Reflective Blog – Journalism and Refugees
The change in the political debate over the last decade has certainly shifted from one of humanitarian effort to that of a national security issue. This is in part due to a significant increase in arrivals of asylum-seekers by boat that occurred after the Rudd government ended Temporary Protection Visas (TPV).
I have quoted the Australian Parliamentary Library on the statistics and compared the Howard era to that of the current Rudd/Gillard administration and suggested that the policy failings of the Labor government have resulted in the political debate over ‘boat-people’ to become securitised. Furthermore, this policy failure gives way to more extremist right-wing rhetoric and keeps boat people in the news headlines.
As a student journalist I have come to appreciate the unique issues when reporting on refugees, something that I was not familiar with prior to this semester. I have referred to a report the UN released outlining these issues.
I have also come to appreciate the great capacity of football as a medium to engage new arrivals and effect social change within the refugee community. This unique ability of football has been covered recently by SBS News. I have also included other various links to important information throughout the blog.
Football - The World Game
PRIOR PERSPECTIVES
What contact had you had with asylum seekers/refugees prior to commencing this project?
Over the past two years I have had almost weekly contact with a refugee family through my volunteering with St. Vincent de Paul’s. The extent of which was simply delivering food, but I have managed to get to know the family and their story, which simply put was fleeing from Sudan to spend 9 years in a refugee camp before finally being approved to come to Australia.
I also lived with two Sudanese refugees during my final two years at a boarding school in Sydney.
What was your attitude to refugees/asylum seekers and policies pertaining to their management prior to commencing work on this project?
I see the management of refugees as a global problem and view the plight of refugees collectively. In this regard I always have thought that countries like Australia should be increasing their intake of refugees. I also think that UNHCR needs to be given greater resources in an effort to sufficiently handle the movement of people on a global/regional scale.
For me the whole debate about ‘stopping the boats’ has become ridiculous. Unfortunately the reality of the situation is that when people come here by boat, they often die in great numbers, as seen last year when over 30 people drowned when their boat smashed into the rocks on Christmas Island.
Furthermore I could not help but feel that we as a country were to blame. It wasn’t the fault of the people on that boat seeking asylum. It wasn’t even the fault of people smugglers who organised the whole thing. If we give people a reason to come here in such a disorganised and dangerous manner; there are plenty of desperate people who will be willing to come.
In an interest of preserving human life and to stem the people smuggling trade, I believe that the boats need to be stopped. In this regard stricter and tougher policy needs to implemented as the lesser of two evils. I would rather have people suffering mental anguish in detention centers than have them drown in the Indian Ocean.
ON ASSIGNMENT FOR #REPORTINGREFUGEES
What did you learn about asylum seeker/refugees during the course of the project?
Looking at football I never knew that the sport was seen as such a credible medium for effecting social change throughout the refugee community. Sitting in on a meeting hosted by Capital Football that invited all the major refugee organisations within Canberra gave me perspective as to the amount of effort that was being invested in the sport in engaging new arrivals. It is also a topic that is rightly receiving increasing media attention and was covered by the SBS earlier this year.
"They may not be able to speak the language, but they play the game." - Capital Football Official
Upon interviewing Glen George as part of the assessment piece I was amazed at his story and how he came to be in Australia arriving from Sierra Leone. At one point he said “We were on a list for Canada, but everyone wanted to go there because of the US. There was Australia and we thought…why not? So we came to Australia.” This is telling of the desperation of people wanting to leave their past life behind and not caring which western country they make it to.
From other people’s projects I have learned about the support infrastructure within Canberra that I had never knew existed. These organisations obviously play a huge role in helping newly arrived people in integrating into their new societies and very rarely get the recognition they deserve.
Also, to learn about the Sudanese Church and the great sense of belonging within the refugee community in Canberra was an eye-opening experience.
What (if any) impact has the project had on your views of asylum seekers/refugees and associated policy issues?
Rather similar to the show aired on SBS Go Back to Where You Came From, I am always going to try and sympathise with those who are striving to gain access to a better life and as stated earlier I think Australia should be increasing its refugee intake. We need to encourage people from all walks of life to come to Australia, but in a safe and human way that the UNHCR and the Australian Government and any other regional bodies can control.
However, we as a country need to understand that whilst there are ‘push’ factors, there also ‘pull’ factors that we a solely accountable for. Policy wise we need to discourage people coming here by boat by any means possible.
In October 1999, the Howard Government introduced Temporary Protection Visas that proved to be extremely effective. As from 2002-2004 there was a grand total of 3 boats and 69 people. In May 2008 the Rudd Government announced that it would abolish the system of temporary protection. From 2008-2010 there were 200 boats with 9,889 people arriving.
No matter what side of the debate you are on, you cannot ignore the statics and the raw fact that there has been a massive policy failing on behalf of the Labor Government. This failure has led the debate around ‘boat-people’ to becoming securitised ‘alongside traditional international security problems like drugs, international fraud, civil and criminal judicial cooperation’ and that in itself is a tragedy.
I can even understand that they were trying to be more ‘human’ by the removal of TPV’s, but Howard proved that when it comes to immigration the tougher the policy (within reason) the more human it is.
“What’s so moral about policies which encourage people to take to the sea in leaky boats and give us the kind of tragedy that seems to be unfolding now in the Indian Ocean” - Tony Abbott, 2009
Since this statement by Tony Abbott, 244 people are assumed to have died on route to Australia. From 2004-2008, prior to Kevin07 abolishing TPVs, there was not a single death recorded.
Forgetting all political stances and being pragmatic about the situation, TPVs remain as the only empirical policy that have worked, as the statistics speak for themselves.
For this reason my personal view will remain the same, until someone else can come up with a better way to stop the boats.
LESSONS FROM THE FIELD
What has the project taught you about reporting refugee/asylum seeker issues?
The project has taught me that when reporting on refugees you are dealing with a very vulnerable group of people that are culturally diverse and often misrepresented in the mainstream media.
I think the most important aspect for a journalist to remember when interviewing a refugee talent, is to try and empathise with what that individual might have been through. Unless you have seen it firsthand it is impossible to know what they may have endured and asking normal questions could invoke strong emotions or bring back unwanted memories. In an effort to avoid this, I think the journalists should ask broad open-ended questions and let the talent pick and choose how they answer, thus giving the talent the narrative control of the interview.
Also, as stated by the UNHCR in a document titled Reporting on Refugees, there needs to be the acknowledgement that ‘people fleeing persecution leave families behind who may face retribution from repressive regimes as a result of the identification’ of their relatives.
This issue was covered earlier during the semester in a lecture, when the ABC published various photos of people within North Korea and choose not to blur the face of a young child. The outcome of this specific example is unknown, however it remains an important and unique issue that should be remembered by journalists when using refugee talent in a story.
Boy in North Korea - The ABC choose not to blur the face of the young boy for editorial reasons
The Pew Center for Civic Journalism states that Journalism can help empower a community or it can help disable it. In this regard I think there is a tremendous responsibility on journalists to ensure that their style of reporting and editorial decision making does not further marginalise the refugee community.
I have truly enjoyed this semester and the Advanced Broadcasting unit with Julie Posetti at the University of Canberra. I have learned valuable lessons about reporting on refugees and will ensure that if I ever get the chance to cover such an important issue I’ll be sure to remember everything that I have gained in this course.
Please feel free to comment and share.
Online News Assessment – Slideshow
Every Sunday night volunteers from the St Vincent de Paul charity collect the remaining fruit and vegetables from traders at the Belconnen Fresh Food Markets and deliver it out into the community.
Paul Coghlan, a member for 25 years, gives a detailed account on how the charity plays a critical role in helping those most vulnerable in the local area and the knock-on effect that the rising cost of living is having.
By Patrick Cape and Ben Krahe
Twitter; The emergence of the Opinion Cycle and the transformation of the mob mentality
The emergence of the internet has resulted in society evolving from on of information scarcity to one of information overload and has resulted in a unique set of issues and challenges, both to journalists and to society as a whole.
As the O’Conner reading, Word of Mouse: Credibility, Journalism and Emerging Social Media states:
Facing a virtual tsunami of unfiltered information—powered by an ongoing technological revolution that has democratized tools of media production and distribution, created by an unprecedented amalgam of increasingly beleaguered professional journalists and newly besotted amateur ‘citizen reporters,’ and distributed via a wide variety of both traditional and new media—how can any of us be sure that the news and information we see and hear is true?
I have never been a fan Twitter or Facebook, even though I have accounts on both sites. It gives individuals a sense that what they do and think is some way important. It has helped create a society that is more narcissistic than ever before. So when I was forced to create a twitter account and blog post in order to study journalism I was kind of annoyed.
The 4th estate is the most important part of a democracy. It informs the people. It empowers them with knowledge so they can go forth and execute their right to vote.
If we are being encouraged to reduced that sacred information into 140 characters tweets, then we are no longer citizens, but consumers of text messages.
There needs to be a clear distinction between what is opinion, insignificant dribble and hard news. In my opinion and in my fairly limited experience this is hard to achieve through tweeting.
The most popular accounts on twitter are those of celebrities and social commentators. There seems to be an increasing desire of the general public to be influenced by these god-like individuals, as if we have become so lazy that we can no longer generate our own opinion, we need to have Lady Gaga, Andrew Bolt and Stephen Fry do it for us.
On Q&A two weeks ago, Lachlan Harris, the former media adviser to Kevin Rudd, claimed that there has been a fundamental shift in the public forming an opinion. He claimed that the Opinion Cycle, not the News Cycle, now reigns supreme over public thought.
Harris with Kevin Rudd
“The new news cycle – the news cycle is getting supplanted by an opinion cycle and basically that opinion cycle is brutal. It is really, really nasty, but it’s also very powerful.
Opinion cycle is if you imagine in the old days the news – what was the news on the front page of the news and the TV was the most valuable currencies in the information environment in politics.
That’s over now. It’s opinions that matter in modern politics and information environment. It’s what talkback hosts are saying. It’s what columnists are saying. It’s what is on blogs and, you know, in social media and it is going to be – it’s a really nasty cycle.
That’s the reality because opinion is much harsher than – opinion is much harsher than fact and you’re going to see – if the days of people – really popular politicians unfortunately or nice – it’s over.”
This revelation is kind of scary when you think about the range and extremities of the media and political commentators that exist, not just in the media but also in the realm of social media.
The incredible growth of the opinion cycle almost seems to coincide with the boom of Twitter. When the opinions of a very select few become more sought after and more valuable than real news and real information, surely this would take a massive toll on the health of a democracy?
However my view is not absolute.
As Roy Peter Clark states in his article How journalists are using Facebook, Twitter to write mini serial narratives the gradual releasing of information, much like politics, builds a growing level of interest in a story or policy. This certainly can help publicise an important story that might not of had a large audience otherwise.
In Clarks opinion: Though not journalism in the classic sense, they attracted a significant audience and generated lively conversations and debates among my friends.
Apart from this I cannot really see the benefit of converting the important role of journalism into tiny bite size forms. Granted that the attention span of the general public is not really what it should be but important stories need to be covered in-depth and at length. You then depend on people having the discipline to click the link and inform themselves to a greater degree.But how often do you think this really happens?
Can you imagine The Washington Post running the Watergate scandal 140 Characters at a time??
Twitter could never do this...
Yes it would have created a lot of momentum and maybe the story might of even attracted more readers. But imagine the amount of detail overlooked due to the 140 character limit.
An important story that will shape people’s opinion and hence the democracy needs to be read without the distraction of pop-up advertising. It needs to be read in hand and understood as a tangible piece of human history.
When Channel 9 falsely reported that Jeff Goldblum, star from movies Independence Day and Jurassic Park, was killed in an accident in New Zealand, because of a tweet, I cringed at the level of journalism that the once powerhouses of Australian media standards had reduced itself to. Rumors and misinformation, especially during breaking news are rife within the Twitter realm.
Dead man walking?
What was now being presented to the public was a form of journalism that takes everything on face value, that anything ‘tweeted’ is therefore that of gospel truth.
This then opens up twitter to be used as a propaganda bugle by those who are so inclined. With fake accounts polluting the twitter-sphere, the system is easily manipulated and twitter uses, or twits as some say, have trouble disseminating what is true or false and everything in between.
Twitter users aren’t accountable to anyone, which gives a large margin for error, speculation and rumour in news terms.
I also think that users of Twitter are not looking for hard news when accessing the site.
Even tweets from news sources such as the ABC are not always hard news
Important news stories like the one above mentioning NATO and Pakistan seem to become uniform with other people’s useless and pointless comments (including my own) that detract the importance of real occurrences that we all should be aware about.
In this regard I am hesitant about twitter and its capacity to ferry important news to the masses as I just think it doesn’t have the same appeal as a news paper headline. The maximum extent of twitter should be as a complementary news source, either supporting a main news provider or linking to outside articles.
I just fear, like many other journalists, that Twitter will become a first port-of-call for the dumb masses who construct their version of reality based on what they are exposed to.
The dumb masses of which I refer to
The other major occurrence with the emergence of Twitter has been the mob mentality which accompanies every Twitter controversy. What defines a mob is that it comes together for a purpose, doesn’t have a leader, and disperses once the purpose has been satisfied.
This was ever evident on ANZAC day when the head of the Australian Christian Lobby, Jim Wallace, posted a tweet stating that the diggers of the past didn’t fight for an Australia that had Gay-Marriage and Islam fundamentalists. The fallout of course was typical of Twitter and the initial post was deleted and an apology post created no less than 40 mins later. But by then the damage had already been done.
Wallace, an ex-SAS solider and one-week user of Twitter, completely underestimated the power of Twitter to reach a mass of people extremely quickly. He appeared a day later on Channel 7′s Sunrise program to issue an apology.
As Hannah Arendt states in her book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, the “voice of the people was the voice of god.” Regardless of what Wallace said, whether he was right or wrong, and more importantly whether there was any TRUTH in what he saying, was irrelevant. Those questions were not asked and he was instantaneously shot down in flames by what he describes as the ‘Twitter Brigade’, or as I argue the new mob.
Yes, everything that an Individual says has consequences and everybody should think long and hard before they make insidious comments on ANZAC day, particularity through a medium such as Twitter.
However the fear of being ‘outside’ the mob and potentially becoming a target for the mob is the biggest weapon that the mob has. For anyone to express a differential point of view on the matter means that you are not for the collective force, you are against it and therefore should be treated just the same as the original villain.
For all the freedoms Twitter is giving the world, the fact that it’s also empowering us to shout down and disable the free speech of others is beyond flagrant.
Twitter debates can be quiet explosive
Out of the thousands of tweets directed at Jim Wallace there was one that I found that supported him:
c_j_abbottChristopher Abbott – @JimWallaceACL Don’t appoligise mate, I’m an ex-soldier and I certainly didn’t fight for muslims and gays freedom to hijack our society.
In doing this, as I described earlier, c_j_abbott has put himself outside the mob and suffered the same fate as Jim Wallace.
Can_do_CampbellNot Campbell Newman – Oh wow, there is more than one pig ignorant, mouth breather in Australia … @c_j_abbott @JimWallaceACL
2FBSStephen C – @c_j_abbott @JimWallaceACL Must be a thing about the surname Abbott. Bigoted dickheads the lot of them.
Again, coarse vile language used to take down someone who went against the mob and stated their own unique point of view. To me there seems to be an emerging pattern that everyone, including the politically correct Twitter Brigade, was ignoring.
amoir amoir / Amy Gray – @JimWallaceACL My Gallipoli Grandad didn’t fight for wowserism or for a turd like you to ransack his ghost & imply he was anti-gay & racist
This tweet listed above is one of three ‘top tweets’ on the Jim Wallace comment.
I dare say that if my grandfather, who fought the Japanese in PNG, had passed away a year ago, I would have rushed to his defence much like Amy Gray did. But he did not pass away a year ago, he was sitting next to me as we watched the ANZAC day parade together.
So I asked him what his thoughts were on the Jim Wallace twitter post, of course expecting him to agree with the rest of the world and call Wallace a bigot. His response to the tweet – “Well, that’s right.”
Shocked as I was, I thought to myself, well maybe Jim Wallace is making a fair point that is a rather inconvenient truth. Out of the thousands of people who have promoted their view on the topic, the three that I know of that are in favour of what Jim Wallace said, are all ex-military men.
If you were to go back to WW1 and ask the diggers in Anzac Cove if they were fighting for gay marriage, what do you honestly think their response would be?
So there does seem to be some truth in what Jim Wallace said. But the realm of twitter didn’t allow for truth to get in the way of the mob tweet bashing those who offended their politically correct narcissistic selves.
- The Mob getting ready to do what they do best
Crowd psychology is an entire branch of social psychology where ordinary people can typically gain direct power by acting collectively. A classical theory of this comes from Sigmund Freud, who argued that people who are in a crowd act differently towards people from those who are thinking individually.
The minds of the group would merge to form a way of thinking. Each member’s enthusiasm would be increased as a result, and one becomes less aware of the true nature of one’s actions.
Would Sigmund Freud ever predicted the occurrence of Twitter?
The emergence of Twitter has been hailed by some as the emergence of the ‘new democracy’, as it has been instrumental in the Jasmine revolution which saw decade-long regimes crumble by the force of people power, and their voice, which becomes as equally loud through the internet.
This is when Twitter is at its best, as it gives people an equal voice to say whatever they feel and the ability to connect with like-minded people across the globe.
However, I think Twitter should know its place when it comes to Journalism.
With people being influenced by opinion, not fact, of which Twitter is a massive influence of, I fear that the most important part of journalism (the truth), has become some what blurred in the Twitter-sphere.
As a wise man once said, “You cannot obtain wisdom (or truth for that matter) through a showing of hands.”
Please comment and feel free to tweet-bash me @Cape003
The treatment of Bradley Manning – US denies UN Access
Can you imagine being asked and having to be respond to the question “Are you okay?” every five minutes 24 hours a day whilst you are contained in solitary confinement and stripped of your cloths?
This is the life of 22-year-old Army Private Bradley Manning who was the source of the leak of almost 46,000 documents pertaining to US war crimes and mass civilian killings.
This morning the Guardian has revealed that the a senior United Nations representative on torture, Juan Mendez, issued a rare reprimand to the US government on Monday for failing to allow him to meet in private Bradley Manning.
Mendez, the UN special rapporteur on torture, said: “I am deeply disappointed and frustrated by the prevarication of the US government with regard to my attempts to visit Mr Manning.”
Mendez told the Guardian: “I am acting on a complaint that the regimen of this detainee amounts to cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or torture … until I have all the evidence in front of me, I cannot say whether he has been treated inhumanely.”
A supporter of Manning voices his conerns
Manning’s supporters claim that the US is being vindictive in its treatment of Manning, who is held at the marine base at Quantico, Virginia, in conditions they describe as inhumane.
Amazingly, but not surprisingly, The Guardian was the only major news publication that covered this story on their website. The Wall Street Journal covered the story through the use of a blog.
But that was it.
Nothing from the ABC, SMH, The Australian, The Age and so on.
As far as the future of journalism is concerned, Wikileaks can play a massive role in increasing transparency and reducing the risk of cover-ups and rampant corruption that is the spawn of secrecy.
The US struggle to bring ‘the terrorist’ Julian Assange to justice has hinged on the single detail of whether the Wiki leaks founder was complicit in helping Bradley Manning ‘steal’ a trove of classified documents off the US government’s intelligence mainframe. This is key in defining whether Assange is, as the US claims a ‘information terrorist’ who hides under the far reaching banner of freedom of speech and freedom of the press that is protected under the political high ground of the first amendment, or whether he is like any other journalist who has anonymous sources and whistleblowers that pass information without him knowing where, how or why he has received such sensitive material.
Assange of course claims that he talked to Manning anonymously in an online chat room and did not instruct or advise the unknown source on how to download the information. As far as we know, supporters of Manning have said that, much to the disgust of the US, this is also what happened.
If this is indeed the case, surely Manning would be tried in military court and sentenced like any other army criminal. But that would mean letting the lanky, sometimes freaky looking white-haired, ex-cyber criminal (who once hacked NASA computer systems to search for evidence of aliens), who poses more of a risk to national security than that of Osama Bin Laden, to walk out of prison in Sweden without anything more than a sexual assault wrap against his name.
If this was to happen Hilary Clinton along with every other Politian to call for Assange’s head would be left red-faced and not to mention very nervous about anything they say in future cables.
In an attempt to get the 22-year-old Manning to change his story he has been held in solitary confinement since his arrest for 23-hours a day. This has led many to believe that the US and the Pentagon will do anything, whether legal or not, to get a confession, whether false or not, stating that Julian Assange was a accomplice in stealing the 40 something thousand documents.
This would obviously be needed in getting Assange extradited so he can be tried in a US court.
So no surprise then that the conditions Bradley Manning has been subjected to has been less than comfortable. Recent reports had suggested that he has been banned from wearing cloths as part of a suicide watch program. This in itself tells you something about the current mental state of the former Army Officer.
But the one thing that the US did not count on when they decided to put Private Manning through hell in order to acquire a confession was the indignation that hey are now receiving from their own side of politics.
This fallout climaxed over the weekend when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s own personal spokesperson resigning in protest of the treatment of Manning.
Needless to say that this development attracted world headlines and made the political giant of the US government appear to be divided and amateurish.
The fact that there is a train of thought that sees the Pentagon as a governmental organisation that is above the law and that it is willing to do anything to silence Assange, certainly does wonders in raising the public’s opinion of Wikileaks and what Assange is trying to do.
Whether the resignation of protest will mean anything to Bradley Manning is yet to be seen. But here’s hoping that common sense will prevail and the 22-year-old private won’t spend too much more of this life naked and bound by chains for 23 hours a day for much longer.
The future of Wikileaks and Julian Assange depends greatly on whether he is implicit in the supposed ‘theft’ of the documents by instructing Manning on how to perform the act.
Initially Manning had said that he acted alone and without instruction from Assange. But that would mean that Assange is just like any other journalist receiving information from anonymous sources, thus making it extremely hard for the US to extradite Assange to the US and face their judicial system.
However if Manning was persuaded to change his story and claim that Assange did in fact help him to steal the documents, the pentagon would finally have a case against Assange and be able to lock him, along with the Wikileaks movement, up for good.
Here’s hoping that the Pentagon are not treating Manning in such a way to simply get a false admission from him in order to go after Assange.
Please comment and express your personal views on the treatment of Manning.
The Role of the Media in War
After watching a John Pilger documentary last night on SBS, The War you don’t see, I was greatly distressed by the images that I had seen for the first time. As gory as they were I wasn’t shocked by the actual footage, watching movies from Hollywood will do that to you, it was more the fact that I had never seen these images before in my life when I clearly felt I should of.
Images of journalists being killed by American and Israeli Forces did not come down the normal commercial avenues of news broadcasting. They come from independent broadcasters that have the capacity to broadcast themselves such as John Pilger through the use of documentaries and Julian Assange through his own, much publicised website, Wikileaks.
Independent journalists who cover stories on the ground still depend on media organisations to broadcast their work with no guarantee that it will be picked up and aired by anyone, regardless of how important the story may be.
In the wake of September 11 a nationalistic movement disguised under the banner of patriotism was gathering momentum preventing journalists from questioning the US decision to invade Iraq. The tenuous link between Saddam Hussian and supposed WMD along with non-existent links with Osama Bin Laden were not questioned in depth and to an extent that you would expect journalists to do. This was based out of a fear that any questions implying that the Bush administration was in the wrong would be shamed upon as being unpatriotic.
A cartoon from 2003 when America invaded Iraq
The result of this was an entire American public not being properly informed about the true nature of the war and the conquest of Iraq for its natural resources.
As Pilger argues in his documentary it is all in an effort to ‘sell’ the war as a product to the masses. Appealing to peoples rational and logic in doing this is not feasible as even the ‘dumb masses’ will gradually work out that invading countries for their oil is not the thing to do. Instead to create an effective PR campaign and to ensure the public’s support for such a war, it is imperative that the effort appeals to peoples emotional side where rational has no belonging.
The ‘War on Terror’ and the international terrorist organisation that is ready to strike at a moments notice anywhere around the world is apart of this campaign of fear, that fuels the continual support for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and now Libya.
Fox News and their coverage of the 'War on Terror'
So what is the role of the journalist in all of this?
During the Iraq war there were many reporters embedded with coalition forces with the aim of providing news from the front line. What ended up happening was journalists becoming personally attached and involved with many of the troops that were protecting them. The journalists were only allowed to go where they were told and what they witnessed was censored at a high level. Subsequently the reporting that came from the front lines through the major TV networks were greatly slanted towards the coalition PR efforts and not ‘fair and balanced’ as Fox News tag line claims it to be.
So what is the future of journalism in covering wars that are lead by countries that spend billions on defence public relations?
Feel free to comment….
Andrew Bolt’s Blog – the far-right segment of the ‘Opinion Cycle’
On Q&A two weeks ago, Lachlan Harris, the former media adviser to Kevin Rudd claimed that the influence the media has on the public has changed along with its news cycle, from that of information to that of opinion. Claiming that what Laurie Oaks and other media personalities has to say is more important than the actual news itself is rather a big statement.
“The new news cycle – the news cycle is getting supplanted by an opinion cycle and basically that opinion cycle is brutal. It is really, really nasty, but it’s also very powerful.
Opinion cycle is if you imagine in the old days the news – what was the news on the front page of the news and the TV was the most valuable currencies in the information environment in politics.
That’s over now. It’s opinions that matter in modern politics and information environment. It’s what talkback hosts are saying. It’s what columnists are saying. It’s what is on blogs and, you know, in social media and it is going to be – it’s a really nasty cycle.
That’s the reality because opinion is much harsher than – opinion is much harsher than fact and you’re going to see – if the days of people – really popular politicians unfortunately or nice – it’s over.”
This revelation is kind of scary when you think about the range and extremities of the media and political commentators that exist in the mainstream media.
Take Andrew Bolt, who claims to be the most read political commentator, and his and Blog post on the Herald Sun. He pumped out 9 blog posts by 4pm today on a range of topics from Julian Gillard and her relationship with the Greens to last nights Q&A and Kevin Rudd’s startling admission that members of his cabinet convinced him to drop the ETS which later resulted in the political coup that ended his reign as PM.
Readers consume this information and opinion religiously and always seem to be the first ones to comment on the site. There is the odd argument but after analyzing a few of his stories, it becomes apparent that a majority of his readers are like minded right-wing political junkies.
So the fact that Bolt’s opinion is becoming more valuable than fact is rather concerning. Its like people have become so lazy that they need these political commentators to form an opinion for them.
Here’s hoping that Pauline Hanson doesn’t get some wild idea to start up her own blog…
The Rise of China – Is it ‘offensive’ or ‘defensive’ in nature and what this means for Australia and the rest of the Asia-Pacific
MANY ARGUE that the recent militarisation of China, particularly its Navy, is a reaction to the growing dependence on the Strait of Malacca, through which a great majority of its energy resources, particularly oil, are delivered. However, some have a more realist and cynical approach sighting Chinese plans to build their own fleet of air craft carriers as a clear statement of intent that China plans to exert its superior force away from its shores in an offensive manner.
Australia, with its close economic ties to China, along with the shrinking US influence within the region, could soon face a stern test of its diplomatic powers, not only deciphering Chinese intentions, but potentially responding to an aggressive and expansive China. With its ever-growing economic and militaristic forces that are destined to make it a superior power in the near future, many realist thinkers are predicting that China will soon become the regional hegemon through a display of force.
The Rise of China
The rise of China over the last thirty years has seen the country go from a Communist state of which all its economic decisions were made, to a market based economy that has been constantly growing at around 8-9% for the last twenty years. The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development estimates that from 2010 to 2025 300 million Chinese now living in rural areas will move into cities. This trend of urbanisation has fuelled an intense demand for raw materials and as a result China became the world’s 2nd biggest economy in 2010 and in the same year became the world’s biggest energy consumer.
With Australia possessing some of the largest deposits of coal and iron ore in the world, the development of a Free Trade Agreement FTA has had significant economic benefits for both Australia and China. China is now Australia’s third largest overall trading partner, with 2-way trade in goods and services trebling since 1996, to $23.3 billion in 2003.
It has also resulted in, as liberal thinkers argue, China becoming interdependent on not just Australia but also on other Asian neighbours for its economic growth. Liberal thinkers argue that these economic partnerships will ensure that China’s rise will remain peaceful, because it has the effect of damping tendencies towards conflict and the cost of war would be too great. Furthermore, Liberalists argue that due to the huge growth experienced, China will subsequently have a more modern approach to foreign policy and will ensure greater communication and ultimately even a level of trust between the theoretical Communist state and the rest of the world.
However, it seems that the growing trend of foreign trade has lead China to becoming dependant on importing oil, most of which it receives from the middle-east. It is estimated that oil importation has grown at an average rate of 9.1 percent annually from 1993 to 1998 with consumption reaching 7.9 MBD million barrels per day in 2008.
This phenomenon has resulted in China becoming extremely dependant on its sea lanes of communication SLOCs, none more so than the Strait of Malacca, via which Asia, not just China, receives 85% of its energy imports. This glaring dependency and potential weakness has resulted in Chinese leaders fearing that whoever controls the Strait of Malacca and the Indian Ocean could block China’s oil transport route which would be devastating for China’s economy.
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Not exclusively for this reason, China has belligerently improved its military, increasing the number and capabilities of its nuclear forces, submarines, surface ships, aircraft and missiles, which has resulted in a growing ability to project its hard power, should it so desire. Subsequently the nature of the Chinese military build-up has been described as posing the single most dangerous challenge to the security of the Asia-Pacific region since that of Imperial Japan.
ASEAN states are also being affected by Chinas increasing regional power projection, with the strategic balance between ASEAN and China shifting drastically creating a regional imbalance and subsequent security dilemma for these states.
The result of this is an arms-race like effect, with neighbouring countries making amends for Chinese growth by expanding their own military, particularly their navel capabilities. The most notable nations include Malaysia receiving its first submarines in 2009, Singapore about to update two of its four submarines in 2011 with former Swedish vessels, and Vietnam placing an order for six Kilo-class submarines.
When analysing this from a realist approach, a clear distinction has to be made between offensive and defensive realism. Realism itself is described as an endless competition to ensure national survival with deterrence, containment, power alliances and balance of power politics being the hallmarks of realism. However this definition needs to be further defined in order to understand the intention of state actors.
Offensive realism, as the name would suggest, involves a nation state looking to expand its power and reach by taking advantage of other surrounding weaker states. Defensive realism is what occurs when a nation feels threatened by another nation(s) who may have the same interests. There is always an underlying suspicion of other powers, particularly in Asia, and their possible intentions to exert power on one another. Subsequently the nation that feels threatened could take action to increase its own defence and security capacity.
There is strong evidence to suggest that this is occurring with China and its regional neighbours. China, with its growing dependency on its SLOCs, is reacting in a typically defensive fashion; however surrounding countries have not perceived this accordingly and are highly sceptical of its intentions.
Subsequently these countries, including Australia, have all declared intentions to increase their maritime and navel divisions and have they themselves reacted in line with defensive realist approach.
The current reciprocal militarisation that is occurring throughout the region is best described by Alexander Wendt when he says:
When a defensive realist nation pursues such strategies, other nations often misconstrue them as threats of force leading to their own pursuit of similar strategies, further decreasing collective security. This type of mirroring can lead to a reciprocal cycle of action and reaction.
More specifically in the case of China and the Asia-Pacific, Jason Blazevic argues:
If China and its competitors repeatedly interpret each other’s defensive actions to be offensive in nature, a cycle of mirror reactions may ensue, continuously escalating tensions between them—potentially even to the point of conflict.
But what is most concerning to neighbouring countries is the ambition of the Chinese to expand the Peoples Liberation Army Navy’s PLAN to not just include nuclear submarines capable of launching ballistic missiles, as it currently has, but to also include its own fleet of Varyag aircraft carries which would greatly increase its capacity to project air power away from Chinese waters.
The future of the Chinese Navy
In December 2008, China’s Ministry of National Defence spokesman, Senior Colonel Huang Xueping, said that China is “seriously considering” adding an aircraft carrier to its fleet, because “the aircraft carrier is a symbol of a country’s overall national strength, as well as the competitiveness of the country’s naval force.”
Again the issue of interpreting whether China’s actions are offensive or defensive in nature is troublesome to say the least. As John Mearsheimer states unlike military capabilities, intentions cannot be empirically verified… are in the minds of decision-makers and they are especially difficult to discern. On the topic of China however, Mearsheimer has a clearer understanding on the country’s intentions:
“If offensive realism is correct, we should expect a rising China to imitate the USA and attempt to become a regional hegemon in Asia. China will seek to maximize the power gap between itself and its neighbours… and will want to make sure that it is so powerful that no state in Asia has the wherewithal to threaten it. An increasingly powerful China is also likely to try to push US military forces out of Asia, much the way the USA pushed the European great powers out of the Western Hemisphere in the nineteenth century.”
If Mearsheimer’s forecast is anything to go by, China, through the expansion of PLAN and maritime supremacy, will be looking to project its might on the surrounding region to achieve regional hegemony. For Australia, as a major trading partner of China and a western outpost in the Asia-Pacific, this could be an extremely challenging scenario.
Realistically, the only hope that Australia has of avoiding such a predicament would be to engage with China at a diplomatic level in partisan with other Asian nations. This approach, rather than trying to contain China, as the realist paradigm would prescribe, would greatly increase the likelihood that China should be able to coexist peacefully with both its neighbour’s and the USA. In policy terms, both the liberal and constructivist logic is reflected in characterisation’s of China as a country that is moving inexorably towards becoming a more responsible stakeholder both globally and within its own Asian region.
This sentiment is echoed in Australia with the 2009 Defence Whitepaper stating …we need to engage China as a responsible stakeholder in support of our common desire to see stable, prosperous and well-governed nations in our immediate region.
However on a more realist approach the paper, Defending Australia in the Asia Pacific Century: Force 2030 acknowledges that it is the beginning of the end of the so-called unipolar moment in which Australia’s key ally, the USA, reigned supreme for almost two decades. As a direct result of this, the paper claims that China will also become the strongest military power within the region, by a considerable margin and has subsequently pinpointed China as a potential military threat and recommended the purchase of an extra 12 new submarines to help ward off any naval incursions.
The Collins Class Submarine - Due to be replaced
On reflection of the paper, it seems that not even the Australia Government, and the then Chinese speaking Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, had a clear understanding of Chinese intentions. This suspicion of confusion is confirmed when the paper later prescribes that greater engagement is essential to encourage transparency about Chinese military capabilities and intentions and highlights that developing our defence relationship with China is therefore a priority.
It is apparent that regardless of Chinese intentions whether they are offensive or defensive in nature, Australia’s role, through its own admission in the whitepaper, will be one of engaging with a country that is both an economically and militaristically superior force. The successfulness of this is anyone’s best guest, but Australia, along with its regional neighbour’s, will surely hope that Liberalist predictions are correct and that China, through its growth, will become a responsible stakeholder within the region.
Documentaries – Entertaining and Educating GEN Y
I have just finished watching the Oscar-winning documentary ‘Inside Job’ and am pleased to say that for the first time I now have a basic understanding of how the Global Financial Crisis happened. In one hour and forty minutes I have been educated about the most important financial incident since the great depression and surprisingly, it was more than entertaining.
Yes, I do feel pretty mad right now at the bankers and their complete lack of decency for the rest of society. I am perhaps even more cynical about the credit rating organizations that had the moral responsibility to inform potential investors about the vulnerability of the loans they were making.
No, I won’t be walking into a Commonwealth Bank branch tomorrow with a SPAS-12 and taking sweet revenge on all those greedy bankers. But I am now certainly aware of the shortcomings of deregulation and how the bad decisions of coked-up, hooker-chasing Banking Executives can effect the manufacturing levels in China and the financial growth of countries like Singapore.
If I was given all this information in a formal report and expected to read it, there would be a fair chance that I would emerge from the final page with a blank look on my face. Reading a report a few hundred pages long about the perils of the derivative market and why it should be regulated would be so mind numbingly boring to the majority of the population, that most of the important details would go unnoticed.
I think this is the power of documentaries. It has the capacity to inform and educate a generation of entertainment hungry morons who have the attention span of a common house fly.
I think by far the most disturbing and enraging documentary that I have seen as been ‘The Cove’, which won the academy award in 2010. It depicts the annual killing of bottle-nosed dolphins in a tiny fishing village in Japan. There is just something about watching an animal, almost as smart as you, trying to escape whilst a fellow human being hacks it to death with a long sickle shaped device, as if he was the Grim Reaper himself.
A scene from 'The Cove'
The film highlights the fact that the number of dolphins killed in the Taiji dolphin hunting drive is several times greater than the number of whales killed in the Antarctic, and claims that 23,000 dolphins are killed in Japan every year in the country’s whaling industry. The migrating dolphins are herded into a hidden cove where they are netted and killed by means of spears and knives over the side of small fishing boats.
Ever since the film premiered there has been outage in western countries about the way in which the Japanese carried out their slaughter of the mammals. Since then the annual hunt, which begins traditionally on the September 1st every year, has been significantly reduced. It even resulted in Broome WA, denouncing its sister-city relations with Taiji.
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Again, because of a hard-hitting documentary, people have been informed of the world around them and just how wrong it can be. The adage that ‘a picture speaks a thousand words’ rings true in every sense, as no number of reports or graphs will ever be able to trigger the human emotion that is felt when watching a dolphin being slaughtered or a family being evicted from the home to live rough on the street.
Wikileaks Billboard has FOX News talking in tongues
So I was sitting in front of my computer wondering what to write about when I checked my Google reader and noticed a new alert had come through about Julian Assange and a billboard that has been erected in Hollywood by obviously wealthy supporters of the Australian.
I clicked on the link and it took me to a Fox News website which had me concerned that I was about to be shoveled some far right patriot crap about how Assange is a terrorist and should be killed like any other ‘armed combatant’.
Expecting this and not much else I watched the video and almost fell off my chair 20 seconds in…..
The first thing I did was pinch myself…I couldn’t believe what I was watching…well I could as many people share this view, BUT ON THE FOX NEWS NETWORK???
Just Checked the date and its not April 1st. In a couple days maybe but not yet. Or maybe the Fox News reader needs to practice his practical joke on Fox Business before letting rip next Friday on a show like the O’Reiley Factor.
I wasn’t the only one astounded by this video with viewers leaving comments such as :
WTF??? I had to rub my eyes to make sure it was FOX… fox??? Fox giving a positive account of wikileaks without sarcasm\bashful comments.. wow…
what’s that? 40 seconds of sanity vs 168hrs of madness?
No wonder this came through the Wikileaks Twitter account as this is a HUGE first, comparative perhaps to the Apollo 11 Moon landing and the Fall of the Berlin Wall. This would have to be the first time in its history that the the Fox News Network has broadcast such a progressive and spot on view on a topic…particularly that of Julian Assange and Wikileaks.
As for the Billboard itself…
Julian Assange looms over the intersection of Highland Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood
If you are a fan of Julian Assange and what he along with his other Wikileaks peers are trying to do, this is almost worth a trip to the US!! After the long flight over the pacific all you would have to do would be to follow the Google Map below and work out a way to get yourself in the photo with JA. Maybe bring along some climbing equipment or a really big ladder.
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As for the Fox News network…I am shocked beyond comprehension. I don’t know whether to congratulate you or scratch my head one think to myself “What on earth or they up to?”
Tennis Prize Money – Should there be gender equality?
If there was ever a man that should disagree with the above video and encourage equal pay in sport for women it would be me. I would happily tote the feminist belief that what men and woman do in the sporting area are equally entertaining and equally important. I guess the reason behind this is not so much one of ideological belief but more so the prospect of a wealthier lifestyle.
My Mother, Helen Gourlay, was a tennis player that competed on the world tour for almost a decade before retiring in 1978. She reached World Number 1 in the Doubles and World Number 12 in the singles. The problem was that back then Woman’s tennis was only an amateur sport, unlike the Men’s tour which was fully professional and much easier to make a living off. So when mum won the doubles tournament at Wimbledon, she received 40 British Pounds in prize money, enough for her flight to the next tournament maybe. Compare that to today’s standards and the winner of the doubles receives 233,000 pounds.
If mum had of played 10 years later there would be no need to be writing this blog as I would not be at university, for there would be no need for me to work as my family would be rich!!! But unfortunately that is not the case.
The US Open was the first Grand Slam on the pro tour to offer equal prize money in 2006 and the other major tournaments followed suit not long after. The equal offering of prize money is in the interest of gender equality in the sport, but it is something that has raised hot debate about its fairness and I cannot help but agree with some of the arguments.
Firstly I believe and accept that nobody is the same and the hopes of world equality, not just in sport, is a farce that will never be achieved. I am not saying that it shouldn’t be pursued, but I am not holding my breath in anticipation.
Everyone has their own talents and I think a lot of that comes down to genetics and what is passed onto them by their parents. When was the last time a white guy won the 100m sprint at the Olympics?(1980 Moscow – Alan Wells from GB)
I am always amazed that woman want ‘gender equality’ in sport and equal pay but when the mention of holding the tournament in a ‘inter-gender’ fashion, not having separate draws based on sex but putting everyone in one all encompassing draw as equals, the feminist cries seem to change their tone.
After all that is complete equality isn’t it, everyone treated equally regardless of their physical abilities?
Even Serena Williams says that the top 100 Men’s tennis players would ‘thrash her.
Also there is the issue of Men playing five sets, and woman only having to play three sets. Even though they get payed the same? This disparity in the scoring structure demonstrates inequality.
It is a fact the men have to engage in more gruelling matches because of the nature of a five-set match. Even if they win in straight sets and a female player must battle for three sets to get past an opponent, over the course of a two-week major, men will accumulate more hours on court.
I guess my argument is that for the Men’s and Women’s events to be viewed equally, they must play equally.
Australian Open champion Serena Williams pocketed $1.3 million for the tournament, the same as male winner Rafael Nadal.
At the Wimbeldon 2010 Championships, Williams pocketed a cheque for $A1.8 million for eight hours, 11 minutes work whilst the Men’s first-round loser Nicolas Mahut departed with a cheque for $A20,283.0.
This was despite playing more games and spending longer time on court in one match than the Women’s world No.1 did in the entire tournament.
Is this fair and equal? Or has political correctness taken a step too far?
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