“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.

Investigative Journalism: Using Animation

Robert Rosenthal, Center for Investigative Reporting

Animation can be used by investigative journalists to reach a wider public, according to Robert Rosenthal. Rosenthal, the Executive Director of the Centre for Investigative Reporting (CIR), was speaking in Sydney at the Back to the Source Conference, organised by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism. For a media innovator, Rosenthal has spent most of his working life as a newspaper journalist; at the Boston Globe, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the San Francisco Chronicle.  One of his first jobs in journalism was at the New York Times, where he worked in a locked backroom, photo copying the Pentagon Papers.

“At the core of everything is the story,” Rosenthal said.

Who is Alan Knight? : an opinion on News Corporation 1

Error by omission is a frequent fault of journalists trying to balance concise writing against providing all the relevant information.

I am guilty of it myself sometimes.

This month, I was contacted by the Age and asked to write an opinion piece about the contest to secure the contract for the Australia Television Network, Australia’s voice to Asia. I wrote a piece which described the Network, currently managed by the ABC, as “pedestrian” .