Train, planes, buses and toilets: the global giant that covers the world

November 15, 2013November 15, 2013freshlyworded 1 Comment

Had the train station become a bank branch?

That’s sort of how it felt walking through Melbourne’s Southern Cross Station every morning on my way to work this week.

Ascending the escalator from the platform I’d see enormous Bank of Melbourne posters dangling from the steel girders high above the tracks and a Bank of Melbourne billboard on the wall as I reached the mezzanine level. All space not occupied by a retailing brand bore the bank’s purple colours, logo and name including the fencing around the tracks, the staircase, more billboards at the main entrance on the busy corner of Collins and Spencer and even a Bank of Melbourne ad just below the roof a couple of stories up.

The only thing that was missing was the Bank of Melbourne itself. For if you were hoping to deposit a cheque, open an account of apply for a home loan at the Bank of Melbourne you’d be out of luck.

In addition to the advertising blitz, Bank of Melbourne was giving away free coffee in Bank of Melbourne cups served by baristas in Bank of Melbourne t-shirts. The only thing that didn’t bear its logo were the sachets of sugar and sweetener.

I duly queued up. The coffee was crap and the bean grinder broke down – I’ll avoid the temptation to draw comparisons with bank service in this country and instead ponder what’s actually going on.

I went to the website of Southern Cross Station and clicked on the button marked “Advertising“. The page contained this message:

If you would like to advertise your business or services at Southern Cross Station, contact JC Decaux.

Just who is JCDecaux? It’s a French-based global ‘outdoor’ advertising giant specialising in selling advertising space across three divisions: transport, billboards and street furniture. In 2012 it earned nearly $3.8 billion revenue. It employs over 10,000 people and is the largest outdoor advertising agency in the world. The second biggest is a US company called Clear Channel Outdoor with revenues of $3.16 billion.

In Australia’s JCDecaux’s main local competitors are: oOh!Media, the world’s 11th biggest agency and APN (12th biggest), which has two subsidiaries – Adshel and Buspak.

Source: JCDecaus Annual Report (US dollars)

Australians see all of these company names everyday. Guaranteed. You may not notice them – the intention is not to promote them but the ad itself – but they will be somewhere on the billboard or poster. Like this one:

Unlike the dominant forms of advertising – television and radio – outdoor advertising is almost subliminal, somewhat Orwellian.

Your eye registers the ad as you rush past it in the station, at the airport, while you’re waiting for a bus. Perhaps you even stop to ponder it, but more often than not you barely even notice. Next thing, you’re craving a hamburger even though you just ate or a new mobile phone, despite their being the latest model in your pocket. More than likely, you’ve been influenced by a piece of outdoor advertising you barely even noticed, but processed sub-consciously.

The JCDecaux annual report provides some fascinating insights into the ubiquitous-ness of outdoor advertising and its ‘out there, but not really there’ dichotomy.

For example, did you know that street furniture advertising products include all of these: bus shelters, public toilets (blokes, you know the ones when you’re having a slash), self-service bicycle schemes, kiosks for flowers or newspapers, public trash bins, benches, citylight panels, public information panels, streetlights, street signage, bicycle racks and shelters, recycling bins for glass, batteries or paper, electronic message boards and interactive computer terminals.

Transport advertising covers major airports, metros, trains, buses, trams and
other mass transit systems, as well as express train terminals serving international airports around the world.

Nice Airport, France

JCDecaux’s billboard advertising includes the M4 Tower, the UK’s tallest
purpose-built advertising structure at 28.5 meters tall, as high
as a seven-storey building on the main highway to Heathrow Airport from London.

How does JCDecaux and Clear Channel get access to these public spaces? Generally it negotiates an agreement with city authorities and either pays them a fee or a percentage of the revenue they earn from the ads they sell.

According to JCDecaux’s annual report, the outdoor advertising market is worth around $35 billion annually across the globe, about 9% of the total global advertising market, which is worth around $500 billion.

A relatively small part of the market, but highly influential, highly influencing and somewhat sly and invasive.

Something to think about the next time you get a strange craving or find yourself staring at one of these, while urinating in the airport toilet:

Yes darling, even Stephen Fry can be boring

November 5, 2013freshlyworded 1 Comment

If there’s a game show, a documentary, a movie or television series featuring Stephen Fry I’m likely to watch it. He’s always immensely interesting, devilishly charming and gives off the aura of an incredibly knowledgeable and worldly man.

Which is why his autobiography “The Fry Chronicles” was such a disappointment and dare I say it, thoroughly boring in large parts.

Perhaps all the very best bits were either in his first chronicle “Moab was my washpot” and covering the first 20 years of his life, which I have not yet read (but have read good things about) – or in his yet to come third volume, likely to begin with his addiction to cocaine.

“The Fry Chronicles” ostensibly covers the years from his time at Cambridge to the success of the musical “Me and my girl” on Broadway, for which he revised the story and dialogue (otherwise known as ‘the book’).

I was expecting to learn something of the inner workings of Stephen Fry’s mind (what makes him tick), his battle with manic depression and various addictions, and where he gets his ideas from – all the elements that make up a good biography – but none of them get any fair treatment. His depression is considered not worthy of his readers, while his addictions to sugar, cigarettes and gadgets are only glossed over. The very last few section of the book – just a paragraph – come under the heading “C” – for cocaine. And then it ends.

It’s not just that he leaves out the juicy bits, but that much of the book is plodding and dull, especially as he narrates the steps he took to achieve success: writing and performing sketches for various Cambridge shows and revues, getting hired to write for Granada TV (now called ITV Granada), the BBC, his friendships with Emma Thomson, Ben Elton, Rowan Atkinson and of course, Hugh Laurie. It’s all either too gushing – or worse, apologetic (he’s especially sorry for having money and spending it on frivolous, expensive gadgets).

Now to be fair, there are some brilliant anecdotes, recollections and insights thrown in amongst “I did this….then I did that…then I met him…then the money starting rolling in” narration that goes on page after page.

One of the most intriguing is Fry’s recount of a visit by Alistair Cooke, the famous journalist and broadcaster and founder of the Cambridge Mummers, the university’s first theatre group open to both sexes. Fry invited Cooke as guest of honour to the 50th anniversary celebration of the Mummers.

Cooke (as remembered by Fry) tells of being on a walking tour through Germany in the 1930s with a friend and coming to a “perfect beer garden”. Later, while they enjoy their beverages, a stage is set up, chairs are laid out and soon the garden is full. An ambulance arrives, then a procession of open top Mercedes limousines. A small man gets out to address the crowd. He speaks. Women duly faint. After he finishes speaking, the little man walks down the aisle and his elbow barges against Cooke’s shoulder, who has leant out to see the intriguing man depart.

“Entschuldigen Sie, meine Herr” (Excuse me, sir”) the little man says to Cooke.

Cooke says in his speech:

“For some years afterwards, whenever he came on in the cinema newsreels as his fame spread, I would say to the girl next to me: “Hitler once apologised to me and called me sir.”

There are many other gems scattered throughout the book and some very funny lines my favourite being when Fry meets the actress Miriam Margoyles (now an Australian citizen) who introduced herself by saying:

“How do you do? I’m Mir…” She stopped and plucked at her tongue with her thumb and forefinger, “Miriam Margoyles. Sorry about that. I was licking my girlfriend out last night and I’ve still got some c-nt hairs in my mouth.”

Unless you’re a prude you’d have to agree that’s hilarious.

Sadly there is not enough of this in the book and too much apologising from Fry: for getting gigs when he thought he did not have the talent, when the money came rolling in and he spent, spent, spent; and for all the good fortune that came his way.

He’s either flattered by offers of work from famous people (Ben Elton, Rowan Atkinson etc) or flattering others and defending their reputations for brilliance, particularly Ben Elton for some reason.

He spends too much time gushing over the obviously incredibly talented Rowan Atkinson and Emma Thompson and not enough revealing his inner workings, his thoughts on the new wave of comedy that swept over Britain from the likes of Rick Mayall, Adrian Edmondsen and Alexei Sayle and too much timed worrying that no one will find his form of “sketch” comedy funny anymore.

Fry highlights all his privilege and wealth, continually apologizes for having it, and then goes on to describe scenes such as when he and Ben Elton visit some swanky private conservative club called “The Carlton” where the joke is on the old crusty Tory members (there’s a bust of Margaret Thatcher there) because they don’t know who they have let in. The thing is Fry appears more Tory than Labour.

Sadly, an utterly boring account of what has been a remarkable life.

Perhaps Stephen Fry should plead: General ignorance and have another go.

Welcome to Australia: please turn your watches back 30 years

September 26, 2013freshlyworded Leave a comment

My cousin Maureen loves telling the story of how she flew to New Zealand in the 1980s and upon landing in Auckland, the pilot announced over the intercom:

“Welcome to New Zealand, please turn your watches back 30 years.”

It was a great line and always made me laugh.

But now it’s no so funny as I suspect Qantas may be forced to play the same message to new arrivals to our shores given the changes that are afoot since the new Abbott government placed Australia “under new management”.

It’s a man’s world

Our new prime minister surrounded himself with his attractive daughters, his wife and other powerful women in an attempt to appeal to female voters during the election campaign, but now that he’s won office its men in grey suits who are running the country. The feisty Julie Bishop is the only woman in cabinet, the rest are all grumpy old men, intent on returning Australia to the conservative values of the king of grumpy old men, John Howard.

Of course the corridors of female power are not assisted by the like of dowdy old Bronwyn Bishop, the Liberal member for Mackellar and someone with the fashion sense of Margaret Thatcher, who said it wasn’t Mr Abbott’s fault he could choose only one women in his cabinet (and just six out of 42 in his ministry), because he had to choose on merit, meaning no other women were good enough to be placed in senior leadership roles.

Give the environment a good kicking

Another swift act the new government was to kick out former Chief Climate Commissioner, Professor Tim Flannery and disband the Climate Commission, an organisation set up as an “independent and reliable source of information about the science of climate change”. Click on any link on the Climate Commission home page and you get this short message:

The Climate Commission ceased operation in September 2013.

With this single act, the new government broadcast its message loud and clear:

We don’t believe in climate change. We’re not interested in the environment.

What it means is that a lot more of Australia’s natural vegetation and eco-systems will fall by the way side to assist the mining industry. Prime minister Abbott is taking his cues from the ultra-conservative Queensland government, demanding that more farmland be given over to coal seam gas exploration. This at a time when even the rapidly industrialising Chinese economy is looking to reduce its carbon footprint alongside that of the US.

The new age of secrecy

Perhaps, most shocking in an age when government’s are being urged to be more transparent and open, that the new government should seek the pull the wool over its own citizen’s eyes. This was most evident in new “go back to where you came from” immigration minister Scott Morrison’s pledge that “there will be no information about whether [asylum seeker] boats are turned around”

Scott Morrison, a “Pik Botha” of his era

“That goes to operational matters that, whether they affect current or future operational activity, you will not be getting commentary from this podium or that podium either way on those matters,” said Mr Morrison in garbled politco-speak that could have come straight out of the mouth of apartheid-era South African foreign minister Pik Botha.

But let’s not kid ourselves – Mr Morrison is no lovable rogue. Old Pik at least had some dour charisma and was happy to give something back under Nelson Mandela.

Mr Morrison has gone to war with asylum seekers and “lefties” who seek to give them a fair go.

These are but three examples in just a few weeks of government, and no doubt more will come (One more example: The Abbott government is attempting to block the ACT government from legalising gay marriage).

Yes, we have a government that’s united. But in what common cause?

To set us on a course for barren shores?

Are we, in the words of Withnail as a nation: “drifting into the arena of the unwell, making an enemy of our own future”?

Withnail, drifting into the arena of the unwell

“What we need is harmony, fresh air, stuff like that,” Withnail goes on to say.

But I fear the air will become clogged with the foulest of fumes.

Are thinner politicians more electable?

August 22, 2013freshlyworded Leave a comment

Of all the guff that has been written about this upcoming election – and there has been a lot – an article from Brisbane’s The Courier Mail caught my attention focusing on the fact that prime minister Kevin Rudd is packing on the pounds apparently under the stress of losing his short-lived grip on power.

The story, written by Hannah Davies, had as its headline: ‘Moon-faced PM ‘comfort eating’ as the stress of the Federal Election campaign takes its toll.

The story quotes a number of nutritionist and dietician who comment on the prime minister’s fuller face and apparent appetite for pizza and beer with the insinuation that he’s becoming less able to govern by virtue of his weight gain.

They even give him free advice such a that he opt for “nuts and a fruit basket”.

Hannah Davies even went so far as to ask the PM’s spokesperson whether he was “comfort eating”. A ridiculous, irrelevant question you’d think given the broader issues being faced – she might as well also have asked if he was spending more time on the couch eating potato chips!

Anyway, it does raise an interesting point about appearances.

Contrast Kevin Rudd’s apparent podginess (It’s easy to find an unflattering photo of someone constantly be photographed, hence my use of the word “apparent”) with the superfit appearance of Tony Abbott and its easy for a conservative Rupert Murdoch-owned paper like the Courier Mail to suggest, subtely that gaining weight is a sign perhaps of bad personal management, bad habits and an inability to lead.

It’s interesting that the two other high-profile politicians to lose a lot of weight are both on the conservative side of politics: shadow treasurer Joe Hockey, whose is a shadow of the huggable bear of a man he once was and NSW premier Barry O’Farrell, whose weight has bounced up and down like a yo-yo over the last 15 years, but is now almost unhealthily gaunt.

O’Farrell explained in an interview to the Daily Telegraph in December last year that he lost the weight by challenging himself after the 2003 election to go to the gym every day for a week, a pledge he has stuck to for nine years.

Joe Hockey admits to having some help via gastric bypass surgery over the Christmas break followed up by with dieting and exercise.

He says its because he wants to be around to see his grandchildren grow up and was also tired of being called “Sloppy Joe” by former Treasurer Wayne Swan.

It’s surely no coincidence though that Joe Hockey has lost his weight in an election year.

Slimmer and fitter apparently makes you a better leader, thinker and decision maker in the eyes of many while adding a few pounds is a sign that you’ve lost your mojo.

This, of course, is baloney.

Yes, losing weight is good for your health and overall sense of wellbeing and people who lose weight are to be commended.

But fat people that suddenly become thin do not suddenly develop more brain cells, a better moral and ethical belief system and a greater sense of what’s right and wrong.

Being fat never bothered Winston Churchill, nor did it stop him defeating a far skinnier Adolf Hitler.

And there’s no indication that billionaire mining magnate Clive Palmer intends to shed any pounds as he seeks a political role.

Yes you may live longer and feel better about yourself, but let’s not confuse this with character, decency and moral strength.

After all Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush – two leaders who both puffed out their chests in front of the camera – are hardly the model of political astuteness.

On with the circus!

Of Federal Elections and fruity flyers…

July 3, 2013freshlyworded 2 Comments

If anything evenly vaguely interesting happens to me in my life that causes me to write my memoirs, I will be sure to include some ‘rules” for living.

One of these will most likely be:

“If someone hands you a flyer outside a train station or on the street, always take it.”

For the entertainment value anyway.

The corollary to this rule would be:

“Never believe anything you read on a flyer handed out outside a train station or on the street.”

Today, as I headed out of Southern Cross Station and across Spencer Street to work, an innocuous enough chap handed me a one page flyer from the ‘Citizens Electoral Council of Australia’- or ‘CEC’.

The CEC purports to be a political movement, with a post box address in Coburg, not far from where I live and a 1800 number.

The headline of the flyer reads:

“Only Glass-Steagall can head off planned bankers’ coup, genocide!”

This is the first paragraph (you can read the whole document on the CEC website:

“A faction of the British Crown-led City of London-centred ‘Money Power’ has announced its immediate intention to pull the plug on the unpayable global debt bubble by ending “quantitive Easing” and to instead sieze depositors’ bank accounts en mass (‘bail in’ vs ‘bail out’), while ramming through the genocidal austerity measures against the great masses of the population in Europe, the United States and Australia/New Zealand…”

Make any sense to you?

All I can gather is that someone in London is going to do something nasty and seize the money I have in the bank.

Further on I read

“The 24 June Bank of International Settlements (BIS) annual report calls for an end to the Bernanke-led quantitive Easing policy and instead demands a regime of Hitlerian levels of vicious austerity….siphoning off the people’s bank accounts to keep selected banks afloat.”

Bankers. Genocide. Hitler. Stealing money. I sense a theme.

Further on in the flyer, there are mentions of a “plot”, a “drive towards outright fascism”, another mention of fascism and a couple more mentions of “Hitler-style austerity”.

The pamphlet mentions another flyer handed out by the LaRouche Political Action Committee (LPAC) “headed by US statesman and economist Lyndon H. La Rouche Jr, who is fond of talking in terms of “quaddrillions of dollars” (how much is that I wonder?) and mentioning dead German dictators in his call to action.

According to Wikipedia, and not mentioned in the flyer is that LaRouche was “sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment in 1988 for conspiracy to commit mail fraud and tax code violations, and was released in 1994 on parole”.

The Wikipedia entry is worth a ready for one of the most colourful descriptions of personality you will ever read and for this photo, that LaRouche allegedly campaigned under, complete with painted on Hitler moustache:

Anyway, it appears that the CEC has looked beyond these small misgivings and joined LaRouche’s cult-like following.

It certainly appears to be absorbing the ways of its master.

Here’s an extract from the history and philosophy section of the CEC website:

“A major contributing factor to the present economic collapse, is the anti-human, bestial policies represented by the rock-drug-sex counterculture which took off in the 1960s.”

For more information, perhaps by this handy guide on the CEC website for just $5:

But back to the bowel-loosening headline in the flyer handed out to me.

What is Glass-Steagall and what does it have to do with Australia?

Well it refers to a 1933 Act of the US Congress, following the onset of the Great Depression, that created the separation of investment and commercial banking activities.

The act was repealed in 1999 and the global financial crisis followed in 2007.

To prevent fascism and genocide, the CEC want it brought back around the world and in Australia to prevent Australia’s four major banks from collapsing due to them “dangerously exposing themselves to the global financial system, including through nearly $20 trillion in derivatives speculation”.

There is clearly some truth buried within this ridiculous statement about reckless mortgage lending and speculation by banks in the US and around the world that caused the banking system to almost collapse.

But to suggest that Australia’s major banks – among the most conservative and profitable in the world – would speculate $20 trillion in derivatives is to believe that Peter Pan truly existed.

Consider that the total size of the Australian economy is around $1.5 trillion (the 12th biggest in the world) and the Big Four banks have a market capitalisation of around $330 billion and you realise that there is no possible way they could ever invest 13 times the size of the Australian economy in high-risk schemes.

Back on planet earth, I prefer the more considered thoughts of Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens, who suggested in a speech today that while challenges lie ahead for the Australian economy we are still a “lucky” country with low unemployment and where households remain cautious, continue to save and act prudently.

Still, if you’re in the mood for a bit of silly, old-fashioned conspiracy theories and scare-mongering, pick up a flyer the next time you’re in the CBD.

And watch out for those fascist bankers!

The enigma, the ego, the cult and the noble idealism of Julian Assange

June 6, 2013June 6, 2013freshlyworded Leave a comment

I finished reading “The Most Dangerous Man in the World” just as the trial of US soldier Bradley Manning began in Maryland.

“The Most Dangerous Man in the World” is a biography of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange written by ABC journalist Andrew Fowler.

It tells the story of how Assange went from being a teenage hacker in Melbourne to one the most influential and controversial figures in the world.

You could certainly not get too more different characters than Manning and Assange and yet both are now inextricably linked together by their idealism and bravery.

Bradley Manning is by all accounts, a shy, introverted, ultimately decent gay man, who somehow found himself thrust into the intelligence operations of the war in Iraq, and who is responsible for the biggest leak of classified military and diplomatic documents in history.

Assange, portrayed in Fowler’s book as an almost Robin Hood like character – stealing the secrets from the richest most powerful nation on earth to give to the world – but also with the touch of Keyser Soyze about him, able to manipulate politicians and journalists, a seducer of women and at times as secretive as the secret organisations he seeks to expose.

While Fowler clearly admires Assange for what he has achieved, he is no sycophant and leaves the reader to make up their own minds about the enigma and cult of Julian Assange.

How you view Assange and Manning depends on whether you believe governments have the right to keep secrets or whether you believe in the idea of a more transparent and open society.

I am one of those people who believe Julian Assange and Bradley Manning are heroes for revealing the many thousands of innocent civilian deaths at the hands of the US government and its allies, most graphically and famously revealed in the “Collateral Murder” leaked Apache helicopter video showing innocent Iraqis, including children, being killed by 30mm gunfire.

Fowler reveals how the actions of WikiLeaks have shifted events on the world stage. For example, tweets of a WikiLeaks story about the corrupt dictatorship of Tunisian leader Zine el Abidine Ben Ali lead to his overthrow and political exile.

“WikiLeaks was a brilliant example of what has been known for some time: the power of information from a legitimate source, disseminated via social networking systems, to threaten the power of a state and its institutions,” Fowler writes.

Similarly the overthrow of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak as part of the Arab Spring after 30 years of an abusive reign (and with the support of the US government), was also spurred on by WikiLeaks documents showing his brutal methods of silencing opposition.

Still, there are those who call Julian Assange and Bradley Manning traitors and guilty of the highest form of treason for revealing highly classified military documents.

Indeed if Manning is found guilty of high treason (aiding the enemy) he faces spending the rest of life in jail while Assange – now under the protection of the Equadorian embassy in London – faces an uncertain future depending on what steps the US government and its intelligence agencies, supported by other countries including Australia, take to prosecute and silence him.

While the US Constitution’s first amendment enshrines free speech and freedom of the press, the US government has argued that 260,000 or so leaked documents WikiLeaks has on its servers, compromises its national security, puts its operatives at personal risk as well as endangers its relationships with other countries. In short they say it is high treason.

Equally, in the eyes of the current Labor Australian government, Assange is a criminal, despite having the support (according to Fowler’s book) of a large portion of the Australian public and which will be tested if Assange is able to run for a seat in the Australian Senate in September.

Assange is now firmly back in the spotlight with the Manning trial underway.

In a post on WikiLeaks, he says Manning is simply on trial for “telling the truth” and that the US has violated its own laws in its treatment of Manning, including that he has been locked up in a “cage” for 23 out of 24 hours, “deprived of his glasses, sleep, blankets and clothes, and prevented from exercising” and held since May 2010 while awaiting trial.

Assange appears to have won favour again with the New York Times, a newspaper that according to Fowler’s book both supported the work of WikiLeaks and Assange, but also despised him for his manner, his ego and his ability to play one media organisation against another to achieve his own aims and outcomes.

Assange has penned for the New York Times a savage review of a book called “The New Digital Age” written by Google executive chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt and head of Google Ideas, Jared Cohen in which he accuses Google of going from “an expression of independent Californian graduate student culture” to having “thrown its lot in with traditional Washington power elements, from the State Department to the National Security Agency”.

The article reveals Assange to be a gifted writer, highly articulate and persuasive. He would make an excellent analytical journalist.

Assange accuses Google of acting like an imperialist power, enforcing its digital views on life and business on the world, whether they want it or not. Google, according to Assange, has become a political animal with sinister overtones.

Google’s world vision, he says “heralds the death of privacy for most people and shifts the world toward authoritarianism” – the antithesis of the goals of WikiLeaks, which are a more transparent government but with the privacy of its citizens safeguarded.

It is hard to distinguish between WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.

Though there is a team of people behind WikiLeaks from donors to programmers to activists, Assange is its driving force, its voice and spokesperson.

Fowler’s book reveals Assange to be a difficult person to work with; starting out as a charmer and drawing like-minded people to his noble pursuit of truth like German technology activist Daniel Domscheit Berg and Icelandic politician and activist Birgitta Jónsdóttir and then putting them offsides by unpredictable and secretive behaviour, a hidden agenda and making decisions without consulting with them.

WikiLeaks is the Julian Assange show.

Holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London , Assange recently gave an interview to Sydney University politics professor John Keane for The Conversation academic website.

Keane’s interview is more sycophantic then Fowler’s book, but we do get a glimpse of a man who while complaining of the boredom of his “cell” clearly revels in his role as spokesperson for “truth” and appears likeable, still idealistic, but also in the end a realist when it comes to his present situation.

“True democracy is the resistance of people armed with truth against lies,” Assange tells Keane.

In an editorial ahead of the Bradley Manning trial on WikiLeaks, Assange asserts that the dice are already loaded against the soldier, describing it as a “show trial” where “24 prosecution witnesses will give secret testimony in closed session”.

“This is not justice; never could this be justice.” Assange writes.

“Bradley Manning is accused of being a whistleblower, a good man, who cared for others and who followed higher orders. Bradley Manning is effectively accused of conspiracy to commit journalism.”

In the end its does not matter whether you like Julian Assange or not – Fowler’s book lets readers make up their own mind.

What is important are his ideals, which are decidedly noble and good.

“In the end it is not Bradley Manning who is on trial. His trial ended long ago. The defendant now, and for the next 12 weeks, is the United States. A runaway military, whose misdeeds have been laid bare, and a secretive government at war with the public. They sit in the docks. We are called to serve as jurists. We must not turn away,” writes Assange with masterful elegance.

The Guardian Australia: you won’t find it @ www.theguardian.com.au

May 2, 2013freshlyworded 6 Comments

For the four-and-a-half years I lived in London, The Guardian was the newspaper to read for quality investigative journalism as well as for its famous spelling mistake howlers.

Writing for Accountancy Age magazine in Soho, I’d read the business sections of The Guardian, alongside the other broadsheets (the Financial Times, The Independent and Daily Telegraph) for possible story ideas in the morning and then, like everyone else, would seek out The Sun and The Mirror in the afternoon for the salacious gossip, page 3 girls and Premier League football stories.

Lately there has been extensive coverage of the launch of a digital Australian edition of The Guardian (announced in January) with news of top Fairfax journalists like David Marr and Lenore Taylor jumping on board with the site to be edited by The Guardian’s deputy editor Katharine Viner.

A colleague of mine at Private Media, Oliver Milman, will be joining the Guardian Australia as a Melbourne-based environment reporter alongside other new signings of journalistic talent announced this week.

They’ve already leased offices for journalists and other staff in Surry Hills, Sydney, so it’s clearly a serious venture for a publication, which is the fourth biggest newspaper website in the world with a monthly audience of 30.8 million users behind Mail Online (45.3m monthly readers), the NY Times‘s (44.8m) and USA Today (34.6m) according to National Readership Surveys September 2012 figures.

So, eager to find out more, I searched for ‘The Guardian Australia‘ on Google.

The first result was this page (below), with picture of a koala bear and a billabong and a host of stories, videos and commentary about Australian issues:

This, I know, is not the new Guardian Australia edition, but the long-running Australia page of The Guardian UK with the giveaway being The Guardian store offers in pounds while the Guardian jobs section are all British roles:

So I clicked on the third link on my Google search – www.theguardian.com.au which sounded like the most likely address for the new digital Guardian Australia edition.

And bingo, I came across a newspaper website full of Australian stories with a masthead in similar font to that used by The Guardian.

So was this The Guardian Australia edition?

Clearly not, since it says its owned by Fairfax.

When I clicked on the “About Us” page, the confusion abated. It reads: “The Guardian provides the latest news from the Swan Hill region, northern Victoria and NSW Riverina.”

This is another Guardian Australia – a regional newspaper dating back to 1888.

Perhaps its only coincidence the fonts are so similar, but it surely must have caught the attention of those in corridors of power at Fairfax, and not just because they’ve got the URL, but also the Facebook address: www.facebook.com/GuardianAU.

As luck would have it, Twitter suggested I follow Lenore Taylor, the recently appointed political editor of The Guardian Australia edition and so I did and duly asked her what form the new publication would take:

“Frontage” – is a new term I’d never heard before, but I assumed it meant something on The Guardian‘s front page, so that’s where I went.

After a little bit of a look around, I came across this button at the top of the website, which allows you to choose between the UK and Guardian US version:

So presumably, at some point when it all goes live, there will be an extra item added to this menu bar with the word “Australia” and when you click on it there will be an Australian version, similar in format to the current American edition:

Website address issues aside, it’s going to be interesting to see how The Guardian performs in Australia.

As someone pointed out to me, it’s going to go from being a UK publication writing about Australia for British readers to one written by Australians for Australian readers, with a UK editor.

This it has done somewhat successfully with its US edition, which now has around 8 million viewers a month.

But it’s been a bumpy ride for The Guardian US, which first launched in 2007 as GuardianAmerica.com, then folded back into the UK edition in 2009, with staff laid off, before launching its US edition (or ‘frontage’ to use Lenore Taylor’s term) in September last year, also accessible via the URL: http://www.guardiannews.com.

While no doubt the journalism produced by The Guardian Australia will be of the highest calibre, it will face challenges from a host of established left-wing publications like Crikey.com.au, The Global Mail (founded no less than by BRW Rich Lister Graeme Wood, the primary investor in The Guardian Australia), the ABC’s online presence and Fairfax’s own stable of publications, to name just a few.

Which means making money from The Guardian Australia will be an even bigger challenge.

The Guardian Media group has been the exact opposite of a cash cow of late reporting huge losses in recent years (£75 million loss in the 12 months to August 2012) as it tries to transition its business model to one that taps into its huge online audience, a difficult task that neither Fairfax nor News Limited nor any media organisation have yet fully realised.

And it has another challenge.

As Crikey writer Guy Rundle pointed out, The Guardian has a reputation for being the worst of the UK newspapers when it comes to writing stores with an anti-Australia slant.

It’s reporting on the Ashes and British Lions tours later this year will be fascinating to say the least – if you can find the website!

Naming Rolf Harris and Sunil Tripathi: mainstream media’s troubled relationship with social media

April 28, 2013April 28, 2013freshlyworded 5 Comments

Last weekend, The Saturday Age splashed this Facebook photo of Sunil Tripathi (below) a missing university student incorrectly identified by bloggers as a possible suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings across its front cover.

The story has been removed from The Age website, but can be read here in its online archives.

The photo of a smiling Tripathi was splashed on the front page of The Saturday Age below a now notorious grainy photo of the two suspects at the marathon just before the bombs went off:

The caption below Tripathi’s photo read: “Sunil Tripathi was reported missing by his family. He is pictured in a Facebook page set up to find the Brown University student. Sunil is reported to have been named on a police scanner as one of the suspects.”

At the very top of the same page, above the masthead, was another headline in large font and in bold:

“Rolf Harris linked to UK sex abuse inquiry“

The Australian entertainer’s arrest over sex crime allegations was a poorly guarded secret since November last year, with his name revealed by many bloggers.

The story that mentioned Sunil Tripathi, written by respected journalist Paul McGeough, a former editor of the Sydney Morning Herald now based in Washington D.C., detailed the events leading up to the capture and death of one of the suspects, while the other was still at large at the time.

McGeough wrote: “Police did not confirm the names being ascribed to the two men in the blogosphere – Suspect One as Mike Mulugeta and Suspect Two as Sunil Tripathi.” – contradicting what was said in the photo caption.

Tripathi had been named as a suspect on blogging aggregator news website, Reddit, after users said they thought they recognised him as the suspect wearing a white baseball cap.

That man turned out to be Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, now an alleged Chechen terrorist, who along with brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev, killed in a police gun fight after the bombing, are believed to be the sole perpetrators of the attack.

Sunil Tripahti and “Mike Mulugeta” (even less has been reported of him) had nothing to do with the Boston bombings.

Tragically, the body of Sunil Tripathi, missing since last month, was found in the Providence River on Friday (April 20), much to the anguish of his grief-stricken family.

A day after the Saturday Age story appeared, the following day’s Sunday Age ran with the correct story about the Tsarnaev brothers as the Boston bombers.

There was no mention at all of the misidentification of Sunil Tripathi.

At first I thought I’d mis-read the Saturday Age story, but pulling out the paper from the recycling bin, proved that I wasn’t going crazy.

So I emailed The Age‘s editor Andrew Holden to ask him if he could clear up the confusion.

I received a response from Steve Foley, The Age‘s news director, who confirmed that the newspaper did publish the two names (Tripathi and Mulugeta) “that were circulating on Friday evening (Saturday morning Australian time) in our first edition”.

“As we went to press the story was still unfolding at rapid speed. The updated story for our second edition of the Saturday paper did not mention them. By then it was being reported that two Chechens were the Boston bombing suspects,” said Foley

“On Saturday morning, by which time our coverage was all online, we acknowledged our error – stating that we had published incorrect information on Friday night.

“We aim to get it right, every time, and despite all precautions, lapses do occur,” he added.

As I mentioned earlier, the Fairfax print archives only references the first, erroneous story about Tripathi being a suspect.

Online, there is no mention of Tripathi being incorrectly identified by the newspaper.

However, The Age and other Fairfax websites have since published two follow-up stories about Tripathi: one under the headline “Student wrongly named as Boston bomber found dead” and another is about Reddit apologising for the grief it caused the Tripathi family for naming their son as a suspect” “Reddit apologises for Boston online witch hunts”.

(This is the official Reddit apology)

Incredibly, neither of these stories acknowledge the fact that The Saturday Age, which has a readership of 227,000, splashed Tripathi’s name and photo across its front page in error, nor has an apology been issued either publicly or privately to the family of Sunil Tripathi for suggesting their son might be a terrorist.

Is this just arrogance on the part of Fairfax or does the media giant really believe it’s entirely the fault of Reddit users for suggesting Tripathi may have been Dzhokhar Tsarnaev?

I should point out that Fairfax was not the only mainstream media organisation to get this wrong.

According to The Australian‘s media writer Nick Leys, both Channel Nine and Channel Seven named Tripathi in their 6pm news bulletins, relying on the “blogosphere” as a reliable source.

“Journalists here and in the US threw the rule books out the window on Friday night choosing to use social media as a reliable source…journalists were blindly repeating those names with no reliable source….” wrote Leys in his Media Diary wrap last week.

This of course brings me back to the other heading on the front page of that ill-fated Saturday Age edition.

The story about Rolf Harris.

Why is that The Saturday Age found it acceptable to print Sunil Tripathi’s name and photograph based on entirely unverified accusations almost the moment they became known but waited six months to print Rolf Harris’s name, when it had been splashed across countless blogs?

Steve Foley did not respond to my questions about this issue so all I can do is speculate.

Was it to give Rolf Harris the benefit of the doubt because he’s one of Australia’s most famous and much-loved entertainers? Was it because they feared a costly and embarrassing lawsuit if the arrest proved untrue?

Possibly both explanation are true.

So why wasn’t a young US student afforded the same duty of care?

And why has The Age not deemed it necessary to apologise to his family?

Time-poor journalists are sitting ducks for press release hoaxes – expect more

January 8, 2013January 8, 2013freshlyworded 3 Comments

The hoax ANZ/Whitehaven Coal press release sent out by environmental activist Jonathan Moylan this week not only exposed the fragile mind-sets of nervous investors, but highlighted the challenges facing time-poor journalists in the internet age of the 24 hour news cycle.

As has been pointed out by many different commentators including Eric Johnstone from The Age, a little research, a little consideration, even a little time spent mulling the press release over, should have alerted journalists and editors that it was fake.

“The press release read like the real thing. However there were several red flags. Banks don’t usually go about advertising the fact they have pulled a financing facility. They leave that to the company,” Johnstone writes.

The fake ANZ press release

Despite these red flags, respected publications like News Limited’s Business Spectator, Fairfax’s metro papers and the Australian Financial Review all bought it hook, line and sinker.

And yet while everyone has been focusing on the impact a press release written in a forest by a 25-year-old translater with basic Photoshop skills and dodgy internet connection had on investors and share prices and possible breaches of the Corporations Act, the bigger story is one about the challenges facing journalists expected to bash out stories in the time it takes to sip a cup of coffee.

Spend time in any online newsroom (as I have done for the past 10 years) and you’ll instantly understand the pressure journalists are under to file copy.

“I need that copy in 10 minutes

“I need it in five minutes.”

“Just file what you have.”

These are the exclamations that ring in the ears of journalists every day uttered by anxious editors.

In the brave new media world, where commercial success is measured by number of ‘hits’, ‘unique browsers’, ‘tweets’ and ‘likes’, there is hardly any time for journalist to sit back and take a moment to think.

The day begins. You turn on computer, put fingers to your keyboard and write, write, write. The day disappears in a flash.

Government reports running to 300 pages must be digested in a few hours, sometimes less, meaning journalists must resort to reading the executive summary and skimming over huge amounts of information.

Intricate legal judgements, deep economic analysis, complex new government policy – its all about finding the story as you skim the paragraphs (keyword searches are especially useful).

And always there is the pressure of time.

Sure there were (and still are) tight deadlines in the past for those journalists working on daily newspapers (I have not worked on one myself) but more than likely – when lucrative print advertising funded newspapers and magazines – they were manageable and editorial teams were large and well resourced.

Today, if journalists want to wear the mantle of true investigative reporters, they must devote their own time, outside of work hours and sometimes their own money to put a deeply researched story together.

And many do.

Jonathan Moylan may have been surprised at the impact his quickly hashed media statement had – wiping $300 million of value off Whitehaven coal and incensing investors and embarrasing editors – but he shouldn’t be.

As an online journalist myself, I have been all to eager on a few occasions to write the story based on research or a press release, which while not a hoax, was based on incorrect information and if I had taken the time to consider the facts before me, would have realised that it clearly was a load of nonsense.

But, a juicy headline as concocted by Moylan, more likely while he rested against a tree and listened to the birds tweeting, would have been impossible to resist for journalists and editors thinking about readers, hits and revenue.

Certainly, at a glance, it looked convincing enough.

(Here’s a copy of the scam press release and you can find numerous genuine ANZ press releases on their website if you want to make your own comparisons.)

Make no mistake, there will be others that will attempt similar guerrilla tactics, considering the enormous impact this hoax has had and the success of other stunts in the past (see this hoax involving Dow Chemicals, this one that caught out Harvey Norman and this recent one targeting MacMahon Holdings ).

Yes, journalists and editors will attempt to be more vigilant, but with the passing of time and the pressure to keep churning out story after story, their guards will slip and we will be easy pickings for activists, trouble-makers and those with more time on their hands than we have.

Grovelling 2Day FM radio DJs deserve little sympathy after TV apology stunt

December 11, 2012December 31, 2012freshlyworded 3 Comments

There seems to be this perception in Australia, that to be truly absolved of anything you regret or are ashamed of in life, all you have to do is make an appearance on Channel 7’s Today Tonight or Channel 9’s A Current Affair – two of the most watched programs on Australian television.

This particularly applies to the sheltered world of Australian celebrities or media personalities, who see grovelling on prime-time TV as the equivalent of Catholic confession (often a paid Catholic confession at that!).

You tell a Current Affair’s Tracey Grimshaw you’re sorry and all is forgiven.

And it’s great because for one thing, you know you’re not going to be asked any real tough questions – all you have to do is shed a tear or two and you can get on with your life.

I am not a fan of right-wing UK tabloid The Daily Mail, but I think their columnist Richard Littlejohn was right on the money when he called Michael Christian and Mel Greig interview’s on these two shows “a self-indulgent, self-justifying sobfest”: that was “utterly nauseating”.

Just consider for a moment how both interviews begin.

Channel 7’s Today Tonight interview begins with the host Clare Brady, asking Mel and Michael if they feel up to doing the interview.

Immediately, we are expected to feel sorry for them (which is fair enough) but what about the poor woman who has killed herself and her family.

In both shows, you can count on one hand the number of times Jacintha Saldanha’s name is mentioned.

Yes Mel and Michael feel terrible about a prank that went horribly wrong, but Brady is happy to let them pass the buck when it comes to accepting some responsibility for their actions.

On both shows they are allowed to get away with claiming that the prank was a “team” decision when clearly it was someone’s idea and also someone’s decision higher up the food chain at radio station owner Austereo to allow the prank to be broadcast.

But no names are mentioned and no further questions are asked.

Tracey Grimshaw begins her expose by telling viewers that this interview is ‘unpaid” which tells you a lot about the credibility of the show before the interview has even begun.

Tracey also begins by telling us of an emotional Mel Greig before she’s even uttered a word.

The message is clear: “Come on Australia, get your tissues ready!”

She begins the interview exactly in the same manner as Clare Brady, asking the pair if they feel up to doing the interview.

And just like rival show Today Tonight, she then asks them whose idea it was to make the prank call – and so the interview progresses.

In fact the interviews are so similar, you’d think they’d colluded on the questions before-hand.

Both presenters put on their best sympathetic, yet stern motherly faces, but avoids any tough questions.

Everything appears stage-managed, deliberate and designed to tug at the heart-strings.

I am sure both Mel and Michael feel genuine remorse, but even the tears shed on the shows have an air of staged theatricality, with the dramatic pauses and contrived helpless expressions.

And then there’s Mel’s response to Tracey’s question about when she heard the call.

“It was the worse call I ever got” is her reply and you can just hear the show’s producer saying to himself – “that’s the bit we’ll run in the promo”.

But there to comfort them in their time of trauma and need – as she has done with so many others in the past – is the mother figure of Tracey Grimshaw, the high priestess of television absolution.

Because let’s face it, if Mel and Michael really wanted to deliver a heart-felt apology, they would have penned a meaningful apology to Jacintha Saldanha’s family and not sought the prime time TV limelight.

But that would be un-Australian – instead we prefer: “Lights, camera, action…Tracey Grimshaw”.