US: lots of technology, poor implementations

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.

Going through the process is illuminating because one discovers the level of incompetence in the American system, if nothing else.
Continue reading “US: lots of technology, poor implementations”

Thomas Friedman, fraud supreme

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.)

Continue reading “Thomas Friedman, fraud supreme”

Money does tend to blur the perspective of many

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”

Crikey: Hypocrisy with a capital ‘h’

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’”

Journalism of the very best kind

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”

Sri Lanka is losing the propaganda battle over war crimes

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 fields”.)

The Lankan bid to refute the claims came a few days after Channel 4 broadcast even more evidence of Colombo’s complicity in war crimes – evidence given by two unnamed soldiers who went to the extent of claiming that the orders to kill Tamils en masse in order to get the war over with came from the country’s defence secretary, Gotabaya Rakapakse.
Continue reading “Sri Lanka is losing the propaganda battle over war crimes”

Why the ABC has been forced to cut programs

THE Australian Broadcasting Corporation has announced cuts to a number of programs which will result in staff in some centres losing their jobs. Surprisingly, the corporation, a government-funded entity, has cited “falling audiences for some programmes” as one reason why it had to make these cuts.

It tells the tale of the corporation in just those few words. Exactly why a government-funded organisation should be chasing behind ratings is not clear.

But the ABC has become like any other commercial network and wants to ape them. It wants to be in the limelight, not to provide services for the diverse range of people who live in Australia.
Continue reading “Why the ABC has been forced to cut programs”

The royal censor gets into the act

THE British royal family, an anachronism in this day and age, has shown its tendency to dictate proceedings in a strange way, totally against the grand British tradition of free speech.

Prince Charles has instructed the BBC to place strict conditions on the feed of the wedding between his son William and Kate Middleton which it provides to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation; these strictures effectively prevent what would have been the best program on the wedding, the view of the Chaser team, from going to air.

What’s outrageous is that the restrictions are specifically aimed at the Chaser – other not-so-straight coverage, such as that planned by Australia’s Channel 10, has no restrictions placed on it.

Charles has laid down the law to the BBC and the organisation has bent over and shown its backside.

The wedding is not a private affair – hundreds of millions of pounds in state funds will be used to provide security. Only the wedding expenses are being borne by the House of Windsor and the Middleton clan – the British taxpayer is forking out by the bucket at a time when the country’s economy and the financial standing of a large percentage of the populace is not exactly what one can describe as healthy.

It is a royal shame to waste public money at a time when most of the rest of the country is struggling to pay its bills. But when did the royals ever give a hoot about the public?

It is far too late for the Chaser folk to organise their own footage of anything remotely close to the wedding; indeed, people would like to watch some part of the official proceedings as they listen to the unique take of the Chaser team who are a class act.

Every country that claims to follow the liberal tradition and have a free press has its own set of satirists – for example, David Letterman, Jon Stewart, and Bill Maher in the US, Ricky Gervais and the Little Britain team in the UK and the Chaser and a multitude of others in Australia.

But the cold, clammy hand of censor Charles has clamped down and it’s back to the colonial era again when Britain told Australia what it could and couldn’t do. And Britain wants to spread the democratic tradition to other lands, I’m told.

This is a fine example, right from the top, of the class-ridden British society. Censorship at its brilliant best. One more good reason, if any more were needed, for Australia to cut the apron strings and become a republic.

When sports bodies dictate the agenda…

RUGBY matches telecast in New Zealand on Sky TV are made highly watchable by the two commentators – Grant Nisbett and Murray Mexted. Nisbett follows the game and Mexted, a former All Black, adds some spicy comment.

But that is all in the past. Mexted has been shown the door by Sky simply because he criticised the New Zealand rugby union authorities for their decision to cut four teams from the provincial Air New Zealand cup tournament next year.

Mexted was apparently told by Sky that the NZRU was a commercial partner and should not be criticised.

This isn’t the first time that Sky has shown such sensitivity; earlier this year when the Indian cricket team toured New Zealand, its officials took exception to the fact that Craig McMillan, who is associated with the Indian Cricket League, an unauthorised rival to the Indian board’s Indian Premier League, was a commentator for the one-day series.

McMillan was pulled from the team after the complaint during the fourth one-day tie. He was also supposed to be a commentator for the second Test at Napier, alongside former Indian player Ravi Shastri.

Shastri is said to be the one who raised the red flag about McMillan.

The Indian cricket board is king when it comes to cricket, be it the shorter variety or Test match cricket. The Indian team is a drawcard anywhere in the world given the huge number of Indians who are interested in what is to a large extent a boring game.

This trend has been present for some time – sports bodies trying to control media coverage. In Australia, the Australian Football League (Australian rules football) has tried to dictate terms to the the media.

The AFL has its own official website and supplies official pictures of the players to the media; these pictures cannot be used by online media.

Other sports do try to extract the maximum commercial gain from an event by selling rights to an official media organ – and the sad thing is that the media goes along with this.

Which means that actions like that of Sky TV are partly to be blamed for the sports bodies acting like prima donnas. When principle is thrown overboard, the public tend to get the short end of the stick.

When will advertising come to our ABC?

Everyone in China bribes everyone all the time – presenter Jon Faine on the ABC 774 morning show

The ABC does not do advertising. The ABC does promotions. – Unknown presenter on ABC drive program

THE Australian Broadcasting Corporation is a sacrosanct institution in Australia. Both its employees and the public – who, by estimates, contribute eight cents per head to keep it alive – have a sense of ownership about the corporation.

Given recent trends, the ABC, a service funded by taxes, seems to be gearing up for advertising – even though it would take an act of parliament for it to be able to go ahead. The statements above are just two of many reasons why I think this is on the corporation’s radar.

The first statement is that of a shock jock, a statement designed to tickle the latent feelings against foreigners resident in the underbelly of Australian society. People like Sydney shock-jock Alan Jones use such devices to increase audience share. Nobody else could characterise China, a society of 1.2 billion people, in such a careless manner.

It is also an indication that the ABC has sunk so low that statements like this go unnoticed.

But why should the ABC be bothered about ratings? After all, the public picks up the tab. There is one possible reason: the only TV or radio station that is bothered about ratings is the one that’s looking to attract advertising.

The second statement is pure spin. It seeks to mask the fact that, from dawn to dusk, the ABC has a constant stream of advertising. The ad slots are so numerous that at times, on TV at least, programs begin as much as five minutes behind schedule.

In one way, this saves ABC presenters quite a bit of work. On a given day, there are any number of radio and TV programs which need to be plugged. On Thursday mornings, for example, there is a plug for Insiders, a political talkfest on TV on Sunday.

Never mind if some other political commentator can provide more incisive or erudite commentary, given that Barrie Cassidy presents Insiders, of necessity one has to listen to him.

On Wednesdays earlier this year, one had to endure an interview with someone from the Chaser team – the plug was mandatory as the Chaser team had a TV program on ABC the same night.

The ABC’s ads about its own services apart, there is a constant stream of media releases from the ABC about the same programs sent to other media outlets.

A few months back, when Phillip Adams was interviewing ABC chief executive Mark Scott to mark the latter’s completion of three years in the post, Adams made a telling statement – that there had been little or no controversy during those three years.

Except, of course, the controversy over the Chaser’s now infamous “make a realistic wish foundation” skit.

The fact that Scott’s reign has been free of controversy is again a good omen for advertisers – no advertiser likes controversy of the type the Chaser provides.

Scott’s reaction to the Chaser incident would also have served to reassure any potential advertiser – he doused any possible flame by demoting an executive over what was a perfectly harmless skit. Advertisers love that kind of thing – it means that the man upstairs is sensitive to what causes public controversy and is willing to step in to make the majority happy.

An additional fact to note is that over the last three or four years, there has been a steady change in the type of people who present programs on the ABC; some of the newcomers, like Lindy Burns for example, are so light-headed in their approach as to be silly. But this kind of anodyne, unquestioning approach is precisely what big corporations look for when planning how to spend their media budgets.

For me, what has cemented the conclusion that the appearance of advertising on the ABC is only a matter of time, was the Gruen Transfer on ABC TV. Whether the program was a management idea or came from the head of Wil Andersen is immaterial – it was the ideal vehicle to test how people would react to having what was blatant advertising on the ABC.

No doubt Andersen expected to be able to use his plentiful wit and satire to poke fun at the world of advertising, much in the manner that he did on The Glass House. But he did not factor in the skills of his regular panel members, Russell Howcroft and Todd Sampson, who hijacked the show very cleverly and used it to their own ends.

Though the ABC does try to avoid gratuitously mentioning the names of companies – to the extent that it calls Melbourne’s second football ground Docklands even though the ground’s owners sell naming rights to a different company each year – Howcroft and Sampson managed to get quite a few commercial entities considerable mileage.

The ABC, apparently, was not in any way upset about this, with the only kerfuffle being a ban on showing an ad that it deemed to be too confronting; the ad was available for viewing online. The program did quite well in terms of viewership and that would have been encouraging.

The ABC has a good example in the shape of SBS – the latter has introduced advertising in the same manner that one boils a frog. No doubt the same methods will be resorted to by Aunty a few years down the track.