Posts by Joshua Drummond
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I read the posts here and found myself humming the "goodbye" song from The Sound of Music.
I'll miss your posts. I always liked seeing you'd written something new; I knew when you did I was about to read something genuinely good.
Good luck with whatever it is you're doing now, Keith. I hope you'll find time to write things and put them on the internet. -
The Libertarianz bit had me LOLing. Very loudly. My favourite thing about them is the way they sum up all their press releases - "It's enough to make you vote Libertarianz!" they say, indignantly. The funny thing is, replace the word "Libertarianz" with "National" and you pretty much have the "national mood" everyone's banging on about summed up.
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Wow. Two posts in as many days? This is krazy, Keith.
What I like is the disparity in content. On the one hand, a fairly serious commentary on media law and freedom. On the other... Mrs Peacock.
Who are hugely funny and definately should be seen. My favourite song of theirs when they came to the mighty 'Kato was the Creed parody one. Damned if I can remember what it was called, but it was very, very good. -
I figured this thread would be as good a place as any to post this little beauty. I've been laughing pretty damn hard.
For my part, I'm still al little mystified as to any any direct correlation between better broadband and, say, better economic performance. Pundits: feel free to bombard me with links, which I will probably read instead of working.
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*Huge* can of worms. The Internet is global you know. My blogs (like most peoples) are hosted in the US (actually, I'm not sure that LJ hasn't moved its hosting to Russia).
Oops. I should have been waaaay more specific. I was thinking in a New Zealand context, it might be practical/possible to subscribe to a code of blogging ethics of some kind - the Press Council's code might work, for example. I don't mean a draconian regulatory framework dished out by the Powers that Be like the Great Firewall - I mean a voluntary scheme, where interested parties can sign up and say "here's our code of ethics." A bit of a badge of honour thing. If something like this ever happened, it would probably be only "serious" commentators who'd bother with it. Where the blog is physically hosted probably wouldn't come into it. Legally, of course, it might, but as far as a self-regulatory code goes it's moot.
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Cheers, insider outsider. The sarcasm detector is restored and working properly.
But what happens if they uphold a complaint and the blogger just ignores them? I doubt they'd persuade Google or another blog hoster to remove the pages without an American court order.
I guess that might be one of the reasons why the Press Council doesn't deal with bloggers right now. (Not to mention that Press Council rulings are not legally binding. They're influential, but extra-legal) A slippery slope ending in a can of worms, to mix cliches.
They may, at some point, have to have a look at doing something about blogs though. As the immediacy and accessibility of the Internet leave print media behind, a self-regulatory body might need to be established for internet media - perhaps, in part, to avoid cease-and-desists being hurled at legit articles put out by small, relatively defenceless outlets... like Hot Topic.
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Don't go into journalism Josh, your research of primary sources is too scary - what you really need to do is say "he said.... but she said no he's wrong". You can fill pages and pages doing that. ;-)
Uhhh... is that a compliment? Sorry, my sarcasm detector is playing up.
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Okay. So not a front, just concerned citizens who go out of their way to speak at American conservative think-tank talks about how climate change is a "non problem" and how they should "have the courage to do nothing" (according to the original Listener article.)
It is extremely well documented that there are organisations whose exclusive purpose is to come up with objections to climate change theory. We call these organisations "fronts." Are CSC a front? I don't know. But they're still wrong.Whether CSC's views are genuine or not doesn't matter a whit. As you say, we should let the facts speak for themselves. The fact is that the world's climate is undergoing a warming trend. This isn't a "non problem." The people who are saying we should ignore the facts, ignore the problem, deserve to have their opinions exposed for what they are, regardless of how "genuine" they appear to be.
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you have to be a member of the PC to be subject to it. Bloggers and individuals generally aren't. I suspect this wasn't an option for the Listener, hence my comments about the rules not applying.
I gave the Press Council a ring to check this out. Apparently they will consider a complaint about any print media source (not necessarily member organisations) with a large enough circulation/readership - for instance, there was one taken out against Craccum some time ago. They can likewise investigate a complaint against a publication's web site (the example given was if nzherald.co.nz published offending material on its site, then a complaint could still be taken.) Blogs, whether they are hosted by a print media organisation or otherwise, are, officially, a "grey area." There hasn't been a complaint accepted (or taken?) about a blog yet, and the Council apparently wouldn't have accepted one from the Listener about Hot Topic because they fall outside their sphere.
Aplologies to everyone who knew this stuff already - I just wanted to find out for myself.I still think, though, that the Listener's response was over the top. There must have been other avenues avaliable to them that were not threats of legal action.
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The media in general seem happy to hide behind notions of providing "balance" or fostering "debate" when printing the CSC stuff, but seems to be happy to ignore the duty of accuracy they owe their readers. The CSC use this to get away with calling black white.
I often wonder how to get around this problem. The media owes a duty to readers/consumers to provide "both sides" of the story, and it can be difficult to point out that some things are not necessarily adversarial. It reminds me of the Intelligent Design "debate" in a lot of ways. ID cries foul over media "mistreatment" of their repackaged creationist nonsense, demading equality, while actual scientists say "well, actually," and the point is missed entirely.
That point, I think, is that the players are not being accurately named in the news stories that attempt to provide balance. Correct labelling could fix this problem. If it was pointed out that the CSC (and their ilk) are a front for conservative think-tanks in each story they were quoted in, you could provide "balance" whilst simultaneously pointing out that they are crackpots. Their credibility would, I think, diminish accordingly.