Media
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KERRY O’BRIEN. We can’t let ourselves off the hook (Part 2)
Part 2 of a speech delivered at The Walkley Fund for Journalism Dinner in Sydney on Friday April 5, 2019. Every year at the Walkley Awards, we honour a craft that holds power in its various manifestations big and small, to account. We should also, all be prepared to reflect on our own failures. Continue reading »
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KERRY O’BRIEN. We can’t let ourselves off the hook (Part 1)
Part 1 of a speech delivered at The Walkley Fund for Journalism Dinner in Sydney on Friday April 5, 2019. Forty-three years ago I went to the Philippines for the ABC’s Four Corners, to cover a disaster story—a tsunami that hit the island of Mindanao, killing 8,000 people. After witnessing close up the nature of Continue reading »
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MICHAEL NIMAN. Weaponised Social Media Is Driving the Explosion of Fascism (Truthout)
Social media platforms give governments, extremists, haters and propagandists the ability to excite and incite hate amplified by algorithms. Continue reading »
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The New York Times ‘How Rupert Murdoch’s empire of influence remade the world’.
On Wednesday 3 April 2019, The New York Times published a 20,000 word article about the influence o the Murdoch family, (Rupert, James and Lachlan) and the developing divisions within it. See link below to the New York Times article. Continue reading »
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ANDREW JAKUBOWICZ. Why Australia is the best place to be an online racist.
When no name pulled the trigger over one hundred times as he sluiced his way through the congregations at two Christchurch mosques, nothing he did was new. It was bigger, perhaps more “successful”, and maybe better planned than his role models had been able to realise, but his actions were entirely predictable. Continue reading »
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BEN POBJIE. Why ‘Q&A’ Is A Complete Waste Of Time (10 Daily).
With Tony Jones announcing his imminent departure from Q&A, it seems timely to take a good look at the little political panel show that his calm stewardship turned into a ratings semi-behemoth for the ABC. Continue reading »
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KIM WINGEREI. Independent Media Continues to Grow!
Independent media continues to grow apace, while mainstream media is at best stagnant. Based on data provided by SimilarWeb – a global online traffic measurement service – independent media traffic has grown by 9.76% from November 2018 to February 2019*. During the same period the top corporate mainstream media sites** grew by 1.1%. Continue reading »
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COLIN HAWES. Why Defamation Lawsuits Are Crucial for Protecting Rule of Law: A Comment on the Chau Chak Wing Case
Following the recent success of Dr. Chau Chak Wing’s defamation lawsuit against Fairfax and John Garnaut, Liberal MP Andrew Hastie stated that the judgment will be “carefully analysed”: “The ability to report freely and fairly on national security is a vital part of our democracy,” and “we are concerned about the impact that defamation laws Continue reading »
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JACK WATERFORD. Murdoch becomes a paper tiger (Canberra Times 2.2.2019)
If Labor wins the next election Bill Shorten may be the first Labor prime minister since Arthur Calwell 55 years ago to act as if he was completely indifferent to the existence, the views or the personality of Rupert Murdoch, or his many media organs, in print or online. Continue reading »
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PETER MANNING. The unknown thoughts of Chair Ita
If Ita Buttrose, AO OBE is appointed ABC Chair of the Board in the next few days it will represent yet another opportunity for her to show her extraordinary talents at confronting difficult media challenges and coming out a winner. Continue reading »
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PETER MANNING. The Chair the ABC needs
After a year from hell, the ABC desperately needs stability, leadership, vision and funds. Continue reading »
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QUENTIN DEMPSTER. The ABC is now fighting for its survival (Speech delivered on 7 February 2019)
In trying to defend the ABC as an institutional pillar of a fearless free media in Australia’s robust democracy, first, we have to confront paranoia.It comes in the form of constant Murdoch Press complaints that the ABC is biased and a force for “left wing” ideology.“All the ABC’s presenters are left wing!” columnists and ABC Continue reading »
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MATTHEW O’NEILL. How the media’s fixation with Trump was exported. (The Interpreter 23.1.2019)
The Trump administration has hurtled into its third year and the media circus that’s trailed the 45th president continues apace. Australians who didn’t tune out of the news over the summer holidays were fed a diet of chaos and controversy out of Washington, with the ongoing partial government shutdown featured prominently in bulletins nationwide. Continue reading »
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CRISPIN HULL. Solution to ABC budget cuts. (Canberra Times 19.1.2019)
Here is an idea for how the ABC might deal with the inevitable round of cuts next Budget. Clever bureaucrats when faced with funding cuts go for the jugular. They attack some popular vote-sensitive function and announce it will be cut. The backlash often results in a funding rethink. Continue reading »
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JAKE JOHNSON. Facebook let corporate partners read users’ private messages.
Just hours after civil rights groups called on Facebook’s top executives to step down from the company’s board for allowing “viral propaganda” and “bigoted campaigns” to spread on the platform, demands for CEO Mark Zuckerberg to resign intensified after a bombshell New York Times report late Tuesday detailed a “special arrangement” the social media behemoth had with tech corporations that Continue reading »
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KIM WINGEREI. Independent Media On The Rise
To conclude my series of posts on media power and politics, it is worth highlighting how independent media is on the rise in Australia. As we head into the new year – elections looming – trust in politicians at an all-time low, aided and abetted by mainstream media focused on headlines instead of substance – Continue reading »
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KIM WINGEREI. The Politics of Media Power.
Much has been said and will continue to be said about the power that Rupert Murdoch wields in our very concentrated media landscape. It is a landscape that continues to change and the ACCC just released the preliminary report on Digital Platforms. New regulations may be needed, but the issues goes to the core of Continue reading »
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CHRIS HEDGES. Banishing Truth – The story of Seymour Hersh. (Truthdig 24.12.2018)
The investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, in his memoir “Reporter,” describes a moment when as a young reporter he overheard a Chicago cop admit to murdering an African-American man. The murdered man had been falsely described by police as a robbery suspect who had been shot while trying to avoid arrest. Hersh frantically called his editor to Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. The ABC 2018 year-roundup and the defining issue of our time.
“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil – God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act” Dietrich Bonhoeffer The ABC 2018 year wrap-up included a few seconds of David Attenborough’s science-based warning to humanity of an impending global climate catastrophe (https://www.her.ie/news/david-attenborough-appealing-help-defining-issue-time-438220), as well Continue reading »
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PETER MANNING. The Best of 2018: Public trust and the ABC, a landmine for Turnbull.
It’s a long-time ago now but in the early 1990’s, just after I’d finished my stint as head of ABC TV News and Current Affairs (and having a blue with first Bob Hawke and then David Hill over ABC TV coverage of the first Iraq war), I took over as General Manager of the ABC’s Continue reading »
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AMANDA MEADE. Positive finding on ABC and SBS a bitter pill for News Corp (The Guardian).
Rejection of competition complaints wasn’t what the Australian was hoping for. Plus: Ray Hadley sees the light. Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE. Newcastle Port – another botched privatisation -A repost from 5 September 2016
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has taken legal action over the terms on which the NSW Coalition Government in 2013 privatised Port Botany and Port Kembla and imposed severe restrictions on Newcastle Port. Our mainstream media has shown scant interest in this episode of ‘crony capitalism’ which lessened competition, disadvantaged the Hunter region and Continue reading »
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WANNING SUN AND HAIQING YU. Mandarin-speaking voters in Victoria: WeChat, new influencers and some lessons for politicians.
The state election in Victoria saw a dramatic swing to Labor in areas with a high concentration of Chinese-speaking migrants. Mount Waverley saw a 6.4% swing to Labor and Box Hill 7.7%. As participant observers in WeChat discussions, we offer some reflections on the role of Chinese social media, WeChat, in this political process and Continue reading »
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Media Ethics and Politics
As the political circus goes from bad to worse, it is important to not only demand that our politicians improve their behaviour, but the media has an equally important role to play. Journalists and the media already have a code of conduct setting ethical standards, but do they adhere to it? Continue reading »
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MICHAEL PASCOE. Fairfax joins the Murdoch sectarian beat-up brigade (The New Daily).
The first law of journalism is that bad news is good news – bad news sells. On Monday, Fairfax’s Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspapers had a choice between a “good news” story and twisting the facts to make a “bad news” story. No prize for guessing which way the decision went. Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. Which planet is the media living on?
While extreme weather events are being reported almost daily on news bulletins, only rarely is it conveyed that these events constitute the manifestation of advanced global warming and a fundamental shift in the state of the atmosphere. Rarely do major ABC TV forums, such as The Drum, The Insiders, Q and A, Four-Corners, the 7.30 Continue reading »
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PAUL COLLINS. ABC -Shenanigans at Ultimo’s Level Fourteen.
Monday’s Four Corners on the ABC’s management shenanigans—the Guthrie-Milne, she said-he said fiasco—and the failure of the rest of the ABC Board to own-up and answer publicly for their performance tells you everything about what’s wrong at the top of the national broadcaster. Its not imagined left-wing bias, or ‘inaccurate and unbalanced reporting’, or Emma Continue reading »
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JIEH-YUNG LO. Ross Cameron sacking shows we won’t tolerate racism any further.
In typical fashion, Andrew Bolt through his blog at the Herald Sun mounted a defence of Ross Cameron’s sacking from Sky News Australia. Instead of recognising its racist connotations directed towards Chinese people (and people of Chinese origin for that matter) Bolt went on by saying Ross Cameron’s intentions, while recognising his poor choice of Continue reading »
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MARGARET SIMONS. Good riddance to Guthrie and Milne. The ABC needs grown-ups in charge (the Guardian 12.11.18)
The most powerful message to emerge from Four Corners’ sad story about the tumult at the top of the ABC is that neither the former chairman Justin Milne nor the former managing director Michelle Guthrie appeared to be friends of the public broadcaster. Continue reading »
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AMANDA MEADE. ‘It was magic’: Kerry O’Brien on ABC bosses, battles and why it’s no bed of lefties (The Guardian)
‘It was magic’: Kerry O’Brien on ABC bosses, battles and why it’s no bed of lefties. Continue reading »
