ABC 7.30/Youtube screenshot

Don’t Blame the Media, Malcolm: part 2

Malcolm Turnbull has urged ABC journalists to adopt a “less aggressive and more forensic” style of political interviewing. The fact that he made this request on The Bolt Report, Australia’s home of Fox…
Struggle Street was no more voyeuristic than any reality TV show of the last two decades. SBS TV

Review: Struggle Street proves to be powerful, often poignant TV

The producers of this series are doing what public service media are tasked to do – making the marginal visible, including the excluded, putting poverty on the public agenda.
Some Australian media outlets have left no doubt about their position on the executions and the target of their anger. Herald Sun/Courier Mail

Judicial murder is meat and drink for the media

There have been executions of Australians for drug offences before. In 1986 Kevin Barlow and Brian Chambers were hung in Malaysia for trafficking heroin. Van Tuong Nguyen was hanged in Singapore in 2005…
Ayaan Hirsi Ali displays a courage most of us will never have to muster. Atheist foundation of Australia/flickr Photo by Rocco Ancora

Heretics

It’s been a week of trauma and tragedy on many levels. One good news story stands out, though: the life sentences passed on those who attempted to murder the young pro-education activist Malala Yousafzai…
Tony Abbott speaks to media. AAP/Lukas Coch

Welcome to the Wild West of political media

I had some airtime on 2UE the other night, to talk about why we blame the media for everything. ‘We’ being politicians angry that their messages are not - as they see it – getting across. Journalists…

Islam and the media – let’s not fear open debate

On Sunday I came across an article in the International Business Times, reporting a posthumous publication by slain Charlie Hebdo editorial director Stephane Charbonnier. The book, completed two days before…
AAP/Dan Peled

Local content and the ABC

The following is an edited version of a submission to the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee with reference to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Amendment (Local Content) Bill 2014…
AAP/Mick Tsikas

A most dangerous profession

Our journalists come in for a lot of stick, what with accusations of political bias from politicians, intrusions on privacy from celebrities, or ‘dumbing down’ of the culture in general. But Peter Greste’s…
AAP/Nikki Short

Don’t blame the media, Malcolm

Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull earlier this week linked the Liberals’ leadership crisis to “bullying” by journalists covering Australian politics. He was not suggesting, I don’t think, that the…
EPA/Maya Vidon-White

We tolerate everything – except intolerance

Trust Rupert to get new media wrong. Respect, boss, but when the entire freedom-loving world is united in condemnation of the Charlie Hebdo killers and the extremist ideology which inspired them, why take…
More time for piano playing, then. EPA/Andy Rain

Alan Rusbridger leaves big shoes to fill at The Guardian

Alan Rusbridger, who has announced that he is leaving the editorship of The Guardian after 20 years in 2015, will be remembered as one of that great newspaper’s greatest editors. Always ahead of the game…
ABC boss Mark Scott is strengthening the broadcaster’s digital offerings in response to budget cuts – a template established by the BBC. AAP/Alan Porritt

Is this the beginning of the end of the ABC as we know it?

While Australia’s elected representatives argue over what then-opposition leader Tony Abbott meant when he promised “no cuts to the ABC, or SBS” the night before the last election, directly to the electorate…
Malcolm Turnbull and the government have been unapologetic after breaking a pre-election pledge not to cut the ABC’s budget. AAP/Nikki Short

ABC feels pain of broken promise: prepare for cut‑price broadcasting

Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has announced a further cut to Australia’s public broadcasters. The ABC’s budget will be slashed around 4.6% per year, or A$254 million in total, over the next…
EPA/Andrew Gombert

Glimpses of gold in rivers of mud?

Mr Murdoch is reported to be smiling once more, or at least his investors are. News Corp’s shares are up nearly 7% on the back of increased revenues and earnings from book publishing, education and realestate.com.au…
AAP/Alan Porritt

Publish and be slammed!

Senator Nova Peris’ current travails around the NT News’ publication of intimate emails are a reminder to politicians and public figures everywhere that, like it or not, in today’s news culture there is…
Academics have a duty to research and teach the best and the worst of journalism. Het Nieuwe Instituut

The Oz needn’t beat up media lecturers – but thanks anyway

Having worked as a journalism and media studies academic in the United Kingdom for the best part of 25 years, one of the things that surprised me on coming to Australia was the state of near-open warfare…

‘It’s our ABC’

On the day that the ABC released the results of a Newspoll survey on attitudes to the corporation, managing director Mark Scott addressed students at QUT with the message, ‘It’s our ABC’! ‘Us’ being the…

No hiding place: MH17 and the media

MH17 is not the first civilian airliner to have been destroyed in flight by weapons of war. There have been accidental shoot-downs before: the Korean Airlines disaster of 1983, the Iranian Airlines shoot…

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