So, what are you doing for New Year's Eve?

I’m heading out to a party but I’m also thinking about a journalist whose courage and fearless reporting of South Africa’s evil apartheid regime helped change history and had a formative impact on my journalism.

30 years ago tonight crusading editor, Donald Woods, made a daring escape from South Africa after being banned from writing, speaking publicly and moving freely. Woods' banning followed his campaigning journalism in the wake of the brutal murder of his friend, the Black Consciousness leader, Steve Biko.

Assuming the identity of a Catholic priest, he fled across the border into the kingdom of Lesotho. He used the cover of New Year’s Eve frivolity to avoid detection and his escape was aided by the Australian diplomat, Bruce Haigh.

In his grasp was a manuscript about Biko's murder, secretly penned during his banning. It included post-mortem photos indicating Biko had been beaten to death while in custody. Woods lived in exile in the UK where he continued to write and campaign against apartheid. His activism and pursuit of Steve Biko's killers helped mobilise international opposition to apartheid.

Woods' courage and his story (which was turned into the excellent film, 'Cry Freedom') inspired my journalism and my belief that journalists can't always be simply bystanders to history.

So, when I raise my glass tonight, I'll think of Donald Woods and draw inspiration from his story as I contemplate the year ahead.

On a lighter note, I’ll also toast the bravado of the Sri Lankan journalists who last week detained a government minister after he stormed their TV station, angry about the newsroom’s decision not to cover one of his speeches.

According to the BBC, angry journalists at Rupavahini TV locked up the Labour Minister, Mervyn Silva, after one of his aides allegedly assaulted the News Director.

They shut him in an office, telling him he would not be released until he apologised for the assault. Mr Silva was splattered with red paint before he was eventually “rescued” by commandos.

Let this be a lesson to all Governments who believe journalists should be propagandists and public broadcasters should be servants of the 'state'. And to doctors of spin: beware the journalists' revenge!

Finally, I'll laugh heartily at the irony of the claim from Australia's shadow Justice Spokesman Christopher Pyne that the Federal Government is engaging in the suppression of free speech in the David Hicks case. In the aftermath of Hicks' release from prison at the weekend, Pyne accused the AFP of spiriting Hicks out of the limelight when the prison doors opened, denying journalists their right to pursue the story. "The last time I looked, there was a free press in this country and there shouldn't be a government action taken to prevent the media doing their job" he told The Australian.

Too funny, Chris! Wasn't it your Coalition Government that ensured Hicks was locked up for five years without trial in Guantanamo Bay and which supported an unenforceable gag order imposed by the US specifically banning him from speaking to the media? But you want us to take you seriously when you say the new Labor Government, in cahoots with the AFP, is undermining freedom of speech and the independence of the media? Thanks, I needed a good belly laugh and that little gag will keep me chuckling all the way into 2008.

UPDATE: The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has revealed 2007 was a deadly year for reporters with 171 killed in the course of their work.

134 of the dead journalists were murdered or killed violently with one third of all the deaths occurring in Iraq.

Raise your glass for them too and toast the much maligned profession which at its heart sees workers risking their lives on a daily basis to bring us the news others would prefer we didn't hear.    [read more]

For me this has been a year of victories and losses…exhilarating highs and devastating lows.

My individual experiences have in some ways paralleled Australia’s year of upheaval and revival. Personally, I won a fiercely contested, long running legal case in the ACT Supreme Court against a corporate bastard. On a national scale, Kevin Rudd won government in a landslide victory against our former Prime Minister John Howard - who also lost his seat to respected former ABC journalist, Maxine McKew.

I haven’t written about my personal battle before but I think it’s time I did. So, I’ll begin here…at the end of the story. The end of the story is the place I have to start because the injury, its consequences and the trauma inflicted by the seven year legal fight are still too raw for me to unearth.

My case for damages against Kosciusko Thredbo Pty Ltd (KT) was brought after I seriously injured my back when I slipped on a ramp at the ski resort while covering the 1997 landslide disaster for the ABC. I crushed a vertebrae when I fell on that ramp, which was found to be in breach of planning and building regulations, with a gradient at least three times steeper than legally allowed. Ultimately, my fall also crushed my career aspirations as a political journalist and wannabe foreign correspondent. As a result of my fall I was “medically terminated” (an appalling descriptor for an action that amounted to being dismissed on medical grounds without benefits) by the ABC and I was left with chronic, life-long back pain.

In February, the Master of the ACT Supreme Court, David Harper, handed down a million dollar plus judgement in my favour – after deliberating for seven months. It was the second time he’d delivered judgement in my case. The first time – in 2004 – he found against me on a technicality. That judgement took him 11 months to hand down and it threatened to bankrupt me as KT announced its determination to pursue legal costs, estimated at over $1m. With nothing to lose, I appealed and won before the ACT Appeals Court which, acknowledging the appearance of a potential miscarriage of justice, recommended the case be returned to the Supreme Court to allow further evidence to be heard on the issue of building regulations. Next, KT took the case to the High Court, continuing their strategy of delaying the legal process step-by-step, but they failed to secure Leave To Appeal.

The company again threatened to appeal all the way to the High Court after Master Harper delivered his final judgement but eventually settled the case in March this year – although they threatened to rescind the settlement after I told my story to the Sydney Morning Herald (the story and my reaction to it will be the subject of a future post). By May the cheque had cleared but a millionaire I was not – despite media inferences and the assumptions of others! Once legal, medical and rehabilitation debts were repaid as required, I was left with just enough money to make a significant dent on my mortgage, allowing me some insurance against the costs of my future medical needs.

But while the verdict failed to enrich me, the relief was overwhelming – as was the knowledge that the Commonwealth insurer, Comcare, was out of my life for good. This agency makes Centrelink look benevolent.

So the champagne corks were popped and joy eventually supplanted the disbelief. For this I am extremely grateful to my legal team who offered support as well as legal advice and worked tirelessly for victory and justice on my behalf. Their ongoing friendship is the highlight of my legal struggle.

In June, my partner and I took off for Europe via Singapore – a timely journey of celebration mixed with enriching intellectual engagement and professional development for me. I attended four international academic conferences and made presentations at two of them on my PhD research into the news media’s coverage of Muslim women.

A highlight of these experiences was making some wonderful new friends – one of them, who inspired a personal revival, also encouraged me to start this blog which has, in turn, led to a journalistic resurgence. Two others I sailed the Amsterdam canals with during a conference dinner none of the other diners will forget - thanks to our raucous laughter and uncensored Australian political commentary which was heavily influenced by the fruits of European vineyards. They’ve now become colleagues on projects revolving around Multicultural reporting. Serendipitous synchronicity!

But one of the year’s devastating losses interfered with this joy and destroyed one of the highs. In Europe I discovered I was pregnant but on the flight home I started to miscarry. My partner and I felt the loss acutely – it was my third consecutive miscarriage. I’m a frenetic coper – thanks to myriad life crises which turned me into a fighter and a survivor – so my recovery (as much as you can recover from such experiences) was relatively swift. And it was aided by a productive bout of ‘workaholism’, some valued relationships and sabbatical from my lecturing duties at the University of Canberra.

I've also found professional purpose and meaning in my new career as a journalism academic. My students inspire me and my research expands my mind. Perhaps, in time, I'll come to see my fall as the necessary stumble that set me on this new path of discovery. Or perhaps it will just fade into the background as the discourses of the story shift to perseverance, survival, triumph and renewal.

I liken my year to trampolining – up, down, up, down, somersault, up, down, up, down, back-flip, up, down, up, down, star-jump, up...you get the picture. But that’s life isn’t it? The lows ground you and offer perspective, the highs keep you jumping and shooting for the stars.

For 2008 my hopes are for personal enrichment – not material but emotional, intellectual and spiritual. I need to continue my recovery from the trauma of the past decade and focus on the future; seizing opportunities and celebrating life, friendship and love. For my family and friends I wish for the fulfillment of their hearts’ desires. For you, I hope for peace and happiness. For my country, that new leadership translates to more heart in government. And, for the world…that it survives humanity and man’s inhumanity to man.

But wherever you are, whoever you're with, whatever you're drinking, raise your glass on New Year's Eve and toast life - the highs, lows; laughter, tears; loves, losses...all of which enrich our existence.    [read more]

Hello J-Scribers, I'm taking a short break over Christmas but I'll be back raising Hell and exposing myself to more ridicule by New Year's Eve!

Meantime, have a fabulous festive season, don't drink and drive and be sure to stand under the mistletoe for long enough to attract the attention of a smoocher! :)

Best wishes for a happy and healthy 2008!    [read more]

Angry scenes from outside a community meeting in Camden last night evoked frightening memories of the Cronulla Riots for many Muslim Australians.

Nearly 800 people turned up to the meeting called to protest plans for an Islamic school in the semi-rural town on Sydney’s outskirts. Police turned away around 100 people when the community hall where the meeting was staged became over-crowded.

Outside the Hall, young people draped in Australian flags, sported clothing and placards adorned with anti-Muslim slogans, chanted “Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi” and yelled racial abuse. One yobbo was caught on film threatening any Muslim who fronted with physical violence. This follows a recent hate crime at the site of the planned school involving the suspension of a pig's head between two stakes.

The school, which is proposed to accommodate 1200 students, would sit adjacent to an existing public school but it is being opposed on racial, religious and planning grounds by local residents. Over 2500 submissions have been made to the council with only 600 in support of the Islamic school proposal.

Inside the hall, NSW MLA, Rev. Fred Nile, was the keynote speaker at the meeting. He claimed Islamic schools were breeding grounds for terrorists. Fred Nile quoted from the Koran to justify his anti-Muslim stance. If he’d consulted his Bible and considered the example of Jesus who preached tolerance towards minorities he may have been able to represent a genuinely Christian perspective on the issue.

Nile’s Christian Democratic Party (CDP) campaigned against Muslim immigration at the Federal Election and is opposing both the Camden school proposal and one planned for Bass Hill. The Party’s number one NSW Senate candidate, Pastor Paul Green, ran on a platform of “No More Muslims, No More Mosques” and appeared in election propaganda wearing a tuxedo and bow tie. He preached disdain towards Muslims (bordering at times on hate-speech)on the campaign trail: “Every vote for the Christian Democratic Party is a vote for a ten year moratorium on Muslim immigration. And as a Senator I’ll be asking every Council in Australia to refuse all applications for new mosques until a Christian Church can legally be built in Saudi Arabia. Then Australian Muslims can have one mosque for every Christian Church built in Saudi Arabia." Neat argument – apply the standards of democracy practiced by Saudi Arabia. I thought Christianity had moved on from the principle of an “eye for an eye”?

Another NSW upper house MP, Liberal Charlie Lynn, also voiced his opposition to the proposal at the meeting – on planning grounds. This is the line which was also adopted by the Labor Party candidate for the seat with Kevin Rudd’s support during the election campaign.

Islamic groups - who were not invited to put their case to the meeting - said the tenor of the gathering and the political contributions were disappointing and irrational. The Quranic Society, which is behind the school proposal, told the ABC they just want to build a school for their children like a Catholic or Jewish school.

Tonight, members of the Community Relations Commission, the Police and the Camden Mayor have met in the town in an effort to ease community tension following the meeting.

This issue is a powder-keg. It highlights the racist undercurrent empowered by the dog-whistling of the Howard Government and the hate-speak of people like Pauline Hanson and the CDP. The result is a dangerous, racially driven mob mentality which has already crossed over into physical violence once at Cronulla.

History shows us powerful examples of the manifestation of racist mob violence fed by fear. In another time and place - Germany circa 1938 - Jewish people endured a night of horror called Kristallnacht (crystal night) which involved hordes of racists smashing thousands of Jewish shopkeepers’ windows and ransacking their homes. There are scary parallels between the rise of anti-Semitism in 1930’s Germany and the post-September 11th development of Islamophobia.

As I’ve argued before, Kevin Rudd must tackle Islamophobia head on and engage Australian Muslims in meaningful, cross-cultural bridge building exercises which he can drag the rest of Australia along with – kicking and screaming if need be. Failure to provide such national leadership will simply encourage racism to thrive and fuel the potential for hate-crimes and mob violence on the scale of Cronulla or worse.    [read more]

Hilary Clinton has been reduced to wrinkles in a pants suit. Maxine McKew's skirt is centre stage. What's the show called? "Misogyny in Da House".

I've considered starving the issue - negative media representation of women in politics - of oxygen but this is a problem that clearly needs further public airing.

Why? Because when a woman of Hilary Clinton's character, experience and intelligence is deemed unfit for the White House because of perceptions the voting public will be turned off by the prospect of watching a woman age before their eyes, it sends a message to the world that feminism is still several battles from winning the gender equality war. And, because far too many men just don't get it.

Lest I be accused of being a reactionary man-hater (again!), I say this from the perspective of a feminist woman who is actually rather fond of men. I also have evidence - in the form of a sexist backlash against my Crikey! story from earlier this week on the Canberra Times' attempt to diminish Maxine McKew's defeat of John Howard via a demeaning front page photograph selected unapologetically by Editor, Mark Baker.

My story about the fiasco attracted a significant number of comments on
Crikey! and a similar number of responses via my blog. Then
there were the emails...many of them were personalised, misogynistic rants that displayed the most extraordinary ignorance. At Crikey, where 30 comments were posted, over 60% of respondents were men. The vast bulk of identifiably male responses took issue with my critique of the Canberra Times' decision to run the tasteless "up-the-skirt shot" of Maxine McKew. At my own blog, while most of the respondents were men, their reactions were almost evenly split along positive/negative lines. But those expressing distaste for my opinion mounted similarly misogynistic arguments.

Some comments were so sexist they were laughable - like this one from Kevin Charles Herbert: "Julie Posetti is showing signs of her damage at the hands of the Catholic eduction system. I commend Mark Baker for not backing down to the hairy chested feminists who exist in every newsroom". (Note to Kevin: I went to public school and I don't need to wax my chest!)

And others’ like Tom Mclaughlin, helped argue my case: “I kno (sic) this is dangerous turf, and yes sexist photo, but here's the thing: Sexy tv presenter does not a serious public policy talent make”. This was my point: McKew was being judged by the Canberra Times in the context of her appearance and sex appeal as being unworthy of the sort of respect afforded to male politicians.

More seethe-worthy was the assertion from a number of male respondents that women offended by the Canberra Times' treatment of Maxine McKew were whinging about nothing and that her choice of clothing was the real problem - that is, she "asked for it". (Uncovered meat comparison anyone?).Take for example this comment from David: "Maxine sexualised herself with her choice of dress. Why should only male politicians should (sic) have a dress code?" On my blog, David was on about pants suits again: “…the effort of people like Julia Gillard and her modest pantsuits should be applauded for giving government the respect it deserves.” This “a lady should wear a nice demure pants suit” argument is amusingly ironic. Who’s wearing the pants in this story? What’s their point? That it really is a man’s world and the only way a woman can be taken seriously in public life is to adopt a male dress code?

Another correspondent, Rob Garnett underlined the problem when he asked of my story “What is this woman going on about. Maxine has been made a parly sec, Julia's the deputy leader, we have a female health minister and Penny Wong is on the world stage. Get some perspective.” Er, that was my perspective, Rob – all that womanly achievement and yet media representation that sexualises and objectifies women continues to undermine their status in comparison to men.

Meanwhile, as the media's commentary on Hilary's pants suits (a discourse which has distracted from coverage of her policies and intellectual gravitas) has proved, even women politicians who wear pants can't escape gender bias in the media.

This was a point echoed by a Queensland correspondent to my blog "...so outraged by Maxine's photo being published I can barely type...women politicians in Queensland are often described in the press in terms of their shoes...Hilary's pant suits have featured in the last four articles I've read on her campaign. My five year old daughter just doesn't get it and asks why they don't put photos of men's shoes in the paper?"

This is not a “pseudo-controversy” and I (like many other women who were equally offended) will not simply “get over it”. As Crikey reader MA Smith (gender unknown) commented, “The issue is not just her underwear. It's how a woman is portrayed on the front page when she has just taken on the most powerful man in the country, and won. As an aggressive whore.”

I wonder if this rampant sexism is another product of the Howard assault on respect for difference derided as "political correctness" by the former PM? Newsflash guys: feminism is no longer a dirty word! And, thankfully, this is a view shared by many men. Take, for example, the perspective of Crikey reader Malcolm Thurston: "I totally concur with Julie. Baker was caught out. His pathetic excuse in the Canberra Times,was exposed for what it was, when an appropriate photo of the same event appeared on p2 of the same days SMH,by the same photographer.The 'Times photo was crude".

But the most encouraging reaction came from a young male Canberra journalist who wrote to me "My two bob in - as a young male, I can easily recognise when someone has a dirty mind. The CT editor is one of them. ...It's frankly embarrassing to see editorial decisions like that being made. In a time where women are gaining more control in the newsroom, there needs to be a level of respect that news organisations have to abide by. XY reporter for the CT, echoed your sentiments...My news editor XX was spitting chips as well.”

When I watched my 3rd year students graduate from their journalism course this week at the University of Canberra I was struck once again by the gender shift among the ranks of junior reporters. Relevantly, I'm regularly asked by News Editors for the names of successful male students because their newsrooms are already "female dominated". But while the ranks of women journalists have swollen dramatically over the past 20 years, most editorial management and senior reporting positions are still occupied by men. Newsrooms remain sexist workplaces (something female Channel 9 reporters subjected to John Westacott's 'f**kability index' could testify to) and women journalists make life choices to avoid being crushed by the glass ceiling on a daily basis. But we shouldn't have to wait for equality in newsrooms for women to be reported equally by the media.

Men are just as capable of understanding the consequences of female subjugation and stereotyping as they are of appreciating racist representation of black men from a white male perspective. But they have to want to remove their blinkers.

Note: A version of this story was first published at Crikey!    [read more]

Australia’s Channel 7 has banned its staff from ‘Facebooking’, blocking their access to the popular social networking site via a central firewall. What a short-sighted, anachronistic means of attempting to boost productivity in a business that revolves around journalism and entertainment.

Web 2.0 platforms like blogging, YouTube and Facebook are not just time-wasting distractions from the business of media, they are also increasingly important research tools for journalists.

I note Channel 7 isn’t attempting to block access to YouTube – they obviously appreciate that web 2.0 platform as a source of news and vision from citizen journalists. So, why ban Facebook? It offers members the opportunity to send video, post links and provide tips to journalists in a more targeted way than YouTube. Did they originally consider banning journalists from access to email – the pre-cursor to Facebook?

From a reporter’s perspective, social media sites like Facebook are the new version of the indispensable contact book – supplementing the telephone book as a tool for locating sources. As a 7 news worker told the Daily Telegraph, the ban is counter-productive: "It's annoying for people like us who actually need to use it for work - seriously, we use it for research, trying to locate people and that sort of thing… It's not like we're sitting there poking or sending virtual cocktails." Indeed!

Consider the role Facebook played in coverage of the recent Federal Election. Politicians' FB pages became the source of stories – stories about their engagement (or lack thereof) with young voters, their popularity (Kevin Rudd kept having to create replica pages so he could add more FB friends…John Howard kept his page private because he had hardly any) and their capacity to interact with new technology. In short, their FB status became a metaphor for their social relevance.

And, as the US election approaches, Facebook is actually becoming another platform for media outlets to reach new audiences as newspapers and broadcasters struggle to keep pace with online media. ABC America not only allows its reporters to use Facebook at work its actually formed a ground-breaking partnership with FB to provide election coverage on the site. Reporters have been given their own pages to allow them to interact with audiences and a specific ABC-FB group, “US Politics”, has been established which effectively creates a mini, network-based, themed news-site on the platform allowing FB users to track coverage and participate in debate around the issues along with the reporting of them. So, ABC reporters may now find themselves adding ‘Facebook correspondent’ to their other roles as filers of traditional TV news stories and providers of text, audio, video and multimedia productions to the network’s online output. Watch that space – it’s a trend that’s likely to spread to these shores.

Meantime, Australian journalists also use the site for networking and debate with colleagues within their news organisation and from other media outlets. It provides an online version of the ‘pub debate’ model of reflexive practice that allows reporters to debrief, analyse and critique each others' work - a healthy professional practice which should be encouraged, not stifled. Employers should also consider the potential Occupational Health and Safety benefits of Facebook for journalists. It could, for example, serve a useful purpose in trauma-related recovery as journalists exposed to horrific events in their daily work find a safe space to discuss their feelings and experiences.

The other point for Channel 7 to consider relates to the role of Facebook as a marketing tool. It’s a virtual popularity index for individual members and is increasingly used by advertisers, celebrities and organisations to promote their products and causes. Seven’s celebrities and the programs in which they star are already featured on Facebook and there’s been an angry reaction from the network’s stable of stars to the FB blockade.

Someone needs to tell the bean counters at 7 Network headquarters that they’re peddling a false economy. Maybe they need a good trout-slapping via ‘superpoke’?

Declaration: I'm a certified Facebook addict and any attempt by the University of Canberra to block my access will be met with fierce opposition involving 'poking' with a blunt stick.    [read more]

It was an extraordinary week for women in Australian politics.

On the one hand, Julia Gillard became Australia’s first female Prime Minister – albeit in an acting capacity while Kevin Rudd was at the Bali Climate conference. But as she told the Sydney Morning Herald "I think if there's one girl who looks at the TV screen over the the next few days and says 'I might like to do that in the future', well that's a good thing."

On the other hand, newly elected Labor MP, Maxine McKew - the woman who ousted former Prime Minister John Howard from his seat - was publicly humiliated by the Canberra Times’ decision to publish a revealing front-page photo of her which evoked Sharon Stones’ performance in Basic Instinct.

The photo opportunity was the official Australian Electoral Commission declaration of McKew’s victory in Bennelong. There she sat – elegant in a fawn suit with an enormous grin on her face, giving the appearance of mocking the man she defeated as she locked eyes on the disgruntled looking Howard whose body language highlighted his humiliation. The images seemed to sum-up the election aftermath. But one photo taken from a questionable angle stole the show. Taken front-on, apparently at the height of the seated McKew’s skirt (i.e. from perve’s eye view), the photograph appeared at first glance to suggest McKew was fond of going both ‘Brazilian’ and ‘commando’.

Most of the national print media ran an alternative tasteful, evocative photo taken by the same photographer while The Age ran the offending shot but cropped it above skirt-level. The Canberra Times, however, chose instead to run the sexist, demeaning shot, uncropped in a full frontal assault on its readership. What was the Editor, Mark Baker, thinking? Was it the day of the CT Christmas party? Did he join the darkroom boys in a few filthy jokes and agree to indulge in a ‘Chaser-style prank’? The joke was on him. Talk-back sessions on Canberra ABC station, Triple 6, were flooded by callers complaining about the photograph and the newspaper was inundated by Letters to the Editor – 11 of which were published yesterday under the headline “An Unflattering View of a Historical Political Moment”. Highlights included “Sharon Stone eat your heart out”, threats and promises from angry readers and advertisers to boycott the paper and this: “It looks like Maxine McKew was after the Brazilian vote." Another reader set Mark Baker a fair challenge: “Perhaps the editor could write us a learned piece on the difference between a perve using a concealed camera to film up the dress of a woman on public transport and a newspaper photographer using an unconcealed camera to try to do the same in a public place?"

While it could be reasonably argued that the photographer should have used greater discretion, the real problem is the editorial decision to run that photograph on the front page. It cannot have been unconsciously done but that’s exactly the defensive line being taken by Baker. He told AAP he maintained it was a "tremendous picture". He says it never occurred to him that readers might find it offensive. "There's nothing immodest or undignified about it”, he said. Er, nothing undignified about publishing a large colour shot looking up the skirt of a woman – the sort of photo that, if taken on a mobile phone in the CT newsroom of a female reporter, would likely result in charges of sexual harassment? Get with the program, Mark! In a memo he later sent to CT staff, he wrote: "It was not obscene. It was not voyeuristic. Those suggesting the picture shows more have vivid imaginations." Oh, so readers with filthy little minds are the problem? No, Mark, your lack of tact, discretion and respect for women is the problem.

What makes Baker’s decision to run the photo even more offensive is the fact that, redolent of misogyny, it undermined what should have been a story about female power – of a woman punching through the glass ceiling and claiming the most prized political scalp in the country. Instead, the focus shifted to the sexual exploitation of women and, once again, to the dress code of women in politics.

Until the media figures out how treat men and women in power equally, female politicians will continue to suffer the indignity of the treatment meted out to Maxine McKew – even on a day when a woman is in charge of the country.

UPDATE: J-scribe has learned a female sub-editor at the Canberra Times complained about the photo before it went to print saying she found it "offensive and wrong" but her objections were over-ruled. What would she know? She was obviously just an overly sensitive, hairy-legged feminist!(Seethe)

Below: The front page of the Canberra Times displaying the offending photo

   [read more]

It’s customary to whinge at this time of year about the hollow celebration of the birth of the central character in the Christian story…to lament the crass commercialism and the incongruous merger of a winter European-style festival and the Australian summer heat. Then there’s the family politics.

But I usually enjoy Christmas – merry-making, good food, seeing friends and family who slip through the year without crossing my path. I used to even secretly delight in the TV re-runs and the Chrissy carols. Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong’s Christmas album would play on a loop on my ipod while I decorated the house and I put loads of thought into picking just the right gift for every person.

This year, though, I just can’t get into the spirit. Not sure why. It’s like someone stole my Christmas joy. People keep sending the Grinch after me on Facebook – maybe that’s got something to do with it? Maybe I’m just getting old? Maybe it’s because it’s been a year of deep lows and uplifting highs and I’m tired from the emotional upheaval? Maybe it’s because after months of soul searching and quiet intellectual reflection while on study leave I’m in a different head and heart space to everyone around me? Maybe it’s because Christmas came early on November 24th when John Howard lost both government and his seat in parliament?

Whatever the reason – the season just aint doin’ it for me this year. The really low point came when I was lined up at the David Jones perfume counter during a hit-and-run gift-buying expedition this week. The sales assistant said to the woman in front of me: “There’s really nothing worse than not having a perfume you like”. That comment hung there, cartoon-like, in a balloon emerging from the corner of her shallow mouth. Really - nothing worse? What about not having a roof over your head or clean water to drink? Rape? Child sexual assault? War? Famine? Chronic unemployment? Cancer? I wanted to reach across the counter and slap her. Instead, I made polite conversation and bought several bottles of designer label scent to put under the tree. It was at this point I realised I’d become just another consumer sustaining the commodification of a religious festival.

Christmas began as a celebration of the birth of a Jewish baby in the poorest of circumstances, who would rise to become regarded as one of the greatest prophets of all time and who many believe was actually the Son of God. Regardless of your faith, there’s much to appreciate in the Jesus story – he was a radical political activist, a friend of the ostracised, a rebel with a cause, an advocate for the sick, poor and marginalised. He spoke of love and justice and mercy, challenged prejudice and condemned the powerful and corrupt.

We could use a champion like that in our society – a social justice campaigner who advocates – across class, cultural and economic divides - for asylum seekers; the abused; Indigenous Australians; the permanently unemployed; the sick and disadvantaged

Maybe contemplating the original meaning of the Jesus story will help me rediscover my festive season joy? I think I’ll go and try to cultivate some authentic Christmas spirit.    [read more]

This post originally appeared on New Matilda

One of the early casualties of the Howard era was journalism with bite.

At the ABC, evidence of muted reporting and self-censorship emerged quickly as Aunty was harassed by Howard’s henchmen from day one. The National Broadcaster was beaten so viciously with the ‘anti-bias’ stick its managers and editorial staff began to recoil from challenging critique and tough interviewing. A form of self-censorship — conscious and unconscious — threatened the ABC's integrity at times.

Richard Alston’s official assault on the AM program via his abuse of complaints procedures, the stacking of the ABC board with ultra-conservatives and revisionist historians, and the appointment of seriously Right-wing commentators in an effort to create the impression of balance, all contributed to timidity and a palpable reluctance to criticise the Howard Government. There were of course stand-out performances from some during the Howard era — with Lateline being the star rebel.

But Howard Government bullying of the media didn’t stop with the ABC. More recently, SBS has been in its sights. Commercial TV, radio and print operations also reflected the resultant lack of strident, opinionated journalism during an era where freedom of speech was under constant attack, government spin was on overdrive, and scandal after scandal failed to dent the Coalition’s electoral appeal. It’s not that there was a total absence of enterprising journalism during this period — ultimately, the Coalition was called to account by journalists over the Solon and Rau cases, Children Overboard, Tampa and Haneef, but the Government frequently got off lightly.

Take the media’s treatment of Howard’s justification for Australia’s involvement in the Iraq War. In a recent presentation at the Public Right to Know Conference at Sydney’s University of Technology, free speech advocate and former senior public servant Richard Mills criticised the national media for its unquestioning stance on the Weapons of Mass Destruction debate. According to Mills’ research, newspapers largely failed to link the tenuous security advice being claimed by Howard as justification for going to war to an assessment of the consequences of invasion and a longer term plan for Iraq.

One explanation for the media’s lack of censure of the Howard Government may lie in Mills’ identification of at least six well known techniques of media manipulation. He listed these as 1) Selectivity, 2) Denial of Fact, 3) Deception, 4) Fabrication, 5) Deliberate Misquoting and 6) Bland Deflection.

These trusted tools of spin-doctoring were put to very effective use on the Canberra Press Gallery which was under constant assault from Howard’s PR apparatchiks. Add to this the daily grind of journalism with its ever increasing deadlines, multiple platform reporting requirements and under-resourcing and you can further understand the diminution in quality of critique.

In the Howard years, those of us seeking serious critical analysis ironically turned to satire. In the aftermath of APEC, following the episode in which The Chaser drove a 'Trojan Horse' through the security overkill, I asked if it was the new model for Australian investigative journalism. The program is billed as comedy but at times it came close to the most confronting, critical TV journalism on offer.

The Haneef case, however, marked a turning point in the media’s attitude to the Howard Government. Finally fed up with the deception and spin, journalists seemed to put their teeth back in and used investigative skill to extract fact after fact with which they exposed the injustice, duplicity, bigotry and fallaciousness inherent in the Government’s case against the Gold Coast Doctor who’s still fighting to have his visa reinstated. This was a transforming moment in Howard Era journalism — an era which I believe required activism in combination with stringent investigative techniques and more enterprising journalism.

This is a controversial view in Western journalism because the model of Advocacy Journalism is eschewed in favour of outdated notions of objectivity which value and present arguments and perspectives equally, regardless of their validity. Is that ‘fair’ reporting?

This approach to objectivity allowed the Howard Government to beat journalists around the head with allegations of bias or a ‘lack of balance’ whenever the Coalition was critically scrutinised. This policy of media manipulation succeeded in part because journalists interpreted balanced reporting as equal measure of time and tone when democracy and social justice demanded a more strident approach. The ‘he said, she said’ model of reporting on which so many journalists rely, delivers the sort of benign societal reflection that conservative politicians would like to restrict journalists to — like a populist version of Hansard, instead of the critical analysis a healthy democracy demands of its independent media.

Those who rejected the activist, liberal model of journalism should consider the role that radical journalism played in South Africa during apartheid. In that setting, journalists who failed to critique the racist regime effectively aided and abetted the oppressors, and it wasn’t accusations of bias that stole their integrity and professional credibility. Those who toed the Government line soon found themselves confessing their sins — for helping to sustain official racism.

I’m not suggesting the pro-Howard sycophancy evident in much mainstream reporting of politics and social policy in the past 12 years equates to the succour given to the apartheid regime by weak and/or racist journalists in South Africa, but the ‘balance defence’ in response to coverage of Howard’s xenophobic politics and policies springs from the same well.

I’m advocating a model of journalism which values social justice and sees itself as a democratising force — a model informed by alternative international professional practice. I’m hoping the election of a Rudd Government will be a victory for free speech, unleashing journalism with bite in this country. We need more inspiring, brave, forthright, reflective and analytical reporting which challenges the straight-jacketed approach of the Howard years.

Update: Read this great article by Mark Davis for New Matilda for more detail on the impact of Howard's media management and his assault on Australia's public institutions    [read more]

Hands up if you think it's OK to copy someone else's work or to take credit for someone else's words? Those of you who have been to university or practiced journalism would be aware that appropriating another person's work and passing it off as your own is verboten. In fact, plagiarism is a serious academic and professional sin which has swallowed the careers of prominent journalists and Vice Chancellors alike.

That's why a story about apparent plagiarism in a popular international journalism textbook, broken in South Africa today (read original story here), is so shocking. Professor Guy Berger, the head of Rhodes University's Journalism School, has revealed tracts of the latest edition of Global Journalism (2004) have been lifted from an earlier version without alteration and attributed to other authors without acknowledgment. The cut-and-paste job has also rendered the content utterly out of date.

And rather than acknowledging the errors of their ways and issuing a public mea culpa, the book's editors (Arrie De Beer and John Merrill)and the publisher (Pearson Education) have employed the classic tools of media manipulation: stonewall,deny, deflect and threaten.

There are important lessons here for journalists, journalism academics and journalism students alike and some very worrying mixed signals about professional practice.

If a student committed such an act of plagiarism they may be expelled; if a journalist was so exposed they may find themselves unemployed. Double standards defence anyone?    [read more]

This article originally appeared on Crikey!

Kevin Rudd must make tackling the growing problem of Islamophobia in Australia a key priority in government.

After nearly 12 years of populist, race-driven politics under John Howard, racist and xenophobic Australians feel justified in vilifying minorities and believe religious bigotry is tolerable. This will be Howard’s enduring legacy - the price the country has paid for his retro-form agenda, highlighted by his war on so called "political correctness" which included appropriating Pauline Hanson’s agenda, decrying a "black-arm band view" of Indigenous history and demonising Muslim Australians, asylum
seekers and African refugees.

He also exaggerated the threat of terrorism to fuel fear of the ‘other’ and promoted anger towards law-abiding Muslim Australians for electoral gain. Think Tampa, Children Overboard, Haneef, the dishonest justification of the War in Iraq and claims African refugees couldn't "integrate".

The latent underbelly of Australian racism and nationalism tipped into public violence two years ago during the Cronulla Riots and the new Prime Minister needs to appreciate the danger of leaving Howard’s legacy unaddressed.

The vile attack on the site of a proposed Muslim School in South West Sydney, in the aftermath of Labor’s landslide win, soured the victory for tolerance and highlighted the potential for a backlash against resurgent multiculturalism by racists emboldened by the Howard years and an often complicit media. Police are continuing to investigate the incident, which involved an Australian flag being suspended between pigs heads impaled on stakes on the vacant lot in semi-rural Camden where there has been strong, organised local opposition to the school.

The new Labor government will need to show strong leadership in combating racism, particularly as it relates to Muslim communities – arguably now the most vilified group of Australians.

The seriousness of Australia’s moral decline towards official racism became starkly apparent to me during my attendance at the recent International Diversity Conference in Amsterdam. I anchored a discussion group about cultural diversity and the media and, in that forum, the distance we've fallen became patently obvious.

There were several Australians in the room and the discussion quickly turned to the coverage of multiculturalism in our country and, from there, to a critique of the political drivers behind what we agreed was increasingly narrow and racist reporting. This didn't surprise me - although there was catharsis in the shared disgust. What did unsettle me, though, were the reactions of other international contributors to the discussion. Most notably, two Afrikaner South Africans in the group. They sat with jaws open and gasped while we debated the issues. "Do you mean they've abolished multiculturalism" they asked incredulously. "Yes" the Australians answered collectively. As a young Canadian post-grad student astutely observed: "What you've told us reminds the rest of us just how quickly the gains can be lost and the clock turned back on tolerance."

Academic study undertaken during the Howard years offers further evidence of the way in which racism has become entrenched. As part of a study of media coverage of cultural diversity in which I was involved – Journalism in Multicultural Australia – research by Murdoch University concluded that:

While non-Anglo Australians are almost inevitably represented as "bad", "sad", "mad" or "other", in the current political climate, the focus of the fear has overwhelmingly been Muslim terrorism which has in turn led to a suspicion of all things Muslim. (Phillips &Tapsall, 2006)

Further, Professor Peter Manning, whose PhD research examined the print reporting of Muslims, has accused Howard era politicians of "stoking up the embers of racist hatred (in a nation) ... awash with misunderstanding about Islam". Meantime, Sydney academic, Scott Poynting argues that political opportunism and the sensationalist headlines triggered by it, led to, and gave licence to, racist attacks in shops, streets and workplaces. And, in a study drawing on his and others’ research which factored in the 2001 asylum seeker debate, the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission concluded that:

The need for action is urgent. In the current environment of fear and suspicion fostered by terrorism and the ‘war on terror’, our multicultural values of social equity and respect for diversity are at risk of diminishing.

Kevin Rudd has a chance to arrest the decline: he must take a stand for tolerance and revive multiculturalism as official policy while using his role to educate bigoted Australians out of their irrational, terror-fuelled fear of all things Islam. This is not a job he can afford to put on the back-burner – it requires immediate action and serious investment if we are to avoid another Cronulla or worse.

The lessons of "home-grown terrorism" which thrives on disaffection, ostracism and bigotry should be motivation enough.    [read more]

Julia Gillard has become Australia’s first female Deputy Prime Minister – that’s an extraordinary achievement in such a ‘blokey’ culture and it’s been no easy ride.

Like dozens of women in high office before her, she’s been subjected to rampant sexism by her political opponents and competitors along with sexual stereotyping by the media. Her relationships and appearance are under constant scrutiny.She’s an inspiration to millions of women but her story is also an illustration of how much further Australia has to travel to reach equality between the sexes.

Questions have been raised about her sexuality – she was single for some time and doesn’t have children, you see. And just last year, John Howard’s chief ‘head-kicker’ the ‘colourful thug’ Senator Bill Heffernan condemned Julia Gillard, saying she wasn’t fit to comment on family issues because she was “deliberately barren”. That comment was as shocking as it was ignorant – even coming from a man as base as Heffernan. A week later he begrudgingly apologised but took the opportunity to re-offend. He is a dinosaur, yes, but his species is far from extinct. Others have described her as a “shrew” and a “fishwife”, alluding to her broad Australian accent.

And it’s not an exclusively male dirt-throwing competition. Women are guilty too of stereotyping Ms Gillard with the media and dinner party conversation awash with complaints about her hairstyle, her dress sense and her relationship status. Is this because some women are still so desirous of male approval and embarrassed about their own lack of progress that they seek to undermine and ridicule a woman who has broken through the glass ceiling? This is bitchiness at its most purile.

Now Julia Gillard has been given the biggest ministerial workload in living memory – Industrial Relations and Education - the new government’s two biggest policy priorities. The fact that Kevin Rudd felt obliged to defend her competence to handle such a workload rankled a little but it also made me wonder whether a man would have to work so hard in the second top job. Is this a governmental reflection of the unfair distribution of labour in the home along gender lines? Immediately I had this thought, I chastised myself for drawing on domestic analogies to analyse the situation but the symbolism does resonate. It’s just not enough for women to prove they are equal to men - they must make a case for superiority to be treated with equality and respect.

And if Julia Gillard does stumble under such an enormous workload, the knives will be out while the “If you can’t handle the heat get out of the kitchen” headlines are likely to underline the sexist discourse.

I’m really impressed with our new Deputy Prime Minister – on top of intelligence, competence and wit, she displayed dignity and humility on election night that seemed genuine. Such characteristics may be perceived as weaknesses in our masculinist society but they’re evidence she’s not afraid to be a woman and a strong leader concurrently and that’s the stuff of real feminist role models. She deserves cheering, not ridicule.

Note: Yes, the headline to this post is deliberately ironic    [read more]