Newsphobia

Clearing out the tumbleweeds, I’d just though I’d try out something different for a while. I post these links on my Twitter account but I think it’s worth at least fleshing out a few of them in more than 140 characters. Any feedback appreciated! Or please let me know of what you’d like to see more of on this blog (more content in general is the obvious one there).

Jon Stewart on Keith Olbermann: You’re just kinda calling people names now

I do so love that as much as Stewart rips apart Fox News in almost every episode (and rightly so), he’s still capable of pointing out when the lefty MSNBC screw up. This is his second swipe at them in two weeks (after last week criticising the lovely Rachel Maddow for her point scoring around Haiti). Comedy Central – more balanced than TWO US news cable channels.

BBC to address portrayal of gays & lesbians

This was interesting to read this week. Following the controversy over BBC posing the question of whether gays & lesbians deserve to be killed re the Uganda “kill the gays” bill, they’ve decided to provide more “positive” portrayals of GLBTI characters on TV. I’m a tad cynical about this and think it’s more about addressing the controversy than actually doing anything but only for the fact that, frankly, the BBC (and British television in general) is already light years ahead in this area. E4 gave us the original Queer As Folk and Skins and BBC has given us Captain Jack in Torchwood to say the least. Not to mention they can never seem to have enough of Stephen Fry. While these sort of token gestures can be heartening, I much prefer less of the hand waving “look at us, we’re showing diversity!” kind of project like this and more of just getting on and actually doing it.

ABC News to go 24/7

Last week ABC announced that they’d be launching a 24 hour news channel probably only comparable to Sky News on Foxtel. There has been so much discussion about what form this will take, on whether it will be a good thing, whether it’s against the ABC Charter, and whether it will be a drain on other ABC resources and ultimately reduce the quality of news provided by the ABC. I’m taking an optimistic wait-and-see approach. It could be a disaster, it could be redundant talking heads and endless repetition, they might give Andrew Bolt a show in the name of “balance” but we could see great new fresh journalism here and (I’m selfishly hoping) plenty of opportunities for new journalists to get into the ABC.

Facebook’s move ain’t about changes in privacy norms

I’m ashamed I didn’t even consider this theory about why Facebook changed their security settings recently with more focus on content being public. Zuckerberg claimed that privacy as we know it was disappearing and people naturally wanted their lives, at least online, to be more public. But this is essentially like much of the argument about paywalling at the moment in journalism, money can be made by information being more free. It’s not worthwhile for Facebook to run private communities where only those privileged enough to be friended by someone else can view their content. Plus the more I think about it, Facebook are much less liable for anything they do with your personal data if more and more of it is in the public domain.