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May 31, 2004

Beyond the IMDB

If you need factual film background beyond what the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com/) can offer, then Masters of Cinema (www.mastersofcinema.org/) may be for you. The site has news and articles about classic foreign cinema and features links to Web information on scores of noted directors such as Kubrick, Tarkovsky, Antonioni and Hitchcock. Release dates of selected movies on DVD are also a feature.
Posted by belinda at 12:09 PM | Comments (0)

May 28, 2004

State of the News Media in the US, 2004

The inaugural State of the (US) News Media 2004 was released some months ago. Updates to the report now include survey results from working journalists. These help clarify the pressing issues facing the news media. Statistics gathered by the survey are in an interactive area where they can be customised by users into charts of their own choosing. In addition to the survey methodology, the new section offers Commentary on the Survey Findings By the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the view that the Press [is] Going Too Easy on Bush: Bottom-Line Pressures Now Hurting Coverage, Say Journalists By the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. All the detail is at www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/.
Posted by belinda at 05:01 PM | Comments (0)

The problems with polling

According to a new Research Note by the Federal Parliamentary Library, opinion polls have become 'staples of contemporary political reporting'. Yet, often, too few details are published, which means people get the wrong impression of results. For example, 'The margin of error (or sampling error) is an oft-overlooked part of polling that can have significant effects on the utility of results, especially those that are within a few percentage points of one another.' Why is this so? And why do polls fail to predict election results accurately? For a range of reasons - see the full Note, Interpreting opinion polls: some essential details, for the lowdown. It's at www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/rn/2003-04/04rn52.pdf.
Posted by belinda at 10:16 AM | Comments (0)

The old Bill

Microsoft held a CEO Summit on May 20, which was addressed by Bill Gates and others. Gates set out his views about what we can expect technologicially over the next decade in both personal and business computing. He talked up blogs and RSS as a way for companies to communicate and talked about more efficient ways of sharing information with workmates. The full text of his remarks is at http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/speeches/2004/05-20CEOSummit.asp.
Posted by belinda at 10:01 AM | Comments (0)

May 27, 2004

Top 40

Google is number one, Amazon has jumped from 7 to 2 and Apple, buoyed by products like the iPod is number 3. In what? Wired's top 40 ranking of technology companies worldwide. Unlike Amazon and Apple, which sell things, Google doesn't make anything, which makes its success all the more amazing. It has beaten giant companies such as Dell, Microsoft, Nokia, Intel and others. The full list is at http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.06/wired40.html.
Posted by belinda at 11:18 AM | Comments (0)

The lowdown

If you had to dig up something on Brett Whiteley, Kakadu or women in politics on deadline, where would you go? The government's Culture and Recreation portal (www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/) has a section called Articles that gives brief overviews of aspects of Australian history and culture, along with links to sites that would provide greater detail. They cover everything from the Archibald Prize to zoos. Have a look at www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/.
Posted by belinda at 10:23 AM | Comments (0)

May 26, 2004

The money or the box?

For twenty years, Australians have been asked the same question - do you want tax cuts or increased spending on health and education? The Parliamentary Library has produced a Research Note called Less tax or more social spending: twenty years of opinion polling at http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/rn/2003-04/04rn57.pdf. Over the time, we've got more altruistic - we care more about social spending now than we do about our tax.
Posted by belinda at 05:22 PM | Comments (0)

May 17, 2004

Where did the money go?

In Australia, seven health conditions together account for $29 billion, or 59% of allocated health expenditure. These areas are
  • Cardiovascular diseases—$5.4 billion (11.0% of total allocated health expenditure)
  • Nervous system disorders —$4.9 billion (9.9%)
  • Musculoskeletal diseases—$4.7 billion (9.6%)
  • Injuries—$4.1 billion (8.3%)
  • Respiratory diseases—$3.5 billion (7.2%)
  • Oral health—$3.4 billion (6.9%)
  • Mental disorders $3.0 billion (6.1%).
The figures come from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare's recent publication, Health system expenditure on disease and injury in Australia, 2000–01. The 35-page report is full of interesting data and is online at www.aihw.gov.au/publications/hwe/hsedia00-01/hsedia00-01.pdf . Time to give away the fags, exercise more and keep brushing those teeth?
Posted by belinda at 04:00 PM | Comments (0)

VoxPop

New tool BlogPulse (www.blogpulse.com/) has been developed to tell us what the chatterati are currently discussing. Use it to find the key people, the key phrases, or the top links in the latest blog postings. With the movie Troy just out here, no surprises in the fact that Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom appear in the top 40 key people. However, a few political names crop up as well so it isn't wall to wall entertainment goss out in blogland. Abu Ghraib is the top phrase.
Posted by belinda at 03:38 PM | Comments (0)

Children behind the wire

Anyone writing a children in detention centres story will find the Parliamentary Library's e-Brief, Children in Detention, useful, as it gives context and background to the issue, including numbers of children affected. It provides information on the education of such children and their psychological well-being (or lack of it). Links to further facts pages and organisations such as HREOC are provided, as well as a link to DIMIA's Women and Children in Immigration Detention page (http://www.immi.gov.au/detention/women.htm). The e-Brief is at http://www.aph.gov.au/library/intguide/SP/Childrendetention.htm. While it was written last year, the facts haven't changed.
Posted by belinda at 03:29 PM | Comments (0)

May 13, 2004

Public Right to Know Conference

Announcement: CALL FOR PAPERS: PUBLIC RIGHT TO KNOW CONFERENCE 2004
The 2004 Public Right to Know conference will be held at the University of Technology, Sydney over the weekend of 20-22 August 2004. This is the fourth in a series of annual conferences organised by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (http://acij.uts.edu.au/).

The theme for the opening night plenary session will be: The right to security vs the public right to know. The conference will focus on two special themes, and welcomes papers that address them:

1. What, if any, provision should an Australian republican constitution make for the media? In particular, should provision for independent public sector media be entrenched in a republican constitution, and should the ownership and operation of private sector media be regulated in any way?

2. Project Censored. What are the stories of social significance that are overlooked, under-reported or self-censored by our news media? The ACIJ will launch an Australian version of Project Censored, begun in the USA by Sonoma State University.

The PR2K conferences combine academic and non-academic presentations. They examine the importance of free communication within and between journalism, media, the arts, government, the academy, interested organisations and the community. We strongly encourage proposals for presentations of case studies that illustrate some of the principles and complexities that occur in practice.

A selection of the academic conference papers will be peer-reviewed and published following the Conference.

Key dates

  • Call for Papers - issued on 6 May
  • Academic Abstracts - due 30 June
  • Proposals for Non Academic Presentations - due 30 June
  • Acceptance of Papers - notified by 16 July
  • Conference Registration - commences 28 July
  • Conference Opening Night - 20 August
  • Conference - 2 full days - 21 & 22 August 2003

More information on the conference is available at the PR2K website: http://acij.uts.edu.au/pr2k/index.html

Posted by belinda at 10:26 AM | Comments (0)

May 12, 2004

It figures

The Budget is all over the Net today. The official site is at http://www.budget.gov.au/2004-05/ for those who want the overview, the budget at a glance and other information.
Posted by belinda at 10:13 AM | Comments (0)

May 11, 2004

Best is back

The Best Australian journalism of the 20th century list is back online after a hiatus at http://fifth.estate.rmit.edu.au/febo4/best100/00.html. The actual site for the conference about the pieces is at http://fifth.estate.rmit.edu.au/febo4/105.html.
Posted by belinda at 03:12 PM | Comments (0)

Pseudo-journalism

Rupert Murdoch's Fox News came in for some scathing criticism from Los Angeles Times editor John S. Carroll when he delivered the annual Ruhl Lecture at the University of Oregon. Blaming Fox News and some talk show hosts, Carroll cited a study from last year that showed many Americans had three major misconceptions about Iraq:
  • That weapons of mass destruction had been found
  • That a connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq had been demonstrated
  • That the world approved of US intervention in Iraq
Eighty per cent of people who primarily got their news from Fox believed at least one of the misconceptions. Carroll said the figure was more than 57 percentage points higher than for people who got news from public broadcasting. "How in the world could Fox have left its listeners so deeply in the dark?" Carroll asked. He lamented that such people "are practicing something I call a pseudo-journalism, and they view their audience as something to be manipulated." The full story, which covers ethics, and the difference between news and propaganda, is at http://www.dailyemerald.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/05/07/409bbfc0d5b00.
Posted by belinda at 10:13 AM | Comments (0)

Catching them young

I Want Media (http://www.iwantmedia.com/) runs a question a day, and the latest is the $64,000 question: "What should newspapers do to attract younger readers?". An answer comes from Henry Scott, the managing director of free sheet Metro New York, whose target audience is 18- to 34-year-olds. Scott says that newspapers have to "understand this formula: Time + Money – Relevance = Lost Reader.". Young people want quick reads and content that's relevant to them, not their parents. The full answer is at http://www.iwantmedia.com/#onequestion. Lachlan Murdoch, deputy chief operating officer of News Corporation, said his company was making some progress in Australia with younger readers, with newspapers in education programs, special kits on elections and high school sports results. Murdoch was at a two-day meeting to stimulate newspaper readership among the young, where publishers from the Los Angeles Times, USA Today and the New York Post exchanged views with European media leaders on shrinking newspaper circulation and the European and American media scene. eWeek has a report at http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1588646,00.asp.
Posted by belinda at 10:01 AM | Comments (0)

May 10, 2004

Gumshoeing

Journalists often lament the fact that the line between news and entertainment is blurring, so what's the answer? According to Maureen Orth, longtime Vanity Fair writer and author of The Importance of Being Famous: Behind the Scenes of the Celebrity-Industrial Complex, doing proper journalism is the answer. According to Orth: “While you can lament the idea that we’re living in this era of celebrity and personality, it also behooves the journalists here to get beyond the superficial and the spin and do the legwork and the research and the hard, hard work that takes to get the real story.” A start might be if journalists made the effort "to critique celebrity foibles rather than just report them without question". She also said the media is "asleep at the wheel", and that opinion is increasingly “masquerading as news.” Fighting words. Orth made the comments to Berkeley graduate journalism students. The full report is at http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2004/05/05_orth.shtml. Orth is a Berkeley alumna herself.
Posted by belinda at 02:20 PM | Comments (0)

May 06, 2004

Development scorecard

The latest World Development Report from the World Bank is called World Development Report 2004: Making Services Work For Poor People. Find it chapter by chapter at http://econ.worldbank.org/wdr/wdr2004/text-30023/. The 2005 report will be called Improving the Investment Climate for Growth and Poverty Reduction. Find information on all reports, future and past (back to 1992), at http://econ.worldbank.org/wdr/. These annual reports cover a range of key development issues such as basic services, poverty and sustainable development.
Posted by belinda at 04:00 PM | Comments (0)

Sugar shake-up

Sugar farmers moaning about their industry's future (or lack of one) should take a look at the World Bank's working paper on sugar policy. According to the Bank's researchers, "Sugar is one of the most policy distorted of all commodities, and the European Union, Japan, and the United States are among the worst offenders...". They'll have to read the 55-page document to find out what, if anything, is being done about that. It's at http://worldbank.org/prospects/workingpapers/Sugar%20Policy%20Opportunity%20for%20Change%20-%20WP%203222%20Feb%202004.pdf
Posted by belinda at 03:47 PM | Comments (0)

Prisoner abuse in Iraq

MSNBC has put up the full text of the report prepared by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba on alleged abuse of prisoners by members of the 800th Military Police Brigade at the Abu Ghraib Prison in Baghdad. Find it at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4894001/. The site disclaimer says : The report includes graphic descriptions of events some readers may find objectionable.
Posted by belinda at 12:44 PM | Comments (0)

Best Australian journalism

A panel of judges drawn from journalism schools and the news media industry has identified what it considers to be the Best Australian Journalism of the 20th Century. The Best Australian Journalism of the 20th Century Conference, hosted by RMIT Journalism on 24-26 November 2004 will honour these media milestones, the full list of which can be found at RMIT Journalism's ezine, Fifth Estate (http://fifth.estate.rmit.edu.au/) . This interdisciplinary forum will appeal to journalists, journalism academics, historians, communication scholars and others researching the Australian media. Contact RMIT Journalism to receive regular email updates about the conference.

Call for papers

The conference organisers are calling for papers about the Best Australian Journalism of the 20th Century list. Papers may be about individual pieces of journalism, individual journalists or editors, or about professional practice themes arising from the list or indeed about journalism you consider important that has been left off the list. Papers may also be about the political, historical or social context surrounding the specific items on the list. Abstracts of not more than 250 words should be submitted by 16 July to muriel.porter@rmit.edu.au. Please indicate whether you are proposing your paper for the refereed or non-refereed presentation stream.

Posted by belinda at 12:09 PM | Comments (0)

Family ties

There’s nothing like brotherly solidarity. Film studio Disney apparently fears the wrath of Florida Governor, Jeb Bush, brother of George W, if it releases Michael Moore's latest documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11. The film apparently links GWB with powerful families in Saudi Arabia, including that of Osama Bin Laden. It also criticises Bush's actions before September 11. Disney allegedly gets millions of dollars of tax breaks in Florida, which it fears might be endangered if ithe studio were linked to an anti-Bush film. More details are at http://www.wbex.com/script/headline_newsmanager.php?id=290142&pagecontent=entertainment&feed_id=44
Posted by belinda at 12:07 PM | Comments (0)

May 05, 2004

Not over yet

They aren't giving up on the Alan Jones/Telstra issue at the Communications Law Centre at UNSW. While the Centre welcomes the ABA's recent report on the issue -- for those who haven't seen it, it's at http://www.aba.gov.au/radio/investigations/projects/telstra-2gb/documents/Jones_Telstra_2GBReport.pdf -- Derek Wilding, Director of the Centre, wants some matters cleared up. Read the letter he has sent to the ABA (www.aba.gov.au/) at http://www.comslaw.org.au/publications/pub56.pdf. The ABA's report, entitled Investigation relating to sponsorship of the Alan Jones Program on Radio 2GB pursuant to an Agreement between Telstra Corporation and Macquarie Radio Network Pty Ltd, is 71 pages long. You'd think they could get matters clearer with that many pages to play with.
Posted by belinda at 03:35 PM | Comments (0)

Size matters

The UK Independent newspaper may axe its broadsheet edition altogether by the end of June, according to a story in the Guardian's Media section. The paper has been carrying out regional trials of a tabloid format, and response to the tabloid has been favourable enough for the paper to consider dropping the broadsheet altogether. Circulation went up by 15.25% which means they must be doing something right. Murdoch's The Times soon followed suit with a tabloid version. The full story is at http://media.guardian.co.uk/presspublishing/story/0,7495,1207158,00.html but you will need to register to see it now. Don't be put off by that - registration doesn't take long and the Guardian is definitely worth it, if only for their brilliant (free) archive. For example, with this story, links to all previous stories on the topic, such as the Indy's tabloid launch, the Times going tabloid, are provided, making it easy to get the full picture in context.
Posted by belinda at 02:57 PM | Comments (0)

May 04, 2004

BBC Olympics coverage

The BBC are flagging their Olympic plans early. Their site at http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/olympics_2004/ covers what they'll be doing - Olympics history, athlete profiles, telling people about venues, security issues and the schedule of events, as well as providing news stories, photos, and video and audio clips. Our own ABC's more pared-down site is at www.abc.net.au/olympics/2004/.
Posted by belinda at 12:45 PM | Comments (0)

Iraq body counts

Cable broadcaster CNN has a site about the numbers of coalition deaths in Iraq at www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/. It lists confirmed deaths in the Iraq war and the ongoing occupation. Each entry includes the name, age, unit, home town, details of death, and some entries include photographs. Another site for this kind of information is www.iraqbodycount.net/, which aims to provide an update of reported civilian deaths in the Iraq war and occupation. It includes an incident-by-incident database. It was compiled by a number of mainly UK-based academics and others working for peace.
Posted by belinda at 11:31 AM | Comments (0)