by cameron | Feb 22, 2007 | Australian media
The Channel 7 (Australia) news department must make money for their corporate bosses hand over fist. Otherwise, how else do they survive?
Remember when their former current affairs host, Naomi Robson (now retired), was the laughing stock of the country because members of her crew (allegedly) released a tape of her swearing and calling their audience “dumb”? (link)
Then there was the Channel 7 news story about how lax airport security is in Australia which featured a reporter walking onto a plane supposedly carrying box cutters in her handbag. When her day in court came around (because this is illegal) Channel 7’s defense was “YOU CAN’T PROVE SHE TOOK THE KNIFE ON THE PLANE”, suggesting that perhaps they just pretended and it was a post-production trick. (link)
And today there is the story that reporter Nicholas Boot at Today Tonight has been ‘suspended’ after chaining an old woman in a nursing home to a cupboard to fake a story.
Of course, faking stories isn’t new to Today Tonight. Older viewers might remember when Dave “Sluggo” Richardson made a highly misleading report on Christopher Skase. Richardson was suspended from duty for a month. This episode was fictionalized in the ‘One Rule for One’ episode of Frontline, where Martin di Stasio is suspended for a month for doing exactly the same thing. Of course, in Marty’s case, being ‘suspended’ means a month’s paid vacation. He turns up to work and just sits around reading the paper and drinking beer. He’s actually rewarded by the producer because of the ratings they scored for the fictional show.
Anyone know where Boot is today?
by cameron | Feb 20, 2007 | Melbourne, Melbourne's Leaders, Podcast
Dr Peter Ellyard is a Melbourne-based futurist, strategist, author and Chairman of the Preferred Futures Institute. He has worked for the United Nations, various international governments and NGOs, and is an incredibly popular speaker and strategic consultant to global corporations.
We caught up today for a discussion about:
the role of a futurist
the rise of “planetism”
the role of globalisation
the role of corporations
leadership versus management
If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you don’t miss future episodes by subscribing to our feed and leave us a voice comment!
The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me†by The Napoleon Blown Aparts.
by cameron | Feb 20, 2007 | science vs religion
I’m sitting here waiting for filmmaker Brian Flemming, creator of “The God Who Wasn’t There” to turn up for our interview. I don’t think he got my email confirming the date/time. Ah well. Meanwhile I’m reading Brian’s blog and there are some great links to information I was going to talk to him about. I might as well share some of it with you now.
Join “The Blasphemy Challenge“!
The Rational Response Squad is giving away 1001 DVDs of The God Who Wasn’t There, the hit documentary that the Los Angeles Times calls “provocative — to put it mildly.” There’s only one catch: We want your soul. It’s simple. You record a short message damning yourself to Hell, you upload it to YouTube, and then the Rational Response Squad will send you a free The God Who Wasn’t There DVD. It’s that easy.
Go to WellingtonGrey.net to find out how George W. Bush’s decision tree works.
He’s also explains the difference between the scientific decision tree and the faith decision tree. Very enlightening.
The Center for Inquiry Transnational, in conjunction with its Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion (CSER) announces the creation of the Jesus Project. The Jesus Project will enlist the talents of scholars from many disciplines to try to determine the likelihood of Jesus of Nazareth having ever existed.
Spearheading this important undertaking is the Chairman of CSER, R. Joseph Hoffmann. The goal of the project, according to Hoffmann, is not to “prove” the non-existence of Jesus, but to take the theory as a “testable hypothesis” and use the best methods of critical inquiry to reach a probable conclusion.
by cameron | Feb 20, 2007 | Uncategorized
When I read Miriam’s post about shaving her head for leukemia, it dawned on me – Britney hasn’t gone mad – she’s just a sweet, down-home country girl with a heart of gold who wants to raise money for those poor people suffering from leukemia. And if Miriam can raise a couple of hundred bucks by shaving her head, imagine how much Britney will raise?
Of course, the infamous no-panties exercise a couple of months ago now makes complete sense. It was just a trial run. She probably raised $500k for the cause by shaving her taco and, in order to prove that she had actually done it, she kindly asked some photographers to be at hand when she got out of Paris’ wheels to record the event. With the huge success of that venture, she’s now decided to go the whole hog and shave her noggin.
And the press is beating it up, making out that the poor girl is half a loaf short of a picnic. It’s just not fair. She’s just doing her bit. I wish more stars would shave their heads. And their tacos for that matter.
Three cheers for Britney!
by cameron | Feb 20, 2007 | media 2.0
People love bandwagons. One of the popular memes at the moment, re-invigorated by some bloke called Rich Skrenta, the CEO of Topix.net, is about “The Failure of We (the) Media”. Anil Dash jumped on it. Even Ben Barren jumped on it.
Are these people living on the same planet I am? The one with 60 million blogs, squillions of YouTube videos and tens of thousands of podcasts? And it’s still the dawn of time as far as new media is concerned. Talking about the failure of “We Media” in 2007 is like the mental midgets who were talking about the failure of the internet to live up to the hype in 2001.
Thank Darwin Chris Anderson gets it.
Every day I get most of my news from blogs. I don’t visit “news sites” or use a “news aggregator”. I use a generic feedreader (Bloglines) and a totally idiosyncratic RSS subscription list that includes everything from personal posts from friends to parts (but not all) of the WSJ. When it comes to the web, I have no interest in someone else trying to guess what I want to read or “help” me by defining what’s news and what isn’t. My news is not your news; indeed, you probably wouldn’t call most of it news at all. I will probably never visit any of the sites Skrenta mentions, and never did visit the ones that are now defunct. In short, We Media is alive and well. It’s just the would-be We Media institutions that are not. A phenomenon is not necessarily a business. That doesn’t make it any less of a phenomenon.
Paul Montgomery – I see he lists TinFinger as one of the “We Media” businesses that failed? Does he know something I don’t?
