Posts by Steve Parks
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Hard News: Going Social, in reply to Sacha,
Murdoch’s The Australian magazine gets all defensive about Twitter in the wake of suing an academic for tweeting a conference presentation by a journalist about the rag’s editorial position on climate change. How dare those Greens supporters not repeat our party line through new media channels we can’t control!
Syd Walker makes a number of good points, including:
Legal action should be the last step in an unresolved grievance – not the first act of petulance. Right now, Mr Mitchell looks like a puffed-up tin-pot dictator throwing a tantrum.
Yep.
Also:
The story was reported in the Australian online which repeated the alleged defamation. This led a few observers to speculate whether Mitchell plans to sue his own newspaper as well?!
I wonder if he’ll be suing Crickey, who said: “And asked whether alarmist predictions about the effects of global warming had made her [Asa Wahlquist’s] job as a reporter at The Australian more difficult, she responded: "It doesn’t help, especially when you have an editor who is inclined to conspiracy theories.”
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Hard News: Wikileaks: The Cable Guys, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Oh yes, we should start referring to other posters in the third person as if they weren’t here, because it’s not at all what a douchebag would do.
Giovanni makes a great point.
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Thanks for that link.
From it: "Mark feels that the book The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick is more in line with the Facebook true story, ..."
Ah... David Kirkpatrick was the person I was referring to earlier when I mentioned someone criticising Sorkin for "making stuff up". (Kirkpatrick used the example the opening scene.)
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You’re also missing the point that Assange is making no statement that you can question – he is merely making available material…
He seems to be making statements now.
Does this really affect anybody’s ability to think like a conspiracy? The most likely effect of this, as Yglesias (forgive me) put it, was that US diplomats will communicate confidential stuff over the phone from now on. That doesn’t degrade the ability to act conspiratorially, and in as much as it minimises openness and accountability, probably aids it.
I don’t think that any of the leaks really are that interesting. Everything is either stuff we already knew, or stuff that barely matters. Most of the diplomatic outrage is utterly insincere — Putin is upset that the US thinks he’s authoritarian? Well, yeah.I’ve been wondering this myself: won’t it just change the way diplomatic conduct is operated? What is really likely to be achieved by Wikilinks endeavours? (As much as I agree that Assange and co. should be able to release this information.)
I read the link to Aaron Bady’s reading Giovanni provided earlier, and it seems very robust as a reading of Assange’s motives and thinking. It also seems very uncritical of these, and is also notably speculative: “Early responses seem to indicate…”
But what if early responses are not good indicators? The political right’s response to the Wikilinks has been predicable and consistent; the left’s has not. (It’s the left arguing with the left on this thread, isn’t it?)
I think much of what Assange aims for is laudable in itself, but I question his approach. It isn’t a level playing field between states when it comes to this sort of thing: will the authoritarian regime of China be as affected as the current administration of the USA (which Assange apparently places in the authoritarian basket too)? I doubt it. The US-right may hate Assange and all that he stands for, and some may try to label him a terrorist, but he may serve a purpose they appreciate. I suspect the main practical result of Wikileaks will be that it adds to the list of ‘Bad things that have happened under the Obama administration’.
Yay? -
Hard News: Going Social, in reply to Matthew Littlewood,
Good observations Matthew. I am planning to make some similar points to much of what you said when I review the movie. So for goodness sake don’t make any more posts on it, or I’ll have nothing new to add!
…although the framing device (we start in a crowded bar and end in an empty office with a computer) was obvious, it felt earned
Yeah. In the comments in this blog post on scriptwriter Ken Levine’s blog, someone criticises Sorkin for making stuff up, and uses as an example the opening scene, which he claims is entirely invented. To which I say: Well, duh. I think any astute film goer, familiar with the origins of Facebook or not, would view the opening and closing scenes as almost certainly a fabrication by the scripter to add to/support his themes. Related…
I’m pretty sure the factual veracity of a good percentage of it is doubtful, but then again, they do acknowledge that in an offhand way- I think one of the lawyers says something along the lines that 85 percent of testimony is emotional exaggeration and the other 15 percent is perjury.
I had the same thought about that exchange. It occurred to me that lawyer (a character Sorkin freely admits to inventing) was speaking a little for the process of making this kind of film – a disclaimer, almost.
Fincher’s Zodiac, which despite the excellent performances and direction, felt oddly hollow and confused.
I was impressed by Zodiac. I like this review by Nathan Lee in The Village Voice.
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Hard News: Friday Recommends, in reply to Alastair Thompson,
Alastair, not sure if you're aware, but there are some reactions to the Scoop editorial over on another thread.
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to Dismal Soyanz,
I agree, Dismal. That editorial was a bit bizarre, frankly. As you note, it glosses over parts of the questioning that would have made the NZ media’s response more understandable, and crucially it completely ignores the fact that the question about the 9/11 comparison was answered, which pretty much undermines much of the point of Scoop’s rant.
[Scoop said:] “Instead of light we have had far too much heat. Perhaps most disgraceful of all has been the spectacle of reporters arriving from Australia – asking legitimate questions – and getting stonewalled by responsible officials, and then criticized by NZ media for daring to ask the questions.
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And the answer should not have been to villify the question and questioner but rather to answer it.Pretty much completely wrong. Thanks for contributing to the heat, Scoop.
As for the question itself being “legitimate [and] thought out by the experienced reporter who asked it.”, I don’t know how long he spent thinking about it, but the question seems ill-conceived to me. There are just so many obvious differences in the two situations. -
Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to James George,
In addition there is every likelihood that any inquiry which goes further in it’s findings than the pols who appointed it wanted, will be told it is involving itself in business “outside it’s purview"
If so, that would be a good reason to have inquiries other than the one appointed by the pols.
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to James George,
Yet the media has repeated that “this was a safe’mine’ over and over until it has become unpatriotic to question the mine’s protociols.
Not really. Many have suggested that it may be premature to assume the mine’s protocols are necessarily to blame, in the sense of being unreasonably lax in safety standards. It may be that that proves to be the case, or, as someone mentioned, it may be a ‘one-in-a-million’ event. There’s a difference between ‘too soon to lay blame’, and saying it’s unpatriotic to question the mine’s operation at all. It’s also too soon, I suggest, to make statements such as “...the appallingly incompetent way the police have attempted to control the situation”.
...(another kiwi trick have 5 inquiries instead of one...
There will of course be more than one inquiry: at least one from the government, and some from other independent organisations. That’s not a trick. That’s entirely reasonable and appropriate.
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Meanwhile, in that country that, apparently has no respect for human life or rights, they rescued their 29 miners within a day or so.
Umm, really, China is your example?
“Rescuers on Monday pulled to safety 29 people trapped in a flooded mine in southwestern China in a rare bit of good news for the country’s disaster-prone mining sector. …
… Last year 2,631 Chinese miners died in the line of work, according to official statistics, but independent labor groups say the true figure is likely to be much higher as many accidents are believed to be covered up.” (From here, emphasis added.)