Paul Henry’s resignation an anti-climax
Well, Paul Henry resigned on Sunday afternoon. The public pressure and an ominous warning yesterday from his boss Rick Ellis were apparently enough to shift Henry into proactive mode. I was a bit...
View ArticleA day of irony, intrigue and outrage: SFC, NBR, SFO, “WTF?”
Funny things coincidences, they tend to happen when you least expect it. So today, coincidentally, New Zealand is in the top ten in the global media freedom index sponsored by Reporters Without Borders...
View ArticleNews 2.0 : journalism, wikileaks and beyond the fourth estate
It’s not every day that you attend a book launch. It’s a once-or-twice moment to launch a book you’ve actually written. Today, 16 December 2010 on a pissing-down evening in Auckland is one of those...
View ArticleSorry, Mr Hywood – you missed the point: It’s not about quality it’s about money
Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood delivered the A.N. Smith lecture at Melbourne University’s Centre for Advanced Journalism last night (Tuesday 15 November). I’ve never quite understood what ‘advanced’...
View ArticleSerious allegations against an Australian journalist in Egypt
Update 11pm Monday 12 Feb Austin Mackell’s blog, The Moon Under Water is a very interesting log of what’s been happening in Egypt in recent weeks. It seems that the Australian journalist will be...
View ArticleFrom hack to Hell and back again
Graham Johnson. (2012). Hack: Sex, drugs and scandal from inside the tabloid jungle. London: Simon & Schuster. Graham Johnson was for years an important member of the Screws of the World news team....
View ArticleAn acceptable Press Council: We decide, you shut the f#ck up
The Australian Press Council has just announced five appointments to an advisory board that will help it review the APC standards and bring them up to speed with the digital reality of news publishing...
View ArticleDown the memory hole part 1: Repeat a lie long enough someone will believe it
The Armstrong Delusion I’m not sure if you’ve noticed because they’ve been quite subtle, but whoever writes editorials for The Australian doesn’t like the idea that there should be some responsibility...
View ArticleMedia Inquiry? Inconvenient facts go down the memory hole (part 2)
Do you remember the Independent Media Inquiry? You might vaguely recall the Finkelstein inquiry…yes, rings a faint bell? It’s OK, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d forgotten most of the details. What do...
View ArticleThe media reform bills – what is really in them
For the last 12 months we’ve been warned on an almost daily basis that the sky is about to fall in on media freedoms in Australia, but what does the legislation before parliament this week actually...
View ArticleJahar – like a Rolling Stone
Jahar Tsarnaev on the cover of Rolling Stone, July 2013 It seems to me that the ‘portrait’ of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the cover of Rolling Stone is actually quite appropriate. If you bother to read the...
View ArticleWe can no longer take these ‘journalists’ seriously
Any casual reader of Ethical Martini will know that I am a critic of News Limited’s newspapers; not because they are bad newspapers, but because of the hardcore conservative political agenda that they...
View ArticleJournalists and conflicts of interest: A difficult fault line
Journalists declaring conflicts of interest sounds simple, but … When it comes to conflicts of interest in journalism – whether real, potential or perceived – the rules are usually simple. They’re...
View ArticleWhen a Tassie Devil resembles a badger you have to wonder what it’s hiding
Over the last couple of days I’ve had an interesting exchange with someone calling themselves ‘Lushington Dalrymple Brady‘. this person acknowledges that the name is a pseudonym, and the avatar that...
View ArticleThe continuing education of a young badger: Speech has consequences
In a recent post, I promised an update if I heard again from the young badger who goes by the moniker Lushington Dalrymple Brady. I had cause recently to correspond with ‘Mr Brady’ about a blog post he...
View Article#Pizzagate and post-truth journalism
I have started writing my next book, a ‘how to’ manual people outside the mainstream keen to work in the news media. I’m hopeful that Navigating Social Journalism will be a ‘best-seller’ and that it...
View ArticleWhat’s wrong with journalism today: Part 1 – Fake News
The sudden global interest in “fake news” sparked by the US elections and allegations of Russian interference to support Trump’s campaign has led several IA readers to contact me asking why both the...
View ArticleIs Reuters right: Covering Trump is like covering Third World dictators
The Reuters news agency says covering Washington DC is now on a par with reporting from dictatorships. Is this the right thing for journalists? Doc Martin reviews the advice being given to reporters...
View ArticleThe News Establishment is broken and Michelle Wolf exposes its flaws
A comedian made fun of Donald Trump and his inner circle and sections of the liberal U.S. news media wet themselves with anxiety. As political editor Dr Martin Hirst explains, it means the news...
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