Kate McClymont
The nation’s wealthy and powerful often used threats to put the frighteners on journalists, according to investigative reporter, Kate McClymont.
Tweeters, bloggers and freelance journalists will be able to insure against defamation actions against them, in a scheme announced by the Media Alliance.
While the internet enabled freelance journalists to self publish, it also meant that independent journalists no longer had an umbrella of employers’ legal protection.
Australia has no constitutional guarantees of free speech, allowing the wealthy or well connected to target their online critics with costly legal actions. Journalists have been faced with the choice of going silent or talking a loan to pay for a lawyer. More…
News is being re-defined in India where citizen journalists use mobile phones to create a grass roots news gathering network.
To seek accuracy and foster credibility, their stories were fact checked by professional journalists employed to review submitted material. More…
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation plans to launch a seamless, new multi media News process.
Under the News system being tested this week, desk editors and producers were working with Chief of Staff desks and day editors in the Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane newsrooms to coordinate national stories, from commissioning through to production – across all platforms. More…
History’s worst mass murderers have been joined by Australia’s Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, if you believe News Limited‘s big circulation Australian newspaper, the Telegraph. The Telegraph was reacting to Conroy’s announcement yesterday that the government would legislate to create a Public Interest Media Advocate. More…
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 14,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 3 Film Festivals
Julia Gillard as depicted by Larry Pickering
The opposition attacks on Julia Gillard’s ethics were underpinned by an unprecedented underground online campaign prosecuted on social media.
The questions raised by the opposition’s Tony Abbott and Julie Bishop were foreshadowed in the Murdoch press which in turn was informed byblogs maintained by right wing activists operating on the margins of the mainstream media. It happened beyond the rarified gaze of the press gallery, which itself has become a target for speculation and abuse. More…
Being offensive should not be illegal, according to Jim Spigelman, the Chair of the ABC.
Mr Spigelman was giving the 2012 Human Rights Day Oration at the Australian Human Rights Commission’s 25th Human Rights Award Ceremony.
Laws restricting hate speech should aim to protect people’s dignity against assault, he said. But “declaring conduct, relevantly speech, to be unlawful, because it causes offence, goes too far.” More…
New media revolutionised US Presidential elections through fund raising, fact checking and crowd sourcing, according to Tom Shaller ( @schaller67 ).
Social media offered fast, if not always accurate, coverage.
Schaller , Professor of political science at the University of Maryland, was speaking at a master class on media and US politics at the UTS Graduate School of Journalism. Tom Schaller is a regular political columnist for the Baltimore Sun and is the author of a number of books on politics. His visit to Australia was sponsored by the US government. More…
The Online Journalism blog contains more than fifteen reports on online journalism, new media and the professional use of Twitter and Facebook. They include:
Computers were introduced into Australian journalism in the early seventies by Australian Associated Press (AAP), a news wholesaler owned by the major newspaper groups.
International news came in on tele-printers, typed in capitals. Sub-editors cut sentences into strips and glued them onto paper backing.
Networks of outsourced sub-editors, linked by computers, could edit most newspapers.
Combined with good journalism fact checking, Twitter can help create an unprecedented network of sources providing global reach, diversity and credibility. More…
