— Insiders ABC (@InsidersABC) August 31, 2018
Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
Saturday 8 September 2018
Tuesday 7 August 2018
Is Sky News Autralia fast becoming national propaganda central for extreme world views?
This is an excerpt from the book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988) by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky.
That these observations have a basis in fact can sadly be borne out by mainstream and social media in 2018.
Take this most recent example....
The United Patriots Front (UPF) is a
far-right Australian white supremacists group.
In September
2017 admirer
of Adolf Hitler, UPF founder & sometime leader Blair Cottrell and two supporters were each convicted under
Victoria’s Racial and Religious
Tolerance Act 2001
and fined $2,000 plus $79.50 in statutory costs for religious
vilification/inciting serious contempt.
This is not
the first time Cottrell has been before the courts. In 2013 he was gaoled for a
string of offences including stalking, arson, burglary and damaging property.
Despite this dubious history Sky
News decided to invite him on as
a guest of former Northern Territory Chief Minister & former Country Liberal Party Leader Adam Giles for a one-on-one
studio interview on The Adam Giles Show on 5 August 2017.
To describe Cottrell as "an activist" is deliberately misleading as his history is well-known, as are some of his more extreme pronouncements such as this:
The reaction to Sky News was swift and this is just four examples:
What a sad moment for Sky in a year full of them. I’m officially giving @foxtel & @SkyNewsAust the boot for good for supporting & platforming neo-Nazism and hope many Australians do so as well. Hope you honestly reflect on your participation in a propaganda network for extremism.— пятьдесят две победы 76ers (@scouse_roar)August 5, 2018
Sky News knows exactly who Blair Cottrell is and what he stands for. They don’t give a shit. That’s why they’re hosting him. Platforming a guy who believes Mein Kampf should be compulsory reading in schools doesn’t even come close to being beyond the pale for them.— ya fave μαλάκας (@mathaiaus) August 5, 2018
"WE DIDN'T KNOW WHO BLAIR COTTRELL WAS WHEN WE BOOKED HIM TO COME ON OUR CHANNEL. GOOGLE WAS BROKEN THAT DAY" pic.twitter.com/sTkEE5b7rF— Kenny Devine (@TheKennyDevine) August 5, 2018
Sky News issued an apology:I have advised @SkyNewsAust that I have quit as a Sky commentator. My father fought Nazis in WWII and was interred in a German POW camp. The decision to allow Neo-Nazi Blair Cotterell onto the channel was another step in a journey to normalising racism & bigotry in our country.— Craig Emerson (@DrCraigEmerson) August 6, 2018
Then announced a ban on Blair Cottrell and a suspension of the Adam Giles Show, along with an internal management shakeup, as the general public pushed to the limits continued to fight back against the 'normalising' of violence and racism.
However, as Sky News often employs markedly right-wing personalities and regularly hosts guests with extreme, intolerant and sometimes racist world views, it is not always easy to accept assertions that extremist views are not the news channel's own views. Or at the very least, that these divisive opinions are seen by Sky News management as driving an agenda desired by News Corp and powerful right-wing groups.
In fact Sky News appears to be fast developing into a version of that US right-wing propaganda vehicle, Fox News, in that it seeks to legitimise and monetise for its own corporate profit the most dangerous elements on the far-right political and social spectrum.1
Notes
1. Sky News' liking for yellow press journalism hasn't past unnoticed.
Junkee, 6 August 2018: Sky News…. was deeply
sorry for slut-shaming a (female) federal senator a few weeks
ago. In the past, Sky News has been deeply sorry for linking a (female) former state
Premier to corruption, deeply sorry for poking fun at a (female) journalist’s
disability, and deeply sorry for suggesting a school boy was gay because he’d
appeared in a video about feminism.
Wednesday 25 July 2018
The two very different faces Facebook Inc presents to potential advertisers and lawmakers
Australian Newspaper
History Group Newsletter, No 98, July
2018, pp8-9:
98.2.3
Facebook described itself as a ‘publisher’ in 2013
Facebook
described itself as a “publisher” as far back as 2013, leaked documents
obtained by the Australian reveal. This contradicts the message that chief
executive Mark Zuckerberg gave to US Congress, in interviews and in speeches (Australian,
9 July 2018). A 71-page PowerPoint presentation prepared by the then managing director
of Facebook, Stephen Scheeler, outlines how the tech giant was the
“second-highest reaching publisher in Australia” when compared with traditional
media companies such as Nine and Seven. The internal sales document is partly
based on data gathered by measurement firm Nielsen as well as confidential
internal figures including quarterly revenue targets. There is no mention of
Facebook being a publisher in Nielsen’s original report; it categorises
Facebook as a “brand” in its Online Landscape Review published in May 2013. A
slide in the presentation produced by Scheeler, the most senior executive at
Facebook’s Australia and New Zealand business at the time, changed Nielsen’s
description of Facebook from a brand to a “publisher”, showing that the social media
giant views itself as such.
This
is significant because Facebook has long argued it is a tech platform, not a
publisher or a media company, when questioned about how it has generated vast
profits by siphoning off billions of dollars from the news industry. The
admission in the document contrasts with Facebook’s recent public contribution
to a high-powered Australian inquiry into the local digital media market. The
company repeatedly calls itself a “platform” in a 56-page written submission to
the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission.
Zuckerberg
has persistently rejected the suggestion that Facebook is a publisher,
presenting the company as a neutral platform that does not have traditional
journalistic responsibilities. In April, Zuckerberg was asked by US senators
investigating the Cambridge Analytica data scandal to explain whether his
company was a tech company or publisher. Dan Sullivan, a Republican Senator for
Alaska, said: “That goes to an important question about what regulation or action,
if any, we would take.” Asked by Senator Sullivan if Facebook was a “tech
company or the world’s largest publisher” during his second day of testimony on
Capitol Hill, the Facebook co-founder responded: “I view us as a tech company
because the primary thing that we do is build technology and products.” Senator
Sullivan pressed further: “You said you’re responsible for your content, which
makes you kind of a publisher, right?” Zuckerberg did not admit Facebook was a
media company or publisher, but did say it was responsible for what is posted
on its platforms after it emerged that the company allowed Russia to spread
disinformation in the US presidential election.
“I
agree that we’re responsible for the content. But we don’t produce the content.
I think that when people ask us if we’re a media company or a publisher, my
understanding of what the heart of what they’re really getting at is: do we
feel responsible for the content on our platform? The answer to that I think is
clearly yes. But I don’t think that that’s incompatible with fundamentally at
our core being a technology company where the main thing that we do is have
engineers and build products.”
Labels:
Facebook,
information technology,
Internet,
media
Saturday 16 June 2018
The American Resistance has many faces and this is just one of them .......(22)
This is a political cartoon by Rob Rodgers, who until 15 June 2018 was employed by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - ciruculation 317,439 - a subsidiary of Block Communication Inc.
On that day he was apparently sacked for being critical of US President Donald J. Trump.
Labels:
censorship,
fascism,
media,
Trump Regime
Monday 4 June 2018
How the media sees denizens of Parliament Drive, Canberra
One Nation’s lifetime
president summed up in ten sentences
The Saturday Paper Editorial excerpt, 2 June 2018:
Despite what she says,
Hanson is a politician. She’s just not a very good one. Burston’s defection is
the end of her balance of power in this senate. The relief at this is great.
To see One Nation break
apart again is to be reminded of the brokenness of racism. Hers is a dried-out
vision of Australia, mean and unimaginative. It is a pleasure to see it fail.
It is like watching a dirt clod give in to rain.
Hers is a country of
racist privilege, of conspiracy theories and clapped-out ideology. It is a
godsend to see it founder.
Hanson arrived in this
parliament with a party of Brits and car thieves. Scandal has claimed member
after member. Those who are left, she cannot hold together. And it is good.
Barnaby Joyce’s
death is announced
The Australian via outline.com, 1 June 2018:
The implosion of Barnaby
Joyce — personally and professionally — in and of itself risks bringing down
the Turnbull government. In fact, it puts the political potency of the
Coalition at risk well beyond the Turnbull era.
The man once described
by former prime minister Tony Abbott as Australia’s best retail politician has
become a dead weight around the necks of his Liberal and Nationals colleagues.
The way Joyce has
conducted himself generally, the contradictions in his calls for privacy versus
selling his story to the highest bidder and some of the specifics (for example,
blaming his partner for taking the cash or earlier suggesting the child might
not even be his) have put Joyce’s retail days behind him. We’re not supposed to
talk about this now that he’s on personal leave but not dwelling on it is
perhaps the more realistic refrain.
There is no coming back
politically from the way Joyce’s soap opera has played out in public. Anyone in
the Nationals hoping for a return of the man who helped the party retain all
its seats at the 2016 election, even picking one up from the Liberals, and
saving the Turnbull government in the process are kidding themselves. Not now,
not ever.
If the best interests of
the Nationals are the only thing to consider, Joyce will quietly announce his
intention not to contest the next election. He may yet do that. Let’s hope it
doesn’t involve another paid interview.
Michaelia the Screecher
in a nut shell
The
Canberra Times,
1 June 2018:
The Liberal Party's
loudest voice speaking up in defence of all the wrong things, while taking zero
responsibility for what happens in her office. Who could possibly forget the
way she dragged the Leader of the Opposition's female staffers through the
sleaze earlier this year? Now she's been subpoenaed
to appear before the Federal Court, which is examining last year's raids on
the Australian Workers' Union. She's been moaning that it's all a union plot while
appearing to forget the Federal Court doesn't get bullied into doing anything.
Liberal MP for almost 17
years and Federal Minister for over 4 years, Greg Hunt, reveals skills acquired
as former Captain of Australian Universities Debating Team
Brisbane
Times, 31 May
2018:
“He relocated his chair,
pointing towards me and said 'you need to f***ing get over it, you need to
f***ing make Senator Scullion your best friend'," Alderman Miller told ABC
TV.
Labels:
Australian politics,
Federal Parliament,
media
Monday 9 April 2018
Trump called out for untrue personal attack
Fox News pointed out in polite terms that US President Donald J. Trump is telling wall-to-wall lies in his personal attack on the founder of Amazon (an American electronic commerce and cloud computing corporation) and owner of The Washingtom Post, multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos.
It also linked this attack to newspaper's reporting of the the DOJ-FBI investigation into alleged links between the the Trump presidential campaign and Russia's interferrence in the 2016 US national elections.
Perhaps Trump should cast his mind back to the last American president that tried to silence The Washington Post - in that case for it's reporting of the Watergate political scandal.
He might also care to recall that Bezos (the world's 'richest' man in 2018) only holds est. 16 per cent of Amazon shares - there are another 2,447 shareholders of record and est. 60.53 per cent of the share pool is owned by institutional investors, who as representatives of a host of beneficial shareholders won't be happy with Trump's crude attempt to force Amazon share value down.
Thursday 29 March 2018
Mainstream media continues to amplify racist dog whistles in 2018
In September
2017 the Nursing and Midwifery Board of
Australia (NMBA) published the new Code of Conduct for Nurses and Code of
Conduct for Midwives. The codes took effect for all nurses and midwives in
Australia on 1 March 2018.
These codes
set out the
legal requirements, professional behaviour and conduct expectations for all
nurses and midwives in all practice settings.
The new codes
for nurses and midwives can be found here.
These codes
passed without much comment until far-right Senator Cory Bernardi began to bay about “political correctness” on
31 January 2018 and claim that Nurses must acknowledge
white privilege and voice this acknowledgment if asked.
According to
ABC Media Watch
he was followed by the Murdoch media running with this blatant dog whistle,
followed by Andrew Bolt, Peta Credlin and various radio shock
jocks.
Misleading
media coverage culminating in a truly appalling piece of journalism by Channel
7 which elicited this response…………..
Luke Pearson writing at @IndigenousX on 24 March
2018:
“BUT FIRST TONIGHT, THE
CONTENTIOUS NEW CODE TELLING NURSES TO SAY ‘SORRY FOR BEING WHITE’ WHEN
TREATING THEIR INDIGENOUS PATIENTS..
That’s how Today Tonight Adelaide
began last night.
Catch Up: Having to apologise for being white – the controversial new code for nurses treating Indigenous Australians. #TTAdelaide pic.twitter.com/yViiqkw67F— TodayTonightAdelaide (@TodayTonightSA) March 23, 2018
It continued:
“Now, it’s the latest in a string of
politically correct changes for the health industry, but this one has led to
calls for the Nursing Board boss to resign.”
It was followed by a five minute story
with the new code being condemned by someone you’ve probably never heard
of, Graeme Haycroft,
explaining that: “According to how the code is written, the white nurse would
come in and say, ‘before I deal with you, I have to acknowledge to you that I
have certain privileges that you don’t have” followed by Cory Bernardi calling
it divisive.
It goes on in this vein for a full
five minutes before it cuts back to the presenter, who finally says, “The
Nursing and Midwifery Board has told us that the code was drafted in
consultation with Aboriginal groups and has been taken out of context as it’s
not a requirement for health workers to declare or apologise for white
privilege”.
And just to reinforce that point, the
entire premise for the segment was false. There is no requirement for nurses to
apologise for being white, which would be very awkward for the more the more
than 1500 Indigenous nurses across Australia, and the countless others who also
aren’t white to begin with. But, even for the nurses who are – THERE IS NO
REQUIREMENT FOR THEM TO APOLOGISE FOR BEING WHITE.
So, why on Earth would Today Tonight
run such a story?
Why would they base a story off the
demonstrably false allegations of this Graeme Haycroft person?
To answer that, it might useful to cut
back to a 2005
Sydney Morning Herald story about Mr Haycroft:
“A member of the National Party and
the H.R. Nicholls Society, he (Mr Haycroft) boasts that, because of a tussle he
had with the Australian Workers Union 15 years ago, the union does not have a
single member shearing sheep in south-western Queensland today.
Now he runs a labour hire firm with a
thriving sideline in moving small-business employees off awards and collective
agreements and onto the Federal Government’s preferred individual contracts,
Australian Workplace Agreements.
…Mr Haycroft’s business stands out
because he is targeting lower-skilled, lower-paid workers, often with poor
English – the people unions say have much to fear from individual contracts.”
Cut back to 2018, and Graeme Haycroft
now runs the Nurses Professional Association of Queensland, which promotes
itself as an alternative to the Qld Nurses Union.
So, a man with a long history of
fighting Unions, who ‘saved’ the mushroom farming business by showing
businesses how to move “small-business employees off awards and collective
agreements and onto the Federal Government’s preferred individual contracts,
Australian Workplace Agreements.”
According to the 2005 article, “Mr
Haycroft said workers had been more than happy to sign on, most with their
penalty rates, holiday pay and other conditions being rolled into a flat rate.”
“However, [there is always a
‘however’], Mr Haycroft was stripped of his preferred provider status with the
Office of the Employment Advocate on Thursday, after a Sydney picker, Carmen
Walacz Vel Walewska, said she was sacked after she contacted the Australian
Workers Union for advice on AWAs.”
With that track record, it’s hard to
imagine why nurses would want to leave their current union in favour of his
‘professional association’.
It seems as though, once again,
Indigenous people have become a political football and a convenient scapegoat
for issues that have nothing to do with us.
Queensland has a long history of
political success found through anti-Aboriginal sentiment, so what better way
to undermine a Union and recruit new members to a professional association than
to accuse the Union of ‘racism against white people’ and ‘political correctness
gone made’ by spreading the blatantly false and misleading accusation that
white nurses now have to apologise to Aboriginal people for being white?
And just like Dick Smith’s
anti-immigration campaign, Blair Cottrell’s anti-African ‘community safety
group’, and Prue McSween’s call for a new Stolen Generation, it seems Channel 7
is always more than happy to ignore the facts and sensationalise issues about race
and racism.
There is always one more
thing.
We, and others, will soon publish
articles explaining what the Code of Conduct actually calls for, and explain
why cultural competence and cultural safety are important (editor’s note: we
did, here’s
one of them), but I can’t help but be reminded of this quote from Toni
Morrison:
“The function, the very serious
function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps
you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you
have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says
your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that
it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you
have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will
always be one more thing.”
So, instead of working on the very
real business of ensuring best practice within the nursing industry, our
Indigenous experts in this area will have to take a few days away from this
important work to explain that no one is asking for white nurses to apologise
for being white.
Just like we have to explain that not
all Aboriginal parents abuse their children, or that we don’t want to steal
white people’s backyards, or that we had (and have) science, or that Australia
wasn’t Terra Nullius, or, as Malcolm Turnbull suggested last year, that
acknowledging Indigenous history and addressing the issue of colonial statues
and place names across Australia is not a “Stalinist exercise of trying to wipe
out or obliterate or blank out parts of our history”.
So long as Australian media and
politics finds value, profit and opportunity in promoting racism, there will
always be one more thing.
So, I might as well clear up a few
others while I’m here, and empty a few more buckets out of the endless ocean of
racist misinformation.
Child abuse isn’t a ‘cultural’ thing.
Police are not scared to arrest
Aboriginal people out of fear of being called racist.
We don’t get free houses.
Aboriginal people using white ochre on
their faces in dance and ceremony is not the same thing as white people
dressing up in blackface.
We don’t get free university.
The Voice to Parliament is not a third
chamber of parliament.
We are not the problem.
Anything else?
We aren’t vampires?
We don’t shoot laser beams out of our
eyes?
We aren’t secretly developing a
perpetual motion machine that runs on white tears?
I’m sure I, and countless others, will
undoubtedly need to keep adding to this list because, as Toni Morrison tells
us, there will always be one more thing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Do
nurses under the new code have to announce their ‘white privilege’ before
treating indigenous patients?
It is not a requirement of the codes of conduct for nurses and midwives
to announce or apologise for white privilege. Any claim that nurses and
midwives need to announce or apologise for white privilege is completely
untrue. The recent criticisms from Mr Haycroft are based on completely untrue
statements. The requirements for nurses when working with Aboriginal and/or
Torres Strait Islander Peoples are clearly outlined in section 3.1 of the code.
Are nurses encouraged to
announce their ‘white privilege’ before treating indigenous patients?
No.
Is there any requirement
to acknowledge or announce ‘white privilege’ before treating a patient?
No.
Can a nurse be sacked
for NOT declaring or addressing their ‘white privilege’ to a patient?
No.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AUSTRALIAN NURSING AND MIDWIFERY
FEDERATION, AUSTRALIAN COLLEGE OF NURSING, AUSTRALIAN COLLEGE OF MIDWIVES AND
CONGRESS OF ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER NURSES AND MIDWIVES
JOINT
STATEMENT, 23 March
2018:
In response to Graeme Haycroft’s recent
comments, we welcome the opportunity to provide further information on how
important cultural safety is for improving health outcomes and experiences for
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.
It is clear from the 2018 Closing the Gap
Report tabled by Prime Minister Turnbull in February 2018 that Aboriginal
and/or Torres Strait Islander Peoples still experience poorer health outcomes
than non-Indigenous Australians. It is well understood these inequities are a
result of the colonisation process and the many discriminatory policies to
which Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Australians were subjected to,
and the ongoing experience of discrimination today.
All healthcare leaders and health
professionals have a role to play in closing the gap.
The approach the NMBA has taken for
nurses and midwives (the largest workforce in the healthcare system) by setting
expectations around culturally safe practice, reflects the current expectations
of governments to provide a culturally safe health system. (For more
information please see the COAG Health Council 4 August 2017 Communiqué).
Culturally safe and respectful
practice is not a new concept. Nurses and midwives are expected to engage with
all people as individuals in a culturally safe and respectful way, foster open,
honest and compassionate professional relationships, and adhere to their
obligations about privacy and confidentiality.
Many health services already provide
cultural safety training for their staff. Cultural safety is about the person
who is providing care reflecting on their own assumptions and culture in order
to work in a genuine partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Peoples.
Nurses and midwives have always had a
responsibility to provide care that contributes to the best possible outcome
for the person/woman they are caring for. They need to work in partnership with
that person/woman to do so. The principle of cultural safety in the new Code of
conduct for nurses and Code of conduct for midwives (the codes) provides
simple, common sense guidance on how to work in a partnership with Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. The codes do not require nurses or midwives
to declare or apologise for white privilege.
The guidance around cultural safety in
the codes sets out clearly the behaviours that are expected of nurses and
midwives, and the standard of conduct that patients and their families can
expect. It is vital guidance for improving health outcomes and experiences for
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.
The codes were developed through an
evidence-based and extensive consultation process conducted over a two-year
period. Their development included literature reviews to ensure they were based
on the best available international and Australian evidence, as well as an analysis
of complaints about the conduct of nurses and midwives to ensure they were
meeting the public’s needs.
The consultation and input from the
public and professions included working groups, focus groups and preliminary
and public consultation. The public consultation phase included a campaign to
encourage nurses and midwives to provide feedback.
The Australian Nursing and Midwifery
Federation, the Australian College of Nursing, the Australian College of
Midwives and the Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses and
Midwives all participated in each stage of the development and consultation of
the new codes. The organisations strongly support the guidance around cultural
safety in the codes for nurses and midwives.
Lynette Cusack Chair
Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia
Ann Kinnear CEO
Australian College of Midwives (ACM)
Kylie Ward CEO
Australian College of Nursing (ACN)
Janine Mohamed CEO
Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses and Midwives
Annie Butler A/Federal
Secretary Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation
Labels:
health,
media,
racism,
right wing politics
Wednesday 7 March 2018
Thursday 1 March 2018
No need to worry about the possibility that a Liberal-Nationals Federal Government will impose censorship on the free press in Australia
The
time to fret over the possibility of government censorship of the media is over
because in February 2018 it ceased being a distant possibility and became fact.
This
is what the Australian Press Council stated about the News Corp online article….
Australian Press Council (APC):
The
Press Council has considered whether its Standards of Practice were breached by
an article published in news.com.au on 31 May 2017, headed “Islamic State [IS]
terror guide encourages luring victims via Gumtree, eBay”.
The opening paragraph read: “ISLAMIC State has released a step-by-step guide on how to murder nonbelievers, which includes how to lure targets via fake ads on Gumtree and eBay”. The article proceeded to relay in detail how an article in “[t]he latest edition of the terror group’s English-language propaganda magazine … encourages would-be terrorists to advertise products on second-hand selling sites … to lure victims and assassinate them”. The article mostly comprised extracts from the source material describing the steps necessary to perform such acts.
The Council considered that the article did publish much of the source material from IS verbatim, with limited accompanying analysis or context, such as comments from experts and websites such as Gumtree. The Council accepted there was no intention to encourage or support terrorism, but considered that republishing content from terrorist entities in this manner can perpetuate the purpose of such propaganda and give publicity to its ideas and practices.
However, the Council accepted the public interest in alerting readers to potential risks to their safety. It considered that on balance, the public interest in alerting readers to the dangerous content of the terrorist propaganda and its instructional detail was greater than the risk to their safety posed by the effective republication of terrorist propaganda content. Given this, the Council concluded that the public interest justified publication of the article. Accordingly, the publication did not breach General Principle 6.
The Council noted that great care needs to be exercised by publications when reporting on terrorist propaganda to ensure that public safety is not compromised. In particular, effectively republishing source material comprising instructional detail in how to carry out particular terrorist acts could pose a risk to public safety, and reasonable steps should be taken to prevent such an outcome.
This
is what the Turnbull Government did…….
News.com.au, 28 February 2018:
…the
article titled “Islamic State terror guide encourages luring victims via
Gumtree, eBay” no longer exists.
A
week after it was published on May 31, 2017, the Attorney-General’s office
contacted news.com.au to demand it be taken down, saying the Classification
Board had ruled it should be refused classification as it “directly or
indirectly” advocated terrorist acts.
It
appears to be the first time section 9A of the Classification (Publications,
Films and Computer Games) Act 1995 has been used to censor a news report, since
it was first added in 2007.
The
action has alarmed the publisher of news.com.au as Australian media in general
were not informed the Classification Board had the power to ban news stories or
that the eSafety Commissioner had the power to instigate investigations into
news articles.
“The
first news.com.au knew of this matter was when contacted by the
Attorney-General’s Department and advised of the Classification Board
decision,” news.com.au argued as part of a separate Press Council investigation
into the article.
“The
department, board and the eSafety Commissioner did not contact news.com.au
beforehand to advise of the investigation. Consequently, news.com.au was not
given the right to make submissions or a defence in regard to the article.”
News.com.au
removed the article as it was facing legal penalties from the Australian
Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) if it refused, including fines or
even civil or criminal legal action.
In
justifying its decision, the Classification Board noted the article contained
“detailed references and lengthy quotations from Rumiyah (Islamic
State’s propaganda magazine)” with limited author text to provide context.
News.com.au
asked the board why there was no opportunity for news organisations to defend
the article based on public interest grounds but a response provided by a
spokesman for the eSafety Commissioner did not directly address this.
The
spokesman said the board did consider whether the material could “reasonably be
considered to be done merely as part of public discussion or debate, or as
entertainment or satire” before making its decision.
He
also acknowledged this may have been the first time a news article had been
censored using this section.
However, as a government which to a man fails to grasp how the Internet works their well-laid plans seldom go off without a hitch and, the article that Turnbull & Co wish to erase from memory remains on national and international news sites as I write.
Friday 19 January 2018
In response to Trump's fake news awards the Committee to Protect Journalists announced Press Oppressors awards
As one has come to expect from this inadequate man it was an eleven point non-event with no red carpet, no 'ceremony', absolutely no evidence of corruption being presented and containing a number of distortions of fact.
Trump's awards had been left in the shade weeks ago by Stephen Colbert's mocking off Times Square billboard and the Committee to Protect Journalists' pre-emptive strike.
Shareblue Media, 9 January 2018:
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on Monday released a list of the world’s worst press oppressors — and Donald Trump took home the top honor, beating out dictators like Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
The list of global press oppressors recognizes world leaders “who have gone out of their way to attack the press and undermine the norms that support freedom of the media.” It was released in response to Trump’s upcoming “fake news” awards ceremony.
Trump was named the winner of the “Overall Achievement in Undermining Global Press Freedom” award for going “above and beyond to silence critical voices and weaken democracy.”
Among other things, Trump has popularized the term “fake news,” using it to describe any news that he doesn’t like — at times, even his own words. He uses the bully pulpit to openly promote Fox News as his personal propaganda arm while denigrating other news sources and calling for the firing of journalists who make honest mistakes.
Most recently, Trump called for banning the book “Fire and Fury” because he doesn’t like its unflattering portrayal of his first year in office.
Winners in CPJ Press Oppressors Award Categories, 8 January 2017 :
Most Thin-skinned - Winner: President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey, Runner-Up: President Donald Trump, United States
Most Outrageous Use of Terror Laws Against the Press - Winner: President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey, Runner-Up: President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Egypt
Tightest Grip on Media (This category excludes countries with no independent media, such as North Korea and Eritrea) - Winner: President Xi Jinping, China, Runner-Up: President Vladimir Putin, Russia
Biggest Backslider in Press Freedom - Winner: State Counselor and de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar, Runner-Up: President Andrzej Duda, Poland
Overall Achievement in Undermining Global Press Freedom - Winner: President Donald Trump, United States
The United States, with its First Amendment protection for a free press, has long stood as a beacon for independent media around the world. While previous U.S. presidents have each criticized the press to some degree, they have also made public commitments to uphold its essential role in democracy, at home and abroad. Trump, by contrast, has consistently undermined domestic news outlets and declined to publicly raise freedom of the press with repressive leaders such as Xi, Erdoğan, and Sisi. Authorities in China, Syria, and Russia have adopted Trump's "fake news" epithet, and Erdoğan has applauded at least one of his verbal attacks on journalists. Under Trump's administration, the Department of Justice has failed to commit to guidelines intended to protect journalists' sources, and the State Department has proposed to cut funding for international organizations that help buttress international norms in support of free expression. As Trump and other Western powers fail to pressure the world's most repressive leaders into improving the climate for press freedom, the number of journalists in prison globally is at a record high.
Labels:
Donald Trump,
free speech,
media,
right wing rat bags
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