Journoz: Updates for Australian Journalists

Palestinian State?

The US-based RAND Corporation has written a 453 page report called Building a Successful Palestinian State. It can be found at http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2005/RAND_MG146.pdf. It includes recommendations on issues such as transportation links between the West Bank and Gaza. The report is based on research conducted from 2002 to 2004. Despite its length, it doesn't address the most intractable problem -- how to get Israelis and Palestinians actually to agree.

Best of Photojournalism 2005

The US National Press Photographers Association has posted its awards for the Best of Photojournalism 2005 at http://www.nppa.org/competitions/best_of_still_photojournalism/2005/photography/winners/. The awards are for still photography only. A wide range of categories are covered -- sport, domestic, international, magazine news stories, nature, the Olympics, environment, and portraits, among others.

State of the News Media 2005

The Project for Excellence in Journalism (http://www.journalism.org/) issued their first State of the News Media report last year. Now the 2005 report is online. State of the News Media 2005 (http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2005/index.asp) has nine sections. The overview section will give you a quick summary of the findings. Two trends may be worth noting :

• There are now several models of journalism, and the trajectory increasingly is toward those that are faster, looser, and cheaper. This is worrying since it claims the traditional journalistic verification of facts is giving way to "a new journalism of assertion, where information is offered with little time and little attempt to independently verify its veracity". Talk shows and cable TV have been the main drivers for this. Blogs also come in for a pasting in that they publish assertions and expect other bloggers to keep them honest by correcting any errors after the event.

• To adapt, journalism may have to move in the direction of making its work more transparent and more expert, and of widening the scope of its searchlight. According to the report, news organisations "may have to document their reporting process more openly so that audiences can decide for themselves whether to trust it."

To defame or not to defame

If you have your doubts about what you can and can't say about people, then you need to check out the Journalist's Defamation Checklist, an interactive web tool designed for working journalists and students by journalism staff at Bond University. It's at http://www.defamkit.bond.edu.au/. Much of the detail has been taken from the second edition of Professor Mark Pearson's excellent The journalist's guide to media law. Dealing with legal and ethical issues, which Allen & Unwin published in 2004. Worth a look, even if you think you know the issues backwards.

Finding people

PeopleSearch (www.peoplesearch.com.au/) is new to me, but might be worth checking out as it's an Australian site for finding people's email addresses and other details. The site describes itself as a new searchable and categorized directory of Australian people search resources. While it is obviously handy to be able to hunt for people by name, the twin curses of spam and identity theft have made many people duck for cover when it comes to posting their details or email addresses online. Having had to close one email address because of the deluge of spam, I certainly hope PeopleSearch has no listing for me! Anyway, it covers a range of people finder tools, from adoption search, missing persons, and phone and address tools to public records, information brokers and gumshoes.

Some good news

Just out is The State of World's Population 2004 (http://www.unfpa.org/swp/swpmain.htm). It includes both long term and current trends affecting the world's population. According to the summary, ten years after the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, "the quality and reach of family planning programmes have improved, safe motherhood and HIV prevention efforts are being scaled up, and governments embrace the ICPD Programme of Action as an essential blueprint for realizing development goals."