A much more nuanced account

If, however, we see democracy as pluralized, as marked by new kinds of communities of identity, as a system in which the traditional public-private divide does not apply, and as a system in which there are no universal visions of the “common good” but, rather, pragmatic and negotiated exchanges about ethical behavior and ethically inspired courses of action, then we will be able to countenance a plurality of communication media and modes in which such a diverse set of exchanges will occur. We will be open to the notion that ethical discourse can be present in many different kinds and genres of media texts and in many different forms of media organization. We will no longer privilege “high modern journalism,” but nor will we mindlessly worship populist media. We will need a much more nuanced account of the connection between (various forms of) citizenship and the media …

– Jacka, E. (2003). “Democracy as Defeat”: The Impotence of Arguments for Public Service Broadcasting. Television and New Media, 4(2), 177-191.

Al Jazeera and Arafat

Buzzfeed last week reported on leaked emails from Al Jazeera English, suggesting some internal tension regarding the channel’s Killing Arafat investigation:

… emails seen by BuzzFeed reflect deep internal concern about the network’s relationship with the former PLO leader’s widow, Suha Arafat, and with the scientific researcher involved in the report. “We should be bringing in another independent investigator. This is going to look biased,” one Al Jazeera journalist wrote.

And today, the Washington Free Beacon site claims that one Al Jazeera journalist who worked on the coverage has been “fired”:

Investigative journalist Ken Silverstein, who joined Al Jazeera two months ago and co-wrote the network’s November scoop about a team of Swiss scientists that found unusual traces of polonium-210 in Arafat’s bone samples, was fired after he refused to travel to Paris to cover the pending release of a French laboratory study on Arafat’s bone samples, multiple sources familiar with the situation told the Washington Free Beacon.

Nobody else reporting this as yet, though.

To televise the news as such

Sir Richard Boyer wanted to have no news at all on television. ‘In Britain’, he wrote in 1951, ‘no attempt is made, or I think will be made, to televise the news as such’. The device of showing a photograph of Big Ben while an unseen announcer read the radio news bulletin seemed to him exactly right, for illustration would destroy balance. If news bulletins were televised, ‘reliable and objective news will have disappeared altogether. It is precisely for this reason that the BBC has set its face against it’.

– Inglis, K. S. (2006). This is the ABC: the Australian Broadcasting Commission, 1932-1983. Melbourne: Black Inc.

Punching the words into shape

After a week of wrestling with Microsoft Word (“It looks like you’re trying to process words! I’m sorry, there has been an error and Word must close.”) I’ve just finished reviewing the edit of 18 Days. Which is pretty exciting. It’ll go back to the editor now for a final pass before the manuscript is locked down.

It’s been very interesting reading my own work fresh after a couple of months of not looking at it. And the line-by-line nature of the review forced me to pay much closer attention to things that my eyes had long ago started to skim over.

Things I’ve learned from the edit process:

  • I’ll never not be anxious that the book will be shit
  • I need to take much more detailed notes while researching so I don’t need to spend 45 minutes scanning through a book or document to find a quote and verify it
  • Editors save you from making some really embarrassing mistakes, such as using “bellow” instead of “billow”, or “less” instead of “fewer”, or repeating the same quote in chapters 2 and 9
  • I tend to write overlong sentences because I’m trying to pack too much information into them and then I tie myself up in knots trying to make them make sense and they end up becoming a bit unreadable and what were we talking about?
  • I seem to really love certain words such as “eerie” and I use them over and over and over again
  • Editors are amazing

Still no final date for release, but it won’t be long now.

Caught on a fast-moving train

I wrote a review of Dominic Boyer’s The Life Informatic: Newsmaking in the Digital Era for Inside Story. Apparently it appeared in its Canberra Times supplement a couple of weeks ago but I missed it.

Inside Story

It’s an interesting book summarising Boyer’s research into the changing nature of journalism. Helps us better understand what’s going on here in Australia, too.

18 Days: Al Jazeera English and the Egyptian Revolution

In late 2011 I started researching a book about Al Jazeera English’s coverage of the Egyptian Revolution, quite unsure whether or not anything would come of the project. For just over a year, on weekends and in between teaching at the University of Canberra, I plugged away at the manuscript until I surprised myself by actually achieving a first draft. And today I’m pretty stoked to be able to announce that in the next few months 18 Days: Al Jazeera English and the Egyptian Revolution will be published by Editia.

editia

No firm date yet, but you’ll probably get sick of me keeping you updated. In the meantime, check out the website, the Facebork, or the Twitter.

Talking @FakeFielding on Radio National

On Friday arvo I headed into ABC Canberra to record a little chat with Jonathan Green for today’s Sunday Extra. It’s been a couple of years since @FakeFielding retired the bottle suit so it was nice to remember some of the fun.

Sunday Extra

Have a listen to the interview, even though they (wisely) cut out the bit where I tried to explain just what even is @Seinfeld2000.

UPDATE: Radio National has posted an expanded online version of the segment.