Media

Craig Thomson’s wife Zoe must really love him. His political career is over. His reputation is shredded. He has become the butt of a national poor taste joke. And yet he continues to put up a front - blaming everyone, EVERYONE, but himself for the situation in which he’s landed.

He can only be doing it for his wife. When you love someone you want to believe them, but you can only believe them if they give you something to hold on to. And so Thomson is giving the mother of his children his ever expanding denials to cling to.

He’s being aided in this bizarre soap opera by the Labor Party, which is simultaneously defending him and barring him from the Caucus. The moral relativism being practiced in Canberra at the moment is almost comical, and Thomson is in the strangest state of career limbo you can imagine.

Continue reading "There’s no one Thomson won’t burn to save his skin" »

We live in a world where economics is valued. People in business get paid more than in most other professions. Yet business fails to recognise the talents of women. Repeatedly. Only 2 per cent of the ASX200 CEOs are female.

I’m old. I’m a baby boomer and was an expert in Affirmative Action in its early days. Affirmative Action is of course an oxymoron. Here in Australia we had no such thing as mandated affirmative targets for women in business or any kind of mandated action much at all.

Recent research by The Reibey institute in Australia showed that ASX500 companies with more women directors make more money for shareholders.  Return on Equity was 9.2 per cent versus an average 4.5 per cent. Those with no women on boards made a measly return of 0.5 per cent.

Continue reading "Are women caged in a masculine workplace?" »

According to the Mission Australia Youth Survey released in September last year, body image ranks in the top three issues of concern for young Australians.

Research shows 90% of 12-17 year old girls and 68% of 12 – 17 year old boys have been on a diet of some type, and that bulimia and anorexia are among the top ten causes of burden of disease and injury in young women in Australia.

So in announcing The Health Initiative this week, Vogue’s editors have shown not just that they understand the powerful influence their magazines and the wider fashion industry wields over the public’s ideas about what a normal body looks like, but also that they are prepared to show leadership and a degree of corporate social responsibility in their industry.

Continue reading "Great to see eating disorders are no longer in vogue" »

I would bet that for probably 95 per cent of regular visitors to The Punch, media policy is quite a way down the list of topics of interest. Like, near the very bottom. Even below Tanya Zaetta. For the punters, it just isn’t the stuff of sexy reading.

But, for the egg heads out there, yesterday’s release of the final report from the Federal Government’s Convergence Review is the latest chapter in what can only be described as one big, hot, steamy, media policy orgy.

For some people (which does not include me… I am far too lazy, ahem, busy doing my job) wading through the various chunky reports is like taking Viagra.

Continue reading "Turning media bolognese into a fresh pack of pasta" »

The Australian Vaccination Network stuck its head over the parapet again this week, and almost immediately copped one between the eyes. American Airlines pulled the group’s anti-vaccination ad from its flights before it even aired.

It’s the latest in a series of setbacks for the controversial organisation, which is increasingly struggling for air in the Australian media.

The media has been exemplary on this topic, refusing to indulge a group that is full of rhetoric but light on evidence. Most famously, Tracey Spicer demolished the AVN’s president, Meryl Dorey, on 2UE. The well-researched Spicer gave Dorey short shrift, eventually hanging up on her.

Continue reading "We need a change in climate in the Australian media" »

We’re a bit squiffy about media outlets paying for stories in this country. Unlike in the UK, where any single mum with a third nipple can get a pay cheque from a newspaper, here we like our paid media appearances to be reserved for heroes or, at least, worthy folk.

No one begrudged the huge sums paid to Brant Webb and Todd Russell, who spent two weeks trapped down the Beaconsfield mine. They’d earned one of the biggest media cheques ever.

But going to air this Sunday night is a paid-for 60 Minutes interview with Gordon Wood, whose conviction for the murder of his girlfriend Caroline Byrne was recently quashed on appeal.

Continue reading "Should only people we like be paid for their stories?" »

Would knowing an academic has shares in a mining company affect how much trust you place in their comments on climate change? How about if the academic sat on the board? Or owned the company? All of these are potential conflicts of interest and all might influence how much weight the media and the public place on that expert’s opinion.

Yet sadly, as a new study just published in the Medical Journal of Australia shows, actually getting hold of this information about academics at universities around Australia is often not a simple process.

The survey of Australian universities by Simon Chapman and his colleagues showed that of the 25 institutions who responded, none required their academics to state their conflicts of interest on their website profile. Perhaps more importantly, although the researchers found public comment policies for 21 universities, “none required that staff declare potential conflict of interests to media when making a public comment”.

Continue reading "Declare conflict of interest or risk public confidence" »

It’s impossible to imagine what life must be like for the parents of Rahma El-Dennaoui and Madeleine McCann. Losing a child is a torment. Losing them without a trace, with no explanation, would be doubly so.

It’s more than six years since little Rahma was put to bed with her sisters in their Sydney home, not to be seen since. Despite years of hard effort by the NSW police, the only solid sign of what might have happened is a cut or tear in the fly screen above her bed. It’s a genuine mystery a two-week coronial inquest that got underway yesterday hopes to clarify.

Deputy State Coroner Sharon Freund yesterday described Rahma’s disappearance as: “every parent’s worst nightmare”. For once this oft-abused description was appropriate, as it is for the McCanns, whose daughter Madeleine vanished 18 months after Rahma, this time from a hotel room in Portugal.

Continue reading "What is the difference between these two little girls" »

As the body count has grown on the streets of Syria, and the people of Burma have enjoyed their first taste of democracy, the number-one issue which has dominated the opinion pages in the western world this past week has involved a column by an English woman called Samantha Brick who is worried about being too pretty.

Brick, a regular columnist with London’s Daily Mail, set some sort of world record for self-absorption with a 1000-word rumination on the curse of being attractive, specifically taking aim at her female friends (and ex-friends) for being intimidated by her apparently stunning looks.

The column was a shining demonstration of first world problems. Brick talked about how she dreaded going to dinner parties and would even dress as a frump so as to not show up the other poor women in attendance, who even then would pale in comparison to her untameable beauty.

Continue reading "Samantha Brick’s first world problem" »

The commonly accepted choice between a stuff-up or a stitch-up is to go with the stuff-up.  Anyone reading the Auditor-General’s report into Labor’s botched tender for the Australia Network television service will reject that accepted wisdom and conclude a stitch-up was more likely.

While the Australia Network may be Australia’s soft diplomacy channel into the Asia-Pacific, Labor’s internal wrangling over who should produce this service has involved anything but soft diplomacy.  A needless internal power game saw the most senior figures in the government face-off over the future direction of the Australia Network.

Sadly, Labor wasn’t content to just battle it out amongst each other.  The owners of Sky News and the ABC were dragged into the fray as proxies in a war over a contract that need not have gone to tender in the first place.

Continue reading "The tender trap set by Government mired in enmity" »

In the midst of the UK riots last year, The Punch was one of many Australian media outlets which offered a series of thoughtful pieces as to why the riots occurred. No one was big-headed or stupid enough to offer a single definitive cause, for the very good reason that there wasn’t one. But we added what analysis we could into the great public melting pot of opinion.

At the time, our efforts attracted scorn from the ABC’s self-appointed media guardian Jonathan Holmes. “It’s all so clear from the other side of the world,” he harrumphed on Media Watch.

Not to gloat or anything, but it turns out the media was right and Holmes was wrong. A report handed down by an independent government-appointed panel overnight in Britain entitled The Verdict on the UK Riots, shows that many of the causes posited by Australian journalists and commenters were spot on.

Continue reading "So a lack of smacks WAS behind the attacks" »

A deranged TV anchor threatens to kill himself, then resurrects his career by ranting and raving on television, screaming his new catchcry – I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE.

This is the “mad prophet of the airwaves” Howard Beale (Peter Finch) in the 1976 flick Network, in which “a TV network cynically exploits a deranged ex-TV anchor’s ravings and revelations about the media for their own profit”.

Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi sees this as a rage to aspire to. He calls the performance, in which Beale inspires people to throw open their windows and shout their madness into the street, as ‘mesmerising’ and says “perhaps it’s time for the concerned citizens of Australia to do the same thing”.

Continue reading "Are you mad as hell and not going to take it anymore?" »

I sometimes think there are two kinds of politics in Australia. The stuff that gets reported, and the stuff that actually affects people’s lives.

The 24-hour news cycle has created constant demand for new content, no matter how trivial. Much of the demand has been fuelled by punditry, pontificating and poll-analysis, rather than actual news.

While the political journos are obsessed with the state of Craig Thomson’s stomach, Peter Costello’s Future Fund dummy spit, and Wayne Swan’s Three Stooges jokes, you could be forgiven for thinking that is all Parliament ever does. Conflict, not matter how confected, is the fuel that drives media coverage.

Continue reading "Some super stuff actually happens in Parliament" »

Yumi Stynes had the right to parp out her little brain fart about Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith. We have the right to criticise and belittle her for it. But should people have the right to make physical threats against her? What about her children?

In the wake of the Finkelstein review, Left and Right are busily and furiously agreeing with each other. Free speech good! Censorship bad!

It’s nice to know some issues can bring everyone together.

Continue reading "At least we can all agree that free speech is good…" »

There’s a kind of political kismet to the fact that the Orwellian Finkelstein media review is released while international crusader for free speech Mark Steyn is in this country on a speaking tour.

“I have an undream?”

If Finkelstein’s recommendations are implemented they would create an oppressive regime of essentially government-controlled media and overturn our cherished principle of freedom of the press.

They would in essence create a “licensing” of every media agency and even, more disturbingly, most website and blogs. Well, those that are actually remotely popular - those with more than 41 hits per day.

Continue reading "Politically correct jeopardise our freedom of speech" »

The Federal Government’s media inquiry was ordered in response to journalistic behaviour overseas which has no equal in Australia. It was also championed most enthusiastically by those who were either in on the lie, or indifferent to the lie, about the crisis in Australia’s political leadership, an 18-month period of indulgent paralysis which came to a head in Canberra last Monday.

Against this backdrop it is hard for those of us in the press not to be suspicious about something which seemed politically motivated in its inception, and which would now subject the entire media, both mainstream and independent, to the most heavy-handed regulation Australia has ever seen.

It is impossible to discuss an issue such as the media inquiry without being accused of journalistic self-interest. However, the inquiry has such dramatic implications for freedom of speech – and potentially also the proper use of public money – that it also raises broader issues of public interest.

Continue reading "A threat to free speech and to media big and small" »

The federal government’s media inquiry released its long-awaited report today – 469 pages of policy discussion for interested parties to absorb on a Friday afternoon.

Guess they don’t know the end-of-the-week pub habits of journalists too well. Stay tuned to The Punch as we delve through the other 459 pages in the coming days. Here’s what it looks like at this point.

Over the past couple of weeks there has been speculation that the inquiry would propose the establishment of a media ombudsman or a licensing system for journalists. Turns out the inquiry has only ended up making one significant recommendation.

Continue reading "Our first look at the future of Australia’s media" »

We all know what the Victoria Cross is, but do we really know what it means and what it represents? Perhaps I am a bit old fashioned but I truly believe that Australians do understand and appreciate the significance of this award. That is, until I heard the comments made on Channel 10’s The Circle program this week, comments the network has since apologised for, faced with national outrage.

Whatever the story behind how each of us learned about the Victoria Cross, whether it was from a school excursion to the War Memorial or from a family member who served ‘back in the day’, we forever remember that it is the highest award presented to a member of the Australian Defence Force for acts of bravery in wartime.

We all know that the acts of those who have been awarded the Victoria Cross are nothing short of heroic. In the case of Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith, VC, MG, he was involved in a hunt for a senior Taliban commander in Afghanistan when during an engagement with a fortified enemy he exposed his own position in order to draw fire away from his mates. He then stormed two enemy machine gun posts, quickly dispatching the enemy.

Continue reading "A hard-earned Cross needs a big old cheer" »

Here’s a tip for Yumi Stynes and George Negus. When you stuff up by calling a Victoria Cross winner a brainless dud root - it’s best to say “I’m terribly sorry.” Then stop. Right there.

Don’t crap on about the reaction to your lighthearted slur making you “feel sick”. Don’t use the old “If I’ve offended anyone…” caveat, and never, ever pull the “you should know us all better to think we would ever deliberately try to hurt people” cop out. Because here’s the thing - it’s not about how you feel.

We all get things wrong sometimes. We all need to apologise sometimes. But people seem to have forgotten how to do it.

Continue reading "When you apologise you should just say “I’m sorry”" »

The sun rises in the east. The sky is blue. And some people are mean on the internet. So when I was faced with a relatively simple task – find some people who identify as trolls to interview for a story – the outcome was a foregone conclusion.

I put calls out on Twitter and Facebook. And in looking for trolls, I got trolled. I was given more suggestions for ways to screw myself than I could find in an edition of Cosmo magazine.

It’s perhaps a reflection on some of the lack of sophistication in the thinking of some trolls that you could be the subject of such hostility for trying to write a story that appeals to them, that speaks for their world view.

Continue reading "Troll patrol: I cajoled the trolls and paid the toll" »

Welcome to The Punch team’s live blog of the Labor leadership showdown. All times are in AEDT. Refresh your browser for updates.

Head over to news.com.au for a blow-by-blow of the ballot, and check out The Punch’s Labor leadership coverage to date, then stick around here for all the blood, guts, glory and nerdy political chatter.

1.30pm: We’re signing off this blog. Will see you in our Question Time Live coverage from 2pm. Happy non-spill day…

1.13pm: Gillard is now being very nice about Kevin Rudd, saying his legacy as PM deserves to be honoured. If she’d done this a little while ago this whole debacle may not have become so nasty. Perhaps in the ugliness of the past few days Gillard realised the public doesn’t hate Kevin Rudd as much as she does. TMaguire

1.11pm: In a delightful piece of understatement Julia Gillard says “Australians have had a gut-full of seeing us focus on ourselves” and promises “that this political drama is over.”

12.59pm: Gillard has called a press conference for 1.10pm.

12.57pm: So Kevin Rudd has pledged to remain the Member for Griffith, both for now and after the next election. Anyone fearing he would quit his seat and blow-up the Government would be relieved, but as long as he’s sitting there on the back bench, he’ll be a thorn in the side of the Prime Minister. TMaguire

Continue reading "Live blog: The Rudd/Gillard leadership showdown" »

To rework a line from those garish billboards which make the kids ask embarrassing questions, Australia is suffering from election problems.

The quaint notion that voters get to decide who does or doesn’t run the country has been challenged during the past few shambolic years in Canberra. I know, I know – it’s up to the Caucus to elect a leader from its team of MPs. But there is a widely-held and completely understandable public view that when that leader goes to the polls, and receives a popular mandate, their continuing employment will be decided by a general election, rather than covert conversations by king-makers and trouble-makers.

It’s why the hurdy-gurdy leadership transitions by State Labor governments over the past decade have usually failed. It’s also why federal Labor is in the mess it is currently in. By dumping Rudd in record time back in 2010, the factions and the Caucus failed to realise the extent to which voters would regard their conduct as an act of gross impertinence, an usurping of the power of the popular ballot. It was this act which martyred Kevin Rudd and he has capitalised on his martyrdom ever since.

Continue reading "Off the record, you’ve all been conned" »

Early last year, a former Rudd Government insider sat down to write about the experience. The resulting document - he called it “a reflection in all seriousness once the period of madness was over” - has never been published.

But in the current climate, where the way Kevin Rudd operated as prime minister has become the central issue in Labor’s bitter leadership contest, it makes fascinating reading.

The author, who operated in a key role and observed much of the discussion and decision making, says  he would not bother to set down his recollections “except that they are such a powerful warning for future governments”.  

Continue reading "The World According to Rudd: an insider’s guide" »

We live in a world where everyone knows everything all the time, where the limited old ways of accessing information are no more, where people who are quaintly still described as newspaper “photographers” now shoot video footage for 24-hour news websites which you can watch on your telephone, your tablet or television.

We also live in a more democratic media world than ever before. Once upon a time, traditional media companies and the people who wrote for them could posture as unchallenged oracles. That is no longer the case. The barriers for entry into publishing in the digital age are zero. If you don’t like what a columnist has written, jump on their website and say so, or start your own blog putting a different view.

We can also be more readily and instantly entertained than ever before. Thirty years ago there was no Foxtel, and the fact that you could set the timer on your VCR was cause for excitement. Now, you can program your IQ box online from your work PC, you can download anything from the app store, or find it anyway on YouTube, when and where you want it.

Continue reading "Regulating free speech and belting the digital economy" »

It is often stated that history is written by the victors, a matter of perspective, rather than of fact. In an age, however, where freedom of speech and of press are sacred, where books are published on merit, and where the Internet has merged the Speakers’ Corners of the world into a conglomerate, perspectives are so abundant that the content of “history” is increasingly difficult to settle.

There is no longer, you might say, an “agreed” history, though this is not say bile is treated anymore seriously than before, for example, Michael Leunig’s 2005 outburst against ANZAC Day, which the cartoonist labelled as “shameful” and as glorifying war.

There is a difference, however, between bona fide perspective and malevolent falsehoods. The Jewish people have long been stuck with instances of the latter, such as the Passover Blood Libel and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Into this category, too, falls historical revision, such as Holocaust Denial. While British drama The Promise might not be considered so sinister, the series’ “fictional” portrayal of real-life events must be treated with great concern.

Continue reading "SBS shouldn’t be allowed to re-write history" »

Three moments in my life have prompted me to question humanity at its very core.

The first was when Jerry Seinfeld observed: “People, they’re the worst.” I thought about this for a moment, remembered I’d once carried my cat by its tail, and decided he was right. The second was when I woke up from a big night at a friend’s party, and discovered my mate’s pillow had been callously stolen. Who steals a pillow? Ugh, people. Right?

The third was when I learned #WhoisPaulMcCartney? was trending on Twitter during the Grammys.

Continue reading "People in 2012 are asking: Who’s this droning old fart?" »

For a moment in the mid-naughties, they were the coolest of all cool social media-fuelled meme-thingos.

I’m talking about flash mobs, the groups of strangers who gather in a public place to do something like dance a routine, freeze in a contorted pose or smack someone over the head with a pillow. At their best, flash mobs, which are typically organised through social media, are flickers of spontaneity, bursts of community in CBDs filled with busy suits.

In recent years though, they’ve become a whole lot less cool. That’s because they’ve been gatecrashed by another crew: the cash mob.

Continue reading "Cash mobs aren’t so flash" »

Recently, Jason Tin wrote a rather satisfying article about the imminent death of the internet due to it collapsing under the weight of its own vapid incivility. He’s right. And you’ve seen it, of course.

An online comment section can turn a group of people who pay their mortgages and love their kittens into petty, hateful stupid people braying non-sequiturs at each other like Tourettes’ donkeys. But, why?

Good question. Science, having nothing better to do, has come up with some rather intriguing answers. So if the internet is dead, then consider me the pathologist – the science wonk who goes picking around in its chest cavity with tweezers trying to determine what killed it.

Continue reading "The science of Punching on" »

The two biggest stuff-ups of the political year to date have said little about the conduct of our politicians and everything about the judgment of the advisors they employ. Given that 2012 is not yet five weeks old, these two remarkably stupid episodes confirm the extent to which the black art of media management has become an unchecked cancer on modern politics.

The irony is that in both cases the very people who were hired to make life easier for our politicians, ostensibly with their capacity for crisis management and flair for finessing a message, have in one case created the crisis and in the other mangled the message.

This should not be of interest solely to political tragics and Canberra insiders. The punchline to the joke is that the mugs who are footing the bill are, of course, the taxpayers, who over the past two decades have funded an ever-increasing number of spin doctors, speech writers and media advisors for politicians of every hue at both the state and federal level.

Continue reading "First, let’s sack all the staffers" »

It’s not often you hear an apology from a big corporation that sounds like it really means it, but Jenny Craig’s statement last night that it “badly misjudged public perception of Kyle Sandilands” sounds genuine enough - perhaps because it’s so bloody obvious.

Hmmm, brand heavily skewed towards women with body issues, linked to the “fat slag” king, what could possibly go wrong?

The language marketing departments use when one of the stars they throw millions of dollars at to flog their products step out of line, is often at best hilarious, at worst mealy-mouthed.

Continue reading "Brands have become our new moral arbiters" »

Liberal MP Teresa Gambaro swung the full pendulum yesterday, after her ridicluous comments about teaching migrants to use deodorant were published in The Australian.

At first, presumably before Tony Abbott’s office scrambled into damage control mode, Gambaro went on radio to expand on her theory better personal hygene would aid in assimilation. When it dawned on her the rest of the country was in a melt-down of piss-taking she pulled out the classic chestnut - “out of context”. She even put out a statement saying the story was inaccurate.

Then when it became clear there was no context in which her comments, which included the line “Without trying to be offensive” could be taken well, she backed down and apologised.

Continue reading "You stink! Sorry, that was totally taken out of context" »

Next week New Idea will feature a half-naked George Calombaris on the cover. “I want to be a role model for all the short and stocky men out there,” he says. Meanwhile, Hugh Jackman reveals all on the cover of the Australian Women’s Weekly about how to stay fabulous in your 40s.

“I’m doing it for all the insecure men out there,” he grunts between his 112th and 113th rep. “You too can look like this!” Of course, this is all happening in a parallel universe. Generally, men don’t feel the need to take off their clothes for the cover of a magazine. So why do some women?

This wasn’t what the suffragettes had in mind when they fought for women’s emancipation all those years ago. Emmeline Pankhurst, speaking at the Women’s Franchise League in 1889 didn’t say: “One day, women will be able to remove their clothes in public and be judged on how hard they work out at the gym. What a glorious day that will be!” Let’s start with Deborah Hutton’s cover shot.

Continue reading "If you really want to help the sisters, keep your gear on" »

You know that shirt really makes your eyes look amazing. I bet you know lots of really important stuff. Would you like to go back to your place and show me all your confidential files?

A report has been handed down in the UK by Dame Elizabeth Filkin, “The ethical issues arising from the relationship between police and media”, prompted by allegations the News of the World phone hacking scandal was not properly investigated by Scotland Yard.

It’s a fascinating document, surprisingly free of the usual bureaucratic mangling of the English language, although it does contain case studies with a traffic light system of assessing risk - red for high, yellow for medium, green for low. But the most up-front part carries the title: “Ten tactics used by some in the media. Watch out.”

Continue reading "Public service message: Beware flirty journalists" »

In the era of The Real Julia, a cricket captain entrapped by media trainers and wall-to-wall corporate spokespeople, you don’t hear many bullshit-free interviews.

As a little summer refreshment, listen to this chat this morning on ABC Radio 702 with Rick Parsons from North Avoca Surf Life Saving Club.

Last night there was a SHARK ATTACK! on his beach. Thankfully the 28-year-old surfer who was bitten on the arm is ok, but standard precautions were this morning carried out, including closing the beach and helicopter patrols.

Mr Parsons sounds like the sort of bloke you want around in a crisis. Crisis? What crisis?

A new report has found that women on MTV reality television programs call each other rodents, skanks, trash bags, tricks (whatever that is) and hoes. The study condemns reality television’s negative depictions of female and male behaviour, as the networks compete to reach the next level of shock value. It can’t be denied that reality television often exploits and humiliates its participants for entertainment value.

There is, however, a notable exception in Junior MasterChef 2011, which has made a visible effort to protect the emotional and mental health of its young participants. I’ve observed the previews of both Junior MasterChef seasons with a resolve not to support a competition that places unnecessary, national pressure on children. But I’ve been won over by the optimism and resilience of the young participants.

The challenges are colourful, the judges gentle, and each negative comment comes wedged in a compliment sandwich. Children aren’t alienated from their families – a stark comparison with its adult counterpart, where participants must resign from society. The judges focus on celebrating the leaders of the scoreboard rather than exploiting the losers, and deliberate strategies are implemented to build upon the children’s self-confidence.

Continue reading "Bullying and humiliation: That’s entertainment?" »

Simon Katich doesn’t deserve a reprimand. He deserves an award for restraint.

After falling foul of the thought police at Cricket Australia he was called up before that stuffy little outfit’s resident kangaroo court to explain his so-called “spray” against Michael Clarke. “Spray”, as it was dubbed in headlines, is a ludicrously overstated term for what Katich had said. All he said was that he doubted he would ever get a spot in the Test team under captain and selector Michael Clarke.

Katich, you will recall, grabbed Clarke by the neck in a dressing room dust-up in 2009, risking serious damage to Clarke’s latest haircut. His assessment of his chances of reclaiming a baggy green under Clarke was both accurate and unremarkable.

Continue reading "Simon Katich and the year of living silently" »

What happened?
With the strange exception of the Walkley Award judges, many people and media organisations revised their assessment of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange over the past 12 months.

Assange shot to prominence last year with the explosive release of secret government documents from around the world, many of which revealed stories which were wholly in the public interest. They ranged from high level diplomatic assessments of foreign governments, to the more titillating but fascinating snippets of info which shed light on the personalities of world leaders. In the domestic setting we learned some interesting facts about our own government.

We learned that, as Prime Minister, the Mandarin-speaking Kevin Rudd was of the view that Australia and its chief ally the US should prepare for the possibility of a war against China.

Continue reading "Biggest moments of 2011 #15 Publish and be damned" »

What happened
This all started when a bearded, talentless big mouth couldn’t handle a spot of criticism. So instead of flinging a few well-aimed barbs at his critics, he decided to shoot the messenger. What a tough guy.

Let the record show that Kyle deserved the derision. His show contained, among other mind-numbing stupidity, a segment where he felt a guest’s boobs. The ratings didn’t lie. They rarely do. An initial audience of 1.3 million shrunk to a paltry 200,000 within minutes.

Afterwards Twitter went into meltdown canning the show. Enter numerous entertainment reporters and bloggers who duly recorded the Twitter mood. One of them was news.com.au’s Alison Stephenson. Ali is capable of excellent colour writing on her day, but on this occasion, she wrote a completely straight, unremarkable account of the Twitter reaction.

Continue reading "Biggest Moments of 2011 #21 Sandilands scrapes the barrel" »

Dear Kyle,

I just want to let you know that I feel sorry for you, mate. I really do. I think people are too rough on you.

Lots of people say that you have no talent, but I think you do. I’ve never listened to your show (except for those times that you’ve been played back on Media Watch), but I know that hosting a radio show does take skill, and you have certainly done that for quite some time.

For that reason alone I hope that everyone goes a bit easier on you in the future.

Continue reading "A letter to the schoolyard bully who never grew up…" »

I have long resisted writing about Twilight.

As children and adults across the world scrambled to hoard Robert Pattinson posters and glow-in-the-dark vampire soaps, I averted my eyes – lest I became a motionless pillar of salt.

Every time you mention Twilight, a puppy kills a fairy and then runs into oncoming traffic. It’s akin to uttering the word “Sandilands”, which I am told is either a kind of small crustacean found in less than two per cent of the world’s oceans – or a range of designer doorbell tones.

Continue reading "I’d drink my own blood before writing about Twilight" »

It isn’t really a bombshell observation, but Kyle Sandilands is a dead-set, rolled-gold, card-carrying dickhead.

It is with some reluctance that I burst into print about this dopey little grub. His entire marketing strategy – to presuppose a level of intellect which renders him capable of crafting a strategy for anything – is to create outrage and feed off it.

Oh, that Kyle, he’s done it again. The rejoinder to the subsequent furore from Kyle and his fans – just out of interest, what in God’s name is wrong with you people – is to deride the critics as politically correct wowsers who don’t understand his brand of humour.

Continue reading "A hole in his head where his brain should be" »

I’d been mapping out a strong, passionate critique of the media inquiry on my computer for the past fortnight. It was going to be the best article ever; a high water-mark in awesomeness.

I was going to suggest that yes, a lot of very ordinary journalism gets published in newspapers these days (“Hey, this bloke just sent us some old nudie pics of someone that sorta looks like Pauline Hanson! How about I run them on the front page?”), but that’s absolutely nothing new.

And if we’re going to start investigating the state of journalism then we probably ought to start with the crap on Today Tonight (which is sometimes is the highest rating show on a weeknight), given the broadcasting spectrum, as opposed to paper, is a finite public resource.

Continue reading "A pointless, political inquiry that misses the point" »

From a crowded field, one of the more embarrassing moments from my troubled phase as a teenage Trotskyist involved selling issues of the socialist newspaper Direct Action on the streets of Adelaide. On occasions I sold it outside Football Park, Adelaide’s home of Aussie Rules, where I hoped to capitalise on that niche readership of people who both loved their footy and loved the idea of capitalism being paralysed by its contradictions.

In hindsight “selling” isn’t the right word. On a good day I sold three copies of Direct Action. On most days I sold no copies of Direct Action. The reason I sold no copies of Direct Action is that it wasn’t a very good newspaper. It was a crap newspaper. It was preachy, dour, earnest, poorly designed, massively overpriced for what it was, and full of articles which were about as far away from mainstream sentiment as you could imagine, with discussions of whether indigenous organisations should take up arms against their oppressors, calls for trade bans with pariah nations such as the United States, editorials calling for transgender prisoners to be given sex changes on Medicare.

Today, about three million Australians will shell out a couple of dollars to but their favourite Sunday newspaper. They do so because they like and enjoy it.

Continue reading "Trotting out nonsense at an inquiry into nothing" »

It’s the first rule of the playground: don’t pay attention to the bullies. So what do a bunch of highly intelligent, respected women bloggers think they will achieve by creating the Twitter hashtag #mensaybadthingsaboutme?

The hashtag highlights the derogatory and often violent comments female bloggers receive from anonymous online readers.

They claim to be “fighting back”. According to yesterday’s Age, the hashtag is the weapon for a campaign led by leading female Australian bloggers to highlight the “abusive misogyny of anonymous posters online”.  It follows a similar movement by female British bloggers, started by Guardian journalist Laurie Penny. But more on that later.

Continue reading "So what if #mensaybadthingsaboutme" »

When it comes to first world problems, information overload used to be the number one cause of anxiety among young adults.

But those folks are a cagey bunch. They adapt. Now, they can carry on a conversation while checking their text messages, surfing the web and watching their favourite TV shows without even batting an e-lash. Their heads are right around spam filters. They can cope with rapid remote movement. Come at them, bro, and they’re ready to give you the millisecond of attention you deserve. Information overload? Pfffft. No sweat.

But now a new kind of anxiety is in town and it’s starting to unsettle this wired up, hooked in, broad band of tech heads. Across every office space, university campus, schoolyard and shopping mall there’s an underlying tension which froths and bubbles to the surface. And the cause? Too many good TV shows and not enough time to watch all of them.

Continue reading "Television: Drug of a nation and a generation" »

The family of the 14 year old Australian boy detained in Bali has allegedly sought a TV deal through the boy’s Australian agent. This news has not been received favourably by Indonesian authorities, and both Nine and Seven are strongly denying any such deal. But as Punch contributor Steve Williams suggests, deals have been done before and probably will be again…

Dear Mr Big Fat TV Executive,

May I be the first to congratulate you on your rumoured signing of the latest Australian arrested overseas to become the new face of Your Network, even though no one has ever seen the person’s face.

Continue reading "A bang-up for your bucks" »

In the past week over 400 people have died in floods in Thailand, three Australian soldiers were killed in Afghanistan and the European economy teetered on the verge of collapse. But most devastating of all was the news that Kim Kardashian’s marriage was in disarray after just 72 days.

Australia’s commercial networks and newspapers almost fell into the trap of misreading the break-up as a pointless, inane, staged piece of nonsense, but then came to their senses and ran blanket coverage of the story for three days.

Things could’ve got much, much worse though. There was the chance the vacuous, money-hungry, talentless reality TV star could have pulled out of her promotional tour to Australia, opening up the possibility that some media outlets would have to resort to reporting serious news. 

Continue reading "Kim Kardashian 1: No news would be good news" »

Most young women are not lying in the gutter with vomit in their hair.  Nor are they starving themselves so they can drink more booze, sleeping with everyone they meet or stuffing endless amounts of cocaine up their nose.

But you’d be forgiven for thinking so if you’d read a newspaper over the past month.

Three articles in just as many weeks have painted an extraordinarily dark and reckless picture of young Aussie women.

Continue reading "Young women have not gone to the dogs" »

In a move shocking to precisely no one, Kim Kardashian, reality TV queen, perennial gossip magazine cover girl and not much else, announced yesterday that she and her husband of 72 days had filed for divorce.

From start to rapid finish Kardashian’s marriage was an exercise in attention and money-seeking.

E! paid the couple $15 million for the television rights to their wedding special show, while People magazine coughed up close to $3 million for wedding and engagement related rights. The guests were treated to a $20,000 wedding cake.

Continue reading "Keeping up with the Kar Krash of a sham marriage" »

It is easy to feel repulsed by the gruesome details of Colonel Gaddafi’s final moments as they continue to flood the airwaves in the wake of his burial. Yet it is also easy to identify sloppy moral relativism when it creeps into ethical public discourse.

It is easier still to ignore it when you see it in print.  For a change, I thought I might not let a recent example of this slide. There were important operational and ethical differences between the deaths of Osama bin Laden and Colonel Gaddafi.  The prospect of peacefully arresting and extracting a death-seeking jihadist barricaded in a fortified compound was always going to be slim. 

This situation stands in contrast to the one faced by the militarised and murderous rebel mob who callously refused the surrender of a wounded and shaken 69-year-old armed only with a comically bling ‘golden pistol’ in a drain pipe in broad daylight.

Continue reading "Sloppy moral relativism in the wake of death" »

There’s an awful lot of hand-wringing these days over the binge drinking epidemic. Well, here’s a really obvious thought. Maybe all those teenagers and 20-somethings are only living up to the example we’ve set them on all kinds of fronts.

Think about it. Society today is full of bingers. We’re all bingers. We consume anything and everything in ever-increasing proportions, usually to the point of excess and often to the point of vulgarity.

Forget the obvious cases of food and booze for a minute. Take entertainment. Remember the days when you’d passively sit back and wait for your weekly instalment of TV drama? That is sooo 2005.

Continue reading "FOOI #13: Young drinkers aren’t the only bingers" »

I remember vividly a very long (and unbelievably frustrating) conversation I once had with someone who was genuinely convinced that he was “playing it safe” by not wearing a seatbelt whilst driving.

I told this man that seatbelts are one of the most simple-yet-effective life-saving devices ever invented in modern societies, and, backed-up by mountains of independent research, any road safety expert will tell you that you’re crazy not to wear one every time you get in a car.

But, this clown thought that the experts were “idiots”, and that he knew better.

Continue reading "FOOI #11: Listen to the experts, they know their stuff" »

After 30 years of making the world a happier place, Apple co-founder and chairman Steve Jobs died yesterday, age 56. The world mourns the man some have called the Edison of our time.

People around the world took to social networks yesterday to express their condolences. Bill Gates tweeted: “I will miss Steve immensely”. Tony Hawk said: “Steve Jobs was the man”. Barack Obama’s statement, “There may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented,” got retweet after retweet. 

While this was happening, Wikileaks was also tweeting about Steve Jobs. Except in doing so, the organisation was committing a journalistic crime taken straight from the playbook of the News of the World. You wouldn’t even read what they published on TMZ.

Continue reading "Wikileaks does a News of the World job on Steve Jobs" »

It’s easy to defend free speech when you support a speaker’s views. It’s harder when you oppose them. Now, after the ruling in the Bolt case, free speech champions – even those who dislike and disagree with Andrew Bolt – should be speaking out.

They line up, to the right and to the left, the self-appointed arbiters of political and societal fashion, the media commentariat. From their pulp pulpits they lay down how we ordinary Australians should think. Their words today are the gospels of tomorrow, regurgitated in dozens of accents and emphases throughout workplaces, bars and coffee shops as well and re-broadcast by phone, email and Twitter.

The best known is Alan Jones, motor mouth of the airwaves, syndicated nationally on commercial radio, hard-core conservative. But there are a dozen or two others, in newspapers and on radio and TV, of various political shades. Most of the time, the harsh pronouncements wash us by, grating and irritating in equal measure on either side of public debate. But occasionally they hit the mark, roughly on target: a surge of public opinion forces focused governments to respond to what appears to be the will of the people. 

Continue reading "Bolt case shows need for more free speech, not less" »

When done properly, a celebrity endorsement can literally make a company. The most famous example is when then third string sportswear company Nike (behind Adidas and Converse) signed first year NBA player Michael Jordan in 1984.

Jordan had just been picked third in the NBA draft after centers Hakeem Olajuwon and Sam Bowie, but Nike founder and CEO Phil Knight really liked the free-scoring Jordan and courted him personally.

When Jordan signed, Nike’s stock price was below 60 cents. When he finished his first three-peat in 1993, Nike’s stock price was $8.80 and now the biggest sportswear company in the world. When Jordan announced that he was retiring from basketball a few months later, Nike stock sunk to $5.20 and when he sent out his famous two-word “I’m back” press release, Nike stock surged again.

Continue reading "It’s a working class sham" »

Fifteen years ago, when I was at uni studying Anthropology, Political Discourse, and the Hegemony of the Hate Media, I couldn’t have foreseen the day I’d be eager to defend Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers.

Back then I also thought a belly button piercing would give me a certain je ne sais quoi, when all it gave me was a deep and revolting infection. Things change.

But although I can feel my gorge and my blood pressure rise when I hear the way politicians pretend adverse media coverage is to blame for their entirely self-created debacles, it’s still hard to leap into the fray.

Continue reading "The News world is not as Limited as you think" »

The Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan said that the medium is the message. I’m not really sure what it means but it seems a suitably pretentious way to start a column about the condition of pretentiousness; that is, the state of being up one’s self, a show pony, a poseur.

The particular class of poseurs I would like to discuss today belong to a group called the Friends of the ABC. I used to live among their number while a resident of the People’s Republic of Leichhardt, in Sydney’s groovy and organic inner west. It’s a terrific part of Australia, marred only by the presence of an old Volvo on every street bearing bumper stickers saying “No Aircraft Noise”, “The Goddess is Dancing” and “Hands off our ABC.”  So that people didn’t think less of me, at neighbourhood barbecues I would tell folks that I worked in a laboratory rubbing cheap cosmetics into the eyes of bunny rabbits, rather than admitting to editing The Daily Telegraph.

You can understand why people don’t like aircraft noise and support dancing goddesses but I am buggered if I can see why people will develop an impassioned lifelong commitment to an organisation which like any organisation does some things extremely well and some things really badly.

Continue reading "Bourgeois wankerdom and Friends of the ABC" »

“As the number of available outlets for political news grows, so does the tendency of citizens to self-select which news to consume and which to ignore.” So says Georgetown University’s Rebecca Chalif, in her 2011 study Political Media Fragmentation: Echo Chambers in Cable News.

This statement seems obvious and fairly innocuous on the surface. Thirty years ago, people were vastly more confined in how they consumed their news - it was perhaps three TV channels and one or two newspapers.

According to the Australian Market and Social Research Society, the media has become far more fragmented over the last 15 years. Free-to-air TV has gone from five to 17 channels with over 120 subscription channels available, and we have over 600 newspapers and 1,500 magazines available to us.

Continue reading "Do you ever really listen to the other side of the story?" »

We have no TV. We’re not weird. We’re not above TV. We’re just victims of appliance violence. 

The guy who helped install the screen just a few weeks ago was called back. He couldn’t confirm whether the damage was from a projectile or a head butt.

All he could confirm was that I could use the warranty to wipe away my children’s tears. And with that our life post-television (PTV) began. 

Continue reading "Tossing the TV doesn’t turn kiddies into grouches" »

Full credit to designer and Australia’s Next Top Model judge, Alex Perry, for declaring he would never call a model “fat”, and that his fashion embraces curvy women.

Perry took a media beating this week, and with what seemed good cause: Appearing to suggest that a size eight teen was too fat to model.

Not only was comparing her to “overstuffed luggage” offensive (even if he was referring more to her pose, in a coffin of all things, than to her body), it was dangerous. Mountains of research attests that “socio-cultural” pressure - ideas picked up from TV, fashion magazines and other media -  is a leading cause of the eating disorder epidemic among young Australians.

Continue reading "Even models should not have to suck this up" »

Perhaps the most damaging outcome of all the dysfunction wrought by the Gillard Government is the shocking loss of respect for the office of Prime Minister itself.

If the headlines of “Dead Woman Walking” and the litany of ridicule in the weekend papers wasn’t enough to convince you that respect is lost, then tonight the ABC launches At Home with Julia - a sitcom, mockumentary, call it what you will, about the private life of Gillard and her partner Tim Mathieson.

Of course, I haven’t seen it - it may well be a touching tribute. Just as Spinal Tap was an erudite tribute to those much misunderstood rockers. Point is, it’s playing for laughs.

Continue reading "At home with a PM who’s lost all of Australia’s respect" »

When Hurricane Irene pummelled the US East Coast last week, some Queenslanders probably felt a sense of déjà vu for the natural disasters that demolished swathes of their state earlier this year.

Just like the floods and Cyclone Yasi, Hurricane Irene inflicted a terrible human and financial cost on the US. The death toll from Irene stands at 45 and the damage bill is at least $US7-10 billion. 

But they wouldn’t just be feeling déjà vu over the disaster damage. If they’ve been paying attention to international news, they’d also be feeling it over the political reaction to Irene in the US.

Continue reading "We shouldn’t be scared by flood of political fear" »

Most people only get one shot at being the target of a lynch mob. I’ve had two in a week.

Last week, Angry Anderson turned a passionate crowd of thousands against me for accurately reporting the number of people at the rally. Yesterday, it was Alan Jones’s turn.

First, let me clarify that at no point did I feel physically threatened. Even when I saw a dozen burly truck drivers marching towards me (with purpose and an escort of 10 cameras), once a few words were exchanged, I quickly realised they were all calm and reasonable people. Not the same could be said about everyone there.

Continue reading "Revved up by Alan Jones, the angry mob turned on me" »

This week the right to peaceful public assembly got a bit of a battering. And those wielding the sticks were none other than freedom-of-speech-loving journalists.

The derision with which many critiqued the anti carbon tax rally seemed, to use one of their favourite descriptors, extreme.

The determination to find an offensive placard, to photograph someone looking unhinged, to find fault with the tone of the event should be a little concerning for those who champion free speech and peaceful public assembly as tenets of democracy.

Continue reading "You journos are the freaks, not us carbon protestors" »

A news conference will be held shortly to shed more light on the accident which has claimed the lives of ABC journalist Paul Lockyer, cameraman John Bean and chopper pilot Gary Ticehurst. We’ll update details as they come through.

For now, we invite you to share your memories of these three highly experienced professionals, and to offer your sympathies to their families.

The three were killed in a chopper accident in South Australia last night, north of Lake Eyre.

Continue reading "Best in the business" »

Paul Keating’s fondness for picking up the phone to relay his displeasure about media coverage is the stuff of legend. From the half-dozen spirited conversations I’ve had as a publisher with the former PM, the most memorable went to the issue of privacy.

An item had appeared in Sydney Confidential about his daughter being spotted on a date with a rugby league player at a city bar. The article didn’t suggest any hanky-panky, simply that they had met for a drink. Keating didn’t think it should have run at all and took particular issue with the accompanying photograph, which had been tagged as digitally altered, featuring separate merged images of his daughter and the said footy star.

Keating prefaced his remarks by reflecting on the level of moral bankruptcy which would attract someone to a career as a gossip writer, and indeed a career as the publisher of their work. To give you a sense of it, in his opening salvo he described gossip writers as “ugly biker’s molls who couldn’t get a root on a troop ship, couldn’t get a root on a troop ship coming home” and he concluded that whenever he rang editors about articles of this kind he routinely received a lecture about public figures and the public’s right to know which had no relationship to the “horseshit” we chose to publish.

Continue reading "The right to privacy would come at a social cost" »

Repeat after me: Models do not cause eating disorders. Really, they don’t.

The news which hit the headlines this week that nearly 100 children between the ages of five and seven had been diagnosed with eating disorders in the UK in recent years immediately prompted some stock-standard finger pointing (“It was the models wot done it!”), but it’s time to dispel a few myths about eating disorders.

For years, the scrawny, malnourished-looking girls who haunt the runways of Paris, Milan and New York have been accused of shoving women the world over just that much closer to starving themselves or sticking their fingers down their throats.

Continue reading "Eating disorders: A more weighty issue than you think" »

There’s been a long-standing, slightly confused and often-broken taboo on reporting suicides. Many believe – perhaps without basis – that just talking about suicide could lead to ‘copycats’. But all the important players agree that it should be discussed, and today the Australian Press Council has released new standards for media coverage of suicides. The Punch spoke to Press Council chair Julian Disney about the changes and what he hopes they’ll achieve.

Q. What’s changed?

A. There was a Senate inquiry that gathered evidence from a number of perspectives and found the Mindframe guidelines should be reviewed – and we thought we should review ours as well.  In particular that related to whether there was a feeling in the media that discussion of suicide was taboo. Our guidelines never said that (it should be taboo), and the Mindframe ones didn’t either.

Continue reading "Punch Q & A: When is it OK for the media to discuss suicide?" »

APRIL 8,1974.

My darling Heather, I write to you at a time when I think I’ve never felt worse about politics. The idiots who now run the Liberal Party will drive me right round the bend. Their last move is to deny supply to the present government in the Senate. Now this is something that shocks me.

These words belong to former prime minister and founder of the Liberal Party, Sir RG (Bob) Menzies.  History of course can provide a longer-run assessment of the bunker-busting tactics used to blast Gough Whitlam from office.

But whatever side you come down on, Malcolm Fraser was vindicated winning three subsequent elections (1975, 1977, and 1980, although not the double-D held just weeks after his 1974 missive under Billy Snedden’s leadership).

Continue reading "Retreat and withdraw: Gillard’s new strategy" »

Is it time for Australian media powers to draw up a code of conduct to deal with spin doctor demands?

Championing the media and their moguls may not be fashionable right now given the UK’s phone hacking scandal, and Labor and the Greens calling for their own inquiry off the back of it.

Nevertheless public relations spin is endemic and enduring.

Continue reading "Media scripts and avoiding the spin cycle" »

Here is a quick multiple choice question. I am writing this column because:

A) Rupert Murdoch instructed me to in his morning email;
B) I am on a personal mission to destroy the ALP;
C) The regular columnist is on holiday and I had to cobble together something at the last minute to fill this giant white space.

If you are a member of the Greens, a self-proclaimed ethicist or a journalism lecturer you will of course know the answer is A. It’s perhaps best that you stop reading now, as to actually find out the truth would ruin your next six-part lecture series at the Enmore Anarchist Collective.

Continue reading "Click here for an insider’s look at Gillard vs. Media" »

If Julia Gillard is looking for a shoulder to cry on about the torrid media coverage she has been receiving she could always pick up the phone to another recent prime minister in John Howard. If she were to do so she would find that, far from getting a sympathetic ear, she’d be politely advised to stop whining, harden up and get on with governing.

Ms Gillard once said, misleadingly, that her chances of seizing the leadership of the Labor Party from Kevin Rudd were as great as being picked to play for her beloved Western Bulldogs. To use an AFL analogy Ms Gillard is currently like the hapless footy coach who finds their team 10 goals down at half time and starts complaining about the umpiring.

It might be an over-simplification but the question Ms Gillard should ask herself is this. Is Labor on a record low primary vote of 27 per cent because of negative media coverage? Or is Labor getting negative media coverage because it’s got a primary vote of 27 per cent – that is, because its leadership has been so haphazard and its policies so poorly sold that the media is simply reflecting, not creating, public disquiet at its performance?

Continue reading "Crappy coach complains about the umpiring" »

From the parliamentary precinct across Lake Burley Griffin to this correspondent’s home takes six or seven minutes by car - max.

But that was easily long enough on Wednesday night to highlight a massive contrast between the grindingly dull and scripted performance of the Australian House of Representatives and the more dynamic, and frankly more honest British equivalent on which ours is modelled.

Thanks to the storm over phone hacking and political entanglements associated with the now defunct News of the World, Question Time in the mother of Westminster parliaments was broadcast on the ABC’s News Radio.

Continue reading "Britain can teach us how to keep our House in order" »

I was at the Press Club debate - how could I resist? I’ve also been lucky enough to see Ian Plimer talk.  Both Monckton and Plimer are wonderful, persuasive speakers. They are entirely affable, avuncular individuals who are entirely unafraid to blend fact and fiction in such a way that, to the uninformed listener, what they say can seem both reasonable and reassuring. 

Unconstrained by the need to actually tell the truth, and with a gift for cherrypicking facts that support their world-view (especially when taken out of context) they rattle off non-sequiturs and utter nonsense to support their main argument which is, in a nutshell, that the world is not warming, even if it was warming it’s not human activity driving it, and even if human activity is driving global warming, doing nothing at all about it is the best solution.

In one of two rather oblique references to the Nazi party, Monckton quoted Albert Einstein who maintained, quite rightly, that 100 people’s (ie a consensus) opinion is not needed to disprove a theory; in fact only one single fact is needed.

Continue reading "It’s time for direct action. No, not the Abbott kind." »

I was going to start this with a deliberately understated introduction along the lines of: This is not journalism’s finest hour. But then I remembered that the whole News of the World scandal was in fact unearthed by journalists. And then I couldn’t work out how to start.

Journalists are prone to navel gazing; the unkind would say that’s because of an over-inflated sense of our own importance. The kind would say it’s because we are aware of the inherent privilege and responsibility of what we do.

But you can’t deny the NOTW catastrophe is an incredibly significant story, so no wonder the non-News Ltd press are wallowing in it – gleefully, in many instances.

Continue reading "News of the World scandal doesn’t make us all hacks" »

If the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, for Canberra reporters this weekend the price of vigilance will mean surrendering their freedom - albeit temporarily.

The “lock-up” as it is known in Canberra parlance, will be in play this weekend to release the Government’s carbon tax / emissions trading plan.

Commonly deployed for the federal Budget, they work like this: Reporters agree to shed all communications devices, phones, wireless computer connections etc. and enter a secure windowless room in Parliament House for a period of several hours leading up the official public release of a policy or reform.

Continue reading "Carbon tax: A lock up or a stitch up?" »

Last week The Punch posted a piece on a fantastic news picture of a couple kissing amid a riot. Then the proverbial hit the fan, with all sorts of rumours - including a suggestion it was the scene of a sexual assault - so we closed the piece until we could work out what was going on. Well now we know (sort of) and the piece is open again, here. And here’s a great look at the situation from a new contributor, Jen Vuk.

Against the tarnished backdrop of the escalating violence in Vancouver last week a startling image of a couple lying on a littered and damaged street and seemingly lost in their own tantric moment caused a meltdown of the most spurious kind.

Within hours of going online the image not only went viral, but had its own Twitter account and its first photo-shopped meme showing the couple on a freeway. While the riot, caused by the city’s hockey team’s championship loss, which left 150 people injured, property and shops destroyed and led to almost 100 arrests had but all been forgotten, our curiosity in the then mystery duo seemed to grow by the nanosecond.

Continue reading "Love, PR, and other catastrophes" »

The Dalai Lama’s most recent tour of Australia is in full swing, and it’s taken a slightly strange direction this time around. While his 2007 tour treated the Dalai Lama as he should be treated - as a spiritual leader who deserves respect - that tour met with a financial loss, and now it’s all about bums on seats.

Promotion, merchandise, and the media circuit. HHDL (as he’s known to his tweeps on Twitter) seems to be in it for the money, and he’s got the Collingwood AFL guernsey from Harry O’Brien to prove it.

The effort to engage a broader audience has strangely tainted his message, and the most our media can manage is to treat the man like he’s a punchline. Considering he’s trying to promote a series of undersold public lectures, he’s got to take what he can get… but is this really the best that we can give him?

Continue reading "Selling the Dalai Lama experience at $5000 a pop" »

This was a different budget. The SA Budget papers were coated in soft blue hues and carried a picture of a nurse and a baby. Even before state Treasurer Jack Snelling opened his mouth yesterday to tell assembled reporters all about his first budget the message was clear. This is a different Treasurer and a new era.

The hard edges that so oftened characterised his predecessor Kevin Foley were to be buffed smooth by Snelling. Foley used to love Budget day. He would relish the battle with the media, jumping in boots and all, to defend, sell and promote his budget.

That was all very well in the days when the Rann Government was flying high. When elections were being won and the cash was rolling in from Canberra there was plenty to shout loud about.

Continue reading "Labor PR 101: It’s about families, stupid" »

The argument that much of Australia’s media and associated journalists are cultural-left in their leanings is proven by last week’s events involving Senator Penny Wong being insulted by the infamous ‘meow’ interjection and Bob Hawke’s very public description of Tony Abbott, the leader of the federal opposition, as ‘mad as a cut snake’.

If the Canberra-based media commissariat is fair and balanced, there’s no doubt that the ex-ALP Prime Minister’s snide and offensive description of Abbott would have received the same coverage and condemnation as Senator Bushby’s interjection.

Given the hue and cry against Senator Bushby’s catcall against Senator Wong, it only stands to reason that if critics are consistent they will also have to call old silver budgie to account.

Continue reading "‘Mad as a cut snake’ as insulting as ‘meow’" »

Memo to the AFL: ban these racist pigs for life. There you go, problem solved. Surely it can’t be that difficult.

This is a serious issue that is very close to my heart. As a victim of racial abuse over many years, I can’t hold my tongue any longer. I have also been in the unfortunate position of being abused while at the footy. My crime? Barracking for my team.

Just when we thought our governing body was getting a grip on these ugly and unintelligent slurs, a couple of ignorant imbeciles, one at an AFL game, the other at the VFL (not for the first time this year mind you) decided it might be a good idea to voice their racist views and sour what was otherwise a couple of great games.

Continue reading "Banish all racists from the AFL. For life." »

Lindsay Tanner isn’t happy with the mainstream media’s treatment of politics and politicians. The mainstream media is lazy, superficial, biased, banal. It has a pack mentality and a short attention span. It cooks up or makes up stories, fails to correct errors, and can be easily conned. It is unwilling or unable to examine big ideas and serious policy debate.

As for social media, well, that’s just frivolous nonsense. All those people writing their silly tweets. And politicians shouldn’t have fun or show their lighter side. Costello dancing the Macarena – what was that about? Just stupid.

With his furrowed brow, his Brylcreemed widow’s peak and his dark and dated suits, Lindsay Tanner has long had the demeanour of someone who is 50 going on 75. It befits him to have authored such a grumpy and meandering book, Sideshow: Dumbing Down Democracy. This crotchety polemic combines random anecdotes from federal politics with haphazardly-selected quotes from professional haters of mainstream journalism to bolster his thesis that politics is stuffed, and that it’s (almost) all the media’s fault. 

Continue reading "Tanner’s one-sided sideshow lets the pollies off the hook" »

It has come to the attention of the Australian Greens and their supporters that members of the media have been questioning politicians about how policies such as the carbon tax will affect people’s lives. To its shame, even the ABC has succumbed to this disturbing trend.

A petition has been organised by activists on the GetUp! website urging the national broadcaster to pull 7.30 Report anchor Chris Uhlmann into line. In an interview last week Uhlmann had the temerity to ask Greens Leader Bob Brown whether he still believed Australia should phase out the coal industry. When Brown suggested that this was a wicked misrepresentation of his position by those of us in what he calls the “Murdoch hate media”, Uhlmann helpfully reminded the Greens Leader that it was actually a direct statement by Brown himself in an opinion piece he authored just four years ago.

Details, details.

Continue reading "Grizzling Greens want power without scrutiny" »

Of all the things I’ve lost online, I miss my mind the most. On Friday I forgot a friend’s name for almost a minute. And this was an actual, real friend. Someone who’d been a guest at my house.

After a little Wiki work and web MDing on my phone I come to the conclusion that I probably had early onset dementia. The next day I mentioned my ailment to one of my friends - whose name I can recall because I see it every day in my Twitter feed (@juzzycullen). She told me she had the same problem and we agreed it was unlikely that we both had dementia.

We decided it less likely we’re suffering a digital-age DDoS attack on out brains. A personal Future Shock if you like.

Continue reading "HELP! I lost my mind online" »

Last week, Melinda Tankard Reist argued right here on The Punch that the “Pippa Middleton Arse Appreciation Society” set up on Facebook constitutes “virtual sexual harassment”.

She re-published some of the more hideous comments people had placed on the fan page, and claimed this is part of a trend that stems from our increasingly “pornified” culture:

When Karl Stefanovic let all the men present know in his Logie acceptance speech that his wife had “the best arse”, frequent comments were made that if a woman had made the same comments about a man, no one would mind. But a woman making a comment about a man’s backside does not carry the same weight or intent as the reverse. We don’t hear men being told to “shake that arse”. We do not hear of a man’s backside referred to as “booty”.

Continue reading "Ease up, we’re not all bum-obsessed trolls" »

Sex and alcohol used to be the weapons of choice if you wanted to attract fellow uni students to a meeting.  The ad industry has known for decades that sex sells. 

And now we have the internet to tell us in even more precise detail just how attractive humans find sex, scandals or booze – preferably all three.

So should we be surprised that, as Lindsay Tanner’s new book Sideshow highlights, the media don’t love good policy, but they simply adore “sexy” stories? 

Continue reading "We are all to blame for the dumbing down of politics" »

I’m thinking about making a sockpuppet. Not like the one on the Telstra ad – although that is kinda cute. A fake online identity to talk myself up.

I’d call it something subtle like Trace is Ace or Spice Rack. It seems to have worked for Scott Adams.

He’s behind a brilliant comic strip called Dibert and a not-so-brilliant blog post comparing women with children begging for candy.

Continue reading "And now, a word from Tracey Spicer’s sockpuppet" »

Generally, I like being a woman. The conversations are great; breasts are both useful and attractive, if I do say so myself; plus, we get to wear more interesting stuff than jeans and variations on the blue shirt. But, recently, I’ve been hankering for a gender opt-out. I’d like a day – actually, make that a week – of being a man.

From the outside, I’m sure it looks as if Girl World is all book clubs and mutual support, and long phone calls and caring, sharing emails. Which it is. Mostly. But while we weren’t watching, a serpent must have slithered into the Garden of Eve because, right now, us girls are in danger of critiquing ourselves to death.

There’s barely an issue that doesn’t polarise us: breast vs bottle, caesarean vs natural birth, tramp vs virgin, tiger mother vs western mother, Botox vs wrinkles, skinny vs fat, airbrushing vs real. And on it goes.

Continue reading "No winners when women turn on women" »

Julian Assange repeatedly said that is the car accidents not the bus accidents of war that have resulted in the massive numbers of civilian casualties revealed by the Afghanistan and Iraq War Diaries in 2010.

Now it’s the media circus around the comparatively pedestrian accident of his legal situation that is drawing global attention away from Wikileaks and the revelations it has made.

Malcolm Turnbull was right when he said that Prime Minister Julia Gillard should not have jumped on what he called a “media frenzy” in describing Assange as a criminal when it had not been established that he broke Australian law.

Continue reading "Where’s Wikileaks in the celebrity circus?" »

I grew up idolising the greatest politician the world has ever seen.

As a boy, I would sit, clutching sugary treats, as he performed all manner of administrative miracles.

He was the one who taught me about terrorism, the perils of cloning, the dangers of space travel and that CIA-style pencil-pushing can lead to muscular atrophy.

Continue reading "Politicians: The Masters of Charisma. Just add crazy." »

Just like that, the St Kilda scandal engulfed another victim.

On Channel 7’s Sunday Night was a much-hyped interview with Kim’s parents. Kim being the 17-year-old at the centre of the St Kilda scandal. Parents Tony and Susan went on television and spoke of their horror at being called “bad parents”, the death threats levelled against them, and their fears for the safety of their younger daughter, who is just 10.

Then there’s a gratuitous shot of Kim jogging through a park with her little sister. So now everyone knows what this young girl, who is arguably the only innocent one in the whole sordid mess, looks like.

Continue reading "St Kilda scandal: Guilty parents, an innocent child" »

As someone who works in PR I read a lot of news. Whether it’s print, radio, TV or online, I’m addicted. 

A side effect of my news “habit” is that I tend to examine what the message of the story is.  Who’s reflected positively?  Who’s reflected negatively?  What perception of the subject will the reader walk away with?

While websites like this one thrive on opinion, journalism has traditionally strived for objectivity.  However, this is harder than it sounds; particularly when it comes to reporting issues that people hold dear.

Continue reading "Journalism and objectivity. Reality or ruse?" »

It was another poor week for the Government, and one in which the Opposition didn’t have to lift a finger.

In fact, Tony Abbott just rode off into the sunset swapping the noisy “gutter politics” of the last weeks of Parliament for the majesty of the open road.  His lycra-clad parade along the 2011 Pollie Pedal charity bike ride gave us a new variant - gusset politics.

But Julia Gillard’s misfortune had nothing to do with nagging suspicions of where the alternative PM keeps his spare pair of socks.

Continue reading "Rogue Rudd has Gillard over a barrel" »

That’s it. Pull back, aim, let go. Repeat a billion times.

The game’s objective is to guide a bird with anger management issues, projectile style, into a structure in the aim of killing the pigs within.

It mightn’t be much of a premise, but mobile game developers Rovio thought it sounded like a good idea. Myself and millions of fellow birdflingers around the world have been unproductive ever since it was released on the iPhone. Through careful use of trajectory, timing, and a slingshot, feathered vengeance can be mine.

Every day, a possible 50 million people worldwide spend a collective 200 million minutes trying to rain down avian justice.

Continue reading "They’re red. They’re angry. They’re birds." »

Public nudity is a funny old thing.

On one hand, letting it all hang out is the most natural thing in the world. Yet – like a small child who leaps suddenly from behind a door shouting “boo radley” – the sight of fully fledged human nudity can be arresting if unexpected.

New South Wales upper house candidate and gay activist Stuart Baanstra certainly disturbed the political equilibrium when he disrobed publically during his campaign for today’s state election.

Described variously as “a political nudist”, “a passionate nudist” and “a softly spoken former employee of Australia Post”, Baanstra used to be a member of the Greens and once went to court for refusing to fill out the Census.

Continue reading "Shoosh, prudes - nude’s not rude!" »

While Japan 2011 will be remembered for the tragic earthquake and tsunami that swept a destructive path through coastal communities, it will also go down in history as a date with destiny on the nuclear energy debate following the fallout from the Fukushima reactor emergency.

Fears surrounding the ongoing crisis at the Japanese nuclear plant have seen it described as the “New Chernobyl”.

The immediate scale of the disaster may not be as dire as Chernobyl but, like the Ukrainian accident, its potential to set back for years the proliferation of nuclear energy as an alternative to carbon-based sources of power is equally as significant.

Continue reading "Online chatter goes nuclear" »

For observers partial, impartial or militant, there is now a barometer for the turbulence in the Middle East. The Qatar-based news outlet Al Jazeera has set up an online tool to track Twitter updates from Egypt, Libya, Bahrain and Yemen.

But if you’re an aspiring insurgent worried that your movements are now more visible to the government you’re trying to topple, rest assured – social media will find a way.

When Libyan secret police monitored Facebook and Twitter, revolutionaries seeking to oust Muammar Gaddafi from power turned to a dating site called Madawi, assuming aliases from “Sweet Butterfly” to “Melody of Torture” and exchanging coded messages. Their missives, and their mission, are another entry in a series of social media-attributed uprisings that has already claimed the scalp of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak.

Continue reading "When the medium becomes the message in the media" »

For newly minted parliamentarians interested in building their media profile to doors, or not to doors, has always been the question.

For the uninitiated the doors in questions are the front doors of Parliament House. Each sitting day a gaggle of journalists guard the doors and throw questions at eager - or unwitting - MP’s and Senator’s walking through.

Attendance for the politicians is voluntary. If they want a shot at getting their mug on TV they chance the doors. If the risks seem too high, they scurry through the underground garage, safe but wallowing in anonymity.

Continue reading "To door on not to door, that is the question" »

It’s a strategy that President Obama’s spin team employed when he was neck-deep in political hot water over an incredibly unpopular health care policy – demonise the critics.

Instead of addressing valid criticisms, damn the people making them.

Witness the way the groundswell “Tea Party” movement was wrongly characterised by most of the mainstream media in the US and here as well.  There’s a derisory edge, almost a snigger, whenever the media discuss this significant political movement. 

Continue reading "Don’t address the concern, shoot the critic" »

Few people, apparently, support the jailing of Julian Assange - Australia’s very own electronic Lord Byron,  the “romantic” hero of the Internet generation - for his organisation’s use and misuse (and, presumably, sale) of stolen US diplomatic documents. 

Fortunately, those rights he may have as an Australian citizen in a foreign country have been actively supported by the Australian Embassies in Britain and Sweden, as they should be. 

Perhaps even more fortunately for Mr. Assange, the United States Ambassador to Australia, Jeff Bleich, has decried the exaggerated claims of ideologues in US media and politics.

Continue reading "Julian Assange: Lord Byron of the internets?" »