Two views, one from here in Australia and the other on the global scene. From my perspective, the last decade has brought both remarkable levels of carnage by both Western actions and Islamists but also a growing awareness of where the real threats reside, and it isn’t from some men in a cave in Afghanistan…
Showing all posts tagged mainstream media
Memo to New York Times; you have no idea about the Middle East
Angry Arab: While watching the scenes in Egypt today [protestors breaking into the Israeli embassy in Cairo], [New York Times columnist] Thomas Friedman, should have tweeted this to himself: I am so clueless. … I have no idea what is going on in the Middle East. … I was sitting in my suite at the Marriott and…
Wonder why Americans are largely ignorant about the world?
Media diversity in the age of the internet offers even less excuses for the corporate press to ignore the depth and complexity of the world. And yet… Evidence one (via the Columbia Journalism Review): For the first time in history, mankind is developing a universal language: video. People now communicate with video on two billion…
Post 9/11 MSM thinking; get somebody, anybody
As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, get ready for an orgy of self-justification (endless war is required because “they” still hate us). This piece by Seamus Milne in the UK Guardian is fascinating because it reveals the mindset of so many elites to the terror attacks. It’s a handy reminder that fear-mongers and war-mongers…
Wikileaks has shown us a world we need to know
Wikileaks has its share of critics – the organisation is too centred around Julian Assange and a personality-type cult exists – but surely the vast bulk of information the group has released since 2006 makes it a major force for good (not least because it’s forced governments and many journalists on the defensive about their…
Guess who was helping Gaddafi stay in power?
The role of Western companies helping repressive regimes monitoring their citizens is only getting worse, as I document in my book The Blogging Revolution. This week the Wall Street Journal secured a cracking exclusive about Libya and the fine, upstanding people helping Gaddafi remain thuggish: On the ground floor of a six-story building here, agents…
So now we know who has been talking to the US covertly
Philip Dorling writes in Fairfax in Australia that there are serious questions about who holds vital information, who releases it, who should horde it and where responsibility lies in an age where Wikileaks (rightly) forces governments and journalists to own up to their own culpability in human rights abuses and cover-ups: Confirmation that the full…
Why the Murdoch empire in Australia threatens democracy
Melbourne academic Robert Manne rightly calls for a neutering of Murdoch empire power in Australia: The company’s domination of our newspaper market poses a real and present danger to the health of Australian democracy … Unquestioning support for American foreign policy led the paper to conduct an extraordinarily strident campaign in favour of an invasion…