Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

I’ll never forget her birth. I tossed off an opener and lo and behold, a few people responded. One of the first was the mercurial David Davis. And he still loves her too.

All in all, an awful state of affairs for Australia and our democracy. So what is the solution? The way I see it, the various independent online media groups need to get together, pool their resources, and step up to a genuine media alternative to the dregs of Fairfax and Murdoch. Academic institutions engaged in media would also be around the table, as I’d see links with journalism students in the new group.

Nevertheless it is true for most of us that for the immediately foreseeable future that whatever we publish online isn’t going to go away, and, more significantly, is going to be searchable in a way that microfiche of a newspaper archive is not.

"I would also like to inform you today that the autonomous Management and Standards Committee, which was established by the Company to ensure full cooperation with all investigations, has completed its review of The Times and The Sunday Times, assisted by outside counsel, Linklaters. We found no evidence of illegal conduct other than a single incident reported months ago, which led to the discipline of the relevant employee." -Rupert Murdoch

"I will gladly pay the cost of a ticket to help you pay your way back to Iraq. When you get there , and if you manage to survive for being as outspoken as what you are here in Australia , then you should be able to help straighten out the mess which YOUR Iraqi countrymen have got you into in the first place , which appears to be the reason that you have come to MY country to avoid.'

Many of its shows are a significant benefit to the community. And, particularly in the Arts, one needs to test the boundaries. However, this program is a critical error of judgment, the type of blunder that, in one moment, destroys years of positive contribution.

The rest is silence.

Hiya, Webdiary tragics. I wondered if any of you are feeling as strange and disbelieving as me while watching what happens when the emperor is seen to have no clothes. Is there a media debate going on about what inquiries our nation needs to have in the wake of the British revelations?

The real wolves, back in the US are likely sharpening their knives (teeth?) in its wake, to find out who will be the new tycoon when the old man gets kicked upstairs.

Obviously the ramifications for Murdoch spread much further than the readership of this one newspaper.  However popular it might be, he''s prepared to sacfice this journal so that the tarnish of perceived lack of journalistic integrity doesn't spread to his other titles across the world.

We would like to place ourselves at your mercy and request a stay of execution for our television program, The Chaser's Royal Wedding Commentary.

"Like all anti-censorship campaigns, Tharunka emerged from a particular political context. From today’s perspective, it appears like the period piece it is, and my early defiance seems optimistic, even naive. Nonetheless, I still believe that direct action and resistance is the best way to counter censorship in whatever form it comes." - Wendy Bacon

 Democracy burned, as we finally learned that sovereign states were a ruse! Did knowledge teach the dog on the leash, or did it only confuse?

To blame Wikileaks for the problems that may or not be caused by the leaking of such information is to shoot the messenger. The information is out there any intelligence agency worth its salt has probably had access to it long before Wikileaks.

It never ceases to amaze me that people who should know better, criticise the NBN because it is not going to generate the sort of returns that private investors would be seeking. I wonder if Charles Todd’s Overland Telegraph suffered the same criticisms. If you recall it cost £480,000. But it was decades before the Overland Telegraph generated a positive return on investment. Annual revenues from telegraph traffic during the first decade of operation were only £12,000. (Mike Quigley, CEO of NBN Co.)

Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming - reviewed by Robin McKie of The Observer.

Paul Keating: I take issue with and repudiate those who assert that privacy in modern times is dead and, that we should get over it. And with those who claim the current framework within which the media deals with privacy issues and concerns is effective and works well. It is of course, ineffective and works, in the main, to the benefit of media organisations.

"To me, this is both a statement of fact and an article of faith, an aspiration. Because it’s only if you believe in the fair-minded mainstream that you can create content for it. And even if you sometimes doubt this is what “most people” think, then, in fact especially then, it’s still important to maintain belief in the better natures of our fellow citizens."- Julian Morrow

Hubris nurtured by groupthink is the Achilles heel of publicly unaccountable power. The only known human cure for its toxic effects is the free circulation of differing viewpoints, courageous conjectures, corrective judgments, checks and balances, the institutional humbling of power. (John Keane)

If we continue down this path, where Australia’s youth engage too heavily in fast food media and not enough in real news, we will be doing democracy in this country a huge disservice. Democracy depends on knowledgeable citizens. It depends on transparency of government and business, and it depends on a well-functioning media that offers every person, not just the elite, an opportunity to access accurate and unbiased information of substance. (Chloe Adams)

Is there even a market for the huge number of community broadcasters in Australia’ Well, in a word, yes. There is definitely a market. According to mid-2008 Community Radio National Listener Survey conducted by McNair Ingenuity Research, the number of Australians (aged 15+) listening to community radio in an average month has risen from 45% in 2004 to 57% (9,562,000 people) in 2008.

Just how do we assess the effectiveness of this tax? A recent AC Nielsen report showed a 28 per cent drop in Ready To Drink (RTD) sales from April 2008 to January 2009, yet there was also a 14 per cent increase in the sale of spirits. Are young people just saving their pennies by upping their spirits intake? And are sales figures really the best way to judge?

Some people are sceptical of the benefits of digital television over analogue television, complaining that they do not want to have to update their televisions when they are happy with their service the way it is, but it seems that for the most part this is just resistance to change in general as opposed to resistance to digital television specifically.

The Rudd government plans to create a NBN that will connect 90% of Australian homes, school and workplaces with speed that is up to 100 megabytes per second, investing a budget of $43 billion over a period of 8 years. It plans to use FTTP technology to create this NBN service and promises that the NBN to be a historical nation-building investment that will help to transform Australian economy and create jobs and business of the 21st century.

For the working journalist, it seems unclear what shape the future will take. Until the ongoing viability of print media becomes evident, journalists will need to be fluent in both print and online publication, able to adapt stories to the distinct media.

When Australia Post made the controversial decision to remove Brett Stewart’s face from the 2008 NRL Grand Final Collector’s stamps, it sent out a strong message to the public. Guilty. But Stewart has not yet been found guilty. So why should he be punished by being left off the stamps?

Sob-stories about the unfair way that females are judged by their appearance globally have been all over the Australian press in the last couple of weeks, from the frumpy Scottish singer Susan Boyle’s rise to fame, to Veronica Lario’s objection to her husband’s selection of beautiful young women to the European Parliament.

It’s no wonder why employers are monitoring social networking sites and sacking workers for posting potentially threatening material to protect their company’s reputation. That’s why employees need to develop some common sense about using social networking services.

In Fiji, the military regime has been exercising the time-honoured routine of silencing critique by media censorship. If the expectation was to ensure social stability and continued power, then, thus far, they have been successful.

The paper started this summer's attack on Hicks just before Christmas, as the restrictive control orders expired.  There was no messing around as every point possible was fired into the public mindset, accompanied by a command that Hicks should reveal all.