Posts by Moz
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The clincher for me is that banning dual candidacy increases the load on the local people running the candidate forums and community newsletters. Instead of 3-6 candidates for the seat+list you'll have 2-4 seat candidates plus a number of parties. You can bet that no matter how safe the seat the opposition parties will still be trying to collect some list votes, even if they can't justify putting much effort into their seat candidate.
So the "meet the candidates" organisers have to choose between chasing up the 2-3 candidates, or chasing up those plus 5 or 6 or 7 party representatives. I think that a lot of the time the extra work will not be done. Or worse, will be half done - 2-3 candidates plus 2 out of the 7 parties in parliament.
I'd much rather see Mike Ward vs Nick Smith vs Maryan Street at a Nelson candidates debate than Nick Smith vs whoever the opposition can afford to lose in an election.
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Up Front: Hitting That, in reply to Emma Hart,
that's something bi people and poly people and asexual people have in common: you can tell someone the plain truth about who you are and how you feel, and they won't believe you
I get this a lot. Not just on sexuality. Most people operate on the basis that everyone else is just like them. When faced with contradictions to that I get everything from denial through to emphatic assertions of the original "everyone is like this". Which is tricky when we have very different worldviews (from, say, being on different parts of the autism spectrum, or from different minority cultures).
I wonder how some of this affects the deeper behaviour and beliefs. Not the "I value diversity" way, but the gut-level expectations that people operate with. I know at a gut level that most people are not like me and I have to expect them to do unexpected things. I mean inexplicable, in the "they can't explain it, they just know" sense. So when I meet people I expect them not to be like me.
Which leads to the careful bridging of gaps, and probing expectations because I don't have the same expectations of behaviour. Which makes a lot of the explicitly negotiating boundaries etc necessary for me to have relationships at all, so by the time I got into bipolykink relationships it was pretty second nature. In the limited "if you can't do it with me we can't be in a relationship" sense, rather than the "I will drive this", because I suck at driving it or teaching it (experience talking).
Also, what is it with this conversational pattern:
"how do you feel about X"
"I feel Y"
"No you don't, you feel Z"
There's the explicit acknowledgement that they've heard what I said and processed it enough to see that it doesn't match their expectations. But then straight into talking over. -
That's because it seems like a definitive argument. I'm not a lawyer, so it's a bit above my head. And I'm not AFAIK covered by the journalism exemption anyway, so it doesn't affect me (the detail isn't important, I can't afford a lawyer to make the argument).
It does seem to set journalists up for some exciting times when the plod are executing search warrants. Specifically of the "on the ground, lie still shut up or I'll shoot you" type of exciting. Challenging anything plod do during the execution of a warrant is AFAIK best done in the presence of both a high-end lawyer and a video camera. Doing it if you're an indymedia journalist being raided by a terror squad at 6am seems unwise.
I mean, sure, if you're a big part of the local bought media this may help a little if your commercial premises are subject to a warrant being executed during business hours. Or at a staged press event. But if there's any reason for the plod to think that you might try to exercise this right I can see them executing the warrant in circumstances that would make it very risky to attempt to exercise the exemption.
So it's just more law to protect the already privileged.
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I'm wondering if there's something between what amounts to a blog by the media body that just lists the corrections, and a full-blown TV show/newspaper correction. A lot of the power of a correction is in its accessibility, and in that sense a professionally maintained wiki might be a useful adjunct to published corrections. Done well that could be a powerful tool in itself, with the potential to facilitate work by the likes of Idiot/Savant on media accuracy.
To avoid the Streisand Effect I assume there will be the possibility of name suppression? Ideally with a compelled removal of archive copies that are under the control of the original publisher? I'm specifically trying to include things like copies of a Nelson Evening Mail article on Stuff being available via fairfax.com.au. I don't know how this works with TV, but I assume there's some similar thing where a DVD of a nominally fact-based show will have sections missing when a complaint has been upheld?
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Speaker: Who guards the guardians?, in reply to Stephen Judd,
I was talking more of the situations where "Tabloid Today" makes up something, gets forced to show a correction, then when it goes to resell/reshow that episode it no longer fits into a standard timeslot because the correction makes it too long.
Media-monitoring shows are something that appeal to me and they do seem to have an audience world-wide. I think it would be worth while to get a decent presenter (a comedian, even) and back them with a decent research team. On John Scalzi's blog there have been responses to his "USA Today" post saying that some people are getting most of their news exposure from The Daily Show+Colbert Report. That's where my TV news exposure comes from, but given how little TV I watch 10 hours of those two shows a year is a big chunk of my total. I read blogs instead...
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Speaker: Who guards the guardians?, in reply to Stephen Judd,
Australia's Media Watch attempts to do this, but I think something slightly more permanent would be helpful. Perhaps requiring that reproductions of the story include the correction and a link to the judgement would help? And allowing citizen input to be recorded would allow third parties to help with the research rather than making them find and declare a connection.
With TV this might be slightly complicated by the time limits, as not all stories subject to a complaint become worthless, but a 22 minute (half hour) story with even 2 minutes of corrections is going to be very hard to show on commercial TV. Not sure, perhaps allow a third party to edit it in light of the corrections?
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I think the benefits of belonging need to be strong, clearly expressed and valuable. The body needs clear powers to expel and otherwise punish members (and a clear definition of the effect of membership/expulsion). Some token of acceptance of the rules would also be required, if for no other reason that expedited handling of members by government agents. For that reason there would need to be some kind of distinction between organisational and personal membership. Can I join as Moz, or do I need to be an associate of "Moz.com" that is a member?
If the benefits are not worth having I don't see any point in compulsory membership. Taxing members according to ability to pay is important, as is not skewing the output accordingly. For serious punishment it is probably better to use the power of the state to crush offenders outright than just add another layer of bureaucrazy to an already glacial process.
Today things move faster than the bought media can generally cope with - just watch coverage of any "breaking news" event in both bought media and citizen media. So by the time a complaint is officially received by the body the matter is generally forgotten about by 90% of those affected. In my case the police had already contacted the people harassing me and told them to use phone boxes to do so or they'd be prosecuted (itself a lengthy process) before the Press Council even accepted my complaint, let alone "acted" on it. "acted" meaning issued a warning to the organisation that what they'd done might be considered wrong by some people and if they did it again a more strongly worded warning might be issued.
I keep returning to "equal time" as as response. It would be vastly entertaining and also effective to force a tabloid television program to devote an entire episode to explaining how stupid they had been and demonstrate the offensive behaviour on their own staff.
Doing that quickly is paramount, and requiring other media to also cover any retraction or restitution as they covered the original offense. So I think the "complaints process" would need to react like the emergency services part of the legal system rather than the court part. "Justice delayed is justice denied" is a critical part of this.
From Indymedia's perspective (usual caveats apply), I don't see that as a significant burden. It is very easy to pump a retraction onto the front page and link to it from the original story. Even redacting parts of the original story if required. For obvious reasons simply deleting stories off websites is an inappropriate response. Making someone available to attend complaints hearings or participate in the body would be more complex, but in this day and age teleconferencing would surely be the norm, making it both cheap and reasonable to meet at short notice.
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As a (former) indymedia reporter I am watching the definitions with interest. My experience on the ground is that looking the part and acting reasonably will get you into a lot of "media only" events. The legal protections available to media should, I think, be extended to anyone performing the role. Otherwise you can get interesting situations around contract employees and freelancers doing prospective work, where they may not be protected at all unless they can find a recognised media outlet who's willing to back them. Much better to err on the side of more protection, IMO. Even if the price is more gutter journalism.
On that note, removing any protection media have against claims of harassment and trespass would seem to be a useful option. Especially since much of it happens in front of cameras.
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Speaker: Who are the news media?, in reply to Law Commission,
As someone who had a complaint to the press council upheld, I suggest that making such a complaint is a waste of time. It's right up there with reporting jaywalking to the police. The actual recourse available is negligible until the behaviour is so egregious as to justify court action. Giving them real teeth would be a useful step - and I suggest a presumption that equal time and prominence be the usual recourse would help. I would have liked to see (or write) an editorial piece rebutting the claims made about me, and the opportunity to publish the private contact details of the staff involved, since they saw fit to publish mine. Especially since the PC decided that compensation for publishing said details was a matter for the courts.
I have repeatedly been told that requiring a right of reply would jam up the media with those replies, and would make it harder to publish critical stories. Insofar as I accept those arguments, I regard them as positive changes. With the proviso that truth should be a defense in the press council and in defamation/libel/slander cases.
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OnPoint: Spending "Cap" is Fiscal Anorexia, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
It might be symbolic, but amending the Renumeration Authority Act to link MPs pay to some combo of inflation, the CPI and/or average pay increases across the public secto
Sod that, make it a fixed multiple of the dole. I'd even say link it to the gap between the poverty line and the dole - like "ten times the dole, plus ten times the % difference between poverty and dole". Yes, that means that on current figures MP's would have to pay to be in parliament. See this little violin?