Category: Media

When the Queen first visited Australia in 1954, my mother almost did not get to see her. (more…)

Turn on the television. Move to the screen. Switch on the device – if you ever left it off. Queen Elizabeth II may have passed, but she is everywhere in very lively fashion, a spectral manifestation that has utterly controlled large chunks of a transfixed global media system. (more…)

There is set to be some anxiety in monarchist groups in the community as they reconcile the ascent of King Charles III to the throne with their fear. Even in educated hard right circles like The Spectator Australia’s readership, conspiracy theories about him are evident. (more…)

In Asian Media this week – a legal critique of the Xinjiang human rights report. (more…)

It is more than 50 years since the astute cultural critic Marshall McLuhan burst into the academic world with his perplexing insights into the meaning of communications and how they would affect mankind. He declaimed, ‘The medium is the message’. I had just turned 30 and was enrolled for an MA in the Stanford University Communications Department. I didn’t understand what McLuhan meant, but as another popular ‘truth’ at the time was, ‘Don’t trust anyone over thirty’, I kept my mouth shut and listened. (more…)

We are getting the worst press coverage of overseas events I can remember from the correspondents fielded in Ukraine. (more…)

In declining order of trust: The Age, SMH, Guardian online, News com.au, Sky News, Herald Sun and Daily Telegraph come below the 50% mark with Sky News boasting the highest don’t trust rating. Would someone please remind us who owns the four at the bottom of the trust scale? (more…)

TRUST IN THE MAINSTREAM media has collapsed, a series of new studies show. Western journalists openly see their role as propagandists for their beliefs, in contrast with their readers, who seek balanced coverage. (more…)

The writer is a retired, or close to retired, barrister who practiced in the area of defamation. He asks: are we to sit back and expect to be entertained for the next one to two years whilst the Federal Court discharges its duty to these litigants? Subject to the qualifications below, he thinks that it is unlikely. (more…)

What power always does is reveal. (more…)

“The prime minister was spotted at the media empire’s Holt Street offices on Wednesday, when, we’re told, Albo, Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles and Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong met News Corp cochairman Lachlan Murdoch and senior editors of the media empire’s Australian mastheads”.(SMH 26 August 2022) (more…)

Whilst resort to warfare must be strongly deprecated in virtually all circumstances, it is arguable that the media treatment of specific conflicts and the resulting casualties–both civilian and military–differs considerably from war to war and can easily break down into black and white categories, based on factors other than the war itself. The recourse to particular forms of categorisation tells us as much about the media itself as it does about the particular conflicts being reported upon.  (more…)

From 2004 to 2014, I ran a program on behalf of Sydney University to send highly-motivated Australian media students to English-language newspapers around Asia. They were to work as professional journalists, researching and publishing their own stories about local events. On return to Australia, their experience was designed to equip those who joined Australian media outfits with a sophisticated insight of their host countries. Funding came from the Myer Foundation, then DFAT. (more…)