Radio Australia Today Editorial
Archive for December, 2009
World’s biggest iceberg, and it’s heading our way
10 December 2009
It’s huge, this thing.
It’s bigger than Sydney harbour, and measures 19km long by 8km wide. And that’s not even including its underwater mass. This monster broke off Antarctica and is drifting north towards Western Australia. Currently it’s 1700 kilometres south west of the Australian coast and heading north.
The man who discovered the iceberg must’ve thought he’d had too much to drink. He was looking at satellite images when this huge white blob suddenly appeared. Alas, it was no glitch, nor the result of blurry vision. It was this iceberg which was duly given the sexy name of B17B.
There’s no shortage of people making jokes about the big berg: “The City of Perth had better steer to the right or end up on the ocean floor” etc. But this is no joke. B17B will be seen as a symptom of the times.
Climate sceptics have been in the media over the last few weeks, seeming to get stronger with each new person joining their ranks. Only yesterday they convened a summit of sceptics in Denmark, a parallel conference of sceptics. The tone seemed to me to be rather sarcastic and scathing. Almost as if in answer to them, the Copenhagen climate conference heard from meteorologists who quashed the claims that the planet is cooling.
B17B, drifting ever closer to us in Australia, is looming proof that something is rotting, and not just in the state of Denmark.
- Phil Kafcaloudes
Tiger Woods scores ten, and journalism takes a hit.
9 December 2009
This is one of the stories that has journalists torn and apologising.
Many of us believe that if a guy like golfer Tiger Woods decides to have affairs, then that’s the business of no-one but Tiger and his wife (and the women of course). It may be an example of extreme bad behaviour, but it’s HIS bad behaviour. These journalists might still run the story, but they are apologising and explaining all the way about why they just had to do it.
Other journalists see this as a ripper snorter of a yarn, a case where the richest sportsman in the world has run off the rails. These journos apologise not at all for running the story. They whack it on the front pages, and do it proudly.
Never has a split in journalism ethics been so pronounced as here.
It’s a story that doesn’t really count for much. No-one is going to go hungry because of what Tiger gets up to. No-one will lose their job, no-one will die.
The Tiger Woods story is in that twilight zone between news and entertainment.
Australia has always loved these kinds of stories, but local journalists have always had the choice on whether to run them. Political journalists have been the most careful. I have heard credible stories of a long-serving prime minister chasing a waitress around a table at a restaurant, his trouser buttons undone. The political gallery has heard other stories of prime ministers who were secretly gay, and of one state premier who liked to dress up in womens’ clothing. Apart from the waitress chaser, the secret lives of these leaders had no effect on their abilities to work in office. The journalists knew this, and respected the politicians’ right to privacy.
The Tiger Woods episode could well rob us of one of the sporting greats of all time. Man, can that guy hit a ball. He has already pulled out of at least one tournament, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he has a total meltdown over this, keeping him away from golf for quite a while.
This would make it an example of when the exposure of a private life can cause damage. All journalists should know this when they are deciding whether to run these kinds of stories.
- Phil Kafcaloudes
Tony Abbott does well. Against expectations
7 December 2009
Tony Abbott has only been Opposition leader here in Australia for less than a week, but he’s already the hero of his party.
First of all he wins the first electoral test of his alternative government, with two good by-election wins, one in Sydney and one in Melbourne. In both cases, Abbott’s Liberal party got swings toward it.
This is extraordinary considering that one of Abbott’s first decisions as leader was to scrap its climate change commitment to an emissions trading scheme. Especially since he did it on the eve of the Copenhagen conference.
It seems that the people in the electorates of Higgins and Bradfield don’t see Australia not having a climate policy as a problem.
If he wasn’t glowing already, Tony Abbott would be feeling positively nuclear today, because a new national opinion poll has indicated that the switch to a new leader has worked. The Opposition is up on its primary vote, and Tony Abbott has eroded the lead of the prime minister.
Of course all this could just be part of the Abbott honeymoon. Australians do have a tendency to welcome new leaders to their job. Unfortunately for those new leaders, Australians also tend to ditch them pretty quickly unless they get some real runs on the board.
Tony Abbott has been around long enough to know this. I’ll bet he’s planning some real surprises, or bombs, for the government over the next few months.
All political watchers here in Australia agree that the next months are going to be very very interesting.
- Phil Kafcaloudes
Balibo. Journalists stand up to the Indonesian government
4 December 2009
It may not end well.
The controversial film Balibo, about the killings of the six Australian-based journalists by Indonesian military in a fledgling East Timor 1975, was released worldwide earlier this year. Robert Connelly’s film was due to be shown at a closed screening of journalists in Jakarta, but at the last minute the censors in Indonesia banned the film, making it illegal for it to be shown, either in a closed session or an open session.
The extraordinary thing overnight was that the journalists went ahead and defied the ban, screening the film. More extraordinarily, the journalists welcomed the world media to come to the screening, ensuring that their act of defiance will be brought to the attention of the Indonesian government.
The journalists were not shy about this in any way. They were very happy to be put an international media and named.
This sets up a showdown that the Indonesian government would not be wanting. The journalists have broken the law. Ten years ago such an act of defiance would not have been tolerated. The Indonesian government has to decide to either ignore the action, or to try to save face by charging, and possibly jailing the defiers. If it does decide to try to save face, it will stir up all the old wounds caused by Balibo, which is an episode it has been doing its best to try to put behind it.
Of course the best thing would’ve been not to ban the film in the first place. It is being seen around Indonesia on pirated DVDs anyway, and the government should know that the best publicity you can give a film is to ban it.
Journalists everywhere await the Indonesian government’s response.
- Phil Kafcaloudes
A new leader, budgie smugglers and emissions
3 December 2009
I didn’t blog yesterday because I wanted to give thought to what a new leader of the Opposition here in Australia would mean. Events have been moving too quickly here on just about every political front, and I knew that anything I’d blog would be out of date almost instantly.
Boy, was I right.
The new Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott was a hell of a surprise. It seems that his predecessor Malcolm Turnbull had fought such a good campaign that he decimated the vote for his biggest challenger, Joe Hocvkey, and in the process split his own vote, and let Tony Abbott slip through to the leadership.
Tony Abbott is a man who famously said only weeks ago that “Climate Change is crap”.
He is also a party brawler with a massive turn of phrase.
So he carries some baggage, but make no mistake, if he keeps his tongue under control, he will be a tough performer.
He has already taken it up to the government. On the first day in the office he refused to let the government’s Emissions Trading Scheme though the Senate. An audacious piece of brinkmanship that made the government blink. The expected Double Dissolution election did not materialise. Instead the government limply offered to put the bill through parliament once more. Either Tony Abbott read the waters well and saw that the government, if it went to an early election, would have its next term cut down to two years.
This morning his deputy Julie Bishop has come out firmly in the anti-emissions control camp, saying that even if Australia cut its emissions to zero, then that would make no difference to global warming (we spoke to Australia’s Chief Scientist about this, and she saaid she despaired when she heard comments like that).
In all we have an Opposition that is a fighting Opposition.
And I haven’t even mentioned the weekend photo of Tony Abbott doing an aquatic sporting event dressed only in his ‘budgie smuggler’ swimming trunks.
But that’s probably a thought I should leave right here.
- Phil Kafcaloudes
