Wednesday, August 03, 2005
PEOPLE’S INQUIRY BEGINS
Look out, Robert Lusetich! You’re being investigated in comments. Expect no mercy. Meanwhile, in other media-watching news, Andrew Bolt deals with our pals at the ABC and SBS.
IT’S ALL ABOUT SOIL
Webdiary inhabitant Kerryn Higgs updates us on Australia’s occupying forces:
As the US military presence is quietly extended across the country ...
And people said the US military was already stretched beyond capacity in Iraq! Higgs is hot for the new documentary Blowin’ in the Wind, an exposé—no, make that a searing exposé—on depleted uranium:
We are not being told whether DU weapons have been or will be fired on our soil.
Well, of course we aren’t being told. Can’t let the soil know about this. We are at war, you know. No blood for soil!
Many locals living near bombing ranges are very worried – for their health, their fertility and their livelihoods.
They’re worried about their health, and they live near bombing ranges? These people don’t sound very informed.
UNCARING AUSTRALIANS
Melbourne Age political editor Michelle Grattan on the upcoming trial of poor little David Hicks:
All the Howard Government currently cares about is that it happens quickly. It is not interested in the fairness debate, saying it won some changes earlier and now it’s satisfied with the process. Contrast the flurry of Government activity in the Schapelle Corby affair - her case (admittedly much less serious) resonates electorally but Hicks’ doesn’t.
Corby’s case is much less serious? Interesting.
The attitude to Hicks is just the extreme end of the Government’s more general rough justice approach to human rights. It’s of a piece with treatment of immigration detainees and its dismissal of criticisms over the years by United Nations bodies.
That’s how evil we are down here in apocalyptic Bushworld—we dismiss UN criticism. Ted Lapkin offers a more evolved view:
David Hicks has sown the jihadist wind, and he will now reap the whirlwind before a US military commission. Hicks aspired to be a professional Islamist holy warrior. In letters to his family, the former Aussie jackaroo boasted of fighting with Lashkar-e-Taiba, the al-Qaeda-affiliated organisation that has conducted a bloody terrorist campaign against India. And he wound up in Guantanamo after being captured as a rank-and-file Taliban fighter during combat operations in an active theatre of war.
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
EXCUSE NOT BELIEVED
Media Watch on Monday night accused Sydney Sun-Herald columnist Phil Gould of cut and paste plagiarism, claiming he’d lifted sections of his July 24 piece from an email reproduced at the website Greasy Spoon. And, sure enough, much of Gould’s column was shown to be identical to the Spoon email. “All these sentimental memories were lifted from the web and plonked into Phil’s column,” concluded host Liz Jackson. “The Sun Herald tells us it was a subbing error. Remember when we used to believe excuses like that?”
Media Watch doesn’t present a direct link to Gould’s item, however. Which is interesting, because the column includes a line citing Gould’s source:
“It reminded me of an email I received years ago, which I’ll share part of with you here”.
This led viewer Kylie to complain at the Media Watch website:
Your criticism of Phil Gould was totally unjustified.
Not so, fired back site moderator Peter McEvoy:
That sentence was added to later editions of the paper. The article originally appeared as we stated without any acknowledgement of the email.
So the fix was made (in print editions of the paper, as well as online) within hours of that first edition being published; before, presumably, Media Watch had alerted staffers to the apparent “plagiarism”. This seems to be a standard response to a sub-editing error.
It shouldn’t be difficult for the Sun-Herald to prove Gould’s innocence (if innocent he is); a pre-subbed version of his column probably remains somewhere in the paper’s files. Meanwhile ... why did Media Watch conceal from viewers that subsequent versions of the Gould column ran an attribution?
Whatever. Next week’s episode should be fun, what with the inevitable attack on race-assuming David Marr.
CUISINE COLUMN
This week’s Continuing Crisis column for The Bulletin mentions ... well, it doesn’t mention anybody. It just contrasts menus from fictional restaurants in Gosford (“Big Pete’s Aussie Eatery”) and Surry Hills (“bistro kafka”).
Also in The Bulletin: Patrick Carlyon tells the story of 24 Australian POWs who survived the nuking of Nagasaki, and James Bennett presents his weekly quiz. Oh, and the 70s cricket gallery is still up, featuring Doug Walters:
UPDATE. Sasha Castel emails:
Your column reminded me of a time my Dad and I were walking on Seventh Avenue in Manhattan, and stopped to read the menu of a swishy French restaurant. Dad said “Mmmm, that looks tasty. ‘Bistec hache au fromage.’”
I looked at him and said, “Dad, that’s a cheeseburger!”
INTERNATIONAL SEARCH UNDERWAY
SMH editor Robert Whitehead has quit:
Mr Whitehead will remain with the company, taking up a new role as director of marketing and newspaper sales.
Should be an easy enough job, what with sales now down to a managable level.
The Herald’s editor-in-chief, Mark Scott, will take over as editor while an international search for a replacement gets under way.
Oh no! When last Fairfax conducted an international editor hunt, at The Age, they ended up appointing Andrew the Easily-Offended. Maybe the SMH will hire Albert Scardino. Hey, for that matter, why not Dilpazier Aslam?
TRIAL OF THE CENTURY
The Telegraph reports:
The trial of Saddam Hussein will be shown on live television, Iraq’s national security adviser said yesterday.
The trial will show the Arab and Muslim world “that this is going to be a fair, just trial with a defence counsel in there, with a proper prosecuting counsel as well there,” Iraqi national security adviser Muwaffaq Rubaie told CNN. “And everybody will watch this trial live on television.”
Tune in to see if Saddam appears all clean-shaven and nice, as Paul McGeough earlier observed. Or maybe he’ll be in his famous underpants.
Monday, August 01, 2005
GET UP, MOVE ON, GO AWAY, STOP DIGGING THROUGH OUR TRASH FOR FOOD, ETC
Australia now has its own version of MoveOn.org:
GetUp, an online organisation founded by two young Australians who cut their teeth on a similar venture in the United States, becomes a reality today when 70,000 people get emails asking them to be part of a new era in politics ...
The project is the brainchild of Jeremy Heimans and David Madden, who met while studying at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard in the US.
Last year the pair started Win Back Respect, a group that produced attack ads during last year’s US presidential race arguing that George Bush’s foreign policy was damaging America’s world standing.
Some pedigree.
Their advisory board included former Clinton national security adviser Tony Lake, former senator Gary Hart, and Leon Fuerth, who advised former vice-president Al Gore on foreign policy.
And yet, despite all that talent, John Kerry still lost. Unbelievable.
Using small donations from online contributors, Win Back Respect paid for a speaking tour by General Wesley Clark and hired a charter plane for the Band of Sisters, a group of female relatives of US soldiers killed or serving in Iraq, to chase Vice-President Dick Cheney on the campaign trail.
A speaking tour by Wesley Clark? The Bush/Cheney campaign thanks you.
Now Mr Heimans, 27, and Mr Madden, 30, want to translate that success to Australia ...
Excuse me ... success? If they succeeded any more they’d be dead. Here’s GetUp’s reason for being:
The other political parties aren’t providing a strong opposition, and the media is dominated by a handful of right-wing voices. People need to take politics into their own hands. GetUp provides them with a way to do this.
Right-wing media voices amount to a mere handful, yet still we dominate. What hope do these GetUpsters have? Margo Kingston, who planned a local MoveOn.org of her own, seems puzzled by and possibly jealous of these upstart GetUp people:
What do you think of the concept, the structure, the website, the funding model and the launch impact? Would you join? Why is this happening now?
The rest of her post—which cites 45 GetUp-ish Webdiary items—appears to be a bid to get into GetUp. Forget it, Margo! GetUp is young and now! They’ve no time for the old and failed! Webdiary regulars possibly don’t realise it, but Steve Atkins is being sarcastic:
Just fantastic! I love it! Great concept!
I can only hope that it is as productive as moveon.org is.
Have you thought of getting Michael Moore involved? He is so influential I know he could do great things for the democracy movement.
GetUp don’t need him. They’ll fail on their own.
COMPELLING IDEA
Brisbane Courier-Mail columnist Nicholas Gruen has an idea which he believes would “advantage [Kim Beazley] in a compelling way”:
Beazley should get a group of eminent and respected Australians together – Malcolm Fraser comes most readily to mind amongst others. They travel as far as they can towards Camp X-ray at Guantanamo Bay with a simple message to the first US official who stops them.
Here’s his simple message:
We’re from Australia – an ally of America in every major war and a few minor ones of the last century. You’re holding our fellow citizen David Hicks. We don’t want to make a hero of him or obtain his release. But like everyone else, he has the same right to due process and a proper trial before an independent magistrate that you accord your own citizens. We’re very upset about it and we’ll be back each month until we can secure his basic rights, the rights that every other Western country has secured for their own nationals.
Nick imagines such a message “would tap into a powerful part of the Australian psyche”. It sure would—the part that wants Malcolm Fraser put to sea off Cuba every four weeks. Please urge Beazley to adopt the splendid Gruen Plan.
UPDATE. Andjam reminds us that Camp X-Ray closed a few years ago. Malcolm and his crew aboard the SS Tilty would be sailing towards nothing, which is pretty much what they do anyway.
HE’S OPENS HIS CASE!
Mark Steyn answers Media Watch (and reader) criticism of his July 25 piece in The Australian, about which punctuation-challenged Media Watch claims:
Mark wants to prove that multiculturalism is not just wrong, it’s dangerous, and he’s opens his case like this.
And he’s closes his case convincingly. Please read. Of course, being of the right, Steyn is a predictable target for Media Watch, which largely ignores journalistic errors committed by entities and individuals associated with the left, including Terry Lane, David Marr, Alan Ramsey, Alison Broinowski, The Age, Richard Ackland, SBS, Michael Gawenda, Phillip Adams, Paul McGeough, Tracee Hutchison, Margo Kingston, The Sydney Morning Herald, John Cleary, Nick Grimm, Peter Lloyd ...
Media Watch executive producer Peter McEvoy once claimed to be “more than happy to come down on some lefty columnists if we catch them stuffing up”. Catch them? An English wicketkeeper would be a safer bet.