From the five-yearly Global Media Monitoring Project, we know that women are not portrayed quite as badly in the media as they used to be. But will the 2015 project show that trend continuing?
On the defensive: the BBC’s director-general, Tony Hall.
Lewis Whyld/PA Wire
As news of Peter Oborne’s resignation from The Daily Telegraph went scattering around the internet and as further coverage came in interviews and articles that evening and the following morning, it became…
The aftermath of a double suicide bombing in Kano, Nigeria
Stringer/Reuters
Ethan Zuckerman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Consider two tragic events that took place last week. A small cell of Islamic terrorists attacked cartoonists at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and shoppers in a Paris supermarket, killing 17 people…
The French writer Michel Houellebecq once referred to Islam as “the stupidest religion”. Speaking as an equal opportunities atheist born and raised into the weird and wonderful ways of Catholicism, I can…
Along with governments, doctors, and infectious disease experts, the media have a duty to help halt the spread of Ebola with responsible reporting.
EPA/OLIVIER HOSLET
Time magazine has named health workers caring for Ebola victims in West Africa as its “Person of the Year 2014” and compared them to “military special forces who volunteered to fight the epidemic when…
In the age of social media, misinformation travels rapidly around the globe.
AAP
It has become one of the hallmarks of the news now. Whenever there is a dramatic event, social media instantly comes alive with comment and conjecture as facts vie for attention with fiction. Alongside…
Taking the politics out of it, what should the ABC be doing with its reduced budget?
AAP/Joel Carrett
In the recent ABC funding debate, many have questioned what the public broadcaster is for. What should its role be in Australia’s contemporary media landscape? Some argue that the ABC is a market-failure…
Leading Australian media organisations launched a ‘Right to Know’ campaign in 2007, citing the erosion of free speech by more than 500 laws and regulations. It’s been downhill since then.
AAP/Tracey Nearmy
I am reluctant to give more ammunition to Pacific leaders who regard Australia as some kind of exemplar in media freedom – in this case a bad example. On the other hand, truths have to be told: in Australia…
The BBC, like the ABC, has faced significant pressure to change in response to repeated debates over how it should be funded.
EPA/Andy Rain
2014 is turning into a grim year for public broadcasting. In June, Hubert Lacroix, the president of Canada’s public broadcaster CBC, announced an unprecedented series of job cuts. One-quarter of the staff…
ABC boss Mark Scott is strengthening the broadcaster’s digital offerings in response to budget cuts – a template established by the BBC.
AAP/Alan Porritt
Brian McNair, Queensland University of Technology and Adam Swift, Queensland University of Technology
While Australia’s elected representatives argue over what then-opposition leader Tony Abbott meant when he promised “no cuts to the ABC, or SBS” the night before the last election, directly to the electorate…
By cutting back in regional and remote areas, the ABC risks sending a message that some parts of Australia are more important to our national conversations than others.
AAP/Joel Carrett
ABC managing director Mark Scott undertook the unenviable task on Monday of wielding the axe to meet the Abbott government’s cut to the broadcaster’s funding. Government cutbacks to Australia’s publicly…
Malcolm Turnbull and the government have been unapologetic after breaking a pre-election pledge not to cut the ABC’s budget.
AAP/Nikki Short
Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has announced a further cut to Australia’s public broadcasters. The ABC’s budget will be slashed around 4.6% per year, or A$254 million in total, over the next…
Most media outlets lined up behind the ‘coalition of the willing’ last time around. This time seems no different.
The US Army
A year after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the University of California, Berkeley, conducted a postmortem of the media coverage of the so-called “Iraq war”. The conference included academics, journalists…
Confused by the news?
befuddled woman image via www.shutterstock.com
Foundation essay: This article is part of a series marking the launch of The Conversation in the US. Our foundation essays are longer than our usual comment and analysis articles and take a wider look…
Hong Kong’s digitally connected protesters are mounting a thoroughly modern campaign for democracy, but the state too has updated its mechanisms of control and surveillance.
EPA/Alex Hofford
In the closing decades of the last century, many political and business elites were swept up in a global wave of policies favouring free markets, deregulation of business and finance and privatisation…
Academics have a duty to research and teach the best and the worst of journalism.
Het Nieuwe Instituut
Having worked as a journalism and media studies academic in the United Kingdom for the best part of 25 years, one of the things that surprised me on coming to Australia was the state of near-open warfare…
Having used security as a pretext to impose an information blackout on operations involving asylum seekers, the government is broadening its denial of the public’s right to know.
AAP/Quinten Jones
The Abbott government’s latest tranches of national security and counter-terrorism laws represent the greatest attack on the Fourth Estate function of journalism in the modern era. They are worse than…
Religious leaders have come together to promote community harmony, but some political and media agendas have encouraged Islamophobia.
AAP/Tracey Nearmy
Many incidents of violence and harassment directed at Australian Muslims have been reported recently. These are visible confirmation of fears expressed by their community, that support for the government’s…