When announcing the media enquiry in September this year, Senator Conroy committed to regulatory processes that support “a healthy and independent media that is able to fulfill its essential democratic…
As journalists and academics got ready to outline a new media order at the Finkelstein inquiry yesterday, anti-regulationists lined up to dismiss the process with bipartisan relish. On day one of the inquiry…
A profound shift is underway in the global news media industries. As the extensive police investigation and judicial inquiry into the News of the World phone hacking scandal continue in the UK, News Corporation…
There is a vast difference between how China is reported inside and outside the country. And that extends to how media and communication is taught in China and Australia. One of my new PhD students, who…
CHOGM As Julia Gillard chairs the Commonwealth Heads of Government in Perth, she would do well to pay special attention to her Indian colleague at the table, Vice-President Hamid Ansari. Brian Stoddart…
The public’s openness to asylum seekers depends largely on the perceived threat that would-be immigrants pose to traditional Australian values, new research has found. Academics from Monash University…
Last night, SBS screened the first instalment of a three-part documentary by Adam Curtis, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. The program attracted intense debate when broadcast in the UK earlier…
The carbon tax bills passed by the Australian House of Representatives on October 12 were a small vindication of climate science. But we should be concerned about the corpses of science, reason and expertise…
In last night’s ABC program, The Slap, an impulsive slap changed everything. A man struck someone else’s child at a barbecue provoking a legal challenge. In real life, that would be an assault, though…
The increasing spread of information and communication technology has changed just about every aspect of Australian society – except democracy. The opportunities to engage citizens in the democratic process…
Media classification in Australia is being dragged into the digital world. At the moment it’s based on analog legislation, unsuited for today’s convergent media. But proposals unveiled today will transform…
Already the Libertarian Right have begun to marshal their traditional arguments to cover Andrew Bolt’s disgrace by the Federal Court. Bolt himself has screeched freedom of speech in the wake of his ascerbic…
Political activists and bad legislation have combined to create the extraordinary situation where eligibility for awards and prizes can’t be questioned. Not all prizes and awards – we can still mock Wayne…
Columnist and commentator Andrew Bolt has lost his racial discrimination case in the Federal Court. The action under the Racial Discrimination Act had been brought by nine Aboriginal people including high…
Australia’s population is ageing, presenting an economic challenge to look after the most vulnerable members of our society. The Productivity Commission released a report last month recommending a complete…
The Gillard Government’s media inquiry is to disregard the crucial issues of bias and concentration of media ownership, despite Bob Brown’s demands for wider terms of reference. This is, at best, misled…
Have we seen the last of the hard-nosed investigative reporters who break news through months of painstaking research and contact-building? The internet has badly hurt the publishing business model that…
The Gillard Government has announced it will hold an inquiry into the state of the Australian print media. One of the key elements investigated will be the role of the Australian Press Council, the self-regulatory…
I was waiting for her to say “he touched me in nooks and in unexplored crannies I never knew I had” but it was not to be. For the rest of the episode, however, the lead in At Home With Julia sounded like…
Does the ABC’s new hit series At Home With Julia demonstrate an unreconstructed sexism in Australian political satire? Should we be cringing at our cultural immaturity again? If the 2010 Election (or subsequent…