THE explosion of online publishing has seen a breed that knows little or nothing about journalism assume posts as editors, writers, and so on.
But when one comes to such positions without understanding the finer points of the craft – as those who have either worked for, or been trained in, full-time publishing ventures do – the danger of overstepping one’s bounds is very real.
CRIKEY is a digital publication from Melbourne in Australia which has pretensions aplenty. It often claims to be the last — and correct — word on things. But oft times, it shows its ignorance. It shows its insularity.
Crikey sends a daily email to its subscribers five days a week. Its content also goes on its website, though only subscribers can access it. And this is a site which preaches a lot about things like freedom.
When Nelson Mandela died, Crikey ran an article by Guy Rundle, a writer who has a tendency to be unduly verbose. He revels in literary masturbation, using multi-syllable words here and there. He can never say anything in 600 words, hence most of his essays are continued off the daily newsletter. But Rundle, who delights in correcting other people, can screw up himself. And when he does it, he goes big.
While the rest of the world was correctly referring to Mandela by his tribal name, Madiba, Crikey called him Mandiba in an article right on top of its website. The mistake — and that’s an understatement — was there in the daily newsletter on December 6. The website was corrected shortly thereafter.
But it took quite a while before this paragon of virtue decided to come clean.
On December 10, a full 96 hours after the screw-up, the staff at Crikey realised that someone may have seen this glorious screw-up before it was changed. And so, a small apology was added in the newsletter on December 10.
THE Australian Broadcasting Corporation is a government-funded entity which operates on the lines of the BBC. It provides some of the better media content in the country, but this is not surprising since the standards of the rest are abysmally low. Murdoch-owned media constitute about 70 per cent of the country’s industry – that should say it all.
Given that it lives off the taxpayer, the ABC has many rules and regulations that govern its operations. It is meant to be accountable. But, then politicians are also meant to be accountable. And both often get away with blue murder.
The ABC’s arrogance is visible on occasion, though for the most part it hides behind the weasel words that are so much a part of public life today. The following incident will illustrate the level of contempt the corporation — living off the public teat, in case one has forgotten — shows.
On Friday, the local morning programme on the ABC in Melbourne has a segment called The Friday Wrap. It is a lazy attempt to consume time — after all, this means one does not have to think up a fresh idea to fill half an hour of a three-hour program — and, in the manner of a dog returning to its vomit, attempts to look at politics during the week that has gone by.
WHEN journalists criticise something repeatedly, those who read their offerings tend to conclude that the journalist in question has a dislike of the person or people at the heart of that issue – and that is the reason for the criticism.
But that is often not the case.
Irish journalist David Walsh was probably the only one of his tribe to be critical of Lance Armstrong when the American, on his return to professional racing after recovering from testicular cancer, won the Tour de France in 1999.
AUSTRALIAN nationals do not require a visa to visit the United States as tourists. They merely have to fill in a form on a website, wait for approval and then carry a printout of the resultant permission when they travel.
But any Australian passport holder who visits the US to report on an event has to get a journalist’s visa, what is known as an I category visa.
WHAT does one call a writer who pretends that the life experiences of others are his own, and passes them off as such? A fraud? A poser? A plagiarist? I have not been able to find le mot juste.
Lest there is any mystery over whom one is referring to, I am talking about the diplomatic editor of the New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman.
Friedman has been ridiculed by journalists like Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald, and rightly so, for his ridiculous use of language and his incoherent writings which appear in what is apparently the greatest newspaper in the US. (That tells us why newspapers are closing down rapidly in that country.)
ONE can understand Matthew Ricketson’s despair over the criticism levelled at the report of the media inquiry of which he was part; after all, one never likes to see one’s work, especially when it is so high-profile, being regarded as the output of a government toady.
(Ricketson, a journalism academic, assisted a retired judge, Ray Finkelstein, in conducting an inquiry into the media in Australia recently.)
But then, Ricketson has only himself to blame. If he thought that news organisations would take kindly to the idea of oversight by the government, then his connection with journalism in the field is obviously rather tenuous. Continue reading “Money does tend to blur the perspective of many”
THE Australian newsletter Crikey is a publication that thinks it is top of the pile. It is always lecturing all and sundry about standards, journalistic and otherwise.
But when its own shortcomings (and they are legion) are pointed out, one doesn’t even get an acknowledgement. I sent the following missive to the editor about the edition of June 1. No response at all. Continue reading “Crikey: Hypocrisy with a capital ‘h’”
CHANNEL 4 has done journalism proud, with a follow-up to its documentary on the war in Sri Lanka.
Last year, in June, the television network screened a documentary titled Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields which provided powerful evidence of war crimes by both the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers during the civil war which ended in May 2009.
The follow-up, titled Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished, screened on the night of March 14 in London; it is available on YouTube and is a powerful reminder that in a day and age when journalism is often referred to as a dying profession, good investigative reports are worth more than their weight in gold. Continue reading “Journalism of the very best kind”
WHEN a sovereign nation has to respond to charges made in a TV documentary that screens in just a few countries, no matter how serious those charges are, then it has well and truly lost the battle to convince people that it is in the right.
Sri Lanka finds itself in this position after having, rather foolishly, decided to respond to a documentary made by Britain’s Channel 4 about alleged war crimes committed during the war against the Tamil Tiger separatist movement that ended in May 2009. (The programme is also available on YouTube; just search for “Sri Lanka killing fieldsâ€.)
