Monday, August 31, 2009

It's all right now

On the West Coast this weekend Richmond did not articulate their plays quite as well as Cuzzy & while it's still unclear whether the snubb to local media was at his behest or that of the event organizers, those asked to leave volunteered to awaiting news media that they felt that they knew why they were the hacks Ben Cousins rejected.

Such instances would indicate that the mainstream media industry needs to review and reform its compliance to the code of ethics - campaigning for Freedom of Information in a repressive environment is laudable, but there is also a need to observe the right to privacy, particularly in times of grief.





It's really rather unprecedented for the employees of sponsors to have to be asked to leave an event because they, by their own words, considered that their conduct might be anticipated to be prejudicial.

Currently, media staff don't have to be regulated(AJA members), or even qualified, in order to work in the industry.

These guys got the scoop.

Monday, August 24, 2009

Government Spin - the Original Rope-a-dope

After a run of bad publicity Bligh blames it on the one percenters...




1%ers account for one in every hundred convictions, but the state government are in another legislative bid to usurp the power of the judiciary and improve pollies' pulling power at the polls.
This was what The Australian ran, and this was what was in the press release. Sadly, there is not much difference between the two, and it is the case that widespread redundancies in the mainstream media industry have forced journalists to use publicity releases by government spin doctors as copy. Dwindling newspaper circulations are creating an increasingly huge need for copious amounts of quick copy, in order to sell advertising space in the country's dailies. This could of course be countered via an increased market in independent copy in the savagely unregulated freelance market that exists in Australia without union restraint, and without award compliance.


Qld politicians do lead the way in the push for preventative detention. The Qld public was conditioned to accept the first preventative detention laws, at odds with the Australian Constitution, strategically implemented on the most unacceptable citizens through the DPSOA.

Under Article 14 of the ICCPR: 'All persons shall be equal before the courts and tribunals. In the determination of any criminal charge against him, or of his rights and obligations in a suit at law, everyone shall be entitled to a fair and public hearing by a competent, independent and impartial tribunal established by law.'
However it's generally interpreted that a country's obligations to UN Conventions should be observed but can not override the laws of a nation, even though ours are merely a slow drip feed from the UK.
With the new focus by the Rudd government on human rights, the UN Conventions that Australia ratifies should theoretically inform any new laws made in the states and territories who have promised their compliance to improving the country's standing on human rights in the international arena.
Was the sharp decline in popularity of the now former political leaders associated with launching preventative detention under the guise of national security fears, such as Bush, Blair and Howard, also an indication that any move to treat people unequally before the law, whether state or federal, isn't popular or commonly accepted?

Preventative detention is now being marketed in Queensland, and some other states against 1%ers and anyone who can be labelled as a 1%er, is now considered worthy by elected representatives of an unequal application of the state's laws.

So what racial or religious minorities will be first up on the list of those never to be released in the redneck state, in which, authorities see everyone but their own corrupt public officers as a clear and inherent risk?


Some might suggest that the blatantly unaddressed Indigenous incarceration rates comprise a massive human rights violation, and openly demonstrate preventative detention against racial minorities has been in effect for centuries and it is not the innovative or efficient crime prevention concept that new spin decrees.


The proposed laws curb the capacity for those suggested to be potential 'outlaws,' by Qld politicians and police, to do the things that other citizens have the freedom to, like socialize with friends and family who've also been branded as 'potential outlaws'(seeing them more than 3 times a year makes them an inmate), or to hold a liquor licence or a weapons licence. To work in security and to have enhanced security around one's home, is also 'outlawed' for those stigmatized as 'outlaws,' or suspected of future crimes via anti-association provisions.

If journalists actually speak to 'outlaws,' instead of just politicians and spin doctors, or have sources who are branded as 'outlaws,' it can and will justify intelligence officers surveilling them, and intruding on their work, and jeopardize the confidentiality of their sources. But strangely, the Qld media remain silently unopposed to the impact of the Act on the integrity of their work.


In the media release the Qld government strongly refuted that the laws would persecute just anyone who rides a motorbike, and that the underfunded 'Public Interest Monitor' could protect the interests of the innocent - although it could be argued that the existence of the court system is to determine guilt or innocence, rather than fortune telling to predict whether a citizen or a group of citizens may commit a crime at some point in the future.

Civil liberties groups
have argued that the short-sighted bill does less than nothing to address the weaknesses in Qld's corrupt public sector and that as a consequence, the laws will actually circumvent public sector transparency with the illusion that organized crime is under the control of a government which has not yet legislated to control its own questionable actions.

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Qld tabloid journo desperately seeking thesaurus

Despite an upcoming court case that requires very stringent reporting protocols in order not to jeopardize a fair outcome, a mild and ageing criminal with an age-old sexy media bricking, gets no presumption of innocence from The Australian's Sarah Elks.

Why forgo a hot headline with 'alleged,' when a crook has no recourse through defamation?


With the accused's last crime dating back at least 13 years, and at 47 years of age, the last 11 of those spent severely confined, it might be time for up and coming crime reporters to find a more timely or current target to vilify.

But in Qld's mainstream media, so 'notoriously' outed for their 'infamous' complicity in media brickings and police corruption during the Fitzgerald Inquiry, perhaps it suits troubled newspaper shareholder interests better not to stick to basic reporting laws?

I can't recall seeing any court pursue contempt or subjudice against a newspaper on behalf of an old crook.



However, what Sarah Elks does do very eloquently and innocently, is draw attention to a strange contradiction in the alleged evidence against the accused, who was returned to Supermax shortly prior to the announcement of the Qld election by the former finance minister, and now... premier.
Author Derek Pedley in 2006(two years less of solitary confinement) said the accused had spent longer in the United Nations condemned 'Supermax' isolation' (the long-term effects of which are well documented) than any man in Australian history though he is solely convicted of three charges of bank robbery dating back decades.

Elks in her court report writes that the QCS Acting Director General listed part of the alleged evidence for the accused being returned to Supermax in the 2nd week of August last year, as intelligence from September '08, well after he was moved to the Woodford Prison Detention Unit on the basis of those allegations.


For those of you still playing catch-up because you're more interested in civil liberties and actual facts than reading crime novels or salacious tabloid news, the accused's 'nickname' was invented by WA Police who thought it would sex up his story.

The false claims portrayed the hunted young fugitive as daring and provocative, and as such, made the story more marketable to a ravenous tabloid news media, after he broke out of the 'notorious' human rights-contravening Fremantle Prison - subsequently decommissioned due to inadherence to basic international prison standards.

Almost 2 & a half decades later, the same name is still being rehashed verbatim by a news media too understaffed and overworked to have an imagination.

It is a consideration in mainstream news dailies so dependent on truckloads of news fodder to sell advertising(although that probably isn't the case for the fine establishment that Sarah Elks writes for), that approaching each court case with a presumption of innocence, can have a strangely chilling effect on public sector sources.