Is Australia's Fourth Estate in BIG TROUBLE?

[MARYROSE02]

Issues beyond political slogans and radio jocks and populist politicians. As the poster mentioned running a country contain many complexities. With many different sides demanding attention.

 

We are all simple people you see, and we want simple explanations, free of elitist jargon, which nobody least of all the elitist cliques, can understand. This is why certain radio jocks and certain newspapers and certain TV shows are just so popular. How about if The Guardian figured out a way to be popular then perhaps they could reach the plebs and convert them all to the correct way of thinking?

[MARYROSE02]

And don't we get derided for it?. Disclose on here that you've exercised your (current) legal right of free assembly and protested about the current government's / mining lobby's actions and you're seen as part of some lunatic fringe. At the last event I attended with Harpo, all I could see were concerned citizens, behaving immaculately, whilst expressing their fears for what the future will bring for their children, their community, their country. Hardly the enemy within.

 

The rhetoric of the Right seems to be to portray themselves as always sinned against, never sinners. Outrage follows someone photographed wearing a 'f*ck Abbott' t-shirt, but I bet the same people were enjoying a sly chuckle at this;

[ATTACH=CONFIG]26577[/ATTACH]

 

or lewd jokes about the former Prime Minister's 'red box,' or the intonation that her partner must be gay because he's a Hair-Dresser.

 

Harpo often references the LNP / Tory 'right to rule' mentality. He's dead right. Just check out rage and indignation bristling beneath the surface whenever Scott Morrison is subjected to scrutiny by journalists. It's only surpassed by his boss's silent rage when quizzed by a journalist about his '**** happens' quote. Those bloody journos with their tricky questions, trying to get to the truth and keep everyone honest eh?. Well, they're not gonna be on 'Team Australia' I can tell you. Much better instead to cosy up to the Andrew Bolts of this world, journalists who 'get' the Prime Minister. Imagine a future where a denuded ABC has been bullied into acquiescence by, ooh, I dunno, $200, 000, 000 in cuts, and just rubber-stamps government policy, whilst in his evening chat-show Andrew Bolt gets Scott Morrison to inform the nation of what a bonza bloke TA is.

 

Did someone mention Pravda?

 

Sounds pretty good to me, but where are you going to move to?

[MARYROSE02]

But how much of this resizing is due to political influence and how much is due to technological change? Although more and more people spend increasing amounts of time consuming media; it's spread out over a vastly larger number of outlets. Why should a relatively small number of outlets get an increasingly large slice of the public cake?

 

It's all just progress to me. What can you do about it? I worked for the Post Office in the 90's and they are losing more and more business because people just don't write letters any more. We can all access the internet for our news.

[MARYROSE02]

Good to see the good burghers of Sweden have moved back to social democracy after a term of giving their right wing party a go. Fed up with cutbacks, reduction in social security and changes to working conditions they have returned to progressive politics.

 

Sounds just great. Why don't we all copy the Swedish Utopia? A non-aligned country who sells arms to everybody? Both sides used the Bofors gun in WW2. Is that why you admire Sweden so much?!

[flag of convenience]

We are all simple people you see, and we want simple explanations, free of elitist jargon, which nobody least of all the elitist cliques, can understand. This is why certain radio jocks and certain newspapers and certain TV shows are just so popular. How about if The Guardian figured out a way to be popular then perhaps they could reach the plebs and convert them all to the correct way of thinking?

 

Simple or not there's little excuse to remain in the dark these days for anybody. Of course radio jocks and certain media rely on lazy thinking and a population wanting ready answers. The plebs you speak off are their own worst enemy. No interest as a broad rule in politics then at some stage wonder why they are being shafted.

[starlight7]

I find it extremely distasteful when people refer to others as 'plebs'. Just who do they think they are?

[flag of convenience]

Sounds just great. Why don't we all copy the Swedish Utopia? A non-aligned country who sells arms to everybody? Both sides used the Bofors gun in WW2. Is that why you admire Sweden so much?!

 

Educated population that were swayed by the forces of the right, partly desiring change after so long with the socialist model, but in a term found out at what cost. Corrected the error at first opportunity. I thought Australia help build the Japanese war machine pre WW2 with Menzies exports of iron to that country. Pig Iron Bob. No my admiration is especially with the Norwegian model but respect the overall Nordic Model. Rather successful overall.

[Diane]

We are all simple people you see, and we want simple explanations, free of elitist jargon, which nobody least of all the elitist cliques, can understand. This is why certain radio jocks and certain newspapers and certain TV shows are just so popular. How about if The Guardian figured out a way to be popular then perhaps they could reach the plebs and convert them all to the correct way of thinking?

 

Heard a very astute comment by an Irishman being interviewed on Radio National the other day - he was saying that in most countries, such as the UK, the tabloid papers are treated as what they are - a bit of a joke, not to be taken particularly seriously - but in Australia the tabloids are actually treated as if the nonsense they often publish is actually true, which is where things start to go wrong. If you get the chance have a listen to the interview - the guy is my new hero: Dr David Caldicott http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2014/09/16/4088546.htm

[flag of convenience]

I find it extremely distasteful when people refer to others as 'plebs'. Just who do they think they are?

 

It can grate. Especially as most had never heard the word until recent publicity. To be honest though I don't find the working class referring to their own as chavs any better. May make certain members take on an air of superiority but who do they think they fool.

[flag of convenience]

It's all just progress to me. What can you do about it? I worked for the Post Office in the 90's and they are losing more and more business because people just don't write letters any more. We can all access the internet for our news.

 

Progress? Going back to pre modern times? With conditions to match. /It goes far further than The Post Office.

[MARYROSE02]

Heard a very astute comment by an Irishman being interviewed on Radio National the other day - he was saying that in most countries, such as the UK, the tabloid papers are treated as what they are - a bit of a joke, not to be taken particularly seriously - but in Australia the tabloids are actually treated as if the nonsense they often publish is actually true, which is where things start to go wrong. If you get the chance have a listen to the interview - the guy is my new hero: Dr David Caldicott http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2014/09/16/4088546.htm

 

We don't actually have tabloids like The Sun or The Daily Mirror in Oz. The Daily Telegraph is closer to The Daily Mail. To accuse it of publishing lies is just more patronising drivel. I would hate to live in a world where the tabloids were all banned. Sounds too much to me like a world where everything is controlled and regulated so We only read what your elite want US to read. What a worthy boring world that would be too.

 

People like reading tabloids and watching tabloid TV too. So what? You don't have to read, watch or listen. Anybody can set up their own tabloid or at least publish a blog. If they are interesting they will get followers.

 

Don't blame Tony Abbott.

[Harpodom]

We don't actually have tabloids like The Sun or The Daily Mirror in Oz.

 

No?

 

How about this for a headline then?

 

[h=1]G’Day Nauru: Tamil boat people say hello to their new home after secret overnight operation[/h]

 

Bearing in mind it relates to the imprisonment of children? Hardly worthy of even The Daily Mail. The big difference in Aus is that there isn't a left wing tabloid...just the Murdoch pap

 

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/gday-nauru-tamil-boat-people-say-hello-to-their-new-home-after-secret-overnight-operation/story-fni0cx12-1227010657087?nk=43d41a95d313406ce8e861d7e14b4498

 

[h=1][/h]

[MARYROSE02]

No?

 

How about this for a headline then?

 

[h=1]G’Day Nauru: Tamil boat people say hello to their new home after secret overnight operation[/h]

 

Bearing in mind it relates to the imprisonment of children? Hardly worthy of even The Daily Mail. The big difference in Aus is that there isn't a left wing tabloid...just the Murdoch pap

 

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/gday-nauru-tamil-boat-people-say-hello-to-their-new-home-after-secret-overnight-operation/story-fni0cx12-1227010657087?nk=43d41a95d313406ce8e861d7e14b4498

 

[h=1][/h]

 

Damn! I missed that article. Will you send them all to me if I give u my email address?

 

Loved reading that one! We can expect even fewer Tamil budgets now!

[MARYROSE02]

Damn! I missed that article. Will you send them all to me if I give u my email address?

 

Loved reading that one! We can expect even fewer Tamil budgets now!

Bludgers!

[Harpodom]

Meanwhile.....

 

 

[h=1]The acid test: Australian journalists must ask what agenda they serve[/h]

 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/26/the-acid-test-australian-journalists-must-ask-what-agenda-they-serve

 

It’s been a big week for the Australian media. We’ve published a picture supposedly of a terrorism suspect that was actually, not. We’ve presented front page stories full of unsourced and misleading or just plain wrong information about a horrific confrontation between a messed up, radicalised, dangerous Melbourne teenager and counter-terrorism police.

 

At the same time, as the ABC broadcaster Mark Colvin noted on Friday, the Australian Senate passed arguably the most significant restraints on press freedom in this country outside of wartime. Those measures are on their way to becoming law.

Given that parliament seems to be on a path to deliver a bigger surveillance state and less means for whistleblowers to expose its abuses or for journalists to scrutinise it, a bit of push back from the community might have been expected. This is, after all, a pretty important principle: public interest disclosure and press freedom.

Yet nobody, apart from the industry, the Greens and a couple of crossbench parliamentarians stood up for press freedom. The freedom warriors of the Coalition, and the accountability merchants of the ALP, waved the restrictions through without a backward glance. The community as a whole declined to be outraged.

The absence of cavil is a significant rebuke, given it would be obvious to most that the current environment invites more truth telling, not more secrecy.

So let’s stand still for a moment and put these two events together – our appalling collective performance this week, and the profound lack of public support for our institutional role.

I don’t think we can avoid the reality that these two eventualities are connected. There’s a harsh truth sitting before journalists and their employers this weekend, and it’s this: people don’t support us when we very much need our community mandate because, too often, we fail our readers and viewers and listeners. We often hurl some very hard truths at others, in fact we pride ourselves on it. It’s about time we joined a couple of dots in order to hurl a few back at ourselves.

This week we produced headlines, like the Courier Mail did on Wednesday with “Police Kill Abbott Jihadi” complete with front page illustrations suggesting to the reader that the prime minister had survived some sort of direct attack. (Police have been saying for days they have no evidence of a specific threat to Abbott, who was, of course, in a different city, in a building surrounded by armed police, before leaving for New York.) Reckless, and misleading.

In multi-ethnic Sydney, at a time of heightened security risks, huge stakes and community tensions, the Daily Telegraph screamed “Jihad Joey” at its readers on Thursday. A front page story reported that the “death cult disciple” Abdul Numan Haider had been “tracking” the prime minister before his “frenzied knife attack”.

It’s still not entirely clear if that actually happened, or what “tracking the prime minister” might actually mean in a connected age where we are all invited to #askTony on Twitter or like Tony on Facebook; where any of us can Google “where is Tony Abbott” and pull up a string of references. Noting this fact is not a bleeding heart exoneration of a radicalised kid troubling enough to be the subject of police interest, and out of control enough to stab two police officers – it’s just a simple statement of the obvious.

A number of reports this week had more in common with a graphic novel or a Marvel comic than anything that actually rang true in the real world. Compounding the beat-ups and the breathlessness, we’ve seen the return of “men of Middle Eastern appearance” doing nefarious things. It should be pointed out that some of the things they were claimed to be “doing” have later been retracted.

“It is understood” was also ubiquitous. We all periodically have to use anonymous sources, and sometimes that process brings us closer to enlightenment than to obfuscation. But we all know that something being “understood” is quite different from it being “known.” And so it came to pass. Some things that were “understood” on front pages were later more complex than they seemed. But the myths, once stated, are difficult to retract.

So the sum of the week was mistakes, sensationalism, stereotyping and the amplification of various “understandings” supplied by Lord knows who. Most reporting came from inside the tent of officialdom, projecting thunderously out. Right now, the times require prompt evacuation. We need to step outside the tent in order to have a good hard look in.

Any objective look at the week would present a report card that said: running too fast, filing too much, revealing too little. I’m certainly not putting myself above it. I’m not positioning myself as better and possessed by more clarity and steadiness and insight and truth-telling powers than anyone else. Truth is I’m flat out keeping my feet and my wits most days too. All of us are a heartbeat away from a career ending stuff-up – that’s the business.

But what I am saying is: wake the hell up. I have never been more resolved, in 18 years of practising journalism, of the absolute importance of our function in a democracy. I have never been more sure that the opportunity cost associated with doing this job is, actually, worth it.

I believe we matter. I know I’m not alone in that belief. Yet we act as though we don’t matter, and facts don’t matter, and truth doesn’t matter. Call this Dispatch this particular weekend a love letter to my profession, and an outpouring of grief at its failings.

In Australia right now, there is a complex story to be told. It’s a story with a geopolitical dimension and a local one. This story involves real people. How we choose to frame and tell the story has real consequences for real people – for neighbours living alongside neighbours, for the police and intelligence agencies working around the clock to keep communities safe, and for the politicians who must lead at this moment and make critical decisions about community interest and national interest.

The story we are telling right now is not just a bunch of disconnected fragments to feed the beast and flog a few newspapers. The real story here is whether or not Australia can come through a specific challenge to the fundamental notion of ourselves as a united, vibrant diverse community which has largely avoided ethnic and religious violence: whether we will affirm these characteristics or fall into disputation and rancour.

So as well as playing cops and robbers, we might have to start interrogating other valid lines of inquiry. A couple of thoughts. Have we done enough as a society to invest in our cohesion and mutual understanding? Is our ridiculously paranoid and hostile disposition to unauthorised boat arrivals sending a broader negative message to non-Anglo communities about our true feelings about ethnic diversity?

Are police doing their job out in the suburbs in our cities in an even-handed way? Is national politics helping or harming the current conditions? Are the legal changes being proposed in Canberra justified given the threats – or is this just cynical over-reach? Will going to war in Iraq make us safer, or make the domestic climate more dangerous?

We are, actually, capable of telling this story. It’s a story which demands the best Australian journalism can provide. But we need to take a moment to be clear about what the responsibility of telling it actually requires.

It requires us to seek truth, whether the truth is ugly and discomfiting or whether it is reassuring and soothing. It requires us to ask questions – a lot of questions – of very powerful people, without fear or favour.

It requires us to take the time to get things right rather than assuming in cavalier fashion that an error in the internet age is never wrong for long. And it involves taking steps to ensure we don’t inflame the tinderbox: truth is not inflammatory, but dog whistling and ethnic stereotyping certainly are.

To put it simply, this story requires what great journalism always requires: that no agenda is served other than the interests of the readers. If we are asking the state to be accountable and not abuse its power and position, then best we hold ourselves to the same standard.

If we meet this basic test, then perhaps we’ll be worth defending

[MARYROSE02]

That was Fairfax NOT Murdoch that wrongly identified bloke as terrorist.

 

And the hypocrites in the Greeens and on the left wanted clampdown on Aussie Murdoch press post Leveson despite knowing full well there was no evidence of Aussies Murdoch journals doing some as News of World yet now theyvscream about censorship.

[Harpodom]

And I thought these guys were defenders of free speech!

 

Unbe-fukkin-lievable.....

 

Journalists and whistleblowers will go to jail under new national security laws

 

 

Journalists will be jailed. It might take a year, or two, or even longer. But journalists and whistleblowers will face prison as a result of the first tranche of national security legislation that was passed in the Senate late on Thursday.

And they laughed as they did it. As the Coalition, Labor and the Palmer United party voted in favour of this bill, which dramatically expands the powers of intelligence agencies while creating new offences for disclosing information about the operations they will undertake with these new powers, there was a jovial air in the chamber.

It’s a bill that makes many broad changes to our intelligence gathering apparatus. It introduces a class of “special intelligence operation” for Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (Asio) missions where intelligence officers can gain immunity from using force or committing other offences.

Reporting of these operations, which could foreseeably lead to situations where a public disclosure would be in the public interest, could land journalists and whistleblowers in jail. And not just journalists, but any person who shares or republishes this material. In addition, harsher penalties are put in place for intelligence whistleblowers who take documents or records and disclose them, partly as a response to the disclosures made by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

So how would these laws work? We have many examples of intelligence reporting that could be caught within the scope of such an offence. Say, for instance, the bugging of East Timorese leaders during their negotiations with Australians were to happen today. If it were declared a ‘special intelligence operation’ – a process which only involves approval from the attorney general – reporting of the fact this bugging occurred, the details around it, the nature of the surveillance, could be caught within the scope of this offence. The same could equally apply for reporting the Indonesian president’s phone was targeted by Australian intelligence agencies, if it were declared a special operation.

Among Asio’s other new powers is the ability to obtain massive warrants for effectively the whole of the internet. They also create new powers for Asio to conduct “optical surveillance” without a warrant. There are many other small expansions that lead to a general widening of the powers of our intelligence agencies.

These are serious changes and they warrant serious scrutiny. But the passage of the bill has been all too easy. After it was initially introduced into the Senate it was quickly referred to the parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security. This committee is dominated by Coalition and Labor senators – the Greens senator Scott Ludlam and independent MP Andrew Wilkie lost their places after the last election.

As a result of this, the committee’s recommendations were weak. It made just 17 recommendations – remarkably, only seven of these actually suggest changes to the bill itself. Four were changes to the explanatory memorandum, while the remainder were suggestions surrounding oversight by the inspector general of intelligence and security – oh, and one was a helpful reminder that the government should re-appoint an independent national security legislation monitor, an office they initially planned to scrap.

The catch-all disclosure offence for special intelligence operations remained, with some minor suggestions for change. There was a recommendation to clarify that “recklessness” is the mental element required to commit the offence. A note was also suggested in the explanatory memorandum that the public prosecutor needed to consider the public interest before commencing a prosecution. This should be little comfort to any of us, when the options existed to have a real public interest defence, or simply not have the offence at all.

Earlier this week the Senate began debating the bill. The government’s amendments sailed through. Labor capitulated almost entirely on these enhanced powers – and, disappointingly, on the disclosure offence as well. Despite the shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, initially saying the government would “need to make changes to remove that consequence” if journalists could face prosecution, the fact is the consequence still potentially exists.

Scott Ludlam fought hard to keep the debate going, and moved a series of amendments that would have protected journalists and whistleblowers, wind back some of the broad new computer warrant powers and increase oversight of Asio.

“I simply do not believe and cannot in good conscience vote, particularly in the climate that we’re in, for continued and relentless expansion of powers for these agencies at a time when the only person who the Australian government had established … to investigate whether the laws that we already have are necessary and proportionate has said in many cases they are not,” he said.

Ludlam spent considerable time questioning how the laws would work and whether they were appropriately crafted – what the limits of the computer warrant powers were, how the disclosure offences would apply – and he was accused of filibustering by the attorney general. Independent senator Nick Xenophon and Liberal Democratic senator David Leyonhjelm also raised many serious questions about the scope of the powers being granted.

But in the end the bill passed. Only the Greens, Leyonhjelm, John Madigan and Xenophon refused to support the amended laws.

Brandis, in a late night third-reading speech, said: “What we have achieved tonight is to ensure that those who protect us, particularly in a newly danger age, have the strong powers and capabilities that they need.”

Really, we can only blame ourselves. Could all journalists, collectively, have done more than throw together a handful of submissions? Most major news organisations in Australia raised concerns about the bill and the new offences. But there was no concerted campaign, no unified push to stop these disclosure offences succeeding. We’re now stuck with these laws, probably until someone is made an example of to spur journalists into action.

There is a small comfort in all of this and that is that the laws simply won’t work as a deterrent. They won’t discourage whistleblowers. And they won’t discourage fearless journalists from reporting on our intelligence agencies when it is in the public interest to do so. The disclosures by whistleblowers like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning – and the reporters who told these stories – have shown us that people are willing to take extraordinary actions, at great personal risk, when they believe it is necessary to do so.

It will just mean that some of them will go to jail.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/26/journalists-and-whistleblowers-will-go-to-jail-under-new-national-security-laws

[Guest]

And I thought these guys were defenders of free speech!

 

Unbe-fukkin-lievable.....

 

 

Ludlam spent considerable time questioning how the laws would work and whether they were appropriately crafted – what the limits of the computer warrant powers were, how the disclosure offences would apply – and he was accused of filibustering by the attorney general.

If in danger of losing the arguement and being exposed as draconian and undemocratic, simply accuse those who had the temerity to ask questions, of time-wasting. After all, there's a 'war' that we need to get involved in.

 

One day people in this country will look back on this chapter in it's history and ask "how did we come to this?"

[Guest]

Meanwhile.....

 

 

The acid test: Australian journalists must ask what agenda they serve

 

 

 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/26/the-acid-test-australian-journalists-must-ask-what-agenda-they-serve

 

It’s been a big week for the Australian media. We’ve published a picture supposedly of a terrorism suspect that was actually, not. We’ve presented front page stories full of unsourced and misleading or just plain wrong information about a horrific confrontation between a messed up, radicalised, dangerous Melbourne teenager and counter-terrorism police.

 

At the same time, as the ABC broadcaster Mark Colvin noted on Friday, the Australian Senate passed arguably the most significant restraints on press freedom in this country outside of wartime. Those measures are on their way to becoming law.

Given that parliament seems to be on a path to deliver a bigger surveillance state and less means for whistleblowers to expose its abuses or for journalists to scrutinise it, a bit of push back from the community might have been expected. This is, after all, a pretty important principle: public interest disclosure and press freedom.

Yet nobody, apart from the industry, the Greens and a couple of crossbench parliamentarians stood up for press freedom. The freedom warriors of the Coalition, and the accountability merchants of the ALP, waved the restrictions through without a backward glance. The community as a whole declined to be outraged.

The absence of cavil is a significant rebuke, given it would be obvious to most that the current environment invites more truth telling, not more secrecy.

So let’s stand still for a moment and put these two events together – our appalling collective performance this week, and the profound lack of public support for our institutional role.

I don’t think we can avoid the reality that these two eventualities are connected. There’s a harsh truth sitting before journalists and their employers this weekend, and it’s this: people don’t support us when we very much need our community mandate because, too often, we fail our readers and viewers and listeners. We often hurl some very hard truths at others, in fact we pride ourselves on it. It’s about time we joined a couple of dots in order to hurl a few back at ourselves.

This week we produced headlines, like the Courier Mail did on Wednesday with “Police Kill Abbott Jihadi” complete with front page illustrations suggesting to the reader that the prime minister had survived some sort of direct attack. (Police have been saying for days they have no evidence of a specific threat to Abbott, who was, of course, in a different city, in a building surrounded by armed police, before leaving for New York.) Reckless, and misleading.

In multi-ethnic Sydney, at a time of heightened security risks, huge stakes and community tensions, the Daily Telegraph screamed “Jihad Joey” at its readers on Thursday. A front page story reported that the “death cult disciple” Abdul Numan Haider had been “tracking” the prime minister before his “frenzied knife attack”.

It’s still not entirely clear if that actually happened, or what “tracking the prime minister” might actually mean in a connected age where we are all invited to #askTony on Twitter or like Tony on Facebook; where any of us can Google “where is Tony Abbott” and pull up a string of references. Noting this fact is not a bleeding heart exoneration of a radicalised kid troubling enough to be the subject of police interest, and out of control enough to stab two police officers – it’s just a simple statement of the obvious.

A number of reports this week had more in common with a graphic novel or a Marvel comic than anything that actually rang true in the real world. Compounding the beat-ups and the breathlessness, we’ve seen the return of “men of Middle Eastern appearance” doing nefarious things. It should be pointed out that some of the things they were claimed to be “doing” have later been retracted.

“It is understood” was also ubiquitous. We all periodically have to use anonymous sources, and sometimes that process brings us closer to enlightenment than to obfuscation. But we all know that something being “understood” is quite different from it being “known.” And so it came to pass. Some things that were “understood” on front pages were later more complex than they seemed. But the myths, once stated, are difficult to retract.

So the sum of the week was mistakes, sensationalism, stereotyping and the amplification of various “understandings” supplied by Lord knows who. Most reporting came from inside the tent of officialdom, projecting thunderously out. Right now, the times require prompt evacuation. We need to step outside the tent in order to have a good hard look in.

Any objective look at the week would present a report card that said: running too fast, filing too much, revealing too little. I’m certainly not putting myself above it. I’m not positioning myself as better and possessed by more clarity and steadiness and insight and truth-telling powers than anyone else. Truth is I’m flat out keeping my feet and my wits most days too. All of us are a heartbeat away from a career ending stuff-up – that’s the business.

But what I am saying is: wake the hell up. I have never been more resolved, in 18 years of practising journalism, of the absolute importance of our function in a democracy. I have never been more sure that the opportunity cost associated with doing this job is, actually, worth it.

I believe we matter. I know I’m not alone in that belief. Yet we act as though we don’t matter, and facts don’t matter, and truth doesn’t matter. Call this Dispatch this particular weekend a love letter to my profession, and an outpouring of grief at its failings.

In Australia right now, there is a complex story to be told. It’s a story with a geopolitical dimension and a local one. This story involves real people. How we choose to frame and tell the story has real consequences for real people – for neighbours living alongside neighbours, for the police and intelligence agencies working around the clock to keep communities safe, and for the politicians who must lead at this moment and make critical decisions about community interest and national interest.

The story we are telling right now is not just a bunch of disconnected fragments to feed the beast and flog a few newspapers. The real story here is whether or not Australia can come through a specific challenge to the fundamental notion of ourselves as a united, vibrant diverse community which has largely avoided ethnic and religious violence: whether we will affirm these characteristics or fall into disputation and rancour.

So as well as playing cops and robbers, we might have to start interrogating other valid lines of inquiry. A couple of thoughts. Have we done enough as a society to invest in our cohesion and mutual understanding? Is our ridiculously paranoid and hostile disposition to unauthorised boat arrivals sending a broader negative message to non-Anglo communities about our true feelings about ethnic diversity?

Are police doing their job out in the suburbs in our cities in an even-handed way? Is national politics helping or harming the current conditions? Are the legal changes being proposed in Canberra justified given the threats – or is this just cynical over-reach? Will going to war in Iraq make us safer, or make the domestic climate more dangerous?

We are, actually, capable of telling this story. It’s a story which demands the best Australian journalism can provide. But we need to take a moment to be clear about what the responsibility of telling it actually requires.

It requires us to seek truth, whether the truth is ugly and discomfiting or whether it is reassuring and soothing. It requires us to ask questions – a lot of questions – of very powerful people, without fear or favour.

It requires us to take the time to get things right rather than assuming in cavalier fashion that an error in the internet age is never wrong for long. And it involves taking steps to ensure we don’t inflame the tinderbox: truth is not inflammatory, but dog whistling and ethnic stereotyping certainly are.

To put it simply, this story requires what great journalism always requires: that no agenda is served other than the interests of the readers. If we are asking the state to be accountable and not abuse its power and position, then best we hold ourselves to the same standard.

If we meet this basic test, then perhaps we’ll be worth defending

 

 

It's a terrific piece, and a reminder to journalists right across the media spectrum that they have a duty to seek the truth, to hold those in power to account and to be mindful of the dreadful repercussions when they don't get their facts straight.

[MARYROSE02]

It's a terrific piece, and a reminder to journalists right across the media spectrum that they have a duty to seek the truth, to hold those in power to account and to be mindful of the dreadful repercussions when they don't get their facts straight.

 

Who was it who accused the RAN of burning asylum seekers?

Who was it that printed eyewitness account of violence at Manus Island except it was NOT an eyewitness?

Who refused to mention fact that group of 'tourists' stuck in Antarctic ice were actually climate change activists who had traveled to Antarctic to PROVE facts of global warming?

[MARYROSE02]

You would like to see the Murdoch Press and 2 GB closed down so the only sources of info were the ABC and Fairfax.

[MARYROSE02]

The Greens only support free speech when it suits them or does not criticise them. They would like to ban anybody who does not believe in Climate Change heretics in their opinion.

[Harpodom]

[h=1]Cheap eats: FOI requests reveal how little the ABC spends on lunches[/h] The Australian’s media editor, Sharri Markson, has outed herself as the person who lodged a raft of FOI requests with the ABC

 

 

 

 

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Sharri Markson peppered the ABC with Freedom of Information requests. Photograph: abc.net.au

 

The Australian’s media editor Sharri Markson has “outed” herself on Twitter as the person who lodged a raft of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests with the ABC for information on everything from the media team’s expense accounts to why Clive Palmer sat on the ABC’s table at the Mid-Winter ball.

 

Markson responded to a tweet about the unnamed, mysterious person who lodged the FOI requests by saying: “I’m not a terribly mysterious person. And my name is on the numerous requests.”

On Thursday and Friday the ABC uploaded five FOI requests and the documents they released to the FOI Disclosure Log.

The ABC is required by s11C of the Freedom of Information Act 1982 to publish a disclosure log on its website. The log lists information which has been released in response to an FOI access request.

But the name of the person who made the requests was redacted from all the requests.

This didn’t stop Crikey speculating that it was likely to be Markson who asked for the wide-ranging material, given her interest in the topics.

Despite putting in as many as 12 requests, only five of which were partially answered, the fishing expedition turned up nothing ... except some prosaic detail on what Mark Scott’s media team do for lunch.

In a gossip item in Rear Window on Friday, the Australian Financial Review at least got some mileage out of the expenses request.

Markson had asked for the expenses submitted by the ABC’s media team Michael Millett, Nick Leys and Sally Jackson, the latter two of whom are Markson’s former colleagues on the Media section.

“The state of affairs is so sorry that a humble $129.10 lunch that the ABC’s Nick Leys treated us to in March, at Gill’s Diner in Melbourne, is one of only two he has shouted since defecting from those killjoys at The Oz in February,” Wil Glasgow wrote. “(In the interests of full disclosure, Fairfax Media kindly paid for our expertly prepared dirty martinis.) The other luncher afforded the Leys treatment was ABC radio host Jon Faine in June. We hear Faine, quite rightly, reckons he’s been undervalued by the $46.50 dumplings-and-green-tea meal.”

But the four other FOIs were dull:

Media Watch coverage of The Australian’s coverage of plain packaging laws.

The ABC’s invitation to Clive Palmer to attend the Mid-Winter Ball.

The number and purpose of Comcar trips taken by Mark Scott in 2013 and 2014.

Advice to the ABC board relating to Chris Kenny’s legal action, request for an apology and the Chaser/Hamster Decides team.

Alas, there were no juicy details in what the ABC provided about the Kenny affair, just an email to the ABC board informing them that Mark Scott had made a personal apology to Kenny on Monday 14 2014.

Crikey’s Myriam Robin and Sally Whyte summed it up when they said: “Four documents released by the ABC under FOI give an insight into the kinds of information News Corp journos are keen to get hold of.”

It appears the Oz still hasn’t had enough of the Kenny affair, despite the many apologies, and is still keen to uncover what went on in the ABC boardroom.

The ABC has had to apologise so many times for the Chaser’s more offensive antics the broadcaster even apologised for their latest TV show, The Chaser’s Media Circus, before it had been to air.

“It’s a shame that all the ABC’s good work for Mental Health Week (5-12 October) will be immediately cancelled out by the return of the Chaser team,” the director of television, Richard Finlayson, said in a media release headlined “ABC Apologises for The Chaser’s Media Circus”.

The most recent apology was for the infamous sketch on The Hamster Wheel about The Australian’s columnist Chris Kenny.

“The ABC wishes to apologise to Mr Chris Kenny for the controversial The Hamster Decides skit run by ABC-TV in September last year and which has formed the basis for legal proceedings. This is further to the apology issued by the ABC’s managing director, Mark Scott, on 14 April 2014.”

 

Just when we thought we had heard the final word on the saga, broadcasting authorities slapped the ABC again for the sketch.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/media/media-blog-australia/2014/oct/18/cheap-eats-foi-requests-reveal-how-little-the-abc-spends-on-lunches?CMP=soc_567

[Marisawright]

Why don't you 'critically' read some of his articles and find out? He does not just spout conspiracy theory rubbish like they do in Fairfax about Abbott's anti terrorism laws there to cover up his mistakes with the Budget.

 

I have to disagree with you there. He may not spout conspiracy theory, but he's very good at cherry-picking his facts, or quoting discredited experts to support his views. And yes, I do critically read his articles, but I don't simply believe what he presents as truth without doing my own research. And I usually find he's twisted things somehow.

 

As for covering up mistakes - yes, I think Abbott is making a big deal about Australia's very small role in the international war effort to distract attention from his government's mistakes.

[Petals]

What they should cull is that dreadful Q and A- gets worse each week. What on earth do the ABC expect? They are supposed to present unbiased comment and news. The last 5 years has seen it deteriorate into a farce.

 

The libs have had it in for the ABC and would love to get rid of it and some of its journos. Only my opinion. I cannot understand why nothing is said about the Hun and its cronies and Andrew B, they talk about being even handed but no that is not the way they play the game. Fairness and difference of opinion are to be banned obviously.

 

Off subject but now the car lot are telling us they will not share their tools with mechanics what is going on in Aus, where is the diversity, going down the plug hole very fast.