If there is a turning point in the Australian debate on same-sex marriage it may well be Penny Wong’s remarkable grace and honesty when answering Joe Hockey on last night’s Q&A.
Wong was asked by…
Journals can make it easier for reporters to do a good job by providing balanced information and accurate media releases designed to inform.
NS Newsflash/Flickr
Journalists are having an increasingly hard time producing high-quality health stories. Medical journal articles feature in many health stories but new research shows their press releases may contribute…
James and Rupert Murdoch appearing before the Westminster parliamentary committee that has subsequently attacked their fitness as media proprietors.
EPA/Press Association
Will the damning, and somewhat surprising, verdict brought in on Rupert Murdoch by a committee of British parliamentarians, spell the end of the reign of the Wizard of Oz?
The answer depends on what is…
Should Breivik's hateful diatribe be made public?
AAP/Hakon Mosvold Larsen
The trial of Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik for the murder of 77 people has a special significance for journalists in Australia, and not just because Breivik summoned the names of John Howard, Peter…
Mark Scott, managing director of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
AAP/Alan Porritt
Welcome to In Conversation, our series of discussions between leading academics and major public figures in Australian life.
In this instalment, Mark Scott, managing director of the Australian Broadcasting…
Newsrooms are changing, and so is the business model that underpins them.
Flickr/Caroline Treadway
Despite rapid growth in the number of non-profit investigative centres in the United States and many fine examples of quality journalism by such centres, uncertainty remains over the longer-term sustainability…
Can a Sunday version of top selling weekday tabloid The Sun recapture readers lost when the News of the World was closed?
AAP/Facundo Arrizabalaga
By Brian McNair, Queensland University of Technology
I write on the day that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp launches its Sunday Sun in the UK, to widespread astonishment at the man’s “chutzpah” and apparent lack of remorse for the ethical breaches which brought…
The Sun is facing a crisis of its own as revelations of police bribery emerge.
EPA
It is difficult not to supress a satisfying shiver of schadenfreude as one watches the saga of the self-immolating Murdoch Empire play itself out.
The latest episode – breath-taking in its sheer chutzpah…
Murdoch and Rinehart could soon own almost all the significant newspapers in Australia.
EPA/Michael Reynolds/AAP/Tony McDonough
Australia’s wealthiest person, Gina Rinehart has bought shares in Fairfax Media. Should we be worried if she buys a controlling interest in the company that publishes the Age, Sydney Morning Herald and…
There's no turning the tide when it comes to Twitter.
Rosaura Ochoa
By Axel Bruns, Queensland University of Technology
The release of Sky News UK’s Twitter guidelines for its journalists – or rather, the Guardian’s not entirely disinterested commentary on those guidelines – has caused a bit of a stir across social media…
It can be hard to sort fact from fiction in the modern media environment.
Mike Bailey-Gates
A growing cohort of commentators has bemoaned the descent of contemporary political “debate” into a largely fact-free zone.
People used to be entitled to their own opinions, but not their own set of facts…
When jobs are disappearing, why are we training more journalists?
flickr
By Diana Bossio, Swinburne University of Technology
It usually begins mid-way through their university career.
My office begins to fill with panicked journalism students who have seen the dismal job vacancies in their field and are starting to think their…
Journalist or blogger? It's a thin line.
See-ming Lee æŽæ€æ˜Ž SML
Citizen journalists everywhere should be checking the fine print of media shield laws, after a US District Court judge in Oregon ruled that self-styled investigative blogger Crystal Cox was not a journalist…
The Age could find itself at the centre of a test case for a brand new law.
AAP/Elaine To
Victoria Police e-crime squad members yesterday raided the offices of The Age newspaper as part of their ongoing investigation into allegations that reporters from the paper illegally hacked into an ALP…
Ray Finkelstein and Matthew Ricketson look like they're leaning towards recommending a single regulatory body for all media platforms.
AAP/Dean Lewins
It seems that despite their sometimes bitter commercial rivalry, the Fairfax and News Limited empires agree on one thing: the Finkelstein Media Inquiry has been a giant waste of time and money.
Both have…
John Hartigan would prefer to increase funding to the Press Council rather than face a new regulator.
AAP/Alan Porritt
Departing News Limited CEO John Hartigan has agreed in principle to support increased industry funding for the Australian Press Council but with a caveat.
On day four of the Independent Media Inquiry…
Murdoch is taking more control of his Australian interests now John Hartigan is gone.
AAP/Rob Hutchison
Was John Hartigan pushed or did he leave his position as CEO of News Limited just in time? It’s likely that only a handful of people know the real answer to this question; among them will be “Harto” and…
Letting readers comment can direct journalism and make accountability a reality.
Flickr/Cayusa
On day two of the Media Inquiry, unconstrained online speech figured as a danger to democracy, rather than a new avenue for discussing media ethics and journalistic transparency.
Justice Finkelstein opened…
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy announces the media inquiry in September
AAP/Lucas Coch
As journalists and academics got ready to outline a new media order at the Finkelstein inquiry yesterday, anti-regulationists lined up to dismiss the process with bipartisan relish.
On day one of the…
Andrew Bolt has a presence across a variety of media platforms.
AAP
Already the Libertarian Right have begun to marshal their traditional arguments to cover Andrew Bolt’s disgrace by the Federal Court.
Bolt himself has screeched freedom of speech in the wake of his ascerbic…
Political activists and bad legislation have combined to create the extraordinary situation where eligibility for awards and prizes can’t be questioned.
Not all prizes and awards – we can still mock Wayne…
Andrew Bolt outside court in Melbourne during an earlier appearance in the case decided today.
AAP
Columnist and commentator Andrew Bolt has lost his racial discrimination case in the Federal Court.
The action under the Racial Discrimination Act had been brought by nine Aboriginal people including…
The Murdoch crisis in the UK raises many questions about media ownership in Australia.
AAP/William West
The Gillard Government’s media inquiry is to disregard the crucial issues of bias and concentration of media ownership, despite Bob Brown’s demands for wider terms of reference. This is, at best, misled…
Have we seen the last of the hard-nosed investigative reporters who break news through months of painstaking research and contact-building?
The internet has badly hurt the publishing business model that…
Tony Blair pulled back the curtain on the relationship between journalists and politicians..
AAP/Julian Smith
MEDIA & DEMOCRACY: On the final day of The Conversation’s series on how the media influences the way our representatives develop policy, John Keane examines how the relationships between politicians…
The Australian's coverage of climate changed is seriously warped.
AFP PHOTO/ NASA - CXC/ A. HOBART
MEDIA & DEMOCRACY – Michael Ashley investigates the national paper’s op-ed policy.
The “event horizon” of a black hole is one of the most mind-boggling concepts in astrophysics.
The black hole’s…
The AFL may bypass broadcasters altogether and stream games live to fans
AAP
Interesting to read AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou’s thoughts on the next broadcasting rights deal, given that the league has yet to work out how to divvy up the money from the deal it recently negotiated with…
The media needs to ask itself some tricky questions.
st bernard
Debates have raged in the media in the aftermath of recent events in News Ltd UK.
Curtailing the freedom of the press; the ethics of methods used to source stories; quality of media reporting; and the…
Can social media temper growing public antipathy towards political parties?
Mandel Ngan/AFP
On Tuesday, the ACT government held Australia’s first virtual community cabinet using Twitter. Four ministers faced a barrage of tweets in an hour long question and answer session held with the electorate…
Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd owns 70 per cent of Australia's daily print media
AAP
While “Murdochgate” rolls on, the question of what it means for Australia has inevitably been attracting considerable attention.
In this discussion, News Ltd itself has played a leading role. For those…
Rupert Murdoch holding a copy of The Times, a News International paper
AAP
In little more than two weeks, the long simmering issue of illegal phone hacking at News Corporation’s British newspaper News of the World has developed into a cascading crisis, with fatal results for…
Rupert Murdoch's Fox News attracts criticism in the US for its perceived bias.
AAP
The decline and fall of Rupert Murdoch has more twists and turns than a colonoscopy: the closing of the 168-year-old News of the World; the resignation of two of his top executives and four Scotland Yard…
Appearing before a parliamentary committee was "my humblest day" according to Rupert Murdoch
AFP PHOTO/PARBUL
So, after a day of drama at Westminster, what have we learnt, other than the fact that Rupert Murdoch’s wife Wendi packs a mean left hook (future pranksters beware)?
For the best part of six hours we…
An ethical journalistic culture cannot be imposed from above but must develop within a news gathering organisation.
AAP
The handwritten sign hanging on the bereaved family’s door says: “No media". As a reporter, do you knock? Most journalism students yell back a resounding “No".
Okay then, what if the family has a high…
Rupert Murdoch's British newspaper empire is reeling under the phone hacking scandal.
AAP
Schadenfreude is the tough-sounding word that wins my vote for describing accurately how millions of people around the world are feeling about Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.
For those who were long resigned…
The final edition of the News of the World carried a full page apology to its readers.
AFP/Ian Nicholson
The dramatic events around the phone-hacking scandal at Rupert Murdoch’s London News of the World are unprecedented in a major news media organisation in an advanced industrial country. A newspaper closed…
Metropolitan Police officers are interviewing senior News International executives as part of their investigation into phone hacking by journalists. AAP photo
AAP
Where to begin? The closure of a 160-year-old newspaper, the arrest of the man who until recently was the Prime Minister’s Director of Communications, the revelations that the Metropolitan Police, or at…
By Brian McNair, Queensland University of Technology
The announcement that the 168-year old British newspaper title News of the World will cease to exist after this Sunday represents a landmark moment in journalism.
The British public reacted with revulsion…
The phones of victims of the London bombings were allegedly hacked by staff at the News of the World.
AFP/Dylan Martine/WPA pool
The British newspaper The News of the World is being investigated over allegations of hacking into the phones of relatives of the victims of the bombings in London in July 2005. It’s also thought those…
