Specialists and entertainment incompatible? (more)
No charges against Bill Henson. The persecution was political. (more)
Politicians have a choice to act morally and with individual conscience; however, it is rare. Caught as they are in-between the gnashing teeth of party discipline, media discipline, populism, and maybe pathological desires for power. Fareed Zakaria blamed too much democracy for that in his book Future of Freedom. Politicians could not act morally or as executive/legislative specialists as they were hemmed in by the demand to be re-elected. Ezra Klein points a finger at the mass media. (more)
I dont watch cable news as I have little faith in its quality of news reporting. I was at Dulles airport the other morning waiting for a plane and the monitors were all on CNN. This interview, or mpre accurately, piece of drama, ran as a news item on the morning CNN news. Basically Larry King trolled Jerry Seinfield with an outrageous and erroneous comment and Seinfield reacted emotionally. This is trolling. It is not discourse. (more)
An interesting study from the US which suggests that American voter interests match Australian voters in wanting policy discussed. The Trends in Australian Political Opinion discovered that 49% of Australian voters use policy to guide who they cast their ballot for.
Ars Technica in discussing how media commentary of politics is the same as sports coverage linked to an article on the Project for Journalistic Excellence which discussed how media coverage was at odds with what people want covered. A Pew Research poll shows that 77% of Americans wanted more coverage of the candidates positions on issues. (more)
Mainstream media, and in particular newspapers, have been facing increasing competition from low cost online news and information sources. The old monopoly that the print media had on op-ed articles has been broken by blogs already. The newspapers cannot compete with a medium whose cost matches its production - zero dollars. Newspapers, both print and online, have been trying to keep their viewers through tabloidisation. Cheap sensationalism is a valid marketing method, but not one which produces quality discourse.
(more)
At the last federal election the Sydney Morning Herald decided to sit on the fence and not endorse Howard or Latham. This raises a couple of questions, should the media be endorsing candidates and if they do should they endorse the leader of a party in a Presidential manner, or local candidates as befitting a parliamentary system? A third question is, should bloggers or alternative media endorse candidates?
(more)
Well, it's now been two weeks since
Blackburn MP Jack Straw
(the former
Foreign Secretary
and current Leader of the House Of Commons) penned his
now-infamous column regarding the wearing of veils
(
niqab
) by women adhering to a certain interpretation of the tenets of Islam. Perhaps surprisingly and perhaps not, the debate is still
rumbling unabated
.
(more)
