The decision of Chechnya President Ramzan Kadyrov to enter two horses – Mourilyan has been entered in the Melbourne Cup and Bankable in the Mackinnon Stakes - will surely cause a thousand earnest hearts to flutter. Oops! The word just popped out; apologies.

But it’s worth noting that while The Sydney Morning Herald featured a two-page story yesterday on the debacle – which includes Senator Bob Brown calling for the horses to be banned due to Kadyrov’s abysmal human rights record - The Herald Sun website didn’t feature the story on its front page.

Possibly hard-bitten editors in our southern capital thought a story with mad Greenie Brown as its hero must be suspect.

Assassinated Russian journalist Anna Politskovskaya dubbed Kadyrov the “new Stalin” a short time before she was gunned down in October 2006. Six months after the killing a memorial ceremony was held in Moscow.

Kadyrov is thought by knowledgeable commentators and human rights experts to have been involved in her murder.

The Australian website ran a story on Kadyrov’s Melbourne Cup aspirations, but there was no front-page headline until 5.15pm, by which time Brown’s opinion had become news. To find it before then you had to do a text search. As Fairfax had featured the story, this is not surprising, in an odd sort of media-rivalry way. It goes to show how commercial considerations can influence the placement of even important stories.

The Age, Fairfax’s Melbourne broadsheet, carried the story on their website yesterday in the sports section only. Even The Sydney Morning Herald pulled the story off its front page after a couple of hours, making it virtually invisible without a text search. The racing fraternity is powerless to block the entries.

Racing Victoria's chief steward Terry Bailey said it was powerless to prevent Mr Kadyrov's English-trained horses - due to arrive in Melbourne on October 10 - from competing.

''When owners run in Victoria they have to declare any criminal convictions and we then assess whether they are suitable,'' he said. ''As I understand it, Kadyrov doesn't have any convictions and, given the horses have raced in other jurisdictions around the world, we wouldn't have any reason to stop them coming.''

The Herald Sun, News Ltd’s Melbourne tabloid, is remiss in not more-highly featuring the story, which would doubtless appeal to readers’ distrust of Russia, which strongly supports Kadyrov’s regime. It is surprising that the editors think that the pending visit by a former St Kilda Australian Rules team captain to the upcoming Grand Final match is worth more attention than whether the Australian Governor-General may present the Melbourne Cup to an accused war criminal.

Strangely, The Courier-Mail, News Ltd’s Brisbane tabloid, ran the story at 11pm the previous day, the same time The Herald Sun ran it. But again there’s no front-page feature.

There’s plenty of information available on the dangers reporters face in the country Kadyrov leads, including a piece published last Thursday on the website of the Committee to Protect Journalists. The piece describes the death on July 15 of Politskovskaya’s friend, journalist Natalya Estemirova.

Politskovskaya was shot in the lobby of her apartment building in Moscow. Estemirova was abducted from outside her home and was found shot in the heart and the head and found 50 miles away. She had received a warning from Kadyrov two days before her death. Terry Gould writes:

Defying death threats from government militias and a personal warning from the Chechen president, on July 13, Estemirova gave an interview to the Caucasian Knot news agency about her latest exposé of killings and house burnings committed by representatives of the Chechen regime.

How should we judge official reaction to catastrophic events? High-profile arrests, murderous rampages, terror attacks, gang warfare, arson – these are the types of events that will make authorities respond in the media.

There they sum up the situation and in the process pass judgement on behalf of the rest of us. The response gives us a sense that it was ‘felt’ in the places that needed to feel it. Alone in our living rooms, we feel secure that those in power have heeded the devastating signal we’ve just received from the streets.

There are two ways that officials express themselves. It is either something along the lines of “everything is under control” or else “we will do more in future”. I think there’s no doubt which of the two methods I prefer to hear.

Perhaps the first response is given when bad things happen that frighten us, such as the attack by a ‘loner’ schoolboy two days ago that resulted in injury to ten people. His name has not been released, probably because he was not killed. The attack took place in the Bavarian town of Ansbach and involved an 18-year-old using petrol bombs, knives and an axe to wreak havoc on occupants of Gymnasium Carolinum which the Bavarian Culture Minister said was “not a problem school”.

And the response?

"Our experience here makes clear that our improved procedures are effective," [German Interior Minister] Hermann told a news conference, "The quick response prevented even worse happening."

In other words, we were able to contain the danger quickly, minimising casualties. The attack came almost exactly six months after the gun attack by German teenager Tim Kretschmer at Winnenden, where 15 people died.

But the response contains nothing to suggest better controls will be implemented to stop this kind of thing happening in future. What is it with German kids and schools, anyway? Are these kids just depressive loners with no social skills or is there some underlying dynamic we’re not yet aware of?

The second type of response is the promise of improvement and there’s an excellent example from the same day. Indonesia’s president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s response to the elimination of Malaysian terror bomber Mohammed Noordin Top includes a promise to tackle the ''ignorance and poverty'' that causes terrorists to take up a struggle they may be prevented from assuming.

... Dr Yudhoyono was not declaring outright victory, even if the terrorist threat had been ''seriously reduced'' with Noordin's death.
''Paralysing [Noordin's cell] just means we have won a battle, but, by prevention, we will win the war against terrorism,'' he said. ''We have to save our country, our people, our community and our young generation from the temptation to involve themselves in terrorism.''

He said this was cause for an acceleration of spending on education, both formal and religious.

In Indonesia, there is a lot of sympathy for so-called ‘terrorists’. The men are sheltered, fed, concealed, and funded by ordinary people who otherwise would never break the law. SBY knows this. He also knows that there is a lot of xenophobia in his country, the type that prefers home-grown criminals winning rather than foreign meddlers.

The difference, I guess, is that SBY was marking the successful end to a long campaign and investigation, whereas the Germans were reacting defensively to another aberrant outcome of their education system.

The difference is noticeable. SBY is being diplomatic because he can afford to be gracious in victory; whereas the Germans, to make the most of a bad situation, are crowing about their success in the hope the sound will dampen any discontent with their overall performance.

It’s all about perception and the media. We only display that which will cause ourselves the least discomfort.

“They chant: have no fear, have no fear, we are all together.” “Keshavarz street we hear chants of Marg bar Dictator!” “Chant: Our vote is lost, Iran is turned to Palestine.” “Radio: the darker it gets, the more people will come out. HANG IN THERE.”

The face of citizen journalism is made up of thousands of facets competing for the reader’s attention. On Twitter, crowdsourced snippets like this jostle and merge together, as each minute a hundred new ones emerge over the internet into your hashtag reader (in my case, Tweetdeck). You strain to understand both the extent of the new Iranian post-election protest and the truth of the claims being made.

What is in no doubt? This, for example: “Ahmadinejad is delivering his speech at Tehran University.” But other tweets are less easy to decipher, such as: ‘Nedaagain basijis and military are just looking don't know what to do.” You are confused when you read this, however: “Police force frees arrested protestors from Basijis & protects people.”

Is this the final revolution? Will the military come across to the side of the protesters, and oust the government? Surely a coup d’etat would be the only way to shift Ahmedinejad?


Still the tweets arrive. “THE BASIJI ON HIS loud speaker on his truck saying death to America. People ARE CHANTING DEATH TO RUSSIA.”

Whatever else we can say about citizen journalism, it is still necessary to confirm and interpret. Not every utterance carries the same weight as the others. The “cost of moderation” is undoubtedly a cause for relief for traditional journalists, my experience with yesterday’s Twitter stream tells me. You cannot take everything at face value. Some things must be jettisoned.

“Police on poeple’s side go to Basijis, take arrested from vans, free people a few streets away, saying ‘we r with u’.” I doubt it. The revolution may come one day, but not today. According to Oxford University's Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism:

[J]ournalists must accept that the dynamic between audience and journalist has changed and must find new, collaborative ways to tell stories, [Washington Post columnist and former visiting fellow at the institute, John] Kelly argued. While the rise of new forms of newsgathering, such as citizen journalism, and revenues may not be fast enough to compensate for the decline in Western news media, he wrote, 'the impulses underlying the rise of citizen journalist are here to stay'.

Twitter streams like yesterday’s show us that there is more to journalism than just reporting facts. On the other hand, facts must be verified before they can reliably be reported. Journalists are trained to be wary of unconfirmed reports which, in many societies, can result in costly legal challenges. In others, they may result in worse outcomes, including imprisonment or even death. So there is still a need for the journalist to sift and glean. Nevertheless, watching a full-on Twitter stream like this is exhilarating. You feel as though you are in the middle of something bigger than yourself.

“Al Jazeera reports millions were out today.” “Mobile phone contact down in Shiraz.” “Caller saying in Shiraz pepper spray was used.” “Females ... chanting, chanting and clapping, clapping ... women SO LOUD ... MOUSAVI MOUSAVI.”

While you are watching the posted videos on Youtube and reading through the stream, you might at the same time be tuned into the local news. The broadcast seems so mundane, so boring. It’s not the real thing. The real thing is several time zones and thousands of kilometres away. It’s early morning in Tehran and the ‘Sea of Green’ (the opposition-leader supporters) are marching in the streets. Over there they also have local news stations, TV and radio.

“Caller R Farda: 'I saw a kid that they caught in side street, his mother was pleading & they sprayed face with gas.’” "Death to the dictators," and "Not Gaza, Not Lebanon, We are ready to die for Iran," chanted protesters. “Heavy attack on #Esfahan University. Students need help. Esfahan Uni campus under attack.”


But the breathlessness eventually tires you out. Tweetdeck refreshes continue to pulse out 30, 40, 50 tweets every minute on the #iranelection hashtag but you zone out. Eventually, you go back to the reliable source you recognise because you see it daily.

A Twitter friend writes: “@matthew_dasilva prefer to rely on a smaller network rather than hash tags on unconfirmed reports.”

Unconfirmed reports. What is he talking about? The stream is relentless. There’s no way they could fake this outpouring of emotion and information. But you understand why he says this.

It’s the lack of credibility that each tweet possesses. “LeFigaro.fr also confirms Khatami attack and how police and supporters saved him from thugs” is plausible because it has a media outlet’s name attached. If you go to the website you read that it is true. You trust the news source whereas you do not trust the tweet.

The atmosphere generated by the twitter stream cannot be reproduced by a news report, however. There is something so visceral and compelling in the array of short bursts of information that conjures images and emotions a normal news story cannot.

We are witnessing something more than a political rally in Iran. We are witnessing a sort of collective consciousness emerging in the Twitterverse. Each voice bleeds into the next, ricochets off it, and thunders away only to be replaced by another, no less interesting one.

“Helicopter flying over sea of green now in Tehran, greens booing them, chanting & showing V sign.” “Basiji thugs attack in Valiasr circle in Tehran has been defeated by people.” “Security Forces stopped 1,000 students of Sharif Industrial Uni in Tehran from protesting and beat them up.”

You cannot pull your eyes away. You are engrossed. You only wish there were fewer, more carefully selected clips of data. You wish for form. You collapse back into the welcoming arms of your favourite broadsheet, breathing heavily.

I worked at Sydney University for six years until recently and often had the chance to walk past St Paul's College. The residential college is located down a sweeping driveway leading to City Road. The driveway and a contiguous path give access to other parts of the campus, where often I had the need to go. As I walked under the trees and past the gorgeous sports oval I noticed the new metal gates installed to keep out intruders.

Recent stories giving the cons and pros of residential college life brought back memories and I wonder if gates might better be placed somewhere to keep college residents out of the campus! Because the old habits from my year at St Paul's in 1981 seem to remain unchanged.

Not once, as I went about my business as a university employee, I saw young men carrying slabs of beer into the college. More memories. Drinking was - and still is, it seems - a dominant form of recreation at college. It wasn't just beer. Tequila shot contests went on into the early hours and I remember the groups of drunken men wandering around the grounds as I tried to sleep, bleating out their inane warcries, looking for a little action.

St Paul's is located next door to Women's College. On many occasions, the Paul's boys would go on a 'raid' into Women's, trying to effect ingress and barraging down the halls looking for someone on whom to inflict their boisterous energy.

If you didn't take part in these activities you were labelled an outsider and punished accordingly. I came back to college one day after attending lectures to find the entire contents of my dorm room deposited - intact and everything in place - on the lawn of one of the quads. A friend helped to restore order into my life, but the feeling of helplessness for the stigmatised was a real threat to personal happiness.

College hazing is part of the deal. 'Freshers' - year-one students, or 'freshmen' - are subject to an institutional form of hazing when they are 'auctioned' one August evening. Second- and third-year students 'buy' freshers so that they can take them out into the wilds of NSW one night and wait for them to return to college. The residents who had bought the fresher who returns last of all wins a cash prize derived from the proceeds of the auction.

I admittedly gained a high price. But I had a surprise in store for my tormentors. They make you dress in your full academic robe - and it's winter, after all - and take a shower while they search your clothes for contraband such as cash. But I rolled two five-dollar notes into pipes and held them under my toes during the shower. The fivers came in handy, later, when we had to buy rail tickets.

Suffice it to say we were not the last to return. But institutionalised hazing like this, accompanied by a strict code of enforced conformism when it came to participating in extracurricular college activities meant that anyone who didn't fit the standard 'drink-til-you-spew' mold lived in a constant state of anxiety.

I guess it toughened us up. But I left after a year. The prospect of buying my own fresher was not enticing and I moved, mercifully, into a small flat in Glebe from where I could walk to uni unmolested, unnoticed, and unworried. It was bliss and I had a couple of very productive years not only studying by making art and reading American literature voraciously.

A room of my own, sans fiends.

How should the media be using social networks? Given the parlous state of media companies' balance sheets nowadays, it's not surprising that many people are writing about how to solve the malaise.

I don't pretend to know the answer but I have recently read two pieces on the website Nieman Reports. The Nieman Foundation for Journalism is at Harvard University. I picked these two stories because there was a whole page of similar stories about journalism and social media and I got to the end of the third one before throwing up my hands.

But I'm going to try to pick out a theme. It doesn't have to do with what news companies should be doing but, rather, with how they should be doing it.

The first story I want to point to is by Robert G. Picard, a fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. He says, at one point:

Reasons can be found to use some [social media] without full cost recovery, but those should be based on strategic thinking and informed choice, not on technological hype and exuberance.

Now before making any comment, I want to point to another story on the same page of links. It is by Richard Gordon, an associate professor and director of digital innovation at Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.

Gordon illustrates what he thinks news websites should be doing by describing a project undertaken by two IT-cum-journalist students in a class he oversaw. They developed an interface called News Mixer, which allows readers to leave traces of their personalities on the website in a way that doesn't require a lot of personal capital to be invested.

The News Mixer, however, also lets readers who write good, interesting and valuable 'letters to the editor' and see their productions featured on their own page, where comments can be left by others. It's an interesting mix and I won't go into all the details now.

What I wanted to show is that it is precisely 'exuberance' that will enable the media to engage well with its audience. Or, rather, that will allow the audience into the conversation. Gordon quotes from Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li, who said that

“… in the future, social networks will be like air.” It will seem “archaic and quaint,” Li wrote, that we had to go to a Web site to “be social.”

It's like the status field in Facebook. The status field was once a single feature among many when I joined the site in 2007. It was just one way the site allowed users to engage with others. It was located obscurely, in the corner near your profile picture.

The Facebook status moved to a more prominent position. Then Twitter happened, making the status field the only game in town. And I think that it's enthusiastic approaches like this that characterise the web today. Even agile software development has allowed developers to move away from the traditional specification-develop-test model that meant long time delays and difficult implementations.

We are in a different place, now. The apps4nsw initiative, launched this month by the NSW premier, Nathan Rees, follows on from a debacle that involved a rogue developer with a good idea for the iPhone and the state rail authority, RailCorp. In March, Rees got a tweet from the developer complaining that RailCorp had tried to prevent the development of a timetabling app on copyright grounds. Rees stepped in and ordered them to allow the project to go ahead.

Under apps4nsw, which is based on Apps For Democracy, an initiative in Washington DC, prizes will be given for the best applications that use government data. Data will be provided in an open source format and licensing will be open source. So instead of investing millions to develop software that may not work, ordinary citizens will be the ones spending time - for fame and fortune - making things people want to use.

Exuberance, again.

Facebook has just launched five new 'prototype' apps that you can activate (click on 'New prototypes' to see the list). The announcement took place at the TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco. It was also announced that the social network site had passed the 300 million user mark.

It took just five months to go from 200 million to 300 million users.

Another announcement came with news that Facebook would support voice interaction, in addition to the current text chat feature. Facebook is not slowing down, and rival Twitter has a long way to go before it catches up, with less than 20 million current users.

Facebook has also introduced @ tagging, which allows users to tag friends in status updates.

But the new apps are exciting. I activated two of them.

The 'Recent Comments Filter' is a great way to catch up on comments your friends made while you were doing other stuff. You know how it is. A friend posts an item and you register it. In facebook, if you 'like' an item or comment on it any subsequent comments on that item will be shown to you. But items you didn't comment on or 'like' are not treated this way.

The 'Recent Comments' tool lets you see what your friends commented on, but of course it only shows you those comments made on items posted by your friends. so you don't ever get outside your own 'friend cloud'.

It's a great tool.

The other tool I activated is the 'Similar Posts' tool. I'm not sure how sophisticated this keyword matcher is, but it seems to offer a way to search through posts that you didn't make yourself. It may be that you remember a post by a friend on a particular topic, say a topic related by keyword to a post you are now looking at. All you do is click on the 'Similar Posts' button on each News Feed item. This brings up a list of similar posts.

The similar posts that appear can be outside your friend cloud. This is exciting, as it gives you access to a huge range of information you would never normally be able to see. It's not wildly accurate as you cannot do the more refined searches you may desire to do, such as those you would normally do using quote marks. But it's a start. To clear the search just click on 'News Feed'.

This one seems good for searching but I think I'll probably be using the 'Recent Comments' tool more often than the other one.

You can read more about the new apps at Inside facebook and at TechCrunch.

I've just read the word 'inventory' again in relation to declining advertising revenues in the online sphere. And again I'm forced to wonder what it means. Pundits use these technical words with such abandon and so freely, assuming their readers know what's going on. We're just curious, you see.

The word usually crops up next to 'increasing'. So what I'm assuming is that there is, for some reason, an increase in the number of news pages available for advertising. Ads are costed in terms of 'views' and 'click throughs'. Each time a page is viewed, the company that provides the page the ad is placed on gets paid. There may also be a payment if someone viewing the page clicks on the link contained in the ad.

It's confusing for me because the revenues deriving from media advertising has fallen drastically in the past year. The trend seems likely to continue. Advertising on paper is far more lucrative than online. Paper ads have fallen most. But the increase in online 'inventory' is having an impact.

So it makes me wonder what is the cause of this increase in 'inventory'. There seem to be more websites than before offering news. Certainly, in Australia, we have the emergence a couple of years ago of two broadsheet websites owned by Fairfax: The Brisbane Times and WA Today. But I'm still struggling to identify the other websites out there that are encroaching on the news space. Of course, it's not just in Australia that 'inventory' is increasing. It's a global phenomenon.

News companies are starting to panic and it has become routine to read on the websites of media critics that standards of journalism are declining. The two things go together. As revenues fall, the trope proceeds, there is less money to be spent paying for news. The result is more news manufactured by processing the press releases of PR operatives. The result? News that is less in the interests of the citizen, and more in the interests of the cashed-up corporation.

The panic started with Rupert Murdoch in the first week in August announcing that his newssites would start charging for access to stories. Since then, it has become a standard part of any discussion of online media. Then Google announced that it was developing a payment solution for news providers.

The language of online media is not transparent. Readers must come to grips with a new set of terms that have instant recognition for practitioners. The average Joe is frequently confused. That is why I chose to write this post. Because I'm trying to understand but I'm confused. There need to be more news stories published dealing with this issue that is so central to our ability to stay informed.

Which is why I was irritated to see a story on The Sydney Morning Herald's website today about a new magazine-style online reader launchd by Google called Fast Flip. I had already seen a mention on Twitter and had had a look. I was not impressed. But the syndicated story deserves space on the front page of the SMH while the stories I want to read do not. This, in essence, is lazy journalism. Instead of writing an in-depth story about the delcine in ad revenues among media providers, we get a PR-sourced syndicated story from global news house AFP.

Because I can get this information free on Twitter, this type of story would not warrant my money. And this is the problem with journalism today: too much cheap stuff devalues the brand and makes it less likely that dedicated news readers like me will support our regular mastheads. It's short-termism pure and simple.

Review: Taliban Country, Carmela Baranowska (2004)

What Baranowska is trying to show in her documentary is that US Marine insensitivity toward local tribes led to some members of them actively participating with the Taliban.

In fact, the part of Uruzgan province in Afghanistan where the video was shot is not, strictly speaking, ‘Taliban country’. We hear that the Taliban had visited about three days before the Marines, but had left soon after.

Uncommitted Afghanis do not automatically side with one party or the other, in this war of East against West. Above all they value their honour. By harrassing the tribesmen, the Marines blemished their honour. “We would rather die than be treated like this,” they say.

What did the Americans do? The tribesmen say the Americans searched them, stripped them naked, fondled their anuses and testicles, and laughed at them. Under Islam, nakedness is a sin. Touching the genitals is also haram. There is no doubt that these men will not soon forget their humiliation. Near the end of the video one of them described how easy it would be, now, to go to the Taliban. “I know where they are,” he said.

Of course the tribesmen could be lying in order to heighten the negative effect of the Marines’ visit. How would the Marines know that fingering an Afghani’s anus was haram? But if they are lying they are all lying in concert. Their stories are eerily similar in content.

In any case it is easy to sympathise with these simple people of the hilly, rock-strewn foothills. They are welcoming of Baranowska when they had no reason to be. They tell everything in a straight-forward way that leaves little room for doubt.

Their culture is so alien, however. This is a place where death is not the greatest misfortune. The codes of honour are deeply ingrained in a land where the extent of official legal reach is probably not deep. Each man and woman knows their own place. They live within a philosophy of Islam as the ultimate arbiter and everyone understands the rules.

In a place with such broadly shared beliefs there is no room for either doubt or argument. But this consensus leaves open, once again, the possibility that their stories are made-up for effect. The script is ready-at-hand, if you were looking for an excuse to lay more blame at the door of the infidels than had been warranted by experience.

Baranowska does not judge. She is the observer. The magic in this film is that she took a chance – and not a trivial one – and returned alone to walk fearless in an alien land, the land of the muezzin and the headscarf.

The video is not long. In fact, it runs for less than an hour. While some might see this as a tonic measure in these days of marathon screenings, by the end of the video I was still wanting more.

But Baranowska’s options were severely restricted due to the circumstances under which she shot the film. Initially embedded with the marines, she was banished to Kabul but returned under her own steam, as I wrote earlier this month.

There is no doubt that the footage obtained while working independent of the Marines is superior. Tribesmen are far more willing to talk in the absence of their tormentors. Using a sole translator, she is able to solicit honest and full accounts of what happened.

The film reminds us that good journalism needs to be neither sanctioned nor lengthy.

If I hadn't read Janine di Giovanni's Madness Visible, this story would not have made much sense. In the story, 'Bosnia to seek extradition of accused war criminal', there are a very few details of the alleged crimes against a Bosnian, now Australian citizen, named Daniel Snedden.

I remember when Snedden, whose previous name was Dragan Vasiljkovic, was arrested in Perth. He has now instituted defamation proceedings against The Australian newspaper.

It is likely he will be extradited to Bosnia, as

''Bosnia's court dealing with war crimes is staffed with international judges and prosecutors and it has received very high marks on the international level for its professionalism and impartiality''.

A recent case involving an extradition request from Croatia was declined by Australian authorities because it was deemed the defendant would not receive a fair trial.

But what is "Captain Dragan" accused of? According to the story:

... a Bosnian woman accused Snedden of repeatedly raping her in Zvornik, northern Bosnia, in 1992. The woman, who travelled to Sydney in April to testify in the NSW Supreme Court along with several Croatian men allegedly imprisoned and tortured by Snedden, identified him in court as the ''Captain Dragan'' who repeatedly raped her and watched as other soldiers did so.

Now that I've read about these types of crimes, which were all too common, I can visualise the kind of man Snedden is accused of being. I can understand the anger felt by the woman, who is doubtless a Muslim. I can see in my mind the ravages brought on an innocent people by war.

Snedden was apparently head of a paramilitry unit operating in northern Bosnia in the early 1990s. "Paramilitary" is an opaque term. What it means is that the unit was NOT part of the official military force of Serbia, but operated alongside the military in an ancillary capacity.

The advantage of being in a paramilitary unit is that you could get away with things that a military unit could not. Paramilitary units are not bound by the rules of war, and feel less circumscribed by ethical opinions. In other words, they are potentially worse than the regular army.

It will be interesting to see what happens in this case - both the extradition attempt and the defamation case - as I believe that public outcry would be greater had the September 11 event not taken the public's attention away from Bosnian war crimes.

Review: Madness Visible: A Memoir of War, Janine di Giovanni (2004)

Slobodan Milosevic died last year in The Hague. The war criminal was dead. But his death wasn't the greatest tragedy facing the survivors of the Bosnian War. Perhaps most damaging in its extent and effect on the perceptions of the world community was September 11, 2001. When the planes hit the skyscrapers everything else was subsumed in the resulting coverage. War crimes in Bosnia were no longer news.

Di Giovanni spent many years covering the Bosnian War, which extended from about 1992 to 1998. During this time uncountable men were summarily shot and buried in mass graves. Uncountable women were interned as sex slaves for the Serbian troops. Uncountable lives were damaged beyond redemption.

Many Serbs would deny things di Giovanni tells us. It's just foreign propaganda, they say. But it's not. If only it were.

Rape in wartime is no small thing. The men line up for their turn. The women are made to serve tea naked, a cause of intense shame for Muslims. They don't know where their children are, or their husbands. They lie on dirty mattresses in concrete huts as tens or dozens of men use them. Then they are released. And they can tell no-one what happened because the shame is too great.

"I was touched," they say. Others, who went through the same trauma, understand immediately. But later, when they return to their communities, after the shelling and killing has finished, they see their tormentors in the streets. What can they do?

These stories never came out in the press. Mass graves, yes. But mass sexual abuse on a fantastic scale was not aired. I would have known. Instead I watched for the thousandth time as a jet flew into a skyscraper, until the sight no longer held any value. Meanwhile these stories were there, waiting to be told.

Nobody told them. It wasn't until I picked up di Giovanni's book that I understood.

Her method is slightly confusing at first. Layer after layer of detailed reporting is applied to the reader's consciousness until a clear picture appears. Dates recur, meaningless at first, until they gain meaning. Characters and names reapper time after time. We finally manage to assemble a picture. Di Giovanni's method is a series of layers applied one on top of the other until meaning blossoms. Then, finally, we understand.

It would be meaningless to say that this book should be mandatory reading at secondary schools. It would be meaningless because each time this type of savage terror occurs it will have unique characteristics. In this case it was ethnic war, which allowed for ethnic cleansing. Next time it will be something different, but the effect on individual lives will be equally devastating.

Is big media targeting bloggers in its search for culprits for its economic woes? Going by comments from APN News & Media Ltd chief executive Brendan Hopkins today at the Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers' Association (PANPA) conference held in Sydney’s Masonic Centre, the answer may be ‘yes’.

Of course, Hopkins also targeted search engines, saying, according to The Brisbane Times:

"To use an analogy, I see search engines as breaking into our homes, itemising the contents, walking out and listing everything for everyone to see. And they get money out of that process," he said.

"The only problem is, I don't see any revenue being paid directly from Google, Yahoo! or Microsoft in our company profit and loss accounts."

His attack grows out of James Murdoch’s. Murdoch, News Ltd’s Europe and Asia boss, last month delivered a spray at state-sponsored media outlets in a speech in Edinburgh. It was widely publicised. He said government-sponsored media, such as the BBC, had a “chilling” effect on the news.

But Hopkins takes the generalised aggression currently visible among media bosses further, intimating that changes to fair dealing laws might be sought, by attacking bloggers:

"As an industry we must strive to protect our content from those who contribute nothing to its creation and are happy to run on its coat tails.

"Our value is diminished by other media companies, both online and in print, with limited resources, who feed off our newspapers, by those who take the ideas of the newspapers, rewrite our journalists' words to be miraculously their own words, and then put it on a blog or a broadcast piece and call that journalism."

Bloggers beware. Or not?

In Australian fair dealing law, you can quote from a published work. Section 41 says “A fair dealing ... does not constitute an infringement of the copyright in the work if it is for the purpose of criticism or review, whether of that work or of another work, and a sufficient acknowledgement of the work is made.”

And section 42 says, further, that “A fair dealing ... does not constitute an infringement of the copyright in the work if it is for the purpose of, or is associated with, the reporting of news ... [and] a sufficient acknowledgement of the work is made”.

Under S 41, fair dealing with a news story would be for the purposes of criticising or reviewing the news story.

Under S 42, fair dealing would apply also, I assume, for the purposes of reporting the news. It doesn’t say anything about blogs, but includes “a newspaper, magazine or similar periodical” as publications that can use extracts. It doesn’t mention reporting reports but, rather, the reporting of “a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work, or with an adaptation of a literary, dramatic or musical work”.

Under S 41 of the Copyright Act 1968 the use of quotes (or a blockquote) around extracts of news reports found on this blog are definitely inside the legal boundaries. Under S 42 they are probably not breached as S 42 only refers to literary works, which however could be understood to subsume a news report.

But Hopkins is seeking more protection than this, because he specifically identifies rewriting and publishing the rewritten words as abuse of privilege.

Google has also come in for criticism, not least from Rupert Murdoch in May this year who accused the search engine of “shameless promiscuity”, inviting Hopkins’ housebreaking analogy. Murdoch later announced that News Ltd websites would set up ‘pay walls’ limiting access.

In the US the industry is getting to grips with a problem that has caused more disruption than it has here. In response to a request from the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) for information about payment systems, Google released a response detailing its capabilities in terms of online transactions for news publishers.

The response describes micropayments and subscription billing, including bundling of multiple offerings under a single subscription. The response makes much of the ‘single sign-on’ used with a Google solution. This would be great news for hard-core web users, many of whom already use Google for emailing and blogging. Google highlights the fact that it has already been successfully using an online payment engine for years. ‘Google Checkout’ is, however, currently “in production”, which means that it is not yet ready to use.

As a user of Google for advertising, I can attest to the ease of paying by credit card with Google for small amounts logged daily but paid periodically, and to a daily limit. Google says in the position paper that it judges an individual’s ability to pay on past performance, and sets the daily limit accordingly.

The NAA also asked other companies to respond, including The Wall Street Journal, which “declined to submit an RFI because their solution will be focused on larger media companies”. In other words, News Ltd will use the WSJ’s solution when they go paid-only.

Hopkins also chairs an industry group, The Newspaper Works. The entity is “seeking talks” with Google over remuneration for use of proprietary works. Google is clearly getting ready. According to a similar story in The Australian:

APN publishes 14 daily newspapers and over 75 community publications across Australia and has newspaper assets in New Zealand.

A good day for journalism or a good day for free speech?

Yesterday New York Times journalist Stephen Farrell was freed from Taliban in Afghanistan by British soldiers. He had been in captivity for a few days, and is pictured wearing a black bullet-proof vest with the word ‘Press’ clearly visible on the front.

It takes you back to 1975, when Indonesian troops invading East Timor shot and killed five Australian journalists who tried to identify themselves, but failed. They paid for their presence in the hot-spot with their lives.

This brings me to another win for journalism yesterday: the decision by Home Affairs Minister Brendan O’Connor to launch an investigation into the Balibo Five. His Liberal predecessor, Philip Ruddock, declined to take up the finding by the NSW Deputy Coroner, Dorelle Pinch, that the journalists had been murdered. Pinch fingered a number of men for the crime, two of whom – Captain Mohammad Yunus Yosfiah and Christoforus da Silva – are still alive.

An article in The Australian says that O’Connor “has a life-long interest in the matter, and was keen for there to be an investigation”. His appointment to the Home Affairs portfolio – which covers federal crime and law, as well as the Australian territories – has given him a chance to do something about it. It is also likely that the appearance and success of the new film Balibo, directed by Robert Connelly, spurred his interest in the case.

His decision will certainly go down well among the Left intelligentsia.

It has also given him an immediate, and high, profile. Following hot on the heels of the news announcement of the investigation, which the Australian Federal Police say they instigated on 20 August, The Australian’s Caroline Overington contacted Indonesian authorities.

They were less than impressed, and said outright, even before any approach had been made by the AFP, that they would not cooperate. There would be no extraditions. It was bad for Indonesian-Australian relations. Both the government of Australia and its people would suffer. It was “something that does not exist”.

The other big win, of course, was that NSW Premier Nathan Rees has agreed to a Senate inquiry into the matters surrounding Michael McGurk, the lender-of-last-resort who was shot in the head outside his Cremorne home a few days ago. There’s apparently a tape-recording made by McGurk implicating top Labor figures in corrupt dealings with property developers.

There is certainly much mud in the air, and it’s probably a wise suggestion by the Liberals to seek out the truth. But I decided it’s actually not as good news as the Balibo decision because Rees’ decision was made for pragmatic reasons:

In a surprise move, NSW Government members in the Legislative Council supported an inquiry, apparently once it became clear that Shooters Party MPs would give the Coalition the majority required.

Basically, it came down to numbers. There’s no longstanding commitment to the truth, as there is in the Balibo case. There’s just hard-nosed utility. Nevertheless, it will now be highly entertaining for the people of Sydney – where the events took place (and this is a very Sydney case) – and of Australia to find out what really happens between shonky lenders, shonkier property developers, and (ahem) politicians.

A couple of years ago I attended a news writing course for a few days. I was working at the time so it was part of my professional development and I'll always be grateful to the manager I had then - thanks Kim! - who also allowed me to edit and produce a weekly bulletin for my work unit. The bulletin ran for over a year until we had a reorg, when another group of employees took it over and I moved to a different work unit.

Anyway, the presenter at the course was (and possibly still is) a contractor with the University of Sydney's Centre for Continuing Education. Because I was also then studying for a masters in media practice, I had more experience than other attendees. I'd already heard about the general practice among journalists to use feed from public relations agencies and the PR people employed by private corporations, NGOs and government departments. So I asked the presenter if investigative journalism was decreasing. "Yes, definitely," she said.

Since then I've been looking out for such references and they appear fairly frequently. One guy I heard on the radio - a journalist himself, though retired - said that he can tell if a piece is largely reproduced from a media release.

And for the study I was doing I had to take a unit specifically dedicated to writing PR releases. I didn't get a brilliant mark, but I passed. We were trained to write stories in such a way that enabled us to both get the message across and to engage journalists and, hopefully, get them to run our stories unaltered.

So when I read about an address given recently by Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, I took notice. He is reported to have said, in part:

What Rosenstiel described as the “trust me” era of journalism in which journalists served as gatekeepers has been replaced with a new era of “show me” journalism, in which audiences express their demands of journalists to openly divulge the source of their information and prove its legitimacy. Thus the role of the journalist has shifted to that of the “committed observer,” with the responsibility to be the eyes and ears for their audience.

If this is the way things are moving, and if journalists now need to "insert their content into a rapidly flowing stream of information", then it seems likely that news consumers will be more and more wary of anything that seems "manufactured". By this I mean something that looks to have been merely cut-and-pasted from a media release.

Journalists are already among the least-trusted breed of working professional, ranking just above lawyers and politicians in the popularity stakes. Isn't it time that they started to do more work, instead of relying on free stuff?

It may be cheaper, but we know now that newspapers are running toward deficit faster than a bunch of lemmings toward a cliff. And who are they following? They're following the shareholder gremlin, the one who says that cheap stories are good stories because these are the stories that pay for themselves.

But this seems short-termist. Getting quality copy online is hard, but the alternative is going to be harder: readers will go elsewhere for their daily news intake. The question to study right now is: how much distance is there between the flock of moving lemmings and the cliff's edge.

In the United States many newspapers have taken the plunge, reformatting output by stopping their printers entirely. Others have settled on a hybrid, with a weekly printed edition as well as daily online publication. But the core problem won't just disappear by wishing - which is what going for cheap copy essentially is.

The Prosperity Principal’s Trusted Avatar shtick got my attention when I read about it on the mUmBRELLA site (a website for the marketing industry containing news). The link was delivered by mUmBRELLA’s Twitter persona.

I didn’t want to resort to short-termist posting, a reactive strategy dependent on interesting stories that appear near to the time of posting, but I feel there’s no other way to produce a daily post than this. Which may seem callow and transparent, but there you go. I’ve only got so much time available for blog posting.

The ad agency’s principal is Geoff Emerson. Going by his responses to comments on the original story, Emerson feels entirely justified in promoting the new service, which involves paid individuals adopting a persona for use in social networking and other Web 2.0 sites. These people ‘drop’ relevant links into the discussion. They do not declare that the link is part of an ad campaign.

In other words, they’re participating in a Web 2.0 version of ‘cash-for-comment’.

That little rort was, as many would recall, outed by the ABC’s Media Watch program. It involved experienced and trusted radio announcers dropping promos for products into their spiels, without disclosing that they had received remuneration for the boosting.

And Emerson is just as brazen. His replies to comments are vitriolic and aggressive, as though he were literally stunned that other advertising practitioners could find anything wrong with his plan.

Apart from anything else, the ‘trusted avatars’ are exploiting the good name of the forum they are participating in. Not content with relying on traditional vehicles for promotion, such as free-to-air TV and newspaper adverts, companies who take up Emerson’s offer of services will be relying on the good name of online sites that are likely to be – initially, at least – oblivious of the rort.

Emerson even admits that the plan is “black-hat”. This is industry code for something that is not-quite legit, or underhanded. But it’s not spam, he asserts.

There seems to be a problem of perception. What is the difference between what he proposes and a company buying space in a newspaper for editorial-like copy? Media companies self-regulate and have decided to only include editorial-like copy with a disclosure, such as an all-caps word at the top of the page that says ‘Advertisement’.

In a follow-up piece on mUmBRELLA Emerson lists the conditions of employment that would apply for people using personas under his plan. It includes this:

If someone asks if you are working for a company, please make a full and frank disclosure about who you are working for and why. If you’d like, you can forward these guidelines to them, it may make them feel more at ease knowing our guidelines and it may also demonstrate, that in return for being present at their site, we are endeavouring to deliver traffic to them. If asked to stop, do so immediately. Please never revisit a site that has asked you to refrain – then notify your manager.

Notify your manager? And what happens if you get, say, ten ‘strikes’ of this kind against your name? Will your employment be terminated? What kinds of people will want to do this kind of work anyway? Depending on the makeup of the cohort under contract, the likelihood of spamming seems high, everything else being equal.

But it is unlikely, given the kind of replies he uses, that Emerson will back down.

The project WILL go ahead. We have been warned. Oh, and by the way, this type of promotion has already been legislated against in the UK.

In June 2007 Queensland Police officer Snr Sergeant Chris Hurley was acquitted of charges of killing Mulrunji at the Palm Island watch house, near Townsville. The finding marked the end of years of speculation about how Mulrunji had died while in custody. His injuries were serious, and included a liver cloven in two, which caused his death.

The events surrounding the death and the long prosecution process, including two coronial investigations, are documented in Chloe Hooper’s The Tall Man (2008), which was named winner of the 2009 Victorian premier’s Literary Award for non-fiction. Hooper also won the Davitt Award for true crime, the 2009 John Button Prize, the 2009 Indie Award for non-fiction, and the 2009 Ned Kelly Award for non-fiction. The book has also been shortlisted for the 2009 Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards.

Her book has had a significant impact in the broader public sphere in Australia. But how true are the facts it contains? Was Hurley guilty, as Hooper suggests? Accusations of guilt failed the most recent test, in Queensland’s Supreme Court, but these accusations, which started with a coronial finding in September 2006, have flared on and off.

Hooper’s book clearly favours an assumption of guilt for Hurley, although this is never stated. Hooper’s sympathies lie with Mulrunji and his family and the onus of proof of innocence seems therefore to have swung back to the police’s side.

The following is a detailed analysis of the events leading up to Mulrunji’s death, prepared in cooperation with Michael Bates, a commenter on this blog.

In 1991 the Royal Commission into Deaths in Custody recommended sobering-up shelters to which a person drunk in public can be taken. This was because most Aboriginal people in police lockups are in “protective custody” after being found drunk in public. Successive governments have taken so long to implement this life or death measure in all jurisdictions that as late as July 2003 Chris Hurley pointed out to the Federal Parliamentary Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs that Palm Island lacked an alcohol diversion program and as a result police only had one option for drunk and disorderly people: the watchhouse.

It is therefore ironic that the death was the result of Hurley arresting Mulrunji and taking him to the watchhouse when he was drunk in public in November 2004. At the time of the arrest Hurley was escorting Gladys Nugent so that she could safely retrieve her belongings from Roy Bramwell's house. She was one of three women who Roy Bramwell had assaulted. Mulrunji walked past, challenged Police Liaison Officer Bengaroo as to why he helped lock up his own people, and then kept walking before turning and swearing at the police. Hurley drove up to him and arrested him on a public nuisance charge. Although some witnesses said that Mulrunji wasn’t really drunk the Coroner’s report held that Mulrunji’s blood alcohol concentration at the time of his death was 0.292. His blood alcohol concentration at the time of arrest is unknown but must have been at least as high.

Hurley dropped off Ms Nugent then transported Mulrunji to the watchhouse. He removed Mulrunji from the van and struggled to get him into the watchhouse. Mulrunji punched him in the face after getting out of the vehicle and then attempted to struggle out of Hurley’s grasp. This apparently caused Mulrunji to fall into the watchhouse and Hurley to fall with him.

Mulrunji was taken to a cell and later found dead as a result of a serious injury to his liver. Being a death in custody, the matter attracted national attention. Some naturally speculated that Hurley had beaten Mulrunji causing injuries that led to his death. By 3 December 2004 speculation appeared to gain substance when media reports revealed that a witness (Roy Bramwell) had seen Chris Hurley punch Mulrunji. An article in The Australian on 13 December 2004 had Murrandoo Yanner state that he viewed Mulrunji while preparing him for his funeral and that the head injuries looked so severe that he was unrecognizable. In response to a Minister’s suggestion that Yanner was not a medical expert he said “I’ve seen plenty of bodies and I’ve seen blokes who have had the shit kicked out of them, and I know what it was.” It wasn’t until 27 September 2006 that the Coroner's report revealed that the only visible facial injury was a small oval shaped graze in the centre of his right eyebrow and this finding was never well publicised.

On 1 March 2005 The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Patrick Bramwell claimed to have witnessed Hurley taking Mulrunji out of an adjoining cell and punching him on both sides of his body. This allegation was also rejected by the Coroner in her 2006 report with reference to video footage from the cell. The Coroner said that the video footage showed Bramwell was in the same cell and that Mulrunji wasn't taken from the cell, thus voiding his allegations. Patrick Bramwell later hung himself.

It is possible to pinpoint the time when Mulrunji’s fatal injury occurred within a very small time frame with a high degree of confidence. The medical evidence cited by the Coroner showed that the fatal injury could not have occurred before the fall as Mulrunji would have been unable to struggle after sustaining the fatal injury. Associate Professor Stephen Lynch, a specialist general surgeon specializing in liver transplant surgery, said that the injury must have occurred at the time of the fall or afterwards. It would be impossible for someone with that injury to engage in the struggle which Mulrunji put up when he was first removed from the police vehicle. Also, the Coroner advised that the video footage from the watchhouse enabled Patrick Bramwell’s allegations of assault after being locked up to be dismissed.

Therefore the fatal injury must have occurred in a period of time starting with the fall and ending when Mulrunji was filmed entering the cell. The incident occurred on a weekday morning at Palm Island watchhouse and it was not hard to find witnesses during that time. Arguably the time period can be further narrowed. Mulrunji, Chris Hurley and Roy Bramwell were only out of view of other witnesses for approximately 6 or 7 seconds after the fall according to media reports of the testimony at trial.

The Coroner considered the two possibilities. One was that Hurley's 115kg had fallen on top of Mulrunji with a knee or elbow making contact causing the fatal injury. Another was an assault involving punching as alleged by Roy Bramwell. She noted that medical evidence ruled out Bramwell’s allegation of kicking.

It was well publicized that the Coroner accepted Roy Bramwell’s evidence of punching and that she found this to be the cause of Mulrunji’s death. Bramwell had alleged that Hurley punched Mulrunji three times in the head. The Coroner's opinion redirected these blows to Mulrunji's midsection due to the nature of the fatal injury and her belief that Bramwell's view was partially obscured.

The matter was then referred to the Department of Public Prosecutions. A complaint was also made to the Criminal Misconduct Commission as police killing people in custody is obviously a breach of police ethics. This resulted in analogous investigations. The DPP had to determine whether there was sufficient evidence to launch a criminal trial and the CMC had to determine whether there was sufficient evidence to launch disciplinary proceedings.

On 14 December 2006 the Queensland Director of Public Prosecutions made a shock announcement. Her finding was that there was insufficient evidence to charge Chris Hurley. She also said that the incident was a tragic accident. On the same day the Criminal Misconduct Commission announced that no disciplinary charges would be laid.

The Queensland Government circumvented the DPP and on 4 January 2007 Sir Laurence Street was hired to review the DPP decision. Being the son of Jessie Street, famed for her advocacy of indigenous rights, his appointment was welcomed by the indigenous community. On 16 January 2007 Street visited the home of the dead man’s family to “pay our respects and express our regrets”. On 26 January Sir Laurence argued that there was sufficient evidence to prosecute and the trial commenced on 5 February with Hurley facing charges of assault and murder. The prosecution was launched by the Attorney General as the DPP refused to prosecute. This later attracted criticism from Robert Mulholland QC in The Courier Mail on 6 July 2007. Mulholland claimed that it relied on a power which was a relic from another time. This was disputed by former Attorney General Matt Foley in the same publication the next day. Foley argued that it was legitimate and the Fitzgerald Report confirmed that the Attorney General has extensive powers.

The defence was that the fatal injury was sustained in the fall with Hurley's weight hitting Mulrunji through a knee or elbow. The trial prosecutor proposed a knee drop theory whereby Bramwell executed a WWF-style knee drop on Mulrunji. No one said they saw a knee drop after the fall but the prosecution needed to account for the medical evidence which unanimously states that if Hurley landed on top of Mulrunji with a knee or elbow it would explain the fatal injuries and most other options were ruled out.

Hurley was acquitted by a jury on 20 June 2007. He subsequently appealed the coronial findings and they were overturned by District Court Judge Bob Pack on 17 December 2008. This ruling was then appealed in the Supreme Court’s Court of Appeal which presented a judgment on 16 June 2009.

The Court of Appeal judgment included the startling announcement that the medical evidence before the Coroner ruled out the alleged punching as the cause of the fatal injury. It also pointed out that the Coroner didn't report that evidence. As a result the Court considered that the Coroner’s judgment that Hurley had punched Mulrunji to death should be overturned. This was startling as the medical evidence ruled out kicking and the options prior to the trial prosecutor’s knee drop theory had always been a choice between an injury in the fall or an injury from punching.

Hurley’s adversaries in the Court of Appeal argued that only the Coroner's finding regarding punching should be set aside and a knee drop or something similar during the ‘window of opportunity’ should automatically be considered the cause of death. The basis for this was Hurley's evidence in early interviews that he didn't recall falling on top of Mulrunji. By the time of the Coroner's report he said that he figured he must have fallen on top with a knee or elbow but didn’t remember. That remains his position today. The Coroner and the prosecution took the view that Hurley would have had to remember making contact with Mulrunji at the bottom of the fall and the contact therefore must not have occurred. Thus they argued that circumstantial evidence proved that Hurley didn't fall on top of Mulrunji. (Another witness gave evidence that Hurley looked like he "landed on top of the other person".) In consequence Hurley's adversaries argued that a knee drop during the subsequent ‘window of opportunity’ must be the explanation. The Supreme Court disagreed, saying that Bramwell's evidence could be taken to rule that out.

Was Hurley guilty as Hooper suggests? The Coroner reported that medical evidence ruled out the time before the fall as the time of the fatal injury and kicking after the fall was ruled out by the medical evidence. Further, no assault occurred once Mulrunji was placed in a cell. The Supreme Court reported that the medical evidence excluded punching as a cause of fatal injury. They also pointed out that Bramwell’s evidence is inconsistent with the knee drop theory. If this is all correct the possibilities seem limited. If Hurley’s knee didn’t hit Mulrunji’s stomach and split his liver at the bottom of the fall how did Hurley do it?

We will probably never know.

In reporting as 'news' that the prime minister's website had been revamped by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, The Age adopts a censorious tone as if it were a frivolous expenditure not authentically related to the task of government.

The tone, the curled lip, is unmistakable from the headline, which reads 'Now it's the ministry of polishing the PM's blog', as though the department did nothing other than attend to the website, which included moderating comments on blogs. The newspaper's tone echoes that of Liberal senator Eric Abetz, who smeared his hand under his nose - metaphorically speaking - as he itemised the abuses included on the department's activity sheet.

Liberal frontbench senator Eric Abetz said the spending on the website was ''an extravagant waste of money'' and questioned whether it was appropriate to use bureaucrats to ''censor'' comments posted on the blog.

''Aside from the obvious implications about politicising the public service, I would have thought most taxpayers would prefer their public servants to be working at improving their lot rather than censoring submissions to the PM's website,'' he said.

It's more than surprising that a newspaper, an entity currently struggling with the most serious challenge to its profitability ever, from the internet, should join in with the opposition party in this nasty little story that has no other aim than to coopt the prejudices of the broader community against a practice that is, nowadays, entirely reasonable.

Apparently the department has historically looked after the prime minister's correspondence and organised community events. Both of these are definitions of practice that entirely cover maintaining and running a website, one would have thought. This information is contained in the story but it is buried in the final paragraph, miles away from the sneering headline and Abetz' reference to "censorship", as though comment moderation were an unsavoury activity, rather than something all newspapers do on a daily basis to protect themselves from legal action.

Rudd's spokesman Sean Kelly, said:

''The new site enables people to discuss government policy, ask the Prime Minister and ministers questions, and find government information quickly and easily,'' he said.

He said the previous government had not sought to use modern technology to engage people and ''therefore a new site platform needed to be built to enable video, blogs and online chats to be hosted''.

Rather than treating website expenses as something natural and desirable - from the point of view of government and democracy generally - The Age chose to treat them as though blue-veined brie cheese had been listed as an essential item of survival for an outback trek. In reality, embracing the internet is essential for politicians, and for everybody.

I'm currently trying to get my mother to use the internet. She's 80 years old and has never used it. I set up a Gmail account for her but when she wants to know if she's got mail she asks me to log in for her. As a person with no opposable thumb when it comes to online life, my mother is excluded from so many activities that I consider routine, such as blogging, watching YouTube, using Twitter and Facebook, and sending emails.

She is thus excluded from a large slice of everyday life. She is essentially crippled. For The Age to get into the spirit of the story from the point of view of a sneering opposition, rather than from the point of view of an enlightened netizen, is irresponsible and ugly.

One could easily imagine that the Community Engagement Unit of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet will be increasingly busy, in future, as Twitter becomes more deep-reaching. If it to be desired that individuals can contact government in an unmediated way - through social networking tools - and vice versa, and both thus bypass the media, the number of people employed in the bureaucracy who attend to the business of social networking, must rise.

Imagine how many of Rudd's followers would get involved verbally via a dedicated hashtag - just as they do now via newspaper website comments threads. Imagine how much time it would take to glean information from tweats logged under that hashtag. The mind truly boggles. But this is the direction we are moving in, there's no doubt about it.

NSW Public Sphere, designed along lines similar to Senator Kate Lundy’s Public Sphere forum for technologists was more focused on deliberating ways to improve the democratic process through web technologies. Held a week later at NSW Parliament House, and organised by NSW Member of the NSW Legislative Council and Parliamentary Secretary for Transport Penny Sharpe, NSW Public Sphere saw 20 experts present their slidepacks to a small audience, with more people watching over the web.

A lively commentary took place on Twitter, as it had on the other occasion. The main difference this time was the absence of chat breaks and the higher video and sound quality due to all speakers taking the rostrum in one location. A point of weakness is that the name of the speaker was not always evident and it sometimes took a tweat to clear up the matter.

With both web experts and technologists from within government departments and other state institutions a lot of ground was covered. A common theme was data availability. Mobile geek Rob Manson: “Information wants to be used.” James Dellow from Headshift: “Release the data!” Milee Joseph from Public Library Services, State Library of New South Wales, said that libraries ensure free access to information and break down barriers to information.

Lynda Summer from the Regional Communities Consultative Council helped to develop The Squawk, a social network that takes learnings from Facebook and MySpace to make a new solution to help talk about what’s happening in communities. She found it necessary to “educate the bureaucrats a bit on these ideas” but eventually got funding from Julia Gillard. Bizarrely they needed to put a geographical boundary on the project to meet funding criteria.

Tony Ritchie, Manager of Corporate Communications for the NSW Police, said that information has to be out there because people otherwise make assumptions. The police “need to be out there” because the media filters information prior to delivering it to the public.

Matthew Crozier from Banthetable agreed. He said that government has an opportunity that it cannot afford to miss. “If you don’t take advantage of the online community the risk is that you will miss out on knowing what people really think are the major issues. You need to take control of the space.”

Colin Griffith, General Manager Strategy of the Government Chief Information Office in the NSW Department of Services, Technology and Administration, highlighted another aspect of government behaviour. “You need to be able to fail,” he said. But he returned to the shared message later. He said that the NSW government is looking at achieving transparency and openness of information. “Even that’s going to be quite a journey.” Barriers to sharing within government let alone outside of government mean the problem is not mainly a technological one, but one of changing the organisational mindset.

Blogger Stilgherrian returned to the problem of governmental mindsets. “Change will mean things change,” he said, noting that there would always be quite a bit of destruction and discomfort in the process of using technology to transform a bureaucracy. People have a natural fear of change, he said, adding that employees must engage with a process in which they might lose their job.

Cassie Findlay from State Records NSW returned to the downside risk message. "Do nothing, lose everything," she said. She repeated the message of openness and accessibility touched on by other speakers. “Public information belongs to all of us.”

Damian Donnely, a representative of website TweetMP, repeated the theme of change contained in other presentations. Open discourse is a catalyst for change, he said. He also noted that it was reasonable to expect that the total traffic to Twitter in Australia is greater than traffic to all newspaper websites.

A memorable note in the forum was sounded by Premier Nathan Rees who appeared briefly to announce a new prize that would be awarded to deserving web applications. Dubbed Apps for NSW, the prize would take place over a three-month period. Prizes of $100,000 would be awarded to applications judged by an expert panel.

Rees also noted the need for greater openness, but said that overcoming old habits of secrecy and control would take years.

It’s breathtaking. John Della Bosca, king-hit by The Daily Telegraph, resigned and is now being aided by colleagues and sensitive journos like The Punch editor David Penberthy back into the public’s good graces.

The attack is also a twin breach of journalists’ code of ethics.

All this within a few days. Kate Neill, the blonde, “glamorous” Newtown chick who stabbed the pol in the nuts has now been outed. The pattern of blame and counterclaim has come full circle. All that remains is for Della Bosca to be rehabilitated. He may still be premier.

It’s none of our business who a man sleeps with, regardless of his position. There is no conflict of interest. Instead of this kind of sensational guff, respectable journalists should be concentrating on writing stories that people really want to read. Feeding prurient appetites should not be part of the code of conduct.

The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance’s (MEAA) code of ethics includes this:

Where a source seeks anonymity, do not agree without first considering the source’s motives ...

The Daily Telegraph did not question the validity of Neill’s outburst and, instead of filing it away under ‘revenge’, published and then put editor Garry Linnell on The 7.30 Report to soft-pedal the issue.

The code also includes this:

Respect ... personal privacy...

The newspaper clearly did not do this, as Della’s privacy was infringed in a blatant and disingenuous way. Neill’s motives have been questioned by a psychologist. She has handled the situation badly and will probably regret what she has done. She says she was misled but at 26 she’s old enough to know better. The MEAA’s code of ethics also includes this:

Ethical journalism requires conscientious decision-making in context. Only substantial advancement of the public interest or risk of substantial harm to people allows any standard to be overridden.

How is the public interest advanced by shaming a 53-year-old guy who had a fling with a younger woman?

“What is the convention about politicians and their private lives?” asks Julia Baird in her 2004 book Media Tarts.

It has been described in the same way for decades, but broken for different, often subjective reasons. Perhaps it is not as strong as the press has thought or claimed it to be. Historically, it has meant that journalists pride themselves on not reporting the sexual liaisons or ‘indiscretions’ or politicians, including affairs, alcoholism, and broken marriages, in the belief that personal affairs should not spill into the public domain unless there is a significant public interest. The convention has long been used to protect men who cheat on their wives, attempt to seduce journalists, drink heavily, or even take drugs. It appears an underlying assumption has been that when men do these things, the way they think or work is not affected – that politics remains untainted by their personal predilections, the distractions of lust, the heartache of relationship break-ups, the struggle with addictions. Men can separate work and play, their loins disconnected from their brains.

Baird goes on to assert that journalists have “with great reluctance” moved into the “more tabloid’ style of American reporting. Clearly, The Daily Telegraph was anything but reluctant. Baird also says that reticence is driven by a fear that “once someone throws stones, rocks will be thrown back”.

But perhaps we’re living inside a different dynamic from that which characterised the 1980s and -90s. Maybe we’re now in a position where bad boys are not in cabinet any more. Maybe the world has shifted on its axis and pollies really are squeaky-clean exemplars of a type, rather than flawed human beings.

Or perhaps the celebrity mode of reporting, so ubiquitous, has taken over other areas of the trade, so that even politicians are liable to have their faces splattered over YouTube, just like any drunken or violent Hollywood celeb.

Maybe.

Review: Why Weren't We Told?, Henry Reynolds (1999)

Half history book, half memoir, the book transports us back to the bad old days of the history wars, the time of that choice epithet, 'black armband', which Reynolds chose to wear with pride. We're in a different space now that ATSIC has been relegated to Siberia, Howard and Hanson are gone, the Intervention has faded, and Rudd said 'Sorry'.

Despite this, Reynolds' question remains valid. For children in school today there are probably more facts about Aboriginal history, but for people of my generation it is a question that must continue to be asked because Aboriginal disadvantage continues to fester in the heart of the nation.

When Australian journalists questioned the sex of athlete Caster Semenya recently, South African news outlets responded by calling Australia "racist". Our image overseas remains sullied by a racist past. In the book Reynolds, a Tasmanian, invokes an era when the texts available air-brushed out Aboriginal claims and Aboriginal contributions to nationbuilding. In the 1960s, when he started teaching, the Aboriginal was seen as a failed genetic experiment, a throw-back which had merely succumbed, regrettably, to the robust advance of Anglo settlement.

But then Reynolds moved to Townsville to take a job following a period overseas. In the far-north city he found racism alive on the streets and in the pubs. It opened his eyes and, when he went to the extant books for a guide to making his own curriculum, saw that accounts failed the reality test.

He set about researching Aboriginal history and continued to do so for the next thirty years. Others also joined in the task of uncovering a hidden story of guerilla conflict, expropriation, summary killings, multiple viewpoints (in the contemporary press), and a British government concerned about the welfare of the natives.

With his wife he became involved in Aboriginal groups that tried to improve the conditions of Aboriginal residents of Townsville. He was reviled by many citizens and was shocked by the levels of hatred that existed on both sides. It was an uneasy relationship. The "uppity nigger" was feared and spat on. The Aboriginal quickly learnt not to answer back to the migaloo who came to the front door.

Reynolds chronicles the history of his progress along a continuum from ignorance to enlightenment. He introduces material produced by some of his students who researched in areas bordering on his own.

This rich material is always illuminated by the writer's excellent style. There is not shrieking from the rooftops, but rather a quiet undertow pulls the reader down an uncharted stream that leads deep into the past. Into two pasts: Reynolds' own and that of the country in general. The excellence of the written style is equalled by the meticulousness of the research and the high tone of his story of close contact with a foreign society.

When we reach Townsville, we are taken swiftly to a gaol. In a dark cell littered with dirty mattresses and broken glass sit two 13-year-old girls. they had "been cheeky" with the teacher and had landed here. It was all-too routine. That was the 1960s.

But how do we move on from this kind of live narrative of summary punishment in the face of entrenched disadvantage; a crushing, humiliating disadvantage? Reynolds thinks that we need to come to terms with our true history, and so wrote the book.

Without some reconciliation of stories, some convergence of histories, it is hard to see how the broader agenda of reconciliation can be advanced. Is reconciliation possible between two peoples who fundamentally disagree about their shared past, who differ widely in their explanation of the reason why things are as they now are?

Reimagining frontier conflict in terms of war may be one way to bring issues surrounding reconciliation (a loaded, heavy word) into the broader public sphere.

the controversy aroused by the question of the Aboriginal war dead should not come as a surprise. War is central to the experience of nationhood. Death in war is seen as the ultimate sacrifice for the nation. The fallen are revered as martyrs who gave up their lives for the benefit of the community. But the situation becomes complicated when white Australia seeks to incorporate indigenous Australia within the nation, when national leaders proclaim we are all members of one nation. If that is so then the logic is inescapable -- we must treat the Aboriginal dead with as much respect and as much honour as we treat our own. Nothing less will do.

But this has never been done, Reynolds writes. If 20,000 white people had died in war there would be recognition. There would be marches. In this case there is nothing. At Myall Creek each year about 200 to 300 people gather on the first Saturday in June each year to commemorate the massacre of 28 Wirrayaraay women, children and old men by a group of stockmen in 1838 and the subsequent trial of the perpetrators. But coverage of the event is patchy and uncertain. Is this enough?

Would Hatoyama abolish kisha clubs? Why would I think this? Japan votes, en-bloc, for a radical – indeed, millenarian – power shift. Maybe it’s about time for truly radical changes to take place.

The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), in power almost uninterruptedly since 1955, loses massively (from 300 seats to just 119 in the lower house). The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) that Yukio Hatoyama leads takes the reins of government, going from 112 to 308 seats. The DPJ was established just 11 years ago.

The LDP lost power briefly in the early 1990s. But at that time they maintained their hold on the upper house. This time, the DPJ “is the predominant force in the upper house” according to a Yomiuri Shumbun story, although it is still looking for a majority.

Kisha clubs have been around a lot longer than 11 years, of course. They’re one of the ‘typically Japanese’ ways that information is controlled and embarrassment is avoided by bureaucrats, who continue to wield extensive power over policy. But what is a kisha club? Wikipedia says it is

a ... news-gathering association of reporters from specific news organizations, whose reporting centers on a press room set up by sources such as the Prime Minister's official residence, government ministries, local authorities, the police, or corporate bodies.

Institutions with a kisha club limit their press conferences to the journalists of that club, and membership rules for kisha clubs are restrictive. This limits access by domestic magazines and the foreign media, as well as freelance reporters, to the press conferences.

A kisha club radically reduces the likelihood of embarrassment by holding the threat of membership cancellation. Step out of line and you could loose membership, thus access to sources. This ensures that questions aimed at bureaucrats are usually Dorothy Dixers.

Reducing the importance of kisha clubs, or eliminating them altogether, seems a good way to help achieve DPJ leader Yukio Hatoyama’s mandate of separating the bureaucracy from government. The bureaucracies have buttressed the country’s "welfare capitalism" for decades, if not centuries (indeed!).

The clean-up job was started by erstwhile LDP leader Junichiro Koizumi. We
know that the Japanese want change. Koizumi’s massive win in 2005 was seen to be the herald of a new era of reform. But he left in 2006 and party mandarins reverted to business-as-usual.

The implicit deal was that agriculture and major domestic industry would be coddled by the state. The farm sector and the Japanese services sector remain, to this day, hugely supported by subsidy and regulatory protection. They are hopelessly uncompetitive by world standards, the competitive rump of the Japanese economy.
These protected industries, in turn, would operate benign policies towards their workforces and communities. The essence of the deal was protectionist, redistributive, and welfarist.

The thriving export success stories, the Toyotas and Sonys, long ago graduated from needing the support of Japanese state banks. But their taxes supply the income by which the government supports the rump sectors of the economy.

But that’s not going to work anymore, says Gerald Curtis, Burgess Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. But how is Hatoyama going to develop effective strategies to reduce the power of the bureaucracies?

To push through reforms, Mr Hatoyama plans to set up a powerful national strategy council attached to his office.

And why not conscript the media, too? Why not open up the debate within the public sphere so the larger population can help to resolve the country’s problems? Curtis says that there are few policy-making sources outside the bureaucracies.

''There isn't a think-tank worth its name in this country if you compare them to what we have in the United States. You don't have a tradition of people going into government and out again to the private sector,'' he said.

Punditry and politics is staple fare in the developed West. Ideas are aired. This is not the way things are done in Japan, says Ian Buruma.

Japanese politics has a dull image in the world's press.

The main reason for this is, of course, that Japanese politics was dull, at least since the mid-1950s, when the LDP consolidated its monopoly on power. Only real aficionados of arcane moves inside the ruling party could be bothered to follow the ups and downs of factional bosses, many of whom were from established political families, and most of whom relied on shady financing. Corruption scandals erupted from time to time, but these, too, were usually part of intra-party manoeuvres to rein-in politicians who got too big for their boots, or who tried to grab power before their time.

Why are kisha clubs bad for the business of government? It’s because the press gallery is muzzled, questions out of the blue are discouraged, and journalists who don’t follow the script are blackballed and ostracized.

In the developing world censorship causes journalists migraines. In the developed world governments have found an equally efficient method of stopping information from getting out, and it causes journalists there mere headaches, but it’s painful nonetheless. It’s called information control.

Requests for an interview are forgotten or deliberately delayed. Freedom of information requests are delayed by other deadlines. Sources in the police and government departments won’t talk, but refer you to a central media unit. Senior managers get reports from the field that you are asking questions, and move to intervene.

No wonder people are turning off the news, when the public sphere is inundated with news that merely conforms to a script. And news companies are struggling, which means there’s less money for in-depth reporting. This short-termism begets cynicism in the audience, who turn to other forms of entertainment, such as celebrity journalism.

Freelance photographers, for example, are doing it hard, according to an article on the NineMSN website. At the annual prize-giving do in Southern France, festival director Jean-Francois Leroy says that “The years 2008 and 2009 will be marked with a black cross in the history of photojournalism”.

Across the world newspapers and magazines are going out of business, hit by competition from free content on the internet and by a slump in advertising revenue during the broader economic crisis.

Photoreportage on conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan is time consuming and costly, while offbeat subjects in far-flung exotic locales must compete for editors' attention with paparazzi celebrity journalism.

Leroy points, however, to some bright lights. This year, it is Italian photographer Massimo Berruti, who spent his own money to go into Pakistan “and came back with a report that will blow you away”.

In the world of video documentary there’s the story of Carmela Baranowska, who took a video camera into ‘Taliban Country’ while embedded with the US Marines in 2004. But Baranowska’s story is also one where we get to see authorities clamping down in the most defeating ways on journalistic freedom. Her footage is gripping, showing a local warlord working with Marines to discover hidden guns in a remote village. But to get footage, Baranowska was forced to abandon the protection of the military and find her own way into the conflict zones.

As a result she was quickly removed from Afghanistan, flown home, and quizzed strenuously by managers as SBS, who were embarrassed by her intransigence. They were more worried about their liability and spooked by the press coverage Baranowska had attracted, as she recounts in Overland Literary Journal.

I was extremely tired and very confused. Why all the fuss? I was back, I was alive, and I had broken a good story. But SBS was politically spooked. Management told me that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) had received an email from the US military complaining about my behaviour. What exactly did the email say? I never found out. But DFAT, ever the loyal US ally, set to work with bureaucratic precision. I later learned that DFAT was ringing SBS weekly to complain about me, something that only stopped shortly before I won a Walkley.

Baranowska won her Walkley Award in 2004. When she saw the small news item announcing the movement of Marines toward Afghanistan, she decided to do the story because she thought it would make good video.

Life is rarely like a film script but I knew enough, as a documentary filmmaker, to find an ‘embed’ with the marines extremely attractive. When one is filming, one needs to have material to film. The marines were the first to fight. They usually lived in the worst conditions, ate bad food and achieved more with less money. They were aggressive. They did things. In both a profound and a banal sense, they were photogenic.

The result is fabulous watching, but not only did she have to fight a controlling military, she also faced pressure from the people who sent her there, and the Australian government. She was an outcast, but she went on to win the prize. We are the richer for her entrepreneurship.

Meanwhile the news media are in a quandary. If they want to attract and keep viewers, they need compelling content. But to make it costs money. As a recent tweet in my feed said: “Yep @ireckon back to the business of producing content...and finding new ways to monetise..:>)”.