My weekly Guardian column: The terms of the current battle in Australia over the ABC, its budget and place in public life have been set by its most vociferous critics, mostly in the Murdoch press. If only the lines weren’t so predictable. Their campaign fits neatly into a global trend: to reduce the public’s faith…
Showing all posts tagged mainstream media
Making money from Ebola misery
My weekly Guardian column: The horror of ebola in West Africa has taken thousands of lives and spread fear around the world. This fact, coupled with ignorance and misinformation, has created the perfect storm. The risk is real, but you wouldn’t know the full picture from watching last weekend’s American 60 Minutes. Lara Logan’s report…
ABC radio interview on whistle-blower rights
Last week my Guardian column was about defending the rights of whistle-blowers. I was interviewed by ABC Sunshine Coast about these issues:
Defending the rights of whistle-blowers in our age
My weekly Guardian column: Freedom is difficult to resuscitate once extinguished. Australian attorney-general George Brandis recently chastised journalists for criticising his government’s new laws aimed at preventing reporting about “special intelligence operations”. Because he’s a culture warrior brawler, Brandis damned the “usual suspects of the paranoid, fantasist left” but also “reputable conservative commentators” for questioning…
How Australia is importing Tea Party style politics
My weekly Guardian column: It’s the swaggering and unthinking bravado that hits you. Australian prime minister Tony Abbott threatens to “shirtfront” Russian leader Vladimir Putin when he arrives in Australia for the G20. Moscow responds via Pravda by comparing Abbott to Pol Pot and Hitler. Australian senator Jacqui Lambie then praises Putin as a “strong…
Triple R radio interview on war, ISIS and failing "war experts"
Yesterday I was interviewed by Melbourne’s Triple R Spoke program about the current war against ISIS, the Middle East and media blindness and complicity:
South African radio interview on politics, Palestine and vulture capitalism
During my recent visit to South Africa’s Open Book literary festival in Cape Town I was interviewed by the country’s leading radio station, SAfm, on writing, my books, politics and activism. My interview begins at 30:35:
Beware all the instant Islamist experts
My weekly Guardian column: Nav K. Samir converted to Islam two years ago. He’s a young Sydney-based writer from an Indian background who recently featured in the successful new Facebook campaign, Australian Muslim Faces. Born into a Hindu family, Samir was attracted to the spiritual and intellectual life of Islam. At the age of 23,…
Handy explainer of the little war in Ukraine
Some classy and pointed German satire (select English subtitles below):
ABCTV Big Ideas on a reporter's focus since 9/11
During the recent Byron Bay Writer’s Festival this event, broadcast by ABCTV1’s Big Ideas, was a robust discussion on the rights, responsibilities and pressures of conflict reporting in a post 9/11 world: In this session writers Abbas El-Zein, Antony Loewenstein and Washington Post journalist David Finkel deliver strikingly different perspectives on the Iraqi and Afghan…