Monthly Archives

April 2022

April 27, 2022
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‘The unborn’ are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don’t ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don’t bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus, but actually dislike people who breathe. Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.

David Barnhart
April 25, 2022
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I'm working on a research paper analysing the interaction between journalists and the audience on twitter. What we've found so far is that, contrary to what we often hear from journalists, replies to news items are not full of what could be deemed 'personal abuse' but instead show the audience is pleading with journalists to look at stories from different perspectives, and to do a better job of verifying information - for example. These critiques of journalists' work are almost entirely received defensively by journalists as 'trolling'. I thought about this when I read the different perspectives from journalists in your [Tim Dunlop] piece. Apart from Amy Remeikis, they all did feel quite defensive in justifying what they're doing. I disagree that the audience don't 'understand' journalism - they know how important it is to democracy and when they see it being done badly - for whatever reason - they complain. And rightly. It's their democracy. I also don't think the journalists collectively can discount just how damaging the obvious bias of Murdoch has had on faith and trust in journalism as an institution. It has become a rule of thumb that most Murdoch journalists are out to campaign for causes rather than objectively reporting facts. When the audience has acknowledged that the largest media organisation in the country is producing what looks more like propaganda than news, it's only natural that they'll draw parallels between this bias, and bias creeping into other outlets - particularly the ABC of late. Journalists don't seem to want to acknowledge the problem of Murdoch bias, and instead host Murdoch journalists and commentators in a collegiate way on their panel shows etc., and sometimes even defend them as 'friends' when they're being criticised. As as media researcher interested in the sustainability of quality journalism, the lack of concern from journalists about the impact of Murdoch bias on trust in journalism is the elephant in the room amongst discussions of 'disruption' and 'doing more work with less resources'.

Victoria Fielding
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