Anyone who uses an Internet domain name – which means most Australian companies, educational institutions, government departments and not-for-profits – should know what’s currently happening with the domain names registration process. (more…)
Category: Media
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JOHN MENADUE. The international press at Panmunjom for the KIm-Moon Summit were much more impressed than the Australian press.
I was struck by the response, amazement and obvious excitement of the international press at Panmunjom, near Seoul last Friday. See link.
But the media interest in Australia seemed remarkably low key and almost disinterested. At least our media was not as sulky and cynical as the Japanese media, -
GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND …
The ABC’s Spirit of Things has woven together several ANZAC stories, including the revelation that the puggaree on our slouch hat is a variant of the Sikhs’ turban. The program starts with presenter Noel Debien interviewing Marist Brother John Lutterll, who has written a biography of an Australian who served in the Gallipoli campaign as a radio operator on the troopship Hessen – Norman Thomas Gilroy. The interview is about the life, politics and theology of Australia’s first cardinal. It also provides insight into the enduring differences between the NSW and Victorian branches of the Labor Party.
The most eloquent and moving Anzac Day speech was from French Prime Minister Édouard Phillipe at the opening of the Monash Centre at Villers-Bretonneux.
To understand current developments in North and South Korea, a little history is useful. The New Yok Times has provided a two minute video of the history of the Korean War. In that context these photographs on the ABC website are extraordinary, because technically the two sides are still at war after 68 years
Don’t believe the official narrative in the Syrian chemical weapons controversy – Truthdig.
Can Anzac Day now return to a day of solemn reflection – Paul Daley, the Guardian.
Japan demands that the Koreas pull a dessert from summit menu because it mentions disputed islands – South China Morning Post.
The secrets of old parliament house revealed – Canberra Times
The demise of the nation state – Rana Dasgupta in the Guardian
The diggers built a proud banking culture and the suits ruined it – The New Daily
Never mind Fox: Trump’s most reliable media mouthpiece is now Christian TV – Politico
Why Trump Is Winning and the Press Is Losing – New York Review of Books.
Caritas and other Catholic agencies divest from fossil fuels – La Croix International.
On Saturday Extra with Geraldine Doogue this 28th April, former ALP Minister for Trade, Craig Emerson discusses the livestock export industry; Alan Kohler on the pay structure of financial advisers; veteran middle east analyst, Anthony Bubalo discusses potential good news coming out from the Middle East; A Foreign Affair with guests Alan Dupont, Jonathan Pearlman and Gorana Grgic and former ambassador to China, Geoff Raby on his travels along the Silk Road. http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/saturdayextra/
Defend the ‘rule-based’ order in Asia at any cost? Hugh White
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Media Watch. How News Corp and The Australian mislead us on climate change.
Great Barrier Reef coral bleaching
The Australian and Cairns Post highlight a dissenting view on whether global warming is the cause of mass coral bleaching.
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SUE WAREHAM. Honouring the war dead means learning from the horror.
This Anzac Day, as on every other, we will hear of the horrors of war to which many of our service people have been exposed, horrors that certainly call into question any notion of us assuming the title “homo sapiens”. We will “honour the fallen” and utter the hallowed words “lest we forget”, as we carefully forget every lesson that the last century and more of bloodshed could teach us. (more…)
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ROBERT FISK. The search for truth in the rubble of Douma – and one doctor’s doubts over the chemical attack
This is the story of a town called Douma, a ravaged, stinking place of smashed apartment blocks – and of an underground clinic whose images of suffering allowed three of the Western world’s most powerful nations to bomb Syria last week. There’s even a friendly doctor in a green coat who, when I track him down in the very same clinic, cheerfully tells me that the “gas” videotape which horrified the world – despite all the doubters – is perfectly genuine. (more…)
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PATRICIA EDGAR. The Death of Australian Children’s Broadcast Television Programming.
How many times must it be said that if we do not take action Australian children’s programming will disappear from our screens? (more…)
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LAURIE PATTON: No balls. How Cricket Australia lost the media game
The on-field actions of a player created a crisis for Cricket Australia. However, its own mishandling of the affair – especially in its dealing with the media – added to an unfolding debacle. For years to come, world travel for Australians will involve tolerating jokes, and worse, about being from a nation of cheats. (more…)
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DUNCAN GRAHAM. Australia Plus – unfit for export.
Though this starts like a fairy story it’s really a frightener: Once upon a time, Australian governments believed that broadcasting beyond our shores – and particularly into Southeast Asia – was an important responsibility, sowing ideas, informing and influencing.
Radio Australia shortwave started in 1939 to counter Japanese propaganda. After the war, it became a ‘soft power diplomacy tool’ in the jargon of Foreign Affairs. It made us ‘globally connected’, able to ‘promote Australian values’.
Now all has turned to froth. Seldom seen by taxpayers is our $20 million presentation to the world. Although called Australia Plus it adds little of value. (more…)
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SCOTT BURCHILL. On the Russian gas attack
Given the “sexing up” and outright distortions of dodgy intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s “WMD” in 2002-3 by both the UK government of Tony Blair and US administration of George W. Bush, one can only be astonished at the credulity of those in the Fourth Estate who don’t even feel the need to ask for evidence in the case of the Salisbury gas attack on double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.
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JOHN MENADUE. Our cricketers The Ugly Australians. A REPOST
Repost from 01/04/2015. Things have only got worse with the cheating in South Africa.. We need a clean out not just of players but coaching staff,Cricket Australia and the media .
They are very good cricketers, but the behaviour of our cricketers leaves a nasty taste. (more…)
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ANNE HURLEY. Former Internet Australia directors support NSW Business Council call for a National Broadband Service Guarantee
Last year the NSW Business Chamber conducted a statewide survey of members. It has since called for changes it believes will help save business an average $9000 per year resulting from problems related to the NBN rollout. Four former directors of Internet Australia, the NFP peak body representing Internet users, have come out in support of the call for a National Broadband Service Guarantee. (more…)
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SCOTT BURCHILL. What is going wrong and how did we get here?
Despite the temptations of presentism and intemperate thinking, the forces which have brought us to the current political malaise have been around for some time.
The ideological convergence of the major parties in our two party system has been underway for over four decades. Its most unfortunate consequence is that voters are robbed of meaningful policy choices in key areas which concern them: the threat of terrorism, national security and defence, surveillance laws, foreign policy, immigration and asylum seekers. This is the serious negative effect of bipartisanship. (more…)
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ANNE HURLEY. Questions should be asked about the Coalition Agreement and its potential impact on the NBN rollout in rural Australia?
Over the last few weeks we have been inundated with reports of the Barnaby Joyce saga. One aspect of the saga has involved a call for transparency in the provisions of the agreement between the Liberal Party and Nationals – the Coalition Agreement – pursuant to which they operate as the Government for all Australians. (more…)
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MATTHEW RICKETSON & RODNEY TIFFEN. The chronicler we deserve?
Michael Wolff’s book owes a large debt to the ethically grounded work of the journalists he professes to disdain. (more…)
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Emma Alberici’s now more critical tax cuts ‘analysis’ reposted by ABC
After a bitter dispute between ABC management and their star chief economics correspondent, Emma Alberici, the ABC today reposted her ‘analysis’ of the Turnbull government’s plan for big corporate tax cuts. (more…)
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RANALD MACDONALD. Stop the presses.
Well, they have almost stopped running around this country with so few papers being sold nowadays, but let us stop them anyway. (more…)
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BERNARD KEANE. Amid denialism on company tax cuts, the ABC lets us down.
The ABC’s censorship of Emma Alberici in response to pressure from Malcolm Turnbull comes at a time when the national broadcaster’s mainstream media competitors are also increasingly failing to properly inform Australians. (more…)
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Has the ABC buckled to PM Malcolm Turnbull by removing critical ‘analysis’ of the claimed benefits of corporate tax cuts?
The ABC’s chief economics correspondent Emma Alberici stands by her ‘analysis’. Significantly the ABC, through Ms Alberici’s editorial superiors Gaven Morris, the director of ABC News, and Alan Sunderland, director of editorial policies, do not.In a promoted article posted on February 14 after the broadcast of an ABC News item reporting that many Australian companies did not pay any tax, Ms Alberici intro-ed her analysis with this sentence: “There is no compelling evidence that giving the country’s biggest companies a tax cut sees that money passed on to workers in the form of higher wages.” (more…)
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EMMA ALBERICI. There’s no case for a corporate tax cut when one in five of Australia’s top companies don’t pay it.
There is no compelling evidence that giving the country’s biggest companies a tax cut sees that money passed on to workers in the form of higher wages. (more…)
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The media, the Iraq war and Fallujah
The Australian media continues to fail us badly over its coverage of the Middle East wars, terrorism and the continuing disaster of ISIS. That failure began with the invasion of Iraq . Unlike important overseas media, no Australian media has admitted or apologized for its failure in the coverage of the Iraq war and its consequences. As is often the case, our media was embedded in the ADF in support of Coalition policy. The political class sticks together.
News Corp media has been most at fault. (more…)
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The ABC’s selective publication of classified documents: “gutless kow-tow” or responsible journalism?
The ABC has been blasted by journalist critics over its selective editing of the national security classified and Cabinet-in-secret documents it received from a “bushie” who discovered them in discarded filing cabinets. (more…)
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JONATHAN GREEN. Media complicit in the rise of political trolls
There’s an arresting moment early in Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury in which Steve Bannon explains the mechanics of alt-right politics. (more…)
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GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND …
In an article in the Fairfax Press, Clancy Yeates points out that Australia’s big banks have “slashed loans to fossil fuel companies by almost a fifth in 2017, including a 50 per cent drop in their coal mining exposure”.
On last weekend’s Saturday Extra, Geraldine Doogue interviewed Laura Dassow Wallis, author of Henry David Thoreau: A life. There is a common image of Thoreau as a hermit in the wilderness, but Wallis dispels this image. He was thoroughly connected with society, and was deeply concerned with the way, as capitalism advanced, public land was being taken from the community and enclosed. The appropriation of physical and metaphorical public space for commercial purposes continues to this day.
On Saturday Extra this 3rd February Geraldine Doogue is discussing the unintended consequences of the government’s foreign interference bills on business activity and NGO’s with Elaine Pearson from the Human Rights Watch and Les Timar from the Australian Professional Government Relations Association; Lesley Russell, from the Menzies Centre for Health Policy discusses US business giants who have joined forces to form a company challenging the US health care system; as evidence is being collected of a Rohingya massacre from last August, Richard Paddock, foreign correspondent with the New York Times, traces the history of the Myanmar army and Geraldine Doogue travelled to Rwanda in January to see the silver back gorillas but also discovered a country reconciling the 1994 genocide, Geraldine speaks with Senator Apollinaire Mushinzimana and the head of the Rwanda Broadcasting Agency Arthur Asimwe.
Many economists are predicting strong economic growth this year. But Ross Gittins, commenting on Australia’s stalled wage growth and the diminished power of organised labour, writes: “Take away the real growth in wages and neither the economy nor jobs will stay growing strongly for long”.
How Australia’s identity was militarised – Paul Daley in the Guardian.
A former communist and a former Catholic activist combine forces to cast new light on the organisation that helped fuel the Labor split – Paul Rodan in Inside Story.
“Qantas and other big Australian businesses are investing regardless of tax cuts” – the Conversation.
We have entered the post-American era, writes Stan Grant
Greg Jericho unravels the miracle of Roger Federer.
Avoiding a US-Rissian military escalation during a hybrid war – Carnegie Moscow Center.
A series of articles by blogger Umair Haque on why the American Dream is over.
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JOHN MENADUE. We are joined at the hip to a country perpetually at war. Part 4
Next week I will be posting articles asserting that we are running great risks in being tied to the US, an ally that is almost always at war. The risks pre-date Donald Trump. Think Vietnam and Iraq.
In recent issues of P & I, I have posted many articles about the US almost perpetual involvement in war, the overthrow of foreign governments and a powerful military and industrial complex that depends for its profitability on continuing wars.
I repost below an article by Professor Tom Nichols ‘How America lost its faith in in expertise and why that matters’ It is a disturbing account about public ignorance in the US on the world and foreign matter. (more…)
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CAVAN HOGUE. White man’a media- A REPOST from May 29 2017
That the Australian media gives us saturation coverage of Europe but much less on Asia is obvious but the question is why? Have they done market research which shows this is what the public wants or does it stem from their own beliefs and prejudices? Is this really what most Australians want? Possibly it may be. (more…)
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ANNE HURLEY. Bad advice: why Mr Turnbull’s NBN is such a failure
These days you can’t buy a new car without airbags and ABS brakes. The Internet of Things is transforming the way we live our lives, run our businesses and grow the crops that feed the world. We’re developing autonomous vehicles and there’s talk about travelling to Mars. Yet millions of Australians are being sold broadband services using 50 year old copper wires. How did this come about? Why are we letting ourselves down so badly at a time when Australia needs to transform its economy now that the resources boom has passed by and we’re in the 21st Century where technology will underpin global economic development? (more…)
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JOHN CARMODY. Who is Joan Sullivan?
Does the Fairfax slogan, “Independent. Always”, really mean independent of truth, reliability and knowledge? Or should my humble response to the extraordinary headline and story in the Sun-Herald of 31 December have been an admission that, even after an operatic obsession of more than 50 years, there might have been a great Australian singer whom I’d never heard of: “New Joan Sullivan theatre to hit high note”. Worse still, the story that followed then wrongly mentioned that legendary name twice. Talk about rubbing salt into wounds (not to mention the cliché of the headline, even if it were correct). (more…)
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MICHAEL THORN. Countering vested interests A REPOST
That corporations wield enormous power is not news. That this power is wielded to benefit the corporation and its agents is not news either. Neither is seeking to counter the power of these corporations by public interest organisations, like the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE). (more…)
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JOHN MENADUE – Our derivative white man’s media A REPOST
Politicians are continually blamed for their failures but our media is also responsible for the state of public discussion on important issues. This downward media spiral has been led by the Murdoch media’s abuse of power in the three major English-speaking markets – Australia, UK and the US. But other media, including the ABC is performing badly.
In foreign and defence policies we are vassals of the US . Our media is an acolyte. (more…)