The weekend has arrived, time for a fresh talk thread.
For those of you who want to talk about something other than News Ltd closing News of the World in an attempt to reduce the outrage over the phone hacking scandal, take a look at these:
Gatsby without greatness – Roger Ebert laments the dumbing down of a classic novel.
My Summer at an Indian Call Center – A Mother Jones feature.
The Birth of ‘The New Journalism’ – Eyewitness Report by Tom Wolfe
If you want to show off your skills of prediction, why not take a guess at which disgruntled/disgraced/former ALP politician will be adding “balance” to the LOLBolt Report this weekend?
Meanwhile, I’ll be spending the weekend figuring out whether I want Queenslanders or Kiwis to lose the Super XV final; tough call.
35 Comments
Oh dear lord, why is it the media likes to complain about how academics spend their tax dollars before checking out the facts?
SMH Article
Of course, anyone even bothering to look into 3D printing would know that you can pick up a machine that does what they are talking about for around $1200. A mate of mine in Sydney who is into printing his own 3D sculptures pitched in with some others for a MakerBot that can, with an attachment change and some open-source code, do exactly what they are complaining about.
If they’d left out the whole taxpayer bit, the story would be just another fluff piece about some technology the journalists were only a year or so late in discovering. Instead, they have to throw in the taxpayer bit.
And while we’re on stupid things. The line from Australian Food and Grocery Council Chief Executive Kate Carnell deserves a mention. The Herald Sun, in it’s usual objective and balanced fashion, is accusing Get Up! of bullying to poor international food corporations (updating the article to include Tony Abbott jumping on the bandwagon). However the following line by Ms Carnell shows a distinct lack of knowledge about business…
Really, I thought boycotting a product / business is the right of any consumer? In fact, consumers being able to choose whether or not to conduct business with a company is a key pillar of a free market. I expect that the reporting of company misconduct is to be classified as “bullying” in the future as it might affect customer choices. Give me a break.
Really enamoured with Gotye’s new single & video: Somebody That I Used To Know (feat. Kimbra) – http://www.vimeo.com/26028186
Natasha Pincus and Warwick Field conceived, directed, filmed and edited the piece. Emma Hack did the body painting for the video. I love how Wally promotes art as a collective. Each form complementing the other.
Now that Ginatoy’s* budget has helped to rid Channel 10 of shows such as Video Hits, chances are you won’t see it on the TV.
*© Monkeywrench
Wow, Idlaviv…when can I expect the royalty check? ☺
Regarding The News Of the World, this isn’t as big a deal as it sounds, News Ltd will now introduce a Sunday edition of the Sun, so no sales lost and they may even make some savings in labour costs.
I don’t think this will save News Ltds bid to take control of Bsky
My prediction is that, when he finally gets around to covering the hacking scandal, the Southbank Jester will try to find a moral equivalence in the Wikileaks saga.
“Snarled Bob Ellis”, “Barked Guy Rundle” … “where were these men when Wikileaks was plundering state secrets … endangering the lives of many?”
Buried midway down the piece will be a half-hearted disclaimer: “Of course, I’m not seeking to excuse the behaviour of News of the World. It was reprehensible. But the price has been paid, and in the most emphatic way. Where now is the accountability for Wikileaks?”
End result: a hearty dose of rationalisation means a minuscue conscience is assuaged. The Boltstrokers hear the whistle and go into self-righteous overdrive. The ill-wind blows over and the bile duct keeps churning on and on.
Isn’t ‘Our Baz’ directing a new version of the Great Gatsby?
Ebert aint seen nuthin’ yet…get ready for the ultimate air-headed candy coated, cocaine fuelled dumbass version of that classic ever!
And people wonder why our film industry is in a slump!
Excuse my hypocrisy after hassling everyone else to post Murdoch stuff on the News Ltd thread but …
An ALP source has told me this afternoon that Kevin Rudd believes his mobile phone was hacked during his time as Prime Minister.
In all the argy-bargy here over the years, I’ve often noticed the crew who bark loudly in favour of whatever Rupe’s typists have blurted out in any particular argument.
They come across as hard core “fans” but never bob up to actually defend Murdoch wrongdoings.
If ever they go close it usually coincides with the lame justification blurted out by News and the timing is as if they have to wait for the corporate line before jumping in.
I haven’t been following too closely but have any of the Murdoch Lovers attempted justification, or are they just bunkering down hoping Dances With Chefs has some scandal to distract?
PS: Hartigan was a real LOL! “Quality journalism” bah hah!
B.Tolputt @2.
The fact anyone gives any credence to anything Kate Carnell says or does is a disgrace. Lets not forget who’s government turned the explosive demolition of the Royal Canberra Hospital into a ‘public circus’ resulting in the death of a 12 year old child.
From http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/ber-waste-tops-15b/story-fn59niix-1226090622303
“MORE than $1.5 billion has been wasted in the eastern states under the federal Government’s Building the Education Revolution schools stimulus program, with the nation’s two biggest states failing to provide value for money under the program. ”
The article reaches the figure of 1.5 billion by “Comparing the rates charged to public schools in the eastern states … to the rates paid by Catholic schools.” However, the BERIT Final report does not say this. It does not conclude that the differences in cost per square metre ammounts to waste. It concludes that there are a variety of factors that contribute to these differences including “projects with small floor areas generally attract a higher cost per square metre than larger buildings … Given the smaller size of NSW Government buildings the m2 rate building cost in isolation is notable relative to other authorities.” However, the report does conclude that some of the differences can be attributed to poor building practices, backlogs etc, that have been manifesting themselves within the NSW industry over the past 20 years.
When it comes to waste, the report looks at individual projects and concludes that of the 72 BER P21 projects it investigated in NSW, Vic. and Qld, 23 did not represent value for money. The report does not conclude how much money could have been wasted on these projects, and it certainly does not suggest that the difference in cost per square metre is indicative of waste.
At the beginning of the report, its author, Brad Orgill, writes: “Given the context in which the BER program was delivered, it is a testament to those involved that the
Taskforce has still only received 332 complaints, over three per cent of BER schools across the nation and at an overall premium on pre-BER business as usual costs of five to six per cent. Over 9,000 of the 10,500 projects have been completed since the P21 program was conceived in February 2009. This is a significant achievement. It is clear that the program did in fact deliver substantial stimulus.”
The cost premium is mostly explained by the size of the BER program, its speed of implementation, a requirement for apprenticeship and indigenous job creation as well as some negative, state factors.
According to the report, then, complaints ammounted to just over 3% of all BER projects. Of those complaints regarding value for money (vfm) less than a third did not represent vfm. Now if one percent of projects did not represent vfm, and the cost of the BER program was 16 billion dollars, then the most you can claim was wasted is 160 million dollars. That is assuming that all the money granted to the projects that were deemed not vfm, was spent on beer and hookers, and no buildings were in fact built.
This is just one more example of the OO misrepresenting a particular report to fit its ideological bent. Or, deciding it doesn’t like something, and facts be dammned, lets rag on it anyhow.
jeebus@11, good analysis. As a comparison, over 50% IT projects fail in one way or another (e.g.: budget, deadlines, deliverables). Some, like Business Intelligence (yes, oxymoron intended
) have a failure rate in the 80s to 90s. From my own experience, its been anywhere between 40-60%.
Any IT product or project manager would be over the moon to be scoring the BER 1 to 3% rate.
B Tolputt @ 12.01 & Emma Royds @ 2.49
I like the way Carnell’s presented as a nonaligned observer in her comments about the Govt. No mention at all about her own political history.
Quantize @ 1.03
I share your concern for Gatsby once Baz gets round to it.
P.S The supposed boycott of overseas minig investment presumably isn’t bullying.
P.P.S.
Should of course be “mining”.
I hate it when that happens.
@quantize@7 with you all the way on OB, but really it’s a category error to think a great novel, even one by someone who wrote for the movies, should make a great movie. I also recently picked up the 1974 Redford/Farrow GG – and it was a snore-fest.
I love it when News Corp republicans insists on calling Monckton “Lord”.
Another one comparing the Greens to One Nation, this time Alexander Downer in his weekly column for The Advertiser earlier in the week:
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/opinion/downer-dangers-of-green-power/story-e6freabc-1226086686409
Unlike Bob Brown and those nasty Greens of course.
Food for thought:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/andrew-gilligan/8624221/Phone-hacking-scandal-enemies-of-free-press-are-circling.html
After reading that, go listen to some of the testimony of newsies from places like the guardian media podcast or any of the UK news services interviewing past and present journalists to see how thoroughly off the charts the UK media establishment is about any sort of restrictions on the freedom of newspapers to basically do whatever the hell they like. Turn the clock back to the fussing about privacy a few years ago to hear how utterly rabid UK journalists are about anyone in the public eye having any right at all to a private existence. After all, the media MADE them, dammit. They OWE us (them).
I’ll have to dig it up tomorrow and post a link, but last night I was hearing an interview with a london journalist who was incensed at the idea that there was anything wrong with what the NOTW had done. His only problem, essentially, was that they got caught. If only they’d “just had a lit’l bit of a listen” and left it at that, without messing things up by deleting messages, there wouldn’t have been any problem. Should journalists have the powers of police? Absolutely – cases would get solved faster if they did. My distant impression is that his view isn’t all that unusual, particularly in the tabloid press. They’re used to having unfettered freedom to act, and they’re utterly appalled by any prospect of not being allowed to bribe, eavesdrop, bug and otherwise break the law in order to break a story … sorry, “serve the public interest”.
They’ve got it coming.
Headed over to Hackerman as I do sometimes. (I know, I’m a little masochistic but spanking myself with a rolled up Womens Weekly doesn’t do it for me like it used to). Predictably in a froth about Adam Spencer’s stoush with Monckton, saying he should be sacked for being rude and belligerent to his guest.
Funny, I don’t recall them being so passionate re the Gillard/Jones tete`-a-tete´ of a few months ago….
MoC@18
Nicely put. This explains the desperately self-centred attitude of The Australian: we’re journalists, therefore we’re more important than either our readership or the powerful people we comment on. Destroy the Greens? No problem. Lie about Labor government programs? A given.
Perhaps we’ve reached “Peak Bullshit”?
Watched SBS news and listened to ABC’s PM, the talk from ‘journalists’ is remarkably reminiscent of the post-Iraq war “we didn’t know”.
Shock, Outrage, Fury – Gate.
The NYT covers this better than any of our inbred local hacks (all hopelessly compromised by their incestuous relationships with Evil Overlord Rupert’s Flying Minions):
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/08/world/europe/08london.html?_r=1&hp
They hate the greens because they don’t kiss Rupe’s Ring.
Expect 100% silence from our little leaders over this criminal scandal engulfing the man who Keating and Howard gave 70% of Australian media to on a platter.
Pindicks.
My Angry by an amazing twist of logic manages to claim that attacks on News Ltd in Australia based on the hacking scandal are a leftist/Greenie conspiracy, and the whole issue is a storm in a teacup anyway.
“I understand that most of the guilty have long left or been pushed out. I am told – but am not able to verify – that many of the frankly disgusting allegations are not true. I also understand only too well that this issue is being whipped up to hysterical levels by media and ideological competitors hoping for an advantage…”
Then he turns on the usual suspects…
“Brown’s call (to investigate News Ltd’s holdings in Australia) is a disgraceful and opportunistic slander. He would know almost as well as I that there is not a single News Ltd paper or editor in this country that would stoop to the tactics alleged against the News of the World. There has never been any such suggestion, and I challenge Brown to present any evidence to the contrary. ”
Gotta admire his breathtaking audacity.
Wouldn’t “stoop”?
How about inferfering with a possible crime scene illegally to get photos of Martin Bryant and then intentionally doctoring them to make him look more evil (before his trial)?
Or, faking photos of Dr Haneef to make a bogus story insinuating there was evidence of a plot to attack a gold coast tower?
Like your laughs on the dark side? Tweet? Check out @RupertMurdochPR and @rebekah_thehack
Angra @23
“I’m now expecting the moralist to wait a couple of days, having expressed the appropriate level of disapproval, before beginning to defend NEWS, pointing to previous examples of the same behaviour elsewhere and claiming that the disproportionate outrage is all a hypocritical scheme of the left to bring down an honest, successful provider of balanced news and opinion”
Me … yesterday
He’s working fast on this one. I was expecting a day or so pause, just so it wasn’t, like, REALLY obvious.
One occasion when Mr B was able, I think, to actually sway a crowd was on QandA when he was debating the internet filter. He cut through the crap and said it straight:
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s2521164.htm
I’ll paraphrase – I hope I don’t do him any injustice by doing so: Yes, we do have an important right to free speech, which we need to protect. But we also have an obligation to try to protect children, and if that means cracking down on the right of perverts to masturbate over pictures of children being raped, then so be it.
This was the QandA when “moral seriousness” was born. I agreed with him, incidentally. So did susan carland (to her apparent surprise).
So, andrew, to turn that back on you (because I think you’ll probably read this, eventually). Yes, we do need a free and effective press. It’s critical to democracy. But I don’t think that press should be able to go beyond the law at will, interfere with police investigations, meddle with evidence, spy on private citizens (and not to report on grand matters of state, but to tattle on who wore what to a party). They shouldn’t be paying off police for tips, or bribing and blackmailing public officials. That’s what NoTW was doing. And then they LIED about it. It wasn’t a “few bad apples”, it was systematic. It wasn’t just cultural, it was just how their business fundamentally operated. And when it was all wrapped up, the perps at the top were whisked away and kept on the payroll – the staff who all lost their jobs were just patsies.
I actually don’t think that’s happening here in australia. Not least because we have communications authorities, consumer protection agencies and privacy commissioners who just wouldn’t put up with that sort of crap. If we didn’t have those, then maybe things would be different. We also don’t have the competitive tabloid industry that london does – we just have new idea and womens day.
This is an entirely different issue to the problem of our political journalism just being basically shit. That’s a discussion for another day.
I’m fine with brown’s call for an investigation into NEWS’ methods. Heck – let’s have a royal commission into how ALL of our major broadsheets operate. Compensate them for their time and resources, absolutely. If there’s no problem, you’ve got nothing to worry about. In the meantime, a bit of sunlight will do everyone good. Because, hey, like I said – democracy does need a free and effective press. Let’s find out if we’ve got one.
Vultures are circling. In big business circles in London, New York and Sydney, the private conversations centre around who stands to gain if Rupert’s highly-profitable empire goes down?
Enjoy:
http://youtu.be/fi-q0ALVzPg
These outlets are reporting on the same BER report.
This is an astonishing thing for Downer to say considering that during the late 1980s and into the late 1990s the Citizen’s Electoral Council (an anti-semitic socialist party influenced by Lyndon LaRouche) regularly ran in Downer’s seat.
Yeah, I think one way of dealing with that joker would be to constantly call him Mr Monckton.
Anyone see the front page of the terrorcrap today? Nothing like a good old attack on teachers…
LaRouche’s organisation has always been disproportionately Jewish. Just check out the following long LaRouche video where Jewish surnames are plentiful:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgcdRCWEt4Q
Something about monckton that doesn’t get said enough. Read this:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/07/09/3265526.htm
For example:
Forgive me if I’ve been mistaken, but I was under the impression that he was here to debate the scientific basis for AGW. None of that is anything more than pure political campaigning. He’s just one more celebrity activist, with worse reasoning abilities and a far more blatant disregard for facts.
This particular comment really made my eyebrows crumple:
“What we’re going to do is get the sums right and the way we’re going to do it is through the ballot box.”
Why’s HE saying that? Who’s “we” in that statement? When the hell did he start voting in our elections? I thought he was guy who wanted to argue that the policy is wrong – why’s he up on a stage urging the crowd who “we” should vote for? Why’s he sprouting liberal party talking points? Tim flannery doesn’t do that (for all his misjudgements). NO climate change scientist does that. So why do the hypocrites in his camp get to play high dudgeon when he’s called out as a shyster?
Who here would have the chutzpah, for example, to turn up at a rally in the US and tell americans what “we” were going to do at the next election? Just contemplate the sheer arrogance reflected in that statement
He’s not a advocate, he’s a paid celebrity campaigner, with about as much interest in science as harold camping or ken ham. Anyone who tries to claim otherwise is a liar or a fool.
Any respect we’re expect to show him because he’s a “lord” or “honest advocate” or, god forbid, a “scientist” just evaporated in a foul smelling cloud. He’s the celebrity of the moment for the denial scene, like some perverted version of jane fonda.
Change of gears …
I’m a podcast omnivore. If it’s in english, chances are I’ll eventually listen to an episode of it sooner or later. Something I’ve discovered recently is radio new zealand. They’ve got a fantastic media watch show, and it’s relevant enough to australia to be well worth listening to for keen media watchers here.
And I’m starting to really like new zealanders (not that I disliked them before – I’d just never thought about it). They’re like australians, but their media is a lot less bullsh1t, and (apparently) so is their politics. And their journalists appear to expect it to be that way, so their reporting can get to the point much more easily. It’s refreshing to listen to.
But right now I’m listening to this:
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday
Specifically, the interview with Tony Wood – “off the grid in afghanistan”. Tony’s a contractor who installs small-scale renewable energy generators in afghanistan, pakistan etc. “Hot, dusty and dangerous” is his unofficial company motto. He was doing it BEFORE 9/11, and just kept going through the recent activity.
It’s a really very surprisingly interesting interview. The interview isn’t really primarily about electricity, although the tech does get a mention. He talks about dealing with taliban, al quaeda etc.