Regulating Press Freedoms : Oakes 2

Governments should keep their mitts off the media, according to Laurie Oakes.  Oakes, arguably Australian’s most eminent political correspondent, told the annual Press Freedom Day dinner in Sydney the Australian government had not produced compelling reasons for legislating new media controls.

Laurie Oakes

He was commenting on the recommendations of two recent media inquiries: the Finkelstein press inquiry and the Convergence Review Committee which examined how new media might be regulated.

The Social Media Counter-Revolution Reply

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Its wrong to think of free speech as an absolute which underpins democracy. Its really a contested event which ebbs and flows, even in stable western countries.

For the last decade, the internet and in particular social media, were seen as advancing free speech and in doing so, threatening authoritarian regimes. But Evgeny Morozov  argues that authoritarian governments have quickly adapted to dash what he calls naive democratic hopes.

The limits of citizen journalism 2

Why were new media able to topple governments in Egypt and Tunisia, but sparked new waves of oppression in Syria and Iran?

During the Arab Spring last year, citizen journalists, using Facebook, Twitter, email and iPhones, undermined state censorship and contributed to the success of massive pro-democracy demonstrations in Cairo and Tunis. Yet in Iran, many of the activists were arrested while in  the case of the Iranian ally, Syria, the government simply attacked with tanks.

Citizen journalism and social change 4

Citizen Journalism can flourish where mainstream journalists have been corrupted or censored by governments and corporations.

Writing in his new book, Revolution 2.0, Wael Ghonim said that social media armed pro democracy activists against the State’s  “weapons of mass oppression”. During last year’s Arab Spring demonstrations in Egypt, the internet was used to keep activist organisers at arms length from security forces.

Ghonim, an Egyptian born  Google executive, operated out of the relative safety of Dubai, while he ran his virtual campaign against the Egyptian government. When he did come home to Egypt, prior to the major demonstrations on January 25, 2011, he was promptly disappeared by security forces who isolated him and subjected him to psychological tortures. Google meanwhile campaigned for his release.

“One sided” coverage of media inquiry : Press Council Chair 2

The press coverage of the inquiry into Australian media exemplified what was wrong, Julian Disney, the Chair of the Australian Press Council  said tonight. “It was very one sided,” he said.

Professor Disney was speaking at a forum organised in Sydney by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism to discuss the Finkelstein report. The inquiry recommended a government funded institution to require press accountability.

Julian Disney

There was insufficient information in the press about what was actually in the report, Disney said. “You had to go online to get a half way decent description of what was in it”.  There was “no significant attempt” by most news papers to get the views of ordinary people.

Making Australian media acountable : the Finkelstein report 5

Australian media are not as accountable as a democracy might expect.

That’s the view of the Australian government’s Independent Inquiry into Media and Media Regulations, conducted by a retired judge, Ray Finkelstein.

Australia has a very narrow mainstream media ownership by democratic standards. One foreign media group dominates the newspapers, while the taxpayer funded ABC generates the bulk of electronic media news and current affairs.

Finkelstein as seen by the Sydney Morning Herald

Queensland police unleash a social media lynch mob 4

The Queensland Police social media strategy came seriously unstuck this weekend as  a wave of prejudicial comments resulting from its FaceBook site threatened the prosecution of an alleged child killer.

The site had earlier announced a breakthrough in the eight year investigation of the disappearance of Daniel Morcombe. The thirteen year old vanished while waiting for a bus along Nambour Connection Road in Woombye, under the Kiel Mountain Road overpass, on December 7, 2003, sparking the biggest missing-person investigation in Queensland Police history. Police announced  that a 41 year old man had been charged with one count each of murder, deprivation of liberty, child stealing, indecent treatment of a child under 16 and interfering with a corpse.

Wikileaks and investigative journalism 1

“All governments lie” according to the founder of modern investigative journalism, IF Stone.

Stone had a lot in common with Wikileaks‘ Julian Assange.

In the Fifties, “Izzy” Stone broke free from mainstream press compliance with, and reliance on, systematic spin. He created his own files, cross referencing and contextualising what governments said, to help reveal what they actually did. He published the results in his own newspaper, IF Stone’s Weekly.

Wikileaks does much the same thing today assisted by the speed of computers and the reach of the internet. In both cases, these media dissidents interrogated governments’ own sources. And in both cases, this revelation of otherwise hidden government activities was claimed to be a threat to national security. Stone was branded as a communist, a fifties smear as potent as the attempt to convict Julian Assange as a gender criminal (a much more contemporary offence).

Buzzy bees, paedophiles and lynch mobs. Reply

The press reporting of convicted paedophile, Dennis Ferguson, seems to be going from partisan to hysterical.
Ferguson, who served 14 years for abusing children, has been repeatedly forced to change residences since his release. Mobs of angry neighbours have attracted wide media coverage which has in turn generated more angry pickets.

Today’s report in the Couriermail.com.au goes one step further.

Ferguson sold toys to kids
Adam Walters, Amy Dale and Xanthe Kleinig
September 16, 2009 12:00am
AUSTRALIA’s most notorious pedophile Dennis Ferguson has plunged to a new low, conning a charity into letting him sell children’s toys on Sydney streets. Ferguson has reportedly been illegally selling merchandise ordered from Diabetes Australia in Kings Cross. Without a mandatory permit and police approval to collect donations in public spaces, the 61-year-old pariah used his middle name of “Ray” to secure box loads of flashing pens, fridge magnets, key rings and a small toy known as a “Buzzy Bee”, the charity’s mascot.

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/comments/0,23836,26079056-952,00.html

You have to ask the following questions about this story.
Did Ferguson actually sell toys to kids as the header suggests? Or did he sell kids’ toys?
If so, how many toys did he sell and what were they? Was the “buzzy bee” a toy or a mascot? Did he actually sell any “buzzy bees” or were they part of a job lot of items to be sold to make money for charity?
The lead sentence is the story is emotionally charged, using the words, “plunged to a new low”. Was Ferguson’s behaviour in this instance really worse then than the crimes for which he was convicted, including the abduction and molestation of children?
And all of these questions hang on the word, “reportedly”, which means we don’t have any proof, but someone else has made the claim.
This may seem like nit picking but journalists have a responsibility to report the facts. There might even be those that thought Ferguson’s attempt to raise money for charity might even be an attempt to do something positive, rather than proof of even more depraved behaviour.
Inaccurate or hysterical reporting can only exacerbate a vexed issue which has already generated threats of vigilantism.

Fiji calls censorship "the journalism of hope" 2

The Fiji military has put a censor in every local newsroom, according to Sean Dorney.
Dorney who was expelled from Fiji last week, was speaking to QUT journalism students and staff.

Brandishing a copy of the military order, Dorney said that Fiji media were being forced “to buckle under”. The military had the power to close any Fiji news organisation which did not do what they were told.

He cited the Fiji Times which tried publishing blank spaces where stories had been censored. They were told,”Do that again and your are shut down forever”. The Fiji Post tried humour. They reported on what they had for breakfast as a front page story. “It was breakfast as usual for staff of this newspaper.’I had left over roti last night a senior reporter… told his colleagues!” They were told any more of that funny business and they would also be shut down.

Journalists were instructed to refrain from publishing any news item which was negative in nature, Dorney said. This was called “the journalism of hope”.

Sean Dorney won a Walkley Award in 1998 for his coverage of the Aitape Tsunami disaster and in the same year the Pacific Islands News Association honoured him with PINA’s Pacific Media Freedom Award. In 1999, the Queensland Branch of the Media Arts and Entertainment Alliance (MEAA) honoured Sean with its “Most Outstanding Contribution of Journalism Award”. The PNG Government awarded Sean an MBE 1991 and he received an AM in 2000 in recognition for his service to Australia as a foreign correspondent.
Dorney’s expulsion prompted more than forty journalists and educators to sign off on a public statement condemning ” attempts to control our colleagues by threats, intimidation and censorship.

QUTNEWS Video report
Dorney Speech 1
Dorney Speech 2

Alan Knight