Back Issue
Abstracts of Vol 14(2), October 2008
A joint edition produced by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (UTS) and AUT University's Pacific Media Centre
Editors
Chris Nash, Tony Maniaty, Jan McClelland and David Robie
Editorial
Political blogs
Chris Nash, Tony Maniaty and David Robie pp. 5-7
Theme
1. Commentary: Political blogging in the 2007 Australian federal election
Mark Bahnisch pp. 8-14
Much of the discussion of the emergence, role and significance of the political blogosphere in Australia has been marred by boosterism on one hand and tired and stereotyped dichotomies on the other. As with so much of the discourse that developed from the 1990s onwards surrounding the social and informational roles of the internet, boosterism and a constant search for the new ‘killer app’ have gone hand in hand. Unrealistic expectations are created by those who have made a career out of promoting and ‘monetising’ blogging, and when those expectations fail to be realised, the ever shifting frontier of social media technologies is invoked in a frenzied search for the ‘new blogging’. At the same time, the multifaceted and rich suite of social practices that comprise blogs and blogging are obscured by being viewed through a very narrow lens. This commentary argues that both sets of frames were (mis)applied to the role of blogs in the lead up to the 2007 Australian federal election.
2. Commentary: Playing possum: Straws in the wind of the blogosphere
Chris Nash pp.15-36
This article discusses the blog Possum Pollytics that became very well regarded by its readers, other bloggers and journalists over the course of the 2007 Australian federal election campaign, and examines it for harbingers of the impact of new media on journalists and their publics. The article commences with an account of the main features of the blog, with special reference to its analysis of the voting trends evident in the pre-election opinion polls. It then discusses two issues with respect to the challenge posed by new media uses to professional journalism: firstly, the way that the anonymity highlights the challenge by some bloggers on behalf of publics to the brandname mastheads and journalistic personalities, particularly in the challenging circumstances of no business model for new media; and secondly, that Habermas’ early theorising of the public sphere might re-emerge as a valuable way to understand the current developments.
3. Commentary: John Howard, weapons of mass destruction and the public’s right to know
Richard Mills pp.37-48
In March 2003, Australia went to war in Iraq to find and remove Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD). None were found.An Australian Parliamentary Committee concluded:
The case made by the government was that Iraq possessed WMD in large quantities and posed a grave and unacceptable threat to the region and the world, particularly as there was a danger that Iraq’s WMD might be passed to terrorist organisations. This is not the picture that emerges from an examination of the assessments provided to the Committee by the Australian Office of National Assessments (ONA) and the Defence Intelligence Organisation (DIO).
This commentary examines what was the threat to Australia, what the government said it was, and what the Australian intelligence agencies said it was. It also describes the media reaction and government response to the Parliamentary Committee Report and discusses whether the government explained its position honestly.
4. Where the wild things are: Evolving futures of communications regulation in the current national security context
Susanne Lloyd-Jones pp. 50-71
In March 2008, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) released a report dealing with the possible implications of the ‘top six trends’ in communications and media technologies, applications and services. The report highlights the fact that key regulatory elements in the communications environment are being conceptually ‘stretched and pulled’ by the accelerating pace of change in communications technologies, applications and services. The report also notes that in the longer term, there will be increasing overlapping developments in technology and increasing interconnections between people, databases and objects. This article will explore the evolving futures of communications regulation in the current national security context by focusing on the post-‘9/11’ regulatory response in Australia. Communications have long been regarded as ‘the fundamental cornerstone of intelligence and law enforcement’. For this reason, in the current national security context, this article will argue that the evolving futures of communications regulation will be increasingly calibrated with national security policy.
5. Australia’s media climate: Time to renegotiate control
Jane Johnston and Mark Pearson pp. 72-88
In 2007, Australia was rated by two international media bodies as well down the chain in media freedom. Within its own borders, internal media groups—in particular the Australian Press Council and the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, as well as a consortium of major employer groups—have recently released reports investigating the position of media freedoms. This article examines a select few of these shrinking freedoms which range from the passive restrictions on access to documents to the overt threat of imprisonment for publishing sensitive material. In particular, it considers laws relating to freedom of information, camera access to courts, shield laws and whistleblower protection and finally, revamped anti-terrorism laws. The article maps the landscape of Australia’s downgraded press freedom and suggests that laws controlling media reportage need to be renegotiated.
6. From Vietnam to Iraq: Negative trends in television war reporting
Tony Maniaty pp. 89-101
In 1876, an American newspaperman with the US 7th Cavalry, Mark Kellogg, declared: ‘I go with Custer, and will be at the death.’ This overtly heroic pronouncement embodies what many still want to believe is the greatest role in journalism: to go up to the fight, to be with ‘the boys’, to expose yourself to risk, to get the story and the blood-soaked images, to vividly describe a world of strength and weakness, of courage under fire, of victory and defeat—and, quite possibly, to die. So culturally embedded has this idea become that it raises hopes among thousands of journalism students worldwide that they too might become that holiest of entities in the media pantheon, the television war correspondent. They may find they have left it too late. Accompanied by evolutionary technologies and breathtaking media change, TV war reporting has shifted from an independent style of filmed reportage to live pieces-to-camera from reporters who have little or nothing to say. In this article, I explore how this has come about; offer some views about the resulting negative impact on practitioners and the public; and explain why, in my opinion, our ‘right to know’ about warfare has been seriously eroded as a result.
7. Student reporting abroad: An international programme called Journalism Reporting Field Trips
Lee Duffield pp. 102-122
A programme organised by the author for journalism students to do practical work overseas has seen small groups engaged in intercultural learning and working as foreign correspondents for campus-based media outlets. Since 2000, 60 students have joined nine tours of 10–20 days in nine countries of Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. They obtain credit for a full elective subject, e.g. an individual study unit, and may negotiate additional credits. The project’s rationale was that while practice focuses the mind on essential communication tasks, practice in distant and unfamiliar settings intensifies the experience. It replicates journalistic practice of overseas correspondents encountering ‘high risk and high returns’: more difficulty, more headlines and colour. This practice dovetails with increasing internationalisation of the curriculum. A literature has been consulted identifying main pedagogical arguments for study abroad, and present day demands on the academy. Leading researchers in this field, viz Jane Knight propose ‘non-ideological’ definitions of internationalised education as a process responding to ‘real world’ demands. The investigation concludes that such programmes can occupy a valuable place in core curricula; relate to increasing demand for ‘real world’ learning and internationalisation, and can be integrated into degree structures without undue stain on resources.
8. Radio writes back: Challenging media stereotypes of race and identity
Susan Angel pp. 123-140
Post-colonial theory has become an important but not uncontested lens through which a range of literary works have been analysed and the engine for the production of a range of creative works. This article looks at two concepts from post-colonial theory: ‘the colonisation of the mind’, and Salman Rushdie’s notion of ‘writing back to the centre’ and how they might be applied to an analysis of journalistic texts. The article explores the usefulness of post-colonial theory as both a heuristic device and a framework for the production of journalism in the context of the recent media coverage of the federal government’s intervention in the Northern Territory Aboriginal communities. Specifically it analyses a recent ABC radio documentary, Carmel Young and Tony Collins’ The Writers Train, as an example of an innovative journalistic ‘writing back’. This contemporary, oral history style documentary interweaves stories, spoken word performances and workshops from Indigenous poets, playwrights, musicians, recordedonthe ‘writers train’, a trip on the Ghan through outback Australia from Darwin to Adelaide.
9. Art journalism and the impact of ‘globalisation’: New fugal modalities of storytelling in Austral-Asian writing
Ruth Skilbeck pp. 141-161
The writing of art journalism has played a key yet little acknowledged role in the ongoing expansion of the international contemporary art world, and the multi-billion dollar global art economy. This article discusses some contradictory impacts of globalisation on art journalism—from extremes of sensationalist record-breaking art market reporting in the global mass media to the emergence of innovative modalities of story-telling in Australian independent journalistic art writing. Using aspects of Bourdieu’s field theory, the article discusses complexities of overlapping fields of economic and cultural production in art journalism and proposes a new modality of cultural criticism based on musical fugue form. Reflecting on two case studies—magazine feature stories on contemporary artists, Guo Jian from China, and Charlie Co from the Philippines—the article considers the attribution of value, ‘the new global aesthetic’, and new forms of autonomous independent art journalism as cultural production.
Articles
Malcolm Ross and the Samoan ‘troubles’ of 1899
Allison Oosterman pp. 163-182
New Zealand journalist Malcolm Ross was a witness to the international rivalries over Samoa between Germany, Britain and the United States, which came to a head in 1899. Civil war had broken out after the death of King Malietoa Laupepa in August 1898 over who would be his successor. The United States and Britain stepped in and supported Laupepa’s son while Germany supported a rival claimant, Mataafa. Malcolm Ross went to Samoa in late January to report on the ‘troubles’ for three New Zealand daily newspapers, the Otago Daily Times, The Press and the Evening Post. The Samoan trip was Ross’s first experience as a war correspondent, although not everybody saw the conflict as war. This article examines Ross’s coverage of four months of the conflict until the cessation of hostilities when a three-man commission was established to look into the troubles and offer a solution. The article will assess Ross’s work as a journalist in a ‘war zone’. The freedom with which he was able to operate in Samoa was not to be repeated, especially once he had become the country’s official war correspondent during World War I.
The suitcase, the samurai sword and the Pumpkin: Asian crime and NZ news media treatment
Sarah Baker and S. Jeanie Benson pp. 183-204
In 2005 and 2007, two high profile crimes were reported in the New Zealand media. The first case involved the murder of a young Chinese student, Wan Biao, whose dismembered body was discovered in a suitcase. The second case involved domestic violence in which a Chinese man murdered his wife and fled the scene with their young daughter—who the press later dubbed ‘Pumpkin’ when she was found abandoned in Melbourne, Australia. The authors discuss how news and current affairs programmes decontextualise ‘Asian’ stories to portray a clear divide between the ‘New Zealand’ public and the separate ‘Asian other’. Asians are portrayed as a homogenous group and the media fails to distinguish between Asians as victims of crimes as a separate category to Asians as perpetrators of crimes. This may have consequences for the New Zealand Asian communities and the wider New Zealand society as a whole.
Commentary
‘Māori terror threat’: The dangers of the post-9/11 narrative
Alison McCulloch pp. 205-217
The dominant narrative surrounding terrorism across the globe is a post-9/11 one. Whether explicitly or not, reporting on terrorism is at the very least strongly informed by the 11 September 2001 attacks and the response to them. And this is so even when, as in New Zealand’s case, the facts on the ground do not fit those of 9/11. In this commentary, I use American reporting on terrorism after September 11 to pick a path through the emerging story of the 15 October 2007 police raids in New Zealand. I argue that not only does the American experience offer important insights into some of the risks associated with reporting on terrorism, it helps explain the narratives at work in New Zealand media coverage. Our own story has already adopted some of the more potent and insidious features of the post-9/11 pattern. Here I will focus on three: (1) terrorism as super-news, (2) terrorism as good vs evil (and ‘us vs them’), and (3) the dangers of ‘the political-media complex’.
