Media inquiry calls for single watchdog

By Kylie Simmons

Updated March 02, 2012 21:11:20

VIDEO: Australian Press Council chair Julian Disney discusses the media inquiry recommendations (ABC News)

RELATED STORY: Media inquiry to hold first hearings

RELATED STORY: Conroy defends media inquiry

RELATED STORY: News Ltd to cooperate with media inquiry

RELATED STORY: Former judge to head media inquiry

MAP: Australia

An inquiry into Australia's print media has recommended a new council to oversee all news media organisations.

The News Media Council would be government-funded and would regulate print, radio, TV and for the first time, online.

The inquiry was set up in the wake of Britain's phone-hacking scandal.

In September the Federal Government asked former Federal Court justice Ray Finkelstein QC to lead an independent inquiry into the Australian media.

After months of hearings he has released his findings, with his main recommendation to establish the council, setting new journalistic standards for all media.

The council would take away responsibility for news and current affairs from the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), which looks after broadcasting, and it would also take away responsibility from the Australian Press Council.

The report found the Press Council suffers from serious structural constraints and that ACMA's complaints-handling processes were "cumbersome and slow".

The new council would also handle complaints by the public when standards are breached and it would have the power to make media organisations publish an apology, a correction or retraction or give a complainant a right to reply.

Support 'quality journalism'

Greens leader Bob Brown played an integral role pushing for the inquiry after the News Of The World hacking scandal broke in the UK.

"What [Justice Finkelstein is] looking at here is not punitive action on the media in terms of fines or imprisonment, but rather remedy of inaccuracies or falsehoods or slander if that occurs to people and they're hurt by it," Senator Brown said.

"And I think the public will be right behind that. The best way to do that is to require news outlets where they've made a mistake to remedy it.

"I think that we have an inadequate system of serving the public interest and truth, which are the two first things mentioned in the journalist code of ethics in this country at the moment, and I think this is a big step towards fulfilling the journalists' code of ethics and making sure that quality journalism is supported."

Press Council chairman Professor Julian Disney says its future is now in the hands of publishers.

"I think the problem that Mr Finkelstein faced is that he understandably felt that at least some of the publishers were not willing to provide the extra resources and other support that we need to be able to perform effectively," he said.

"I think it's clear from the report that is really the main reason why he then went for another approach and I think that clearly lays down a challenge now for the publishers.

"Do they want to avoid the kind of body he proposes, which is created by government and entirely funded by government and has quite some risks of excessive legalism?

"If they do, then they're going to have to provide more resources and more support and accept that we need some firmer powers. So really the ball is now in their court."
Conroy meeting

Key publishers are planning to meet Communications Minister Stephen Conroy in the coming weeks.

Senator Conroy has released a statement saying the recommendations will be considered but no action is likely to be taken until a wider review of the media is completed later this month.

The convergence inquiry is examining a range of regulatory issues across broadcasting, radio and telecommunications.

Opposition communication spokesman Malcolm Turnbull says a News Media Council does not appeal to the Coalition.

"The segment of the media that is most criticised for lacking in accuracy in balance is commercial talkback radio, but it is regulated by ACMA," he said.

"Metropolitan newspapers, on the other hand, are generally regarded as being doing better in terms of accuracy and balance and yet they are completely unregulated.

"So I think those observations, most people would agree with. Why would your conclusion from that be that the way to get more balance and accuracy is to have more regulation?"

Fairfax media issued a statement saying it is pleased the report acknowledges upfront the importance of a free press in a democratic society and that regulation should not endanger that role.

Like many other media organisations, Fairfax is going through the 474-page report and any further comments will be made in the coming days.

Topics: media, industry, business-economics-and-finance, print-media, federal-government, government-and-politics, australia

First posted March 02, 2012 15:19:18

How to make a movie poster

You think you just randomly ended up in that movie-theater seat watching things explode? No, that was the end result of a meticulously crafted propaganda campaign by the movie studio, utilizing all the persuasive powers of graphic design—as wonderfully elucidated in the infographic below, from Colour Lovers, examining the posters from the top 10 blockbusters of 2011. There are lots of interesting tidbits—note the preponderance of sans serif fonts and all caps, and the various textures and sight lines utilized. Did these factors alone fill theaters? Of course not. It helped that almost all of these movies were sequels—expanding on the equity built up in previous ad campaigns. Via Fast Company.

 click to embiggen

TV Tropes

I recently found a great resource for teaching/learning about Narrative in Cinema Studies, it's called TV Tropes and it has heaps of links and information. But hey, enough of my yackin' Let's see what they have to say on their homepage.


What is this about? This wiki is a catalog of the tricks of the trade for writing fiction.

Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations. On the whole, tropes are not clichés. The word clichéd means "stereotyped and trite." In other words, dull and uninteresting. We are not looking for dull and uninteresting entries. We are here to recognize tropes and play with them, not to make fun of them.

The wiki is called "TV Tropes" because TV is where we started. Over the course of a few years, our scope has crept out to include other media. Tropes transcend television. They reflect life. Since a lot of art, especially the popular arts, does its best to reflect life, tropes are likely to show up everywhere.

We are not a stuffy encyclopedic wiki. We're a buttload more informal. We encourage breezy language and original thought. There Is No Such Thing As Notability, and no citations are needed. If your entry cannot gather any evidence by the Wiki Magic, it will just wither and die. Until then, though, it will be available through the Main Tropes Index.

We are also not a wiki for bashing things. Once again, we're about celebrating fiction, not showing off how snide and sarcastic we can be.

Enough about what we are not. Go on, have a look at the welcome page, and have fun!

Television 'misrepresents' young people and older women

Broadcasters negatively stereotype young people and fail to put enough older women on screen, says BBC-commissioned report

by John Plunkett, guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 31 January 2012

The BBC-commissioned report comes just over a year after former Countryfile presenter Miriam O’Reilly won her landmark ageism case against the BBC. Photograph: Rex Features

Broadcasters have been accused of negatively stereotyping young people and failing to put enough older women on screen, according to a BBC-commissioned report.

The survey of viewers and industry experts found that more than 40% of young people were dissatisfied with the way they were portrayed on screen.

Younger viewers complained that they were stereotyped as being "disrespectful" and living "unproductive and vacuous lives".

Older viewers also thought they tended to be stereotyped on television, but of more concern was the lack of middle-aged and older women on the small screen.

The report comes a year after former Countryfile presenter Miriam O'Reilly won her landmark ageism case against the BBC after she was axed from the BBC1 rural affairs show.

"There was a particular and strong concern voiced about the lack of middle-aged and older female representation on television," said the report.

"This view was expressed by both men and women of all ages but was much more ardently voiced by middle-aged and older women who believed that a person develops a 'face for radio' at a certain point in their middle years."

More than a third of women over 55 said there were too few of them on television.

The negative portrayal of older people revolved around the perceived incapacity of old people and "perceptions about a reluctance to move with the times and tendency to moan", said the report.

Viewers accused the media of being "insulting" and "out of step" with the ageing society.

"There is some concern about the way different ages are sometimes at best presented as slightly humorous but exaggerated caricatures and at worst as negative stereotypes," concluded the report.

It said the audience would "welcome more middle- and older-aged women on television providing positive role models and greater genderequality".

The research was commissioned by the BBC on behalf of the Creative Diversity Network, a forum of UK media organisations set up to improve diversity across the industry and chaired by BBC director general Mark Thompson.

It followed O'Reilly's high-profile tribunal victory in January last year.

The former Countryfile presenter parted company with the corporation earlier this month and will launch a support network for women facing discrimination in the workplace next month.

The report, called Serving All Ages and carried out by independent social research institute NatCen, interviewed 180 participants, aged from 13 to 92, as well as industry experts.

It investigated how people felt they were portrayed in relation to their age in the media as a whole, including TV, radio and the internet.

Infographic: Hollywood's long war on technology

Infographic by Anne Rhodes via matadornetwork.com

By Cory Doctorow at 1:13 pm Saturday, Jan 28

You know, when I was sitting down with entertainment execs on a regular basis to debate applied, practical technology choices in DRM standards bodies, their constant refrain was, "We love technology! We use it all the time!" The implication being that if they instigated a law prohibiting a technology it would not represent ignorance or fear, but well-informed solemn judgement. I'd often cite Jack Valenti's infamous words to Congress: "The VCR is to the American film industry as the Boston Strangler is to a woman home alone," and they'd scoff. "Why do you always bring that up? It's ancient history!" And I'd say, "Oh, do you repudiate Jack Valenti, then? Because the last time I checked, you guys renamed your headquarters (I shit you not) the Jack Valenti Building." And they'd say, "Ha, ha, very funny. But seriously, is one wrong-headed statement from Jack all you've got?" And then I'd go into the long list of all the crap they'd fought as an industry, from the remote control to cable TV, from diversified cinema ownership to yeah, the VCR, and they'd mumble something about how EFF stood for "Everything For Free," and I just didn't understand the arts. Which always made me laugh because generally speaking I was the only working creative artist in the discussion, and I'd often be going to meetings in between working on novels. Clearly, to understand the arts you need to be an entertainment industry lawyer working for a giant multinational conglomerate, not a working artist.

Anyway, if I was still in those stuffy, hateful rooms where they plotted to ban technologies, I'd print out a stack of this Matador Network infographics, which are a handy guide to the pig-ignorant campaigns that Hollywood has waged against new technologies since the industry's founders ripped off Thomas Edison's patents and fled to California.

Infographic: Why the movie industry is so wrong about SOPA

We Have Every Right to Be Furious About ACTA

from EFF.org Updates by parker

If there’s one thing that encapsulates what’s wrong with the way government functions today, ACTA is it. You wouldn’t know it from the name, but the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is a plurilateral agreementdesigned to broaden and extend existing intellectual property (IP) enforcement laws to the Internet. While it was only negotiated between a few countries,1 it has global consequences. First because it will create new rules for the Internet, and second, because its standards will be applied to other countries through the U.S.’s annual Special 301 process. Negotiated in secret, ACTA bypassed checks and balances of existing international IP norm-setting bodies, without any meaningful input from national parliaments, policymakers, or their citizens. Worse still, the agreement creates a new global institution, an "ACTA Committee" to oversee its implementation and interpretation that will be made up of unelected members with no legal obligation to be transparent in their proceedings. Both in substance and in process, ACTA embodies an outdated top-down, arbitrary approach to government that is out of step with modern notions of participatory democracy.

The EU and 22 of its 27 member states signed ACTA yesterday in Tokyo. This news is neither momentous nor surprising. This is but the latest step in more than three years of non-transparent negotiations. In December, the Council of the European Union—one of the European Union’s two legislative bodies, composed of executives from the 27 EU member states—adopted ACTA during a completely unrelated meeting on agriculture and fisheries. Of course, this is not the end of the story in the EU. For ACTA to be adopted as EU law, the European Parliament has to vote on whether to accept or reject it.

In the U.S., there are growing concerns about the constitutionality of negotiating ACTA as a “sole executive agreement”.  This is not just a semantic argument. If ACTA were categorized as a treaty, it would have to be ratified by the Senate. But the USTR and the Administration have consistently maintained that ACTA is a sole executive agreement negotiated under the President’s power. On that theory, it does not need Congressional approval and thus ACTA already became binding on the US government when Ambassador Ron Kirk signed it last October.

But leading US Constitutional Scholars disagree. Professors Jack Goldsmith and Larry Lessig, questioned the Constitutionality of the executive agreement classification in 2010:

The president has no independent constitutional authority over intellectual property or communications policy, and there is no long historical practice of making sole executive agreements in this area. To the contrary, the Constitution gives primary authority over these matters to Congress, which is charged with making laws that regulate foreign commerce and intellectual property.2

(And by the way, we agree [pdf].)

Senator Ron Wyden has been asking these questions for years, first demanding an explanation from USTR ambassador Ron Kirk, President Obama, and now the administration’s top international law expert Harold Koh. The distinction between executive agreement and treaty should not be lost on this administration: as a Senator, Vice President Joe Biden used the same argument to require the Bush administration to seek Senate approval for an arms reduction agreement.

Public interest groups and informed politicians have long lamented these problems with ACTA. But the impact of dubious backroom law-drafting is getting fresh attention in light of the powerful global opposition movement that has emerged out of last week’s Internet blackout protests. Activists and netizens all around the world have woken up to the dangers of overbroad enforcement law proposals drafted by monopoly industry lobbyists, and rushed into law through strategic lobbying by the same corporate interests that backed SOPA and PIPA. Tens of thousands are protesting in the streets in Poland as their ambassador signed the agreement in Tokyo. The EU Parliament’s website and others have come under attack for their involvement in these laws. The Member of the European Parliament who was appointed to be the rapporteur for ACTA in the European Parliament, Kader Arif, quit yesterday in protest. In a statement he said:

I want to denounce in the strongest possible manner the entire process that led to the signature of this agreement: no inclusion of civil society organisations, a lack of transparency from the start of the negotiations, repeated postponing of the signature of the text without an explanation being ever given, exclusion of the EU Parliament's demands that were expressed on several occasions in our assembly…This agreement might have major consequences on citizens' lives, and still, everything is being done to prevent the European Parliament from having its say in this matter. That is why today, as I release this report for which I was in charge, I want to send a strong signal and alert the public opinion about this unacceptable situation. I will not take part in this masquerade.

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves. ACTA may have been signed by public officials, but it’s crystal clear that they are not representing the public interest.

It is now up to the collective will of the public to decide what to do next, and for individuals to ask themselves what they want their government to look like. Do you believe in democracy? Do you believe that laws should be made to reflect our collective best interests, formulated through an open transparent process? One that allows everyone, from experts to civil society members, to analyze, question and probe an agreement that will lead to laws that will impact potentially billions of lives? If we don’t do anything now, this agreement is going to crawl itself into power. With the future at stake like this, it’s never too late to fight.
~
If you live in Europe, follow these links to learn how you can take immediate action and stay informed on the latest updates:

La Quadrature du Net (@laquadrature): How to Act Against ACTA

European Digital Rights (@EDRi_org): Stop ACTA!

Open Rights Group (@OpenRightsGroup): ACTA: signed, not yet sealed - now it's up to us

Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (@FFII): ACTA Blog

For those in the U.S., you can demonstrate your opposition to the dubious decision to negotiate ACTA as a sole executive agreement to bypass proper congressional review by signing this petition on the whitehouse.gov website, demanding the Administration submit ACTA to the Senate for approval.

EFF will continue to monitor ACTA's global implementation and watch for efforts to use ACTA to broaden US enforcement powers.

• 1. United States, Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Korea
• 2. (See also here [pdf] and here).

Related Issues: 

International

Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement

SOPA to create "Internet Blacklist"

from The Guardian by Dominic Rushe

Google, Twitter and eBay say controversial Stop Online Piracy Act would give US authorities too much power over websites. Internet giants went on the attack on Wednesday, claiming legislation aimed at tackling online piracy would create an "internet blacklist bill" that would encourage censorship, kill jobs and give US authorities unrivalled powers over the world's websites. Internet firms including Wikipedia owner Wikimedia, eBay, Google, Twitter and others protested as Congress discussed the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) now passing through Washington. The act aims to tackle online piracy by giving the US Justice Department new powers to go after websites, both domestically and abroad, that host disputed copyright material. The act would allow the US to effectively pull the plug on websites and go after companies that support them technically or through payment systems. A vote on the bill could come as early as next month.

Maria Pallante, register of copyrights, told the committee: "As we all know, the internet harbours a category of bad faith actors whose very business models consist of infringing copyright in American books, software, movies, and music with impunity.” She said these "rogue" sites were the "dark side of the internet", and that while American authors, publishers, and producers had been asked to invest in online commerce, "in critical circumstances we have left them to compete with thieves." SOPA would redress the balance she claimed by "ensuring that our law keeps pace with infringers." She said the act would requires "all key members of the online ecosystem, including service providers, search engines, payment processors, and advertising networks, to play a role in protecting copyright interests".

Mel Watt, a North Carolina Democrat and one of the bill's sponsors, dismissed as "hyperbolic" charges the bill "will open the floodgates to government censorship." He said the comments belittled "the circumstances under which true victims of tyrannical governments actually live." The act has powerful support from the United States Chamber of Commerce, the Motion Picture Association of America, the American Federation of Musicians, the Directors Guild of America, the Screen Actors Guild and drug companies keen for a crackdown on online pharmacies undercutting US sales. But it has met with almost universal criticism from the tech community. Mozilla, maker of the Firefox web browser, blacked out its name on its home page in an anti-SOPAprotest, as did Reddit, the social news site. Tumblr launched a page attacking the act, and firms including AOL, eBay, Facebook, Google, Twitter and Zynga criticised SOPA in a full-page advertisement in The New York Times. "We support the bills' stated goals – providing additional enforcement tools to combat foreign 'rogue' websites that are dedicated to copyright infringement or counterfeiting. Unfortunately, the bills as drafted would expose law-abiding US internet and technology companies to new and uncertain liabilities, private rights of action, and technology mandates that would require monitoring of websites," the firms wrote. "We are concerned that these measures pose a serious risk to our industry's continued track record of innovation and job creation, as well as to our nation's cyber-security."

In a blog post, Google said: "We strongly support the goal of the bill – cracking down on offshore websites that profit from pirated and counterfeited goods – but we're concerned the way it's currently written would threaten innovation, jobs, and free expression." Art Bordsky, spokesman for Public Knowledge, a Washington-based public policy group, said SOPA was "the proverbial bull in the proverbial china shop" and that the bill as it stands would have "terrible consequences" for the internet. "The international aspects alone are very worrying," he said. "It appears that the US is taking control of the entire world. The definitions written in the bill are so broad that any US consumer who uses a website overseas immediately gives the US jurisdiction the power to potentially take action against it."

At present, if Facebook, YouTube, or other leading websites are found to be holding copyright material without permission, then they are told to take it down. SOPA would make it possible for the US to block the website. Such far-reaching powers could kill smaller firms and put off investors from financing new companies, said Holmes Wilson, co-founder of Fight For The Future, a lobbying group. "Everybody uses the internet every day, these days. Everyone realises how important freedom is online. This isn't just for geeks anymore," he said. "The worst part of this bill is that the vast majority of the damage will be invisible – it will be all the companies that never start because this bill has effectively killed them."

Officials use ruse at high school to clear halls for drug search

By Mark Frauenfelder at 1:30 pm Monday, Oct 24 boingboing.net

[Video Link] Police and school administrators Wolcott High School in Connecticut tricked students and teachers into believing a dangerous intruder had come into the school building and ordered a lockdown. It was a ruse for a drug sweep of the lockers. No drugs were found. In the video, the police and Wolcott school superintendent Joseph Macary serve a large pile of steaming horseshit to defend their reckless stunt. As kehfysik says in the comments: "The teaching point here is that they can not trust the people into whose care they are given. The authorities will lie to you and try to use fear to control you. I hope the kids learn this."

At Wolcott High School one morning this week, an urgent announcement crackled over the intercom: a threatening intruder was in the building and students were told to immediately take refuge in classrooms. Doors were locked and police, with dogs, moved in. Students stayed huddled in classrooms where they were told to stay away from the windows.
But what sounded like a frightening situation was just a search for narcotics. Drug-sniffing dogs combed the school while students stayed in locked classrooms, believing that an attacker was roaming the halls.

Officials Use Ruse At Wolcott High To Clear Halls For Drug Search (Via The Agitator)

Here's another version:

Officials Use Ruse At Wolcott High To Clear Halls For Drug Search

Say There's An Intruder In Building, But It's Just A Drill

October 22, 2011|Rick Green articles.courant.com

At Wolcott High School one morning this week, an urgent announcement crackled over the intercom: a threatening intruder was in the building and students were told to immediately take refuge in classrooms. Doors were locked and police, with dogs, moved in. Students stayed huddled in classrooms where they were told to stay away from the windows. But what sounded like a frightening situation was just a search for narcotics. Drug-sniffing dogs combed the school while students stayed in locked classrooms, believing that an attacker was roaming the halls. Drug-free schools are an admirable goal but I wonder when we reached the point where the war on drugs justifies police searches under the ruse of a Virginia Tech-style attack. What on earth could authorities in Wolcott be thinking?

School officials told me it was a routine lockdown drill, the kind that schools are required to do. "We wanted to practice,'' said Superintendent of Schools Joseph McCary. "We said there was a lockdown with an intruder inside. Doors are locked, shades are drawn and the lights are turned off and students are told to move to a corner of the room." "After 10 minutes we say this is a drill and at that point we started a search for drugs,'' McCary said. "We are providing a safe and secure nurturing environment." [my emphasis] No drugs turned up in the search. An email from the high school to parents explained the event, without mentioning the intruder story. It was described as a "lockdown intervention drill" where "two police dogs swept the hallway lockers, locker rooms and the student parking lot.''

Bringing in police dogs to search for drugs in student lockers, while not common, isn't the real outrage here. It's understandable why adults feel they must do something about drug abuse. It's the trickery and tactics that seem more suited to a police sting operation than a public school. "I don't think the school administration and police department have any right to mislead these kids, under any circumstances, to conduct a public safety drill," said Carl Glendening, a parent of two high school students. "The kids are told there is an intruder and there is a lockdown and then they see cops coming in with dogs." "Some kids were freaked out by it. The notion of Columbine was in the back of their minds,'' Glendening said. "We didn't think this through clearly." "They are kids. They are students. They are not there to be used."

Andrew Schneider, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut, called it a "terrible policy. It will cause more trouble in the long run. Young people will learn not to trust the police." "It's a terrible civics lesson." While state law requires schools to have regular emergency drills, drug-sniffing-dog searches are up to the individual school district. Canton schools recently attracted attention for surprise drug searches using dogs. "The whole issue of search and seizure, you have to have reasonable suspicion, such as if they have had other issues in where the administration feels there's a drug problem in the school,'' said Vincent Mustaro of the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education. "This is one of those policies we consider optional."

School officials say it's not as if they think there's a drug problem in Wolcott. Bringing the dogs in "is precautionary," said school board Chairwoman Patricia Najarian, who added that she didn't see a problem with the fake intruder story. "Maybe there's a few people who get nervous. When we say it's a surprise drill, it's a surprise drill,'' she said. "We have a very active group of citizens against substance abuse." The drug search is "something that is good to do periodically. It says we don't have drugs in the school,'' she said. "Either way it's a win-win. I know people get concerned … there seems to be an overreaction." McCary, the Wolcott superintendent, said they want to teach students to take their safety seriously, so making them think it was real was essential. "If you say it's just a drill, would you move as quickly?" He makes a point, except that we don't set fires to get students to take fire drills more seriously. There's also another issue. If you say something important to teenagers and you want them to trust you, it's better not to lie.