The Internet is approaching a crisis. Authoritarian regimes censor and manipulate it to suppress dissent, western governments pursue online whistleblowers and Wikileakers, big business wants to track consumers’ every move. Supposedly liberal governments from the United States to Australia have proved as eager as their conservative predecessors to constrain it. And the mainstream media? They have largely been silent. Read More
Five years ago, a circus, the late Michael Jackson and the unknown “Tank Man” collided in Beijing to demonstrate how state censorship leads to even censors not knowing what they don’t know. Now, at a time when calls of “fake news” undermine the confidence of citizens in their democracies, it is ironic that we can learn from censorship states like China just what can happen next. … Read More
Despite most young journalists now coming from universities, there still lingers among many editors, chiefs of staff and other hard news managers the view that real journalism skills can only be learned “on the job”. And they blame the dilettante intellectuals of academia for making their task harder by filling the heads of young journalism graduates with fancy ideas. How much of this is true and what can be done about it? Read More
Commercial radio throughout the world are often incubators of on-air bullies. Sydney radio shock jock Kyle Sandilands shows all the symptoms, but he is not entirely self-made. For although he’s bright enough to be a successful know-all – just bright enough to be dangerous, as the saying goes – he’s had outside help along the road to being a thoroughly unlikable loudmouth. They may start as bullies, but we then make them monsters. Read More
Arrests of working journalists by Australian authorities remain a continuing threat to media freedom in the country. Even when those arrests are not followed through to prosecution, they still send a chill through working journalists, impeding their efforts on our behalf. And while social media comes ablaze with indignation whenever journalists are arrested, the media companies themselves are often noticeably mute. Read More
Ask scientists, economists, sociologists, futurologists and most experts what is the greatest single threat facing the human race and the most common response is likely to be “climate change”. Discounting transient crises, why is climate change not constantly on front pages and leading news bulletins? Why is the environment reporter so far beneath the political editor? What IS going on? Read More
Disasters bring out the best and worst in us, magnifying both good and bad. Almost inevitably journalists will be condemned at some stage in covering disasters, especially when our initial shock wears off. It has been labelled disaster porn and few sectors of the media are spared, whether a camera crew chasing exhausted rescuers or newspaper photographs of dead or dying children. So how far should we go? Read More
An era of sorts ended in 2011 with the death of cartoonist Bob Browne, the creator of Mr Grass Roots, perhaps Papua New Guinea’s most loved comic character, “the social conscience of PNG”. Browne’s life and work could be read as an allegory of change in the Pacific. He came as a British volunteer in 1971 and stayed through thick and thin until his death. This was one of our best-read articles, proving journalism is about people. Read More
It’s not easy being a foreign correspondent in a crisis. They often find themselves part of the story they’re covering, so the secret is to be present but translucent, letting the story shine through their own experiences, offering their audience a guiding hand without their own voice overwhelming the narrative. Not all reporters do this well all the time and they fall victim to “look at me journalism”. Here’s a cautionary tale. Read More
After every mass killing, blogs and forums brim with accusations how the media may have prompted the event. We respond that we’re only doing our job, but sometimes we should consider how much we are to blame, if not for whipping up hatred then at least for aiding and abetting those who do. It’s one of the great questions of journalism: “How responsible are we, as journalists, for the negative effects of things we report?” Read More
