Appalling

That's the only description for the news that Air New Zealand has been helping the "coalition of the willing" prosecute its illegal war in Iraq. When even Peter Dunne is resorting to calling them "lickspittle lackeys of the Australian and American Governments", you know they've really fucked up. Sure, they're a commercial operation, but at some stage common sense and ethics have to kick in about, say, not profiting from an illegal war. Unfortunately it didn't, and so for the sake of a few extra dollars Air New Zealand has now made their planes - and we poor suckers who fly on them - targets. Thanks, guys.

Meanwhile, quite apart from hauling Air New Zealand into line (can they add them to the SOE Act and so bring them under the social responsibility clause in s4 (1) (c)?), the government also needs to find out who in MFAT had the brilliant idea of not telling them that Air New Zealand had asked about permission to help in Bush's squalid little war. Because obviously, that's what you do on highly sensitive issues which are likely to inflame the electorate. OTOH, that's exactly what the government has been doing on Guantanamo, so maybe MFAT was just applying the same rule: don't talk about it, and hope that no-one notices. Unfortunately for them, it didn't work this time.

Finally, I'd like to add my voice to those congratulating Ian Wishart and Investigate for doing real journalism for once, rather than the usual slime and sleaze. If he does more of it, perhaps people will stop treating him as a pariah.

Sedition by Example XXV: Paddy Webb

(Being an attempt to excite hostility against our archaic law of sedition)

Patrick Charles Webb, MP, addressing a Labour Party meeting during local body elections, Greymouth, April 19th, 1917:

The miner is fighting against conscription, and would go to jail rather than shirk what they feel to be their duty to the country. That is their sentiment at the present time. They are not fighting for themselves alone. They are fighting for thousands of people who are not able to fight for themselves., and when the true history of the part played by the miners during this great struggle is written I am certain that the miner will stand out in letters of gold as compared with any other section of the community.

For saying this, and for a similar speech at a meeting in Taylorville in February, Webb was charged with sedition. After a trial which saw acting Prime Minister Sir James Allen called as a witness, he was convicted and sentenced to three months imprisonment. His seat was later declared vacant after he was conscripted, court-martialed, and sentenced to two years hard labour for refusing to serve, but Webb had the last laugh, serving as Minister of Mines in the First Labour Government.

Two other men who addressed the meeting - Greymouth Borough Council candidates James O'Brien and P. O'Rourke, were also prosecuted and imprisoned over speeches they had given. The use of the sedition law to persecute opposition candidates (and an opposition MP) for speeches made during an election campaign makes this the worst abuse of the sedition law in New Zealand history.

(Source: Maoriland Worker, May 16, 1917)

Sedition by Example XXIV: John Roche

(Being another example of the absurdity of our archaic law of sedition)

New Zealand's pettiest sedition prosecution is undoubtedly that of Father John Roche. A Catholic priest visiting from Australia, Father Roche got into a discussion with a soldier in the bar room of the Waverley Hotel. According to the subsequent report, "after a discussion on Irish politics, the conversation turned to conscription, and the recent referendum on the question in Australia". The discussion "heated up", and at some stage Father Roche said

The Germans are a better civilised nation than the british; you are a fool to go to the war.

For saying this, Roche was charged with sedition. While the judge was sympathetic, he was "surprised that a clergyman, presumably a man of education, should say the German nation was more civilised than our own". That remark lent "an unpleasant flavour" to the discussion, and suggested disloyalty. Roche was convicted, and fined 5 pounds plus costs; he subsequently returned to Australia.

(Unfortunately I neglected to note the date on the photocopied newspaper article, but a reference to it can be found in the notes to Sweetman's Bishop in the Dock: The Sedition Trial of James Liston).

Sedition by Example XXIII: Sidney Fournier

(Being an incomplete history of the abuses perpetrated under our archaic law of sedition)

Watersider Sidney Fournier speaking to a meeting in Wellington, Sunday, January 7th, 1917:

I belong to an organisation that has for its purpose to make inoperative or to repeal an Act that has been placed on the statute book called the Conscription Act,and by the provisions of which you may be forced against your will overseas to fight to fight in the war that is now going on. The chairman has called your attention to the fact that, upon a charge of unlawful assembling, the speakers who addressed you last Sunday have either been arrested or summoned, and I think the conclusion to draw from that is, of course, that we all here are unlawful assemblers. I want to give you this fair warning of the fact that if you listen to me you are doing what the law forbids, and I think under such circumstances that law is an offensive law that we, as good honest citizens and workers, should not obey. The view of us workers is that we should be fighting the only war in which we can at least become victorious - that is, the class war, or the war between the classes of people who own and control the wealth in all the countries that are now at war and the people who labor and are exploited by the wealthy classes in all countries. The truth is this war is being forced on by conscription, because as we know they take an opportunity that will produce them more wealth and give them more opportunity of oppression, until a peace could be brough about to their advantage, as they conceive it.

The immediate objective of the anti-conscriptionists is the repeal of the Act, or to resist the Act, and in operation we approve of both methods, and by us they will be put in operation. If I should be sent to intense privacy as the result of my present action, you people will see to it that the moment shall come to us that we have not spoken in vain. I hope I have put this clearly before you , and that you will remember that those whose interests it is to prolong the war will not stop it till you stop them. We call upon New Zealand, the working class associations and their allies, to join in getting the COnscription Act repealed and rsisting its operation.

For this "audacious advocacy" of repeal, Fournier was charged with sedition under the War Regulations of 1914. he was convicted, and sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment with hard labour.

(Source: Maoriland Worker, January 24, 1917).

A change of heart

The other news on youth rates this morning was the anouncement that Progressive Enterprises had reached an agreement with the NDU to reduce the use of youth rates and pay its younger workers the full adult rate after either 3 months or 200 hours. This mirrors the proposed amendments to the Minimum Wage (New Entrants) Amendment Bill (well, almost - its unclear whether its time with Progressive or time counted across any employer), and goes further in extending the adult rate to those under 16. It's a remarkable change of heart from a company which just last year was locking out its distribution workers; perhaps they've realised that so publicly screwing their workers is bad for their bottom line?

A small improvement

Sue Bradford's renamed Minimum Wage (New Entrants) Amendment Bill is before the House for its committee stage today, and there's been some welcome movement from the government on it. Government members had gutted the bill in Select Committee, replacing straight abolition of youth rates with a scheme which would see them still apply for the first 200 hours of employment. Now, in response to the Greens pointing out that part-time employment could see that period stretch over six or even nine months for some young workers, the government is planning to introduce a three-month cap, after which adult rates will apply. While it's not full equality, it's a small improvement, and a welcome one. Still, I would have expected much better from a self-proclaimed "worker's party" supposedly committed to principles of equality and social justice.

Torture begets torture

One of the problems with torture is that quite apart from being morally wrong, it results in false confessions. People being tortured will say anything to make it stop, implicating friends, family members, or people suggested to them by their torturers. And there's a perfect example of this in the case of Canadian rendition victim Maher Arar. In September 2002, Arar was stoped while passing through the US on the way home from Tunisia. He was then deported to Syria where he was tortured for almost a year, and forced to sign a false confession that he had trained with Al Qaeda. A subsequent commission of inquiry from the Canadian government cleared Arar of any connection with terrorism and recommended compensation, but important parts of the commission's report were kept secret. Some of those sections have now been declassified [PDF], and what they reveal is disturbing. Most significant is the US and Canadian authorities' original reason for believing Arar was a terrorist: a "confession" from another Syrian-Canadian which was itself extracted under torture. Despite knowing how their "evidence" was obtained and that the source had retracted it, the RCMP not only relied upon it, but put it before a judge without being clear about its origins. Anything, it seems, to get the next "suspect" in the chain. And as a result, Arar was taken to Syria and tortured in turn into another false "confession". It really makes you wonder how many of the "suspected terrorists" currently held by the US and its proxies really are, and how many are just innocent victims of this obscene echo chamber of lies extracted by torture.

New Fisk

Lebanese militants vow to take battle outside camp

Journalism Matters: Elsewhere

Finally, if anyone is interested, here's some links to other discussion of the Journalism Matters summit:

• Scoop has photos and audio from both Saturday and Sunday.
• David Robie of the Pacific Media Centrehas some thoughts here.
• Public Address's Keith Ng has his original piece about contextual advertising and editorial direction, and some followup thoughts on issues raised at the conference (which he didn't attend, being out of the country). The latter has sparked a good discussion on Public Address System, which has distracted me for much of the day.
• The Herald's Audrey Young blogs about it here. The Herald also has a piece on the summit's outcomes.
• Finally, Mediawatch said they'd be talking about it next week.

We now return to your regularly scheduled bloggage.

Journalism Matters: Outcomes

Over the weekend I attended the Journalism Matters conference in Wellington. The conference brought together journalists, academics, journalism educators and corporate representatives, and was organised by the EPMU to debate the state of New Zealand's news media and what can be done to improve it". Here's a rundown of the Sunday session.

Disclosure: I was invited to cover the conference by the EPMU.

Sunday morning had run over time, so the summit closed with a very rushed session on "possible solutions". This included some resolutions being passed, which I'll reproduce in full:

1. The EPMU will lead a review of journalism in NZ over the next 6 months, inviting public submissions on the effects of growing commercial pressures on journalism, journalists' pay rates and the resulting loss of talent to PR, freelance pay rates, union membership, public interest broadcasting and the growing pressure on journalists to serve multiple media at once.
2. The EPMU will also review the Journalists' Code of Ethics, available as Rule 42 of the EPMU rules at: http://www.epmu.org.nz/SITE_Default/about/rules/default.asp. Public submissions will be sought for this review too. The code needs to be updated to take account of new technology.
3. We want taxpayer funding of TVNZ to be increased to a level that allows it to be a true public service broadcaster.
4. We urge everyone concerned about democratic media to take every opportunity to create new media outlets committed to providing people with information about public issues in a coherent form, facilitating an exchange of ideas about those issues and building a sense of social cohesion as a foundation for social action.
5. We support the work of the Bruce Jesson Foundation and urge other funders to fund independent investigative journalism on important public issues.
6. We will establish a Movement for Democratic Media, with membership open to all NZers as well as the union, to create, support and link local websites and other media outlets reporting on public issues, and to campaign for publicly funded broadcasting.

The first of these is quite broad, and there was a lot of concern about whether it could do a proper job in only six months. But it might be useful in finding ways to avoid Alastair Thompson's doomsday scenario for print media. The fourth seems to be encouraging people to start blogs and generally just make some noise. The last was first suggested in Simon Collins' contribution to the commercial pressures forum as a means of

giv[ing] some coherence to all those bloggers and citizen journalists out there by encouraging a network of local news websites dedicated to public issue journalism... Any individual local news site, say in Wellington, would be lost in the vastness of the web, but if we could link it up with sites around the rest of the country, which share their best stories on a national news site, the combination could rival the commercial websites like Stuff and nzherald.co.nz.

But this seems to have morphed into a sort of advocacy group instead. Still, advocating for public broadcasting is important, and hopefully we'll see someone emerge to do it.

Journalism Matters: Sunday

Over the weekend I attended the Journalism Matters conference in Wellington. The conference brought together journalists, academics, journalism educators and corporate representatives, and was organised by the EPMU to debate the state of New Zealand's news media and what can be done to improve it". Here's a rundown of the Sunday session.

Disclosure: I was invited to cover the conference by the EPMU.

Sunday opened with a panel and open forum on public broadcasting. Peter Cavanagh (CEO of Radio NZ) began with a robust defence of the role of public broadcasting. Globalisation and changes in media ownership had undermined traditional media values, to the extent that the media no longer served the public good - rather, it was just another business with the primary aim of maximising short-term profit (a telling example of this was the unusual honesty in APN's Australian employment contracts, which stated that "the core business of the company is the soliciting and publishing of advertising"). Against this backdrop, Radio New Zealand is now the only major news organisation in New Zealand where output is not driven by commercial imperatives and with an obligation to serve the public good. Cavanagh saw RNZ's job as "nation building" and returning cultural, rather than financial, dividends. He also expressed some concern about increasing content-sharing among media organisations, which had resulted in shrinking diversity and too much news and information being traced back to too few sources.

TVNZ reporter Sharon Fergusson was next, but she began by saying that TVNZ forbade her from commenting to the media without permission from PR, and therefore her comments were off the record. They might be in the Scoop audio feed, though.

Margie Comrie talked about the unusual treatment of public broadcasting in New Zealand. Elsewhere in the world, public broadcasting is valued, and well funded. In New Zealand, it is not, and has historically been treated as a cash-cow by the government. TVNZ - the only public broadcaster in the western world which is expected to return a dividend - has been boxed into a corner by conflicting demands and looted for "special dividends" whenever the government needs cash. But Radio New Zealand shows that the non-commercial model works well; despite being run on a shoestring, it does serious news, and never resembles TV voyeurism. As a final comment, she noted the absence of New Zealand's newest public broadcaster, Maori TV, which has likewise done wonders on a small budget.

Finally, Nine To Noon host Kathryn Ryan started by admitting to being a heretic - she likes commercial media. But she thought that public sector broadcasting was essential to raise standards and provide the stuff the market wouldn't provide. Without it, and the competition of "real news" it provides, we'd see news values declining as commercial imperatives took over. Like her boss, she was also concerned about the decline in diversity in the face of syndication and sharing, and was also worried about the possible creation of a "digital ghetto" is content was moved online before there was an audience for it. Finally, she pointed out that the absence of commercial pressure at Radio New Zealand meant they were free to report on stories regardless of popularity, and could spend half an hour on an interview with someone if they thought it was important and/or interesting enough. As someone who pulls down content through their website, its a model I quite like.

Discussion focused on how public advocacy could support public broadcasting in New Zealand. Australia has the Friends of the ABC, but we have no equivalent organisation in New Zealand, and this has seen a constant erosion (particularly by National) of TVNZ's mandate. If we want it, we have to speak up for it. There was also an interesting point raised about the size of the NZ media market: some people argued that the media pie in NZ was really too small for public broadcasting, with the result that journalists often bought in to attacks on TVNZ because it was competition for their own livelihood. But Chris Warren turned this around, asking whether with such a small amount of advertising revenue we could really afford 3 fully commercial channels, let alone the 6 expected to happen under digital TV. If the market is that tight, then the case for a non-commercial TVNZ becomes stronger.

Next was a panel on what can be done? Freelancer Kim Griggs opened this by making a strong case for the restoration of journalists' reprographic rights, removed by Parliament in 1994 for no reason other than business asked them (typical New Zealand business move, trying to increase profits not by working harder, but by lobbying Parliament to screw their workers or customers). in Australia, these rights (the equivalent of authors getting 10 cents every time their book is taken out of the library) are worth thousands of dollars a year to journalists and are a valuable source of revenue. In New Zealand, it apparently all goes to NZPA. So, there's a challenge to NZ MPs: to bring a bill to restore those rights (Unfortunately, the VDIG Hansard has disappeared, so I can't look back and read the speeches, but I understand Labour opposed it, and Rick Barker spoke out against it).

Former City Voice editor Jeremy Rose talked about alternative ownership models and whether we can fight the McDonaldsisation of media by putting out quality boutique media. On the former, he argued that it was less a matter of foreign vs local ownership as ownership structures and the need to repay debt; this created pressure to cut costs, which in turn prevented media organisations from investing the time and resources required for serious investigative reporting. He floated some alternatives - a trust model, for example the Scott Trust which "owns" The Guardian for the sole purpose of ensuring that it remains a liberal voice; or the idea of "reader takeovers". The latter is an attractive model, and in NZ we already have some reader-owned media, in the form of Consumer and AA Directions. He also suggested that it might be worth unions and NGOs clubbing together and combining their PR budgets to support an independent newspaper to give them a voice.

Otago Daily Times editor Murray Kirkness gave a very interesting talk on the quirks of the ODT (headline today: ‘Regular bloke’ rewarded for being teetotally honest) and his experience in managing community newspapers for Allied Media (who own the ODT). many of these newspapers are simply not commercial propositions - he described his immense pride at seeing one paper which had never made a profit return a whole $800 to its owners - but were being run for social reasons (and in some cases anticompetitive ones). As editor of one of the few papers in NZ with a stable (rather thank shrinking) circulation (against a shrinking population, no less), he said outright that he wanted to reinvest in his journalists. So, maybe those underpaid APN reporters can go and live in Dunedin - it'll pay more and cost less.

Finally, Alastair Thompson of Scoop gave an excellent presentation on the future. And his prognosis for print journalism was basically "you're all doomed". Every major newspaper in NZ bar the ODT is conglomerate owned. Those conglomerates treat us the provinces (or the provinces of the provinces). They are not interested in resourcing NZ newspapers to do Good Journalism (any more than Fairfax NZ is interested in resourcing the Marlborough Express or APN the Christchurch Star); rather they will treat us as a cash-cow. And in a world where advertising revenue is shifting online, an area newspaper management is neither comfortable with nor competent in, that spells bad news. Newspapers are going to need to transition themselves to the new online world, but if they fail to transform, they are going to fail as companies. That aforementioned debt-burden makes this more likely, and Thompson thought that we may see anti-competitive behaviour, conglomerates buying up papers simply to close them down, as part of their death-spasm during the shakeout. This led to his most memorable line - that

we're dealing with deadly, dangerous and wounded corporations who are avaricious, venal and stupid

However, the net was also an opportunity, at least for some. He pointed out that in some areas, print media was still better than the net for classified advertising (small, geographic areas e.g. a suburb or small town), and that this provided a niche for profitable "micro-newspapers", with copy from Scoop, wire feeds, and a few journalists supported by local ads. It's an interesting vision, and it will be interesting to see whether it comes to pass.

Election for sale

The Coalition for Open Government expressed their position on the government's Electoral Finance Bill by putting the 2008 election up for auction on TradeMe. Unfortunately, it was pulled within half an hour, but there is a screenshot here.

No bid reached the $10,000 disclosure threshhold.

I just like to hear them say it

Some years ago, I attended a lecture by Don Brash (then opposition finance spokesperson) as part of a political seminar series. His icebreaker was a joke about a man who goes to the bank, and is turned away because the bank manager is dead. He keeps going back, and keeps being turned away for the same reason, until finally some annoyed teller asks him why he keep scoming back, and doesn't he understand that the bank manager really is dead. His response is "I know; I just like to hear them say it".

This describes perfectly my reaction to the headline on BBC that Top White House aide Rove resigns.

Bye bye, Turd Blossom, we won't miss you.

Journalism Matters: Saturday Afternoon

Over the weekend I attended the Journalism Matters conference in Wellington. The conference brought together journalists, academics, journalism educators and corporate representatives, and was organised by the EPMU to debate the state of New Zealand's news media and what can be done to improve it". Here's a rundown of the Saturday afternoon session.

Disclosure: I was invited to cover the conference by the EPMU.

The first hour after lunch was occupied with a workshop on the morning sessions, with the conference splitting into three groups to discuss the issues raised. The group I ended up in focused on wages and conditions and the decline of journalism as a profession, which pretty much put me off any thoughts I may have had about pursuing journalism as a career. Here's some of the nasty facts:

• 20 years ago, a journalist could be hired out of high school on a salary of $32,000 plus overtime (or ~$40 K all up). Today, you generally need a degree or journalism qualification, and the starting salary at APN and the Herald is $28,000. Overtime disappeared with the Employment Contracts Act in 1991.
• Freelancers are even more poorly paid, with a maximum rate of around 40 cents a word. Some publications offer as little as 10 cents a word. It is estimated that they need to pay 85 cents a word for professional freelancers to earn a salary of $60,000.
• Salaries are tightly capped. After 10 years as a professional journalist, you might be making $40,000 a year. $60,000 seems to be the absolute upper limit.
• Wages at the Herald have failed to keep pace with inflation over the past 25 years.
• Because they are poorly unionised, journalists have no real way of fixing this.

As a result, the profession haemorrhages experienced staff, and has an enormous churn amongst the young journalists hired to replace them. As a profession, it's just not economically sustainable - just like nursing or teaching were until a few years ago.

(Apparently other workshops discussed the rise of citizen journalists and the expected future of the New Zealand media. They sounded a lot less depressing).

The workshop / bitch session was followed by a speech from Chris Warren, former president of the International Federation of Journalists, on the international perspective and consolidation of media ownership. Warren talked about a crisis in press freedom caused by the "war on terror", a crisis in safety as journalists struggle to cover it, and a crisis in the way journalists work as large media companies seek to increase profits by cutting costs and screwing their workers. He also discussed the changes in media ownership laws in Australia, which have seen ownership concentrated in fewer and fewer hands with a consequent loss of diversity of opinion. He also talked a little about how the internet was challenging newspapers, shrinking ad revenues while at the same time demanding more and more frequently updated content.

There were some interesting points made in the discussion about the different audiences for print and internet news. Apparently there's only a 20% overlap in readership between the two in Australia - so only 20% of people who read the Sydney Morning Herald will read it both in print and online. The online audience is quite different ("more downmarket"), and so you see quite different story selection and placement between the print and online editions. There was also some discussion of the role of strong unions in preserving journalists' pay and conditions in Australia - collective bargaining has delivered real wage increases of more than 25% since 1992. However, this is now under threat due to the Howard government's ECA-style "WorkChoices". Finally, it was pointed out that our new Evidence Act actually includes a presumption about the confidentiality of journalists' sources, which again runs counter to international trends.

Next was a panel discussion and forum on Journalistic Ethics. This was wide-ranging, with a fairly large number of speakers. Firstly, Tony Wilton (former secretary of the New Zealand Journalists Union) talked about how the EPMU actually has a journalist's code of ethics in its bylaws, and the struggle to get it recognised by employers (they were initially keen, apart from of course the clause about not allowing advertising of commercial considerations to influence things, but it all went out the window with the ECA in 1991). This was followed by the University of Canterbury’s Jim Tully asking "who is the journalist in the 21st century"? Journalism differs from other professions such as law or medicine in that it has been unable to close itself to outsiders. "Journalist" covers a broad range of people from employee-journalists to contractual journalists (freelancers) to citizen journalists (bloggers) to co-opted experts such as political or sports commentators. And all of these roles can overlap. The upshot is that it is impossible to "close" the profession, which in turn makes it impossible to enforce any professional code of ethics.

Freelance journalist Amanda Cropp was next, discussing the ethical problems posed by the PR industry. She cited a story on MediaWatch [audio] last week talking about the massive increase in government PR flacks, and how many freelance journalists do PR work as an extra way of making a living. She had some horror stories about freelancers who mixed their work and who seemed utterly blind to the ethical problems in, e.g. charging PR clients a "placement fee" for being mentioned in a story done under contract for a magazine, or writing press releases for the same people you report on. Not that some of the magazine editors were much better. This breakdown of barriers between PR and journalism poses a threat to journalists' credibility.

Finally, Dominion-Post reporter and Parliamentary press gallery chairperson Vernon Small gave an entertaining talk on "mapping the crossroads between new media and ethics" and where the profession was headed. Like Judy Macgregor before him, he was pretty scathing of the blogosphere, calling bloggers "biased and unfair" and saying that they were way out on the fringes of the media solar system. He pointed out that the convergence of text, audio and video content on the web posed new problems for regulators - traditional newspapers were now putting audio and video on their websites, and had in a sense "leaped the fence" while leaving their regulators behind. He questioned whether we should expect the same rules to apply to new media like the web or cable TV (characterised by being "pull" or "on demand") as older, "push" or broadcast mediums, but also claimed that if we had different rules, it would undermine the entire system. As for a solution, he took his pointers from the web and argued for "more speech, not less" - letting people decide for themselves, perhaps aided by some voluntary labelling scheme which would mark news stories as having been produced by "ethical journalism". Journalistic standards of fairness, accuracy and balance are journalists' point of difference.

There was some quite interesting discussion on this, including a strong debate on the merits of in-house vs. external codes of ethics, and some points about the isolation of freelancers from journalistic norms (50% of them have no journalism training; 50% have been working in the industry for less than 5 years). There was a very interesting question raised by a journalist from Auckland's Chinese Herald, who pointed out that there was a lot of misleading coverage of Asian New Zealanders in the media and that this led directly to racist attacks. He wanted to know why this was tolerated, and what he could say to his readers (and listeners, since he also ran a radio show) about what New Zealand journalists were going to do about it. He didn't get an answer, with the (almost entirely Pakeha) gathering distracting themselves into the safer topic of Debbie Gerbich instead.

The discussion also saw an explanation from Audrey Young on her John Key post (apparently, the title was added by her sub-editor). Young argued that "one of the best ways we can ensure journalistic standards in blogging is for more of us to do it". Vernon Small argued that the blogosphere's "rush to instant opinion" invited trouble in the form of errors born of swift judgement (something I'll ruefully admit to); he thought journalism had a requirement for considered opinion. Chris Warren chipped in with some very interesting points about blogging culture: the problem he thought isn't that bloggers are acting unethically as journalists - the problem is that blogging is fundamentally contemptuous of journalism. We've seen the development of a key communications technology which is fundamentally contemptuous of journalism, with that contempt being driven in part by a belief that journalists are not living up to their own standards. However, he also argued that journalists have "terrible glass jaws" and were perhaps excessively sensitive to criticisms from bloggers.

I was actually hoping to interview Vernon Small about his views on blogging (I think he's right, but I'm also interested in how he thinks we can improve what we're doing), but once I'd introduced myself he ignored me like I was shit on the bottom of his shoe. When I did manage to corner him, I was given the impression that I'd be able to interview him on the Sunday. Unfortunately he didn't show, so I didn't get the chance. Maybe I'll just have to politely bother him by email instead...

I'll have more on the Sunday sessions later.

Pure snobbery

While I was at the Journalism Matters summit over the weekend, DPF was attending the Centre for "Independent" Studies' Consilium forum over in Brisbane. Which led to this wonderful example of economic snobbery:

[Consilium] is generally not a cheap event to attend. I am extremely lucky to have been invited to speak as a guest. Not up to me to state what the normal attendance fee is, but let us say it is high enough to deter anyone who is not very serious about policy issues.

Because obviously only the rich (or in DPF's case, the clients of the rich) can ever be truly serious about policy issues.

Election funding: fixing the bill

Since its introduction to the House three weeks ago, the government's Electoral Finance Bill has come under sustained attack due to its impact on freedom of expression. The Coalition for Open Government in particular have made a compelling case that the provisions limiting third-party campaigning go too far, pointing out both that they impose ludicrous limits on ordinary political advocacy, and that may even prevent political parties from announcing their positions to the public. These problems have been seized upon by the right as ammunition in their calls for the bill to be dumped.

Unlike people like DPF, though, I don't think that the bill should be incinerated. Rather, I think it should be fixed. And it seems to me that there is an easy way to do it. Many of the core problems stem from the bill's definition of an "election advertisement" as

any form of words or graphics, or both, that can reasonably be regarded as doing 1 or more of the following:

(i) encouraging or persuading voters to vote, or not to vote, for 1 or more specified parties or for 1 or more candidates or for any combination of such parties and candidates:

(ii) encouraging or persuading voters to vote, or not to vote, for a type of party or for a type of candidate that is described or indicated by reference to views, positions, or policies that are or are not held, taken, or pursued (whether or not the name of a party or the name of a candidate is stated):

(iii) taking a position on a proposition with which 1 or more parties or 1 or more candidates is associated.

Clause (i) is aimed at traditional political advertising - "vote for X". Clauses (ii) and (iii) are aimed at "issue advertising", which while it doesn't explicitly advocate voting for or against a particular party, does so implicitly by reference to a party's policies (for example, those infamous pamphlets from the Exclusive Brethren). The narrow concern here is that such advertising will be used by parties to bypass expenditure limits - a concern totally justified by the behaviour of the National Party exposed in The Hollow Men. The broader concern is that such advertising will "destabilize the balance of resources among candidates and political parties", undermining political equality and favouring parties which pursue agendas which favour (or at least don't threaten) the interests of the rich. But as Colin Feasby points out in his 2003 paper "Issue Advocacy and Third Parties in the United Kingdom and Canada" (McGill Law Journal, 48, 11 - 54), a distinction needs to be drawn between advertising of this sort, and advertising which merely seeks to set the political agenda rather than favouring any particular party (or, in the case of the NZ bill, advertising which doesn't really have any political purpose at all). The obvious point of distinction here is the attempt to influence voters - and both the British and Canadian electoral laws (which seem to have been the major influence on the bill) recognise this. For example, the UK Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 defines "election material" as

material which can reasonably be regarded as intended to-

(a) promote or procure electoral success at any relevant election for-

(i) one or more particular registered parties,

(ii) one or more registered parties who advocate (or do not advocate) particular policies or who otherwise fall within a particular category of such parties, or

(iii) candidates who hold (or do not hold) particular opinions or who advocate (or do not advocate) particular policies or who otherwise fall within a particular category of candidates...

while the Canada Elections Act 2000 defines "election advertising" as

an advertising message that promotes or opposes a registered party or the election of a candidate, including one that takes a position on an issue with which a registered party or candidate is associated.

(Emphasis added)

This recognition is absent from clause (iii) of the proposed definition in the bill. However, inserting it would make clause (iii) essentially identical to clause (ii), so it may be easier simply to remove it entirely.

Onward Christian soldiers?

The Sunday Star-Times yesterday had a piece about the potential for a Christian party in New Zealand. According to their polling, 33% support parties adopting policies that "more closely reflect traditional Christian values", while 6% would vote for a new Christian party at the next election, with another 9% in "soft" suport. So, should we be worried?

Not really. As the poll report [DOC] notes, "hypothetical polling of this kind can easily overstate a political party’s prospect". What people say they'll do and what they'll actually do can be very different things, especially when there's no actual choice before them. Add to that sharp divisions amongst Christians over what policies "Christian moral values" translate to (Savage's welfare state as "applied Christianity", or the Maxim Institute's welfare and service cuts?) and the potential for this to divide the potential voter base, and the prospects of any actual Christian party crossing the 5% threshhold look remote.

Still, it would not be a bad thing for the left if the Christian right tried. As Chris Trotter pointed out in his Independent column last month (offline), a right-wing Christian party pushing social conservative policies would force National to defend itself on the right, which would in turn risk alienating the moderate voters they are currently chasing. Then there's the threat of such a party being a future coalition partner and influence on government policy. New Zealanders are a pretty secular, moderate lot, and the thought of religious fanatics using the government as a vehicle to stick their nose into everyone's bedroom will scare the bejesus out of them.

Journalism Matters: Judy MacGregor on blogs

In her keynote address at today's Journalism Matters conference in Wellington, EEO Commissioner and former journalist Judy MacGregor made some comments about blogs and blogging which were highly critical. So during the lunchbreak I cornered her in a closet (OK, actually a storage room) and interviewed her. You can download the audio here (10:23).

The overall message is that if bloggers want to be taken seriously, they need to do actual research, use more sources, and generally be more reflective than they are at present.

Manwhile, I clearly need to improve my interview technique. But tomorrow I hope to practice by stalking Vernon Small.

Update: Judy's full speech can be found here.

Journalism Matters: Saturday Morning

This weekend I'm attending the Journalism Matters conference in Wellington. The conference brings together journalists, academics, journalism educators and corporate representatives, and was organised by the EPMU to debate the state of New Zealand's news media and what can be done to improve it". Here's a rundown of the first session. As usual, any errors are due to my poor memory and worse handwriting.

Disclosure: I was invited to cover the conference by the EPMU. I have no idea how much, if anything, it cost to attend.

Dr Judy Macgregor (former journalist and academic, now EEO Commissioner) was the first real speaker. She stole a slogan from Amnesty International and argued that journalists needed to Make Some Noise in defence of their profession and its role in the democratic system. She thought that journalism faced challenges from technology, demography, and the market. On the technology front, the internet now means that "every woman and her dog can say whatever they want without fear of repercussion" and had led to the rise of a "me-media", some of which "are not profitable, or even sensible". She saw this as a threat to the quality of published news. At the same time, there was also an ethical challenge from journalists with their own blogs. However, she thought that whatever the technology, the journalist's central skill of filtering and judging information was still needed.

Demographically, everyone talks about "disinterested youth" who don't read newspapers, but she pointed out that there is a mismatch between what a young audience wants and what is actually published. She asked whether an editorial board of young people would really reserve 2 pages of each paper for stock market news, 2 for racing, and publish only 10 letters to the editor (while telling another 50 that their points had been noted). The obvious answer is "no". Obviously, if the media want young people to pay attention, they need to do more to appeal to that audience, by publishing relevant information. She also felt that there was a problem with most journalists (and journalism students) being Pakeha, and that this unrepresentative composition had resulted in Maori news being bad news (in the sense that Maori seem to only be mentioned in the context of crime). The same also seems to be happening to Asian New Zealanders (who have even less journalistic representation than Maori), and Deborah Coddington's "Asian Angst" story got a particular mention here.

On the economic front, globalisation has seen an increase in cross-media ownership, foreign ownership, and homogenisation, but there are still plenty of outlets, and (in New Zealand) a broad diversity of political comment. She asked whether great journalism was compatible with good business in the context of the current media marketplace - and pointed to a study by the Aspen Institute which argued that it was, if it is supported by management. Finally, she capped it off with some sharp and pointy observations on our local political commentators.

This attracted a wide range of questions and comment (I have two pages of notes). The most interesting bits (to me) where her comments on the Audrey Young's blog post on John Key, and on blogs in general. On the former, she thought that journalists should not attack sources, and that such attacks endangered the continuing relationship between journalist and source necessary for newsgathering. Whereas I'd have thought that it was a good way of keeping sources honest (OTOH, Young's personalisation of the issue was a bit misleading; the problem wasn't so much that Key lied to her, but that he had tried to lie to the New Zealand public and expected a journalist to be complicit in this). On blogs in general, MacGregor was highly critical, saying that "much of common blogging isn't terribly thoughtful" and that there was a need for a debate on citizens as journalists before the next election (more on this later).

The other event of the morning was a panel discussion and open forum on "commercial pressures on journalism". This was conducted under Chatham House rules, meaning that while I'm free to use the information received, I can't attribute it. There were some interesting points to come out of this. Firstly, commercial pressures were a worldwide problem, caused by the pressure on media companies (from shareholders, and increasingly the need to make the interest payments on highly leveraged buyouts). This led to pressure to cut costs, and the easiest way of doing this was to use fewer journalists, resulting in poorer news quality. It also led to pressure to outsource functions like subediting, and to shifts to fluffier "lifestyle" content in an effort to increase advertising revenue. Declining revenues as classified advertising shifted to internet sites like TradeMe was likely to increase this pressure; it would also make large advertisers more powerful and give them greater ability to dictate content. against this, it was pointed out that there have always been commercial pressures driven by media companies' need to return a profit (but, I think, not such a threat to their revenue base).

A second theme (which was repeated often during the day) was journalists' wages and conditions. These seem to be poor (more on this later as well), with one journalist commenting that they earned more as a waitress than from their profession. Others noted that there was no shortage of journalists; instead there was a shortage of jobs that paid well enough. As a result, the industry had problems retaining experienced people (many are forced into PR work by financial considerations), and so on one major media website inexperienced journalists were doing everything themselves, with no review and no checks and balances. This was seen as affecting news quality.

Finally, someone asked a question similar to that asked by Keith Ng: are website hit rates influencing story selection? One editor answered "not really", while a major Sunday newspaper admitted being "quite driven by that stuff" and that they closely watch what gets page views on their web-site all week and that this did influence stories. It also emerged that talkback radio closely monitored their topics, and had concluded that while their nighttime crowd are mad, daytime callers are actually fairly sane.

Lunch was fairly boring, and I have to admit to not being very impressed by the Parliamentary caterers. I'd have thought our MPs demanded bette

I'll do the afternoon session later in another post.

Prosecuting the victim

A woman is gang-raped by three men. She complains to the authorities, but after pressure withdraws her complaint. Those authorities then turn around and charge her with "indecency", and grant her attackers immunity in exchange for testifying against her.

A story from Pakistan, perhaps, or some other misogynist Islamic theocracy? Nope - this particular act of injustice is from the US Air Force. It's nice to know where they stand.

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