in regional Queensland and Hitchcock in Sydney. Brace remembers her first day on the job at Seven, when she was a university student on a competitive internship, which involved covering a fatal bus crash. 'I went out shadowing a reporter,' she says. 'I kind of really got thrown in the thick of it.' It's been a wild ride since then, with Brace covering everything from the drought in rural Queensland to being part of a world-record skydive live on air ('It was absolutely terrifying. I cried in my goggles'). In 2020, she won a Walkley Award for her coverage of the protests outside the White House, where she was hit with a baton by police. 'You can't cover these things from a bureau or even from a block back,' says Brace. 'Because what is happening to these people is happening on the front line, and you have to be standing there, and you have to sit with your own eyes so you can actually stand up on camera or in Congress, as I had to, and say what happened wasn't right. Sometimes it's your job to say, 'I saw that and that wasn't OK.'' Hitchcock, meanwhile, got his start in the office of the now defunct current affairs show Today Tonight when he was 18 years old. 'I was answering the phones and filling the biscuit barrel,' he says. 'But within six months, I was a researcher, and within another three months after that, I was a producer at 18. It was fast, but from there I've done almost every job – researcher, producer, editor, reporter, correspondent, all sorts.' Like Brace, he's has the kind of globe-trotting news career that makes great TV – reporting from the frontlines of Syria and Iraq, covering the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, and Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines – but it's the quieter story of Sharn McNeill, who was only 30 when she was diagnosed with motor neuron disease, that he names as one of his favourites. 'It always makes me teary whenever I even describe it to anybody,' he says. 'That's one of those stories of human endurance and positivity that always stays with me.' With so long in business, do either of them see a difference in how news is reported or consumed today? Loading 'I don't see a change in the stories of people interested in, just in the way they consume it and the speed in which they consume it,' says Hitchcock. 'Those big stories used to happen and [you] used to be able to chew on it for a whole week. Now it could be the most immense story that you've ever seen, and three days later, we're on to something else.' Brace, meanwhile, thinks people are more overwhelmed than ever before by the 'sheer amount of information out there' and this is what leads to the rise in misinformation. 'It's just selective reporting when you blatantly just tell one side of a story,' says Brace. 'That side is not untrue, but it's dangerous to do that, I think. I bump into people in real life regularly who say, 'Did you hear this?' And I'll say, 'But did you hear this?' And it's not that I'm on one side or the other. I just get really annoyed when they have no idea that that's only half the story.' The US, famously, is home to Fox News, which proudly wears its bias on its sleeve. Do either of them think there is that type of biased reporting in Australia? 'We have more of it than we used to,' says Brace. 'I genuinely think that perhaps 10 years ago, we had a really balanced media with very little tolerance for bias. I remember maybe around the Kevin Rudd kind of time – because I'm very politically focused – there started to be some headlines and some things said, and I'd be like, 'Hm, that's interesting reporting.' I just feel like it's grown over the years, where we now have certain outlets that you just know they're one side or the other. And I really don't like that.' Loading Of course, it's not just bias or misinformation that modern broadcast news has to deal with. The fickle beast that is ratings will probably have more of an effect on 10 News+'s future than any story they choose to do. A dramatic drop in ratings was one of the reasons given for The Project's axing, so what happens when, say, four weeks from now, 10 News+ isn't clicking and it's suggested they start chasing more sensational local stories? 'It'll be a collective decision, the stories that we chase for the day,' says Hitchock. 'So that'll be Dan Sutton, who's the executive producer, and Martin White, who's the vice president [of news on Ten]. Those two will be keeping a keen eye on the show, and then Amelia and I, of course, will have heavy input as well. 'But I don't think it'll change the mission statement or the program. Will it change if the ratings are not as expected? I don't know, but I don't think so, because the show has been pitched as a certain way, and we're filling a national show. It can't be hyper local. The answer wouldn't be to go back to hyper local stories, the answer would be just better stories.' And what if it's suggested a comedian would make a perfect addition to the desk? 'We are very funny,' says Brace, laughing. 'No one's realised that Denham and I are hilarious. So we should be fine.'
The Age
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
‘People are fed up': Why 10 News+ is going back to basics
If you read the comments under any story about free-to-air news and current affairs, you will find the same mix of complaints: Untrustworthy, too woke, too left, too right-wing and, inevitably, 'bring back The Drum '. So launching a new nightly news program, one that promises in-depth coverage and big-picture reporting, is a tough ask: How do you build trust with an audience that is already side-eyeing how news is delivered? It's a question journalists Denham Hitchcock and Amelia Brace hope to answer as the hosts of Network 10's new hour-long nightly news program, 10 News+. '[Building trust] that's difficult because that requires time,' says Hitchcock. 'But what we're saying from the start is that [trust] is at the core of this program, so you will see that in the reporting and the questioning and the topics that we choose, I think that will change people's opinions because we won't just be taking one side, we'll be questioning both sides equally, and when people see that, I think it will change their opinion.' Brace agrees: 'It is just about treating our audience with respect. People are intelligent. They do have their own thoughts and they do have their own opinions. So it's just about telling both sides of the story and then letting people decide what they think of that, not telling them what they think about it.' 10 News+ is at the heart of Ten's bid to reshape its early evening viewing. The state-based local news is broadcast from 5pm, followed by 10 News+ at 6pm, and then game show Deal or No Deal at 7pm. Gone is The Project, which finished last week after a 16-year run. In another bold move, 10 News+ will be broadcast on Spotify, as well as on YouTube and 10Play, in what Ten says is a 'world first for commercial TV news'. It is an everything, everywhere all at once approach. And it's also a sharp U-turn from The Project, which mixed news reporting with light entertainment and comedy. 'People just want their news straight up,' says Brace. 'There's been, I think, a drift in recent years towards opinion or sensationalism, and in some media even, I think bias. And people kind of leant into that for a while and enjoyed the change, but now people are fed up with it. 'They don't want to be told what to think or how to think. They just want their information and then they can make up their own minds. People are smart. They don't need to be told what to think.' So what does that mean in practice? On the basis of Monday night's first episode, it was an exclusive interview with Debbie Voulgaris, the convicted drug smuggler and Melbourne mother who is currently serving a 15-year prison term in Taiwan, and another interview with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Loading Both stories were longer than most standard news segments and, apart from covering a shark attack on the far north coast of NSW, the show steered clear of the kind of local fracas that are grist to the daily news mill. It's an approach, says Hitchcock, that melds the best of Australia's big TV news hitters: 7.30 and Four Corners on the ABC, 60 Minutes on Nine and Spotlight on Seven. 'Our show is a hybrid of almost all of them,' says Hitchcock. 'We'll see a story in our first two days, I'm pretty sure it'll be Monday [the Voulgaris story], that will be a story that 60 Minutes, Spotlight or Four Corners would kill for. So we're hoping viewers will come to us because they'll get the news of the day, they'll get the things that matter, but they'll also see something fresh.' Brace, 37, and Hitchcock, 48, come to 10 News+ as familiar faces from Seven and Nine, respectively, where they built their reputations as foreign correspondents, with stints in the US, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. They both began their careers at Seven – Brace in regional Queensland and Hitchcock in Sydney. Brace remembers her first day on the job at Seven, when she was a university student on a competitive internship, which involved covering a fatal bus crash. 'I went out shadowing a reporter,' she says. 'I kind of really got thrown in the thick of it.' It's been a wild ride since then, with Brace covering everything from the drought in rural Queensland to being part of a world-record skydive live on air ('It was absolutely terrifying. I cried in my goggles'). In 2020, she won a Walkley Award for her coverage of the protests outside the White House, where she was hit with a baton by police. 'You can't cover these things from a bureau or even from a block back,' says Brace. 'Because what is happening to these people is happening on the front line, and you have to be standing there, and you have to sit with your own eyes so you can actually stand up on camera or in Congress, as I had to, and say what happened wasn't right. Sometimes it's your job to say, 'I saw that and that wasn't OK.'' Hitchcock, meanwhile, got his start in the office of the now defunct current affairs show Today Tonight when he was 18 years old. 'I was answering the phones and filling the biscuit barrel,' he says. 'But within six months, I was a researcher, and within another three months after that, I was a producer at 18. It was fast, but from there I've done almost every job – researcher, producer, editor, reporter, correspondent, all sorts.' Like Brace, he's has the kind of globe-trotting news career that makes great TV – reporting from the frontlines of Syria and Iraq, covering the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, and Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines – but it's the quieter story of Sharn McNeill, who was only 30 when she was diagnosed with motor neuron disease, that he names as one of his favourites. 'It always makes me teary whenever I even describe it to anybody,' he says. 'That's one of those stories of human endurance and positivity that always stays with me.' With so long in business, do either of them see a difference in how news is reported or consumed today? Loading 'I don't see a change in the stories of people interested in, just in the way they consume it and the speed in which they consume it,' says Hitchcock. 'Those big stories used to happen and [you] used to be able to chew on it for a whole week. Now it could be the most immense story that you've ever seen, and three days later, we're on to something else.' Brace, meanwhile, thinks people are more overwhelmed than ever before by the 'sheer amount of information out there' and this is what leads to the rise in misinformation. 'It's just selective reporting when you blatantly just tell one side of a story,' says Brace. 'That side is not untrue, but it's dangerous to do that, I think. I bump into people in real life regularly who say, 'Did you hear this?' And I'll say, 'But did you hear this?' And it's not that I'm on one side or the other. I just get really annoyed when they have no idea that that's only half the story.' The US, famously, is home to Fox News, which proudly wears its bias on its sleeve. Do either of them think there is that type of biased reporting in Australia? 'We have more of it than we used to,' says Brace. 'I genuinely think that perhaps 10 years ago, we had a really balanced media with very little tolerance for bias. I remember maybe around the Kevin Rudd kind of time – because I'm very politically focused – there started to be some headlines and some things said, and I'd be like, 'Hm, that's interesting reporting.' I just feel like it's grown over the years, where we now have certain outlets that you just know they're one side or the other. And I really don't like that.' Loading Of course, it's not just bias or misinformation that modern broadcast news has to deal with. The fickle beast that is ratings will probably have more of an effect on 10 News+'s future than any story they choose to do. A dramatic drop in ratings was one of the reasons given for The Project's axing, so what happens when, say, four weeks from now, 10 News+ isn't clicking and it's suggested they start chasing more sensational local stories? 'It'll be a collective decision, the stories that we chase for the day,' says Hitchock. 'So that'll be Dan Sutton, who's the executive producer, and Martin White, who's the vice president [of news on Ten]. Those two will be keeping a keen eye on the show, and then Amelia and I, of course, will have heavy input as well. 'But I don't think it'll change the mission statement or the program. Will it change if the ratings are not as expected? I don't know, but I don't think so, because the show has been pitched as a certain way, and we're filling a national show. It can't be hyper local. The answer wouldn't be to go back to hyper local stories, the answer would be just better stories.' And what if it's suggested a comedian would make a perfect addition to the desk? 'We are very funny,' says Brace, laughing. 'No one's realised that Denham and I are hilarious. So we should be fine.'
West Australian
01-07-2025
- Politics
- West Australian
‘Boring as bats..t': 10's Project replacement dubbed ‘Temu ACA' as Perth viewers tune out, opt for ABC reruns
Channel 10's replacement for the axed Project has flopped with Perth viewers, beaten by reruns on the ABC and derided online as a boring, Temu current affairs program. 10News+ debuted in Perth with an average audience of just 25,000 according to OzTam data— compared to 7NEWS Perth's share of 137,000 in the same timeslot. It recorded just 1000 viewers in regional WA. But 10's new show came in fourth in Perth, losing out to the ABC's reruns of Antique Roadshow and Hard Quiz over the hour-long slot. Nationally, 10News+ recorded an average share of just 291,000 viewers. Anchors Denham Hitchcock and Amelia Brace opened the program claiming they weren't out to 'scare or depress' viewers. 'We will give you facts, information you can trust — the truth,' Brace said, before Hitchcock added: 'Of course, we are a daily news program, so you won't miss the stories that matter.' 'But we are also digging deeper with investigations and original reporting you won't see anywhere else,' Brace added. The first segment — a 20 minute-long investigation lead by Hitchcock into drug smuggling Melbourne mum Debbie Voulgaris, who is serving a 15 year sentence in Taiwan — was slammed as too long for 6pm. 'Please no more long investigation reports it's 6pm,' one viewer mused on social media. '10News+ will not survive. A 60 Minutes-style program like this will not connect in the 6 pm timeslot. Families are busy preparing dinner and doing kids homework to really tune in,' another wrote. 'You replaced The Project with a Temu ACA. Not seeing (The Project) is incredibly depressing. 10News+ sucks,' wrote another. The duo then interviewed the Prime Minister, crossed to a reporter covering the the Erin Patterson 'mushroom murders' trial and the claims by a former Greens candidate about police brutality at a pro-Palestine protest. At one point in the broadcast, Hitchcock asked Anthony Albanese if he would ever call US President Donald Trump 'Daddy', following NATO secretary general Mark Rutte's comments last week. 'It's not the words that I would use. I've been very respectful to the President of the United States,' he said. 'I know the Secretary General of NATO quite well, Mark Rutte, and he was formerly the Prime Minister of the Netherlands and he was a bit of a character and I think his own character came through with those comments. 'But they were received well by the President and so all's good.' The show ended with a story on a NSW surfer attacked by a shark at the weekend before an interview with astronaut Chris Hadfield. Hitchcock and Brace closed the show with a fist bump, prompting one viewer to say 'yikes'. Others slammed the hour long show as bland, disappointing and 'unwatchable trash' and 'boring as bats..t'. 'This is trash, so dry and bland. Time for the project 2.0 and a game show in a prime time slot up against Home and Away,' one said. 'You replaced The Project for this tabloid junk? I'm turning this off!' another posted. 10 announced the new program last month, a replacement for the long-running show The Project, which is axed last week after a run of poor ratings.
Perth Now
01-07-2025
- Politics
- Perth Now
‘Boring as bats..t': Channel 10's news show dubbed Temu ACA
Channel 10's replacement for the axed Project has flopped with Perth viewers, beaten by reruns on the ABC and derided online as a boring, Temu current affairs program. 10News+ debuted in Perth with an average audience of just 25,000 according to OzTam data— compared to 7NEWS Perth's share of 137,000 in the same timeslot. It recorded just 1000 viewers in regional WA. But 10's new show came in fourth in Perth, losing out to the ABC's reruns of Antique Roadshow and Hard Quiz over the hour-long slot. Nationally, 10News+ recorded an average share of just 291,000 viewers. Anchors Denham Hitchcock and Amelia Brace opened the program claiming they weren't out to 'scare or depress' viewers. 10News+ anchors Amelia Brace and Denham Hitchcock share a fist bump after the end of their first broadcast Credit: 10Play 'We will give you facts, information you can trust — the truth,' Brace said, before Hitchcock added: 'Of course, we are a daily news program, so you won't miss the stories that matter.' 'But we are also digging deeper with investigations and original reporting you won't see anywhere else,' Brace added. The first segment — a 20 minute-long investigation lead by Hitchcock into drug smuggling Melbourne mum Debbie Voulgaris, who is serving a 15 year sentence in Taiwan — was slammed as too long for 6pm. 'Please no more long investigation reports it's 6pm,' one viewer mused on social media. '10News+ will not survive. A 60 Minutes-style program like this will not connect in the 6 pm timeslot. Families are busy preparing dinner and doing kids homework to really tune in,' another wrote. 'You replaced The Project with a Temu ACA. Not seeing (The Project) is incredibly depressing. 10News+ sucks,' wrote another. Nationally, 10News+ recorded an average share of just 291,000 viewers. Credit: Supplied The duo then interviewed the Prime Minister, crossed to a reporter covering the the Erin Patterson 'mushroom murders' trial and the claims by a former Greens candidate about police brutality at a pro-Palestine protest. At one point in the broadcast, Hitchcock asked Anthony Albanese if he would ever call US President Donald Trump 'Daddy', following NATO secretary general Mark Rutte's comments last week. 'It's not the words that I would use. I've been very respectful to the President of the United States,' he said. 'I know the Secretary General of NATO quite well, Mark Rutte, and he was formerly the Prime Minister of the Netherlands and he was a bit of a character and I think his own character came through with those comments. 'But they were received well by the President and so all's good.' The show ended with a story on a NSW surfer attacked by a shark at the weekend before an interview with astronaut Chris Hadfield. Hitchcock and Brace closed the show with a fist bump, prompting one viewer to say 'yikes'. Others slammed the hour long show as bland, disappointing and 'unwatchable trash' and 'boring as bats..t'. 'This is trash, so dry and bland. Time for the project 2.0 and a game show in a prime time slot up against Home and Away,' one said. 'You replaced The Project for this tabloid junk? I'm turning this off!' another posted. 10 announced the new program last month, a replacement for the long-running show The Project, which is axed last week after a run of poor ratings.
