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TOONS SPOKEN OF
Arrived here via Media Watch? Seeking forbidden acts of Danish cartoonery? Look no further.
I thought the Media Watch segment on the cartoons was very fair, especially to me (this follows several years of entertaining combat, certain to be resumed during the year, or perhaps next week, or maybe today). Many readers, as you’ll see in earlier comments threads, thought otherwise. Some quotes from the segment deserve another look:
* New host Monica Attard: “You’ll have noticed by now that we haven’t shown any of the cartoons. ABC Managing Director Russell Balding says that we can’t.” Can’t? CAN’T? What the hell?
* ABC Managing Director Russell Balding: “The ABC believes it is not essential to include explicit depictions of the original cartoons.” Much of that broadcast by the ABC is “not essential”. In fact, some ABC programs are defined by their non-essentialness. Was this essential four years ago?
* Channel Seven director of news and current affairs Peter Meakin: “We faced an invidious choice between the right to publish and exposing our staff and the public to unnecessary risk. With regret, we played it safe.” I’m hearing that from a few local media types, who are perhaps realising too late they missed their chance to publish. It’s interesting that the cartoons were given a wider run in Islamic countries than they were in Australia.
* Host Attard: “[The cartoons] were after all commissioned by the paper to test the limits of Islamic tolerance.” Really? As Brussels Journal reports, via reader 13 times:
The newspaper published the cartoons when a Danish author complained that he could find no-one to illustrate his book about Muhammad. Jyllands-Posten wondered whether there were more cases of self-censorship regarding Islam in Denmark and asked twelve illustrators to draw the prophet for them.
* Brisbane Courier-Mail editor David Fagan: “The one cartoon we used accompanied a story about the reaction to the original publication. Our aim was to find the balance between informing our readers of a significant and legitimate international news story without gratuitously inflaming or offending those that might object ...” This is Fagan’s first comment on his paper’s publication of the cartoon, which News Ltd. insiders say wasn’t his decision. Fagan is welcome to clear this up at any time.
So, Media Watch 2006. Your early verdict in comments, please.
Mark Steyn, Janet Albrectson and Miranda Devine amongst others have nailed this self-censorship issue. Steyn,
The issue is not “freedom of speech” or “the responsibilities of the press” or “sensitivity to certain cultures.”
The issue...is the point at which a free society musters the will to stand up to thugs.
This first Media Watch failed to blame the Howard Government for anything and seemed to give Tim a fair go.
Someone needs to remind Attard about the ABC charter.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 02 13 at 04:22 PM • permalink#3 - Guns dont kill people, Dick Cheney kills people.
Posted by Lucky Nutsacks on 2006 02 13 at 04:23 PM • permalink#7
DelbertDeo - He didn’t kill anybody.The incident is unfortunabe, but it’s still safer to go hunting with Dick Cheney than to get in a car with Ted Kennedy at the wheel.
Posted by Barbara Skolaut on 2006 02 13 at 04:39 PM • permalinkOh yeah, sure. Easy for you to say. But when one the evil lords tells his henchman that he’s going hunting and he needs a gun bearer, whatcha going do?
I just thank my lucky stars that Karl hasn’t found spare time to go quail hunting. If that happens though, well, I guess I better fill out my will, put on the camaflauge body armor (and personal deflector shield, thanks to the gray ones) and pray for a nice clear day.
Posted by wronwright on 2006 02 13 at 04:40 PM • permalinkI am starting to think that Media Watch and the rest of the ABC may be suffering from terminal ignorance as well as dhimmitude.
The moonbats on last Sunday’s Insiders obviously knew nothing about the fake pig cartoon until Andrew Bolt told them.
Maybe such unawareness of what’s happening in the world is why MW had to use inane fillers for its first show of the year.
Perhaps Russell Balding is shielding his journalists from anything that might incite them.Early verdict on Media Watch? Forgive my repetition Tim but…
Irrelevant, trivial and gutless.
GUILTY of leading off with an English message-in-a-bottle hoax, years old, with no demonstrable media misbehaviour either then or with the current message-in-a-bottle story. Maybe its “Message In A Bottle Watch”?
GUILTY of following that with a story about a police stuff up in revealing an informant’s name - but again, no actual media misbehaviour, other than a complaint by someone so identified and then contacted by the media. The police stuff-up angle was covered by the media months ago, when it occurred.
Those cartoons? Sweet Jesus. So now the ABC Managing Director gives orders on what “Programming” may broadcast and what they may not broadcast, and Programming (Media Watch!) meekly says “Yes, Sir!”. Craven spinelessness OR convenient excuse for editorial hypocrisy? After all, several times in the past Media Watch has lambasted other media outlets for pulling cartoons deemed “offensive” and couldn’t post them on its web site fast enough.
Peter McEvoy (Executive Producer of Media Watch), take a long, deep bow and put your head up your backside where its apparently been for the past 4 months. Long may it stay there so we can laugh at Monica every Monday.
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 02 13 at 05:49 PM • permalink#8: Oh. I had him confused with Chuck Norris - my mistake.
Posted by Lucky Nutsacks on 2006 02 13 at 06:06 PM • permalinkI thought Ms Attard was great. She was tough but fair, she was reasonable and explanatory. What I liked most is that she covered media behaviour as well as media action. I disagree with you, SCD: the first two issues she discussed focused on poor behaviour on the part of the media, and I thought her comments were well-deserved.
I also don’t blame Ms Attard for not broadcasting the cartoons. While I strongly support their publication, she can probably do better work changing the world from the Media Watch desk than she can being fired after her first episode for disobeying orders.
I also liked what she didn’t do. She wasn’t smug or superior. She wasn’t snide or derogatory. She didn’t lecture viewers about her beliefs. In short, it wasn’t like watching the ABC at all.
My word, that Monica Attard is very earnest isn’t she, VERY earnest. Journalists take themselves so goddamn seriously.
Makes me long for the days when Stuart Littlemore used to deliver the whole show with a wry smile on his face. Mind you he wasn’t a journalist so he could see how ridiculous the whole thing was. God I hated him.
Posted by Pig Head Sucker on 2006 02 13 at 06:49 PM • permalinkTim, it must be gratifying to get a mention on the ABC’s self-censoring Media Watch, but calling it “very fair” is going too far.
This is the box they put you in: “It’s been the extremists on both sides who’ve pushed the hardest for publication ... the western ideologues who insist we should publish. Whatever the consequences, just to prove we can.”
Hardly fair to Jyllands Posten either. Media Watch asserts: “They [the cartoons] were after all commissioned by the paper to test the limits of Islamic tolerance.” Not true. They were commissioned, and published, to demonstrate the extent of Danish submission to Islamist intimidation. Incidentally they’ve proved the same point about the media generally. QED.
If Media Watch had defended the ABC’s censorship of the most newsworthy material of the moment on the grounds of prudence - that they were afraid for their safety and that of other bystanders - I wouldn’t be so critical of them.
Instead they’ve chosen to vilify the reporters of important news, making themselves part of the Islamist campaign.
Thanks for standing up for the rest of us, Tim, but Media Watch is not your friend, and the ABC is not defending our rights.
Some fair points Roger, but Attard gave the impression she supported showing the cartoons herself - at least in theory.
I thought it was promising she didn’t begin with a passionate defence of the ABC’s Lack of Bias - followed by renditions of Internationale and Solidarity Forever, as we have come to expect from her predecessors.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 02 13 at 07:03 PM • permalinkHey Tim be thankful they acknowledge your existence. I’m sure if the true believers of the collective could get away with it you would be ignored. Failing that a Pauline shout down would suffice. But to be treated with even an ounce of fairness by the ABC is remarkable.
What strange times we do live in.Just why can’t they defy the PC critics and put them up on their website, backing an open press society? Isn’t that what MW is for?
David Marr did just that with The Age cartoon equating the Occupied Territories with the Nazi Death Camps -it was far more offensive and graphic than Leunig’s similar one.
But they are just Jooos…Re: #23,
The Left have little choice where this issue is concerned. They’re on the wrong side of the debate and they know it. Only the Leunigs of this world are stupid enough to stick it out, with increasingly bizarre justifications.
It’s like watching someone self-mutilate.
Issues like this will only serve to split and isolate sections of the Left, whose views will become more and more extreme.
They’re perpetually on the wrong side of history, only this time, the stakes are personal.These are views Media Watch prevented me from expressing in their website guestbook :
Monica, when a world leader, in this case the Danish Prime Minister, describes the reaction over the Mohammed cartoons as a “global crisis”, the ABC has a DUTY to show the cartoons in question, as a matter of doing its job and reporting the news. One can no longer hide behind excuses of not wishing to offend religious sensibilities etc.
It’s amazing that all the so-called “artistic and intellectual” types who are keen to stand up for their freedom of speech rights, only seem to do so when the “fight” provides them with a platform for greater personal exposure and carries absolutely no personal risk. That’s some fight!!!
We are all well aware that the pictures from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal caused a great deal of offence and violent reaction around the world, but that didn’t stop the gratuitous use of these images by the ABC. In fact Media Watch used one in its opening titles last year. I guess it’s O.K. to inflame a situation when others, namely Coalition troops serving in Iraq, have to deal with the violent consequences.I eagerly tuned into MW to see the latest edition of the editorial eyebrow, the curling lip sneer, the gratuitous references to hoWARd and his gang of stormtroopers, the destruction of democracy and so on, and I find a relatively well balanced 15 minutes of discussion of real issues.
It was illuminating to hear ABC policy on the Motoons.
Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2006 02 13 at 09:10 PM • permalinkI’m glad to hear that MediaWatch is improving. However it sounds like they still haven’t quite got their heads around the MEDIA part of MediaWatch.
If Monica and her crew can remember that it’s MediaWatch, not PoliceWatch or PoliticsWatch (as it became especially under the stewardship of Marr), she’ll be on the right track.
Posted by blandwagon on 2006 02 13 at 09:21 PM • permalinkAttard is a rather unfortunate nname.
Posted by Tony.T.Teacher on 2006 02 13 at 10:24 PM • permalinkMedia Watch “improving”? Dear Monica “acceptable”? Hmmm… methinks some people don’t remember the first ‘OK’ show under Liz Jackson. Remember the partly see through dresses of later shows (shudder)?
Anyway, although the host can add some gratuitous lip curling and sneering (and indeed, its expected of ABC presenters), the real power lies with the odious Peter McEvoy who I THINK is still the Executive Producer (I had a look on their web site but couldn’t see this credit).
In the “your say” feedback page on Media Watch’s web site last year (not functioning this year) a ‘Moderator’ occasionally piped up with retorts to anyone who dared criticise the show. When the ‘Moderator’ was asked how come he/she was taking such a partisan position, rather than ‘moderating’ the discussion… Viola! Mr McEvoy threw off the fake nose & moustache and revealed himself to be the ‘Moderator’. Sort of like Comical Ali being the judge in Saddam H’s trial…
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 02 13 at 10:32 PM • permalink#25
They’re perpetually on the wrong side of history, only this time, the stakes are personal.Brian I don’t think it is personal as much as significant. Leunig and other nutters will burn out like Margo did. I want to know what will happen to the legion of opportunists who have enfeebled our country for decades with their progressive, post-modernist stew?
I wish they could be spewed out of our societal mouth but I doubt that will happen.My humble view is that they should all be retrained in a trade therby alleviating our skills shortage. They should have an opportunity to help build the country that they have tried to destroy.
Compared to the last few years, last night’s MW wasn’t too awful.
But the old trend is still there. While the AFP story was important, the message in a bottle was beyond trivial.
It was clearly being used as filler. Given too much time exploring the cartoon story (which is inarguably the biggest media-related story in the world at the moment)
they and their viewers would have to draw the same conclusion as us.That being that the story exposed blatant hypocrisy and cowardice of the western fourth estate, and the sheer barbarity of the world’s Islamic population.
Posted by Mike Jericho on 2006 02 13 at 10:38 PM • permalinkIslam is obviously not a race, but since the west did away a couple of centuries ago with any degrading term to use on those who disagree with your religious views (ie heretic, etc), they have had to fall back on racist/racism to put people in boxes, and attack the person rather than the underlying common sense of the message… just another PC-bullsh*t term to stifle discussion and opposing views....
Fine presenter, Attard. But those teeth!!!!
Makes Helen Clark’s smile look like Jessica Simpson’s...or they would if she smiled.Posted by pick-your-pun on 2006 02 14 at 08:39 AM • permalinkHmmmm ... I found Monica Retard’s hirsutism and gapped teeth strangely erotic, in a sort of schoolmistressy way.
But it was Monica’s lips that I found hypnotic. One side barely moved. But she has a good voice.
Not quite on the point but a column by a Ted Lapkin (footnote says has Jewish connections) in this mornings CM says in Oct 05 “Cairo’s al Fajar daily ran a straight news article on the Danish drawings affair...featured 6 of the original 12 sketches including 2 of those deemed most offensive by Scandinavian Islamics…
But the republication of these cartoons in the heart of the Middle East passed without discord or disruption"
Hypocritical jerks!!!
Posted by Mikie Slats on 2006 02 15 at 12:27 AM • permalink
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