Media
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RANALD MACDONALD. ABC cuts – the gloves are off.
The Coalition’s latest budget aimed at ensuring the voters return it to the government benches has dropped any pretence of supporting a vibrant, independent and properly funded ABC. Continue reading »
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LAURIE PATTON. What’s going on at auDA? The battle over Internet domain names.
Anyone who uses an Internet domain name – which means most Australian companies, educational institutions, government departments and not-for-profits – should know what’s currently happening with the domain names registration process. Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE. The international press at Panmunjom for the KIm-Moon Summit were much more impressed than the Australian press.
I was struck by the response, amazement and obvious excitement of the international press at Panmunjom, near Seoul last Friday. See link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw8mROuQs44 But the media interest in Australia seemed remarkably low key and almost disinterested. At least our media was not as sulky and cynical as the Japanese media, Continue reading »
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GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND …
The ABC’s Spirit of Things has woven together several ANZAC stories, including the revelation that the puggaree on our slouch hat is a variant of the Sikhs’ turban. The program starts with presenter Noel Debien interviewing Marist Brother John Lutterll, who has written a biography of an Australian who served in the Gallipoli campaign as Continue reading »
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Media Watch. How News Corp and The Australian mislead us on climate change.
Great Barrier Reef coral bleaching The Australian and Cairns Post highlight a dissenting view on whether global warming is the cause of mass coral bleaching. Continue reading »
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SUE WAREHAM. Honouring the war dead means learning from the horror.
This Anzac Day, as on every other, we will hear of the horrors of war to which many of our service people have been exposed, horrors that certainly call into question any notion of us assuming the title “homo sapiens”. We will “honour the fallen” and utter the hallowed words “lest we forget”, as we Continue reading »
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ROBERT FISK. The search for truth in the rubble of Douma – and one doctor’s doubts over the chemical attack
This is the story of a town called Douma, a ravaged, stinking place of smashed apartment blocks – and of an underground clinic whose images of suffering allowed three of the Western world’s most powerful nations to bomb Syria last week. There’s even a friendly doctor in a green coat who, when I track him down Continue reading »
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PATRICIA EDGAR. The Death of Australian Children’s Broadcast Television Programming.
How many times must it be said that if we do not take action Australian children’s programming will disappear from our screens? Continue reading »
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LAURIE PATTON: No balls. How Cricket Australia lost the media game
The on-field actions of a player created a crisis for Cricket Australia. However, its own mishandling of the affair – especially in its dealing with the media – added to an unfolding debacle. For years to come, world travel for Australians will involve tolerating jokes, and worse, about being from a nation of cheats. Continue reading »
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DUNCAN GRAHAM. Australia Plus – unfit for export.
Though this starts like a fairy story it’s really a frightener: Once upon a time, Australian governments believed that broadcasting beyond our shores – and particularly into Southeast Asia – was an important responsibility, sowing ideas, informing and influencing. Radio Australia shortwave started in 1939 to counter Japanese propaganda. After the war, it became a Continue reading »
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SCOTT BURCHILL. On the Russian gas attack
Given the “sexing up” and outright distortions of dodgy intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s “WMD” in 2002-3 by both the UK government of Tony Blair and US administration of George W. Bush, one can only be astonished at the credulity of those in the Fourth Estate who don’t even feel the need to ask for evidence Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE. Our cricketers The Ugly Australians. A REPOST
Repost from 01/04/2015. Things have only got worse with the cheating in South Africa.. We need a clean out not just of players but coaching staff,Cricket Australia and the media . They are very good cricketers, but the behaviour of our cricketers leaves a nasty taste. Continue reading »
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ANNE HURLEY. Former Internet Australia directors support NSW Business Council call for a National Broadband Service Guarantee
Last year the NSW Business Chamber conducted a statewide survey of members. It has since called for changes it believes will help save business an average $9000 per year resulting from problems related to the NBN rollout. Four former directors of Internet Australia, the NFP peak body representing Internet users, have come out in support Continue reading »
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SCOTT BURCHILL. What is going wrong and how did we get here?
Despite the temptations of presentism and intemperate thinking, the forces which have brought us to the current political malaise have been around for some time. The ideological convergence of the major parties in our two party system has been underway for over four decades. Its most unfortunate consequence is that voters are robbed of meaningful Continue reading »
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ANNE HURLEY. Questions should be asked about the Coalition Agreement and its potential impact on the NBN rollout in rural Australia?
Over the last few weeks we have been inundated with reports of the Barnaby Joyce saga. One aspect of the saga has involved a call for transparency in the provisions of the agreement between the Liberal Party and Nationals – the Coalition Agreement – pursuant to which they operate as the Government for all Australians. Continue reading »
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MATTHEW RICKETSON & RODNEY TIFFEN. The chronicler we deserve?
Michael Wolff’s book owes a large debt to the ethically grounded work of the journalists he professes to disdain. Continue reading »
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Emma Alberici’s now more critical tax cuts ‘analysis’ reposted by ABC
After a bitter dispute between ABC management and their star chief economics correspondent, Emma Alberici, the ABC today reposted her ‘analysis’ of the Turnbull government’s plan for big corporate tax cuts. Continue reading »
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RANALD MACDONALD. Stop the presses.
Well, they have almost stopped running around this country with so few papers being sold nowadays, but let us stop them anyway. Continue reading »
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BERNARD KEANE. Amid denialism on company tax cuts, the ABC lets us down.
The ABC’s censorship of Emma Alberici in response to pressure from Malcolm Turnbull comes at a time when the national broadcaster’s mainstream media competitors are also increasingly failing to properly inform Australians. Continue reading »
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Has the ABC buckled to PM Malcolm Turnbull by removing critical ‘analysis’ of the claimed benefits of corporate tax cuts?
The ABC’s chief economics correspondent Emma Alberici stands by her ‘analysis’. Significantly the ABC, through Ms Alberici’s editorial superiors Gaven Morris, the director of ABC News, and Alan Sunderland, director of editorial policies, do not.In a promoted article posted on February 14 after the broadcast of an ABC News item reporting that many Australian companies did Continue reading »
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EMMA ALBERICI. There’s no case for a corporate tax cut when one in five of Australia’s top companies don’t pay it.
There is no compelling evidence that giving the country’s biggest companies a tax cut sees that money passed on to workers in the form of higher wages. Continue reading »
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The media, the Iraq war and Fallujah
The Australian media continues to fail us badly over its coverage of the Middle East wars, terrorism and the continuing disaster of ISIS. That failure began with the invasion of Iraq . Unlike important overseas media, no Australian media has admitted or apologized for its failure in the coverage of the Iraq war and its Continue reading »
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GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND …
In an article in the Fairfax Press, Clancy Yeates points out that Australia’s big banks have “slashed loans to fossil fuel companies by almost a fifth in 2017, including a 50 per cent drop in their coal mining exposure”. On last weekend’s Saturday Extra, Geraldine Doogue interviewed Laura Dassow Wallis, author of Henry David Thoreau: Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE. We are joined at the hip to a country perpetually at war. Part 4
Next week I will be posting articles asserting that we are running great risks in being tied to the US, an ally that is almost always at war. The risks pre-date Donald Trump. Think Vietnam and Iraq. In recent issues of P & I, I have posted many articles about the US almost perpetual involvement Continue reading »
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CAVAN HOGUE. White man’a media- A REPOST from May 29 2017
That the Australian media gives us saturation coverage of Europe but much less on Asia is obvious but the question is why? Have they done market research which shows this is what the public wants or does it stem from their own beliefs and prejudices? Is this really what most Australians want? Possibly it may Continue reading »
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ANNE HURLEY. Bad advice: why Mr Turnbull’s NBN is such a failure
These days you can’t buy a new car without airbags and ABS brakes. The Internet of Things is transforming the way we live our lives, run our businesses and grow the crops that feed the world. We’re developing autonomous vehicles and there’s talk about travelling to Mars. Yet millions of Australians are being sold broadband Continue reading »
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JOHN CARMODY. Who is Joan Sullivan?
Does the Fairfax slogan, “Independent. Always”, really mean independent of truth, reliability and knowledge? Or should my humble response to the extraordinary headline and story in the Sun-Herald of 31 December have been an admission that, even after an operatic obsession of more than 50 years, there might have been a great Australian singer whom Continue reading »
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MICHAEL THORN. Countering vested interests A REPOST
That corporations wield enormous power is not news. That this power is wielded to benefit the corporation and its agents is not news either. Neither is seeking to counter the power of these corporations by public interest organisations, like the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE). Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE – Our derivative white man’s media A REPOST
Politicians are continually blamed for their failures but our media is also responsible for the state of public discussion on important issues. This downward media spiral has been led by the Murdoch media’s abuse of power in the three major English-speaking markets – Australia, UK and the US. But other media, including the ABC is Continue reading »
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PETER BROWNE. Historian of the present.Ken Inglis
When I visited Ken Inglis early last month, a few weeks before he died, I found him engrossed in the day’s edition of the Sunday Age. It was perhaps eighty years since he’d begun reading the papers as a schoolboy in the inner-Melbourne suburb of Preston, and during that time he’d become one of Australia’s Continue reading »
