This was the unusual question posed by Paul Cutler, SBS Director of News, at the Media140 conference on Thursday, and my response for the Media 140 blog to a question that isn’t as simple as it might first appear:

There was an audible gasp from the auditorium when Paul Cutler mentioned the Holocaust on stage at Media140 in Sydney. Here, indefatigable guest blogger, Paul Farrell re-examines the question and gives his own thought-provoking analysis of this controversial “What if?”

“How would history have recorded the holocaust if there had been I-phones in the concentration camps?”

This was the unusual question that Paul Cutler, SBS director of news and current affairs, posed in his on stage tweet during the panel discussion about the use of new technology in getting coverage of events. While the answer seems quite simple to start with, the presence of new media in a conflict zone doesn’t always guarantee widespread coverage.

The recent war in Sri Lanka demonstrated that a crisis of horrific proportions, which many believe is tantamount to genocide, has not been given anywhere near the coverage it should warrant. There are also 300 000 Sri Lankan in internment camps, and yet this too has received a dismal amount of coverage.

Video footage from a mobile phone was recently placed online that claimed to show Sri Lankan military executing people in the war zone. Despite this, stories both in Australia and further abroad of the conflict are few and far between.

It’s very easy to praise the democratization of information, but without a combination of new and old media, the message will not get across. At the end of the day, a news editor still has to make a decision about whether to run a story or not, and the same rules can still apply. Stories about the situation in Sri Lanka have failed to generate much currency in media organisations around the world, presumably for this reason.

Tools like I-phones are great new journalistic adjuncts, but without platform and editorial support, they simply don’t equate to coverage. There are many more factors to enter into the equation, and this is one of the main points that came through from the speakers at both days of the conference.

Riyaad Minty, head of social media at Al Jazeera, spoke at length on this subject with regards to reporting in Gaza, and how social media tools can be used effectively in conjunction with broadcast journalism.

So would the Holocaust have been recorded differently if there had been I-phones inside the camps? Differently yes, but whether they would have driven the atrocities being committed into the headlines, sadly, may not have been the case, as the case of Sri Lanka shows.

New media tools do allow for direct access to information, but are still dependent on old media platforms for widespread distribution. Unfortunately, we can’t always rely on these platforms to provide coverage where it is due.

 

Please do comment your thoughts on this question – most interesting idea wins a prize!

The second day of Media140 in Sydney proved to be as exciting and engaging as the second, despite the collective hangovers clearly being felt throughout the audience.  After a few cups of coffee, here were my thoughts for Media 140 on the Skype conference with Jay Rosen, Professor of Journalism at New York University:

Much anticipation in Sydney ahead of the day two keynote, live from New York, courtesy of Skype from respected commentator Jay Rosen. Guest live blogger Paul Farrell managed to post this lively summary and analysis of what was, by any criteria, a powerful and thought-provoking speech. Oh -& the tech all worked beautifully too!

Professor of journalism at New York University Jay Rosen, delivered a powerful talk on the way that new media was transforming the news system.  His main initial point was that “the audience isn’t atomized any more, it’s connected horizontally”, and his discussion painted a bright picture about the democratization of information online.  The very nature of the way that Jay’s talk was conducted, via webcam, seemed to prove the essence of his point.

But one topic of discussion that proved to be hard to swallow for the audience as they tweeted away was on the topic on filtering, and how “we have to get much better at creating intelligent filters” for information distribution across social media platforms.  As soon as the word “filters” was thrown around, the bloggers in the audience collectively raised their hackles.

Jay went on to say that  “we can build filters that are much more personalized”, and this tied into one of his other ideas that “transparency is the new objectivity”.  New media is credible because of its honesty, and Jay says this is how people gain audiences and responses.

But what are the implications of this?  What will happen when filters become more sophisticated and the ways that people view information with social media changes?  It seems that this could have some potentially disastrous impacts for the democratization of information on the web.

Media140 was a great place for bloggers and journalists alike to get some great advice on how to engage with social media.  Below is another live blog I wrote from Thursday for Media140 on some of these handy tips:

 

The last few panels of a big event such as Media140 Sydney pose challenges to panellists and audience alike. Paul Farrell, guest blogger, explains how the final pow-wow managed to hold the attention of the auditorium.

This panel presented the most informative and practical advice for bloggers and journalists on how to use social media effectively. Tips came from practitioners in all fields of the Australian media world, and ranged from tweeting the facts to checking tiny URL’s before posting (you never know what you might be linking to…) to keeping up to date with your Twitter followers’ tweets.

Dave Earley, online editor from channel 7 Brisbane and Wolf Cocklin, from ABC digital, spoke about the benefits of alternative Twitter programs like Tweetgrid and Tweetdeck, and how effective they are at allowing people to stay involved.  All the speakers gave examples of how they had used Twitter in the field.  Wolf talked about his tweeting of the Victorian bushfires, and how effective it was to communicate the situation in real time.  He not only communicated with his own followers but also with the ABC newsroom via Twitter.

Twitter dominated the discussion, and the speakers all agreed on one big point; tweet about everything.  It’s about establishing your own identity online, and that’s how readers begin to trust you.  As Renai Lemay, news editor at ZDNet says: “it helps for your audience to see you as a person, and not an anonymous journalist in a newsroom.”

Twitter is not just about links and pictures, and sometimes the everyday activities and thoughts of a Twitterer are just as important.  As Andrew Davies, producer of ABC’s Future Tense, also says, it’s becoming an important way to meet people as well, which is why it’s so important to stay involved and engaged.

I’ve spent the last two days at the Media140 conference in Sydney live blogging for the event.  This is one of the entries (many more to come hopefully) on Riyaad Minty, director of digital media at Al Jazeera, and his talk on reporting in Gaza earlier this year:

Riyaad Minty, Head of Social Media at Al Jazeera was the next keynote speaker, and delivered a case study about reporting on the recent Israeli offensive in Gaza.  His insights into the professional practice of journalism and how social media was used is a fascinating insight into the way social media can be used effectively in conflict reporting.

His discussion did not just focus on Twitter, but other online tools like Ushudhi as well, which was used to create maps about the conflict areas in real time. Al Jazeera created ‘Your Media’ when the offensive began, which allowed for people to contribute their own stories directly to the site, and according to Riyaad worked effectively for a few days until the Israeli military clamped down on communications.

The war was also micro reported via the Twitter account @AJGaza.  Al Jazeera also permits creative commons for all their raw footage, to allow democratic access to their footage.  Looking at all of these new ways of engaging with new media meant that this talk was as much a case study of  Al Jazeera itself as it was of reporting in Gaza.

Listening to Riyaad, it’s not hard to see why Al Jazeera is one of the most credible and engaging news organizations on the planet.  As Riyaad says, “its about trust, and openness within your organization”.  With people like Riyaad leading the way in engaging with social media, it shows how the old professional practice of journalism can be combined with these technologies, to provide us with a comprehensive vision of events going on around the world.

But Riyaad also gave a warning about social media and that “ at the end of the day it’s a technology, and it’s a tool”.  This was a welcome caution about the supposedly revolutionary nature of these online tools.  Its not the tools that define what journalism is, it’s the ever-present desire to expose the truth and hold the powerful to account.

 

Several more posts to come on the conference, including a wrap of the two days and some of the more interesting questions posed.

Because I was lazy and didn’t blog much today, here’s the cheeky little things that I wanted to write about, but failed dismally to:

• A great new index from Global Voices on threatened journalists and bloggers that outlines in real time the plight of journalists across the globe.

• The weird and wonderful world of the CIA – Plots ranging from Kittens with microphones and ear pieces, plans to bomb US targets in the 60s and then blame it on Cuba and pigeons as missile guidance systems. Is it any wonder that Obama is trying to scale back the funding of these maniacs?

• New protests occurring in Iran

• A fascinating history into the relationship between Abdullah and Karzai – It’s great to actually get a little more background on these characters rather than the token remarks usually seen

• A disappointing find by the US house of representatives with regards to the Goldstone report – why are they pursuing war crimes issues in Sri Lanka, but not in Israel? I guess this shows the inherent contradictions in the human rights dimension of American foreign policy

• And finally, another brilliant claymation of Peter Garrett. I wish the SMH just did claymation news, it would be so much better

more about “Things That Happened Today“, posted with vodpod

The United States has been making some positive steps in holding to account the Sri Lankan Government for alleged war crimes in its brutal war earlier this year, as the Guardian reports:

 

Sri Lanka today objected to attempts by the US to question the chief of its army over allegations of war crimes during the final stages of the conflict with the Tamil Tigers.

US immigration authorities told General Sarath Fonseka, who is currently visiting his daughters in Oklahoma, that they would like to interview him before renewing his green card.

The Sri Lankan government said it was “worried” about the questions he might have to face because the US state department had made “allegations of crimes committed by the Sri Lankan armed forces”.

Officials in Colombo are concerned that the US could also seek to ask the army chief about the involvement of the defence secretary, Gotabaya Rajapaksa – the brother of the Sri Lankan president and a US citizen – in the war.

The Sri Lankan embassy in Washington has retained lawyers from Patton Boggs, a leading law firm, to make the case that Sri Lanka could resist US attempts to question Fonseka over the defence secretary’s conduct.

Fonseka and Rajapaksa are seen as the brains behind the government’s bloody victory in May, which saw the Tamil Tiger leadership wiped out on the Indian Ocean island’s north-eastern beaches.

Tamil groups have long urged the US to prosecute both the general and the defence secretary for what they describe as “genocide”.

more about "Daily Show Interview Exclusive – Anna…", posted with vodpod

The sacking of a senior scientist that advises the British Government on drug policy this weekend is as good an opportunity as ever to reintroduce the subject of drug decriminalization in Australia.

In a speech and pamphlet for the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, Professor David Nutt criticized the Government’s policy of harsher penalties for cannabis related offences, and was sacked this Saturday.  Professor Nutt is the head of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and is an expert in various drug related fields.

But despite his credentials, Prime Minister Gordon Brown found his views to be politically unpalatable.  A home office spokesperson said to the Guardian:  “the home secretary expressed surprise and disappointment over professor Nutt’s comments which damage efforts to give the public clear messages about the dangers of drugs”.  Professor Nutt said that Prime Minister Gordon Brown was using drugs for political capital and was “devaluing and distorting” scientific evidence.

The sacking of Professor Nutt is raising the eyebrows of the scientific community in the UK, but should be making Australians think about what has happened to the drug debate in this country.  The accusation from Professor Nutt in the UK that Gordon Brown is using drug criminalisation for political reasons would be met in Australia with no surprise.  Politicians are more than happy to use drugs as being synonymous with their ‘tough on crime’ stance, particularly in NSW.  A lethal blow for the NSW Greens in the last election was the misleading smear campaign led by the Labor Party that the Greens wanted to legalise ice and make it available for sale.  Who could also forget the bizarre election stunt from political wildcard Fred Nile, who not only accused Greens candidates of being drug users but then took a random drug test at a press conference.

But despite drugs remaining as a point of discussion of law and order, the real question is rarely asked; what is the best way to respond to the use and sale of drugs, and is the current approach working?  There is an increasing amount of evidence that suggests that the criminalization of drugs is not the solution, and decriminalization is a viable option.  The calls from Professor Nutt are the tip of the iceberg, with increased calls across the globe for a review of how drug use and access are managed.

While I support the decriminalisation of some drugs, I also accept that there are risks to drug use, and that these risks vary for different drugs.  But I do not believe that the most effective way to mitigate these risks is to throw people in a cell.  This approach is demonstrably failing, and drug use and access in major world cities like Sydney have never been higher.  All the criminalisation of drugs will do is put more people in jail, and support and fund the criminal elements that run the drug traffic trade.

In a strange twist of fate, around the time Professor Nutt was sacked I was at a pub talking to a friend who was recently arrested for possessing several amphetamines on a night out in Kings Cross.  While he may be somewhat foolish at times, he is by means an individual predisposed to criminal activity.

But bizarrely enough, the police initially pushed to charge him with supply of a small quantity as well, a more serious offence that would have likely led to jail time with a maximum sentence of two years.  The maximum jail time he could have served for these two combined offences is four years in prison.  While the supply charge was dropped and the judge took into account a serious of mitigating factors that meant he did not receive any jail time, experiences like these are sobering.  In a city like Sydney almost all of us will know people that are regular drug users.  Is the end game of policing drug use to lock them all up?

This is why it’s time for a serious debate on the issue of drug criminalization in Australia.  The longer we wait the more harm will be done to the community, and the more likely it will be that someone you know who uses drugs will end up in jail.

The conditions of detention centre in Indonesia are appalling, as Angela Dewan from New Matilda reports.  We can only hope that the so called Indonesia solution collapses from under Prime Minister Rudd:

 

In response to questions from newmatilda.com, the Directorate of Correctional Institutions said abuse did occur in the nation’s facilities, but rejected that it was wide-scale. The head of the Directorate’s human rights department, Chandran Lestyono, admitted that the department had no data on abuse cases and that no one was looking into it.

Lestyono said that overcrowding was a major contributor to the problem. “In Jakarta’s Cipinang prison, there is a capacity of 1500, but on average, we have around 3000 inmates,” he told newmatilda.com. Much of the time, Cipinang holds far more than twice its capacity. A cell that should hold four to seven people will often have 20 to 30 sleeping on the floor.

And overcrowding in Indonesian jails is worsening each year. In 2006, the nation’s prisons were 36,194 inmates, or 47 per cent, over capacity. This year, they are 58 per cent over.

“It’s a funding issue,” Lestyono said. “Every year, we ask the Government for more money. The costs to run the facilities are always rising. And of course, with overcrowding, inmates are more vulnerable to abuse.”

But according to Ricky Gunawan, it is not overcrowding that is responsible for the majority of the violence in Indonesian jails — it’s corruption. “If an inmate wants a friend or relative to visit them, the visitor has to pay the guard,” he told newmatilda.com. And if they don’t pay up, the prisoner pays for it in other ways.

Indonesia’s jails and detention centres operate within the context of a justice system that is just as corrupt. Transparency International pegs Indonesia as the 48th most corrupt country on its corruption perceptions index of 180 nations — on par with Libya, Uganda and Honduras. Last year, TI found the Immigration Office to be the third-most corrupt public institution, after the National Police and Customs. The judiciary came in eighth.

If the Sri Lankan asylum seekers step onto Indonesian land without speaking to the UNHCR first, their fate will lie in the hands of these corrupt institutions.

An interesting article by Nichlas Kristof in the New York Times that shows just how costly the war in Afghanistan really is, and what some of that money could be used for:

Dispatching more troops to Afghanistan would be a monumental bet and probably a bad one, most likely a waste of lives and resources that might simply empower the Taliban. In particular, one of the most compelling arguments against more troops rests on this stunning trade-off: For the cost of a single additional soldier stationed in Afghanistan for one year, we could build roughly 20 schools there.

It’s hard to do the calculation precisely, but for the cost of 40,000 troops over a few years — well, we could just about turn every Afghan into a Ph.D.

The hawks respond: It’s naïve to think that you can sprinkle a bit of education on a war-torn society. It’s impossible to build schools now because the Taliban will blow them up.

In fact, it’s still quite possible to operate schools in Afghanistan — particularly when there’s a strong “buy-in” from the local community.

Greg Mortenson, author of “Three Cups of Tea,” has now built 39 schools in Afghanistan and 92 in Pakistan — and not one has been burned down or closed. The aid organization CARE has 295 schools educating 50,000 girls in Afghanistan, and not a single one has been closed or burned by the Taliban. The Afghan Institute of Learning, another aid group, has 32 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with none closed by the Taliban (although local communities have temporarily suspended three for security reasons).

In short, there is still vast scope for greater investment in education, health and agriculture in Afghanistan. These are extraordinarily cheap and have a better record at stabilizing societies than military solutions, which, in fact, have a pretty dismal record.

Whats next Glen? Your own line of action figures? I would most definitely buy a wind up glenn beck that said “GET OFF MY PHOOOONEEEE!!!” when I pulled the string.

more about “Glenn Beck’s The Christmas Sweater“, posted with vodpod

 

Great, now we all have to worry about being served an injunction for joining a Facebook group about how terrible the name of Vegemite’s new brand is:

 

The battle to lead marketing strategies within social media – which has seen PR, social media, digital, and even media agencies lay claim to the emerging turf has a new challenger – law firms.

Sydney legal firm Turner Freeman has created a joint venture with comms agency SR7 to launch a joint venture – En Garde - in what it claims may be a world first.

En Garde will target corporates, government departments and institutions and offer auditing and monitoring of social media networks “for potential threats” including helping “prevent social media marketing campaigns from becoming a platform for inappropriate content or attacks on brands”.

Turner Freeman partner Steven Penning said: “The management of online risk should be approached with the same diligence afforded to traditional risk factors such as financials, operational and material. Social Media risk can be managed properly if appropriate mechanisms and procedures are put in place and legal counsel who understand the medium are used.”

http://www.srilankaweek.com/

 

It would be considerably more amusing if it wasn’t so accurate.

 

 

A curious and intriguing new play, reported in the Guardian:

There is nothing ordinary about this advocacy campaign for a large UN institution. The lights dim before a packed audience and a slideshow begins: images of Gaza in conflict, people fleeing their homes, buildings on fire.

Then stands Chris Gunness, the chief spokesman of the UN Relief and Works Agency, the organisation responsible for the support and welfare of Palestinian refugees. “I am a warehouse,” he says. “I am a dying warehouse, the victim of an excruciatingly painful fire that burned me down.”

It is the start of a remarkable 20-minute, one-man play intended for Israeli audiences but so far unwelcome in Israeli theatres. It tells the story of the main UN warehouse in Gaza, a storage point for food and aid for a million Palestinians, and how it was hit repeatedly by Israeli artillery shells, some loaded with white phosphorous, during the Gaza war – how it was set ablaze and burnt to the ground.

This is a story that “until now has remained buried, untold,” Gunness said at the debut performance of his show at the French Cultural Centre, east Jerusalem, on Wednesday night.

His play, Building Understanding: Epitaph for a Warehouse, is a challenge to the criticism the UN has faced within Israel. Many aid organisations and human rights groups highlighting the Palestinian cause have faced increasing opposition since the war, as has Richard Goldstone, the South African judge who authored a highly critical UN report accusing Israel and Palestinian militant groups of war crimes.

 

 

A great article from Jake Lynch on Crikey outlining the terrible conditions of the Sri Lankan Government’s internment camps, and Sri Lanka’s continual evasion of responsibility:

 

we should remember 300,000 inmates who are being held against their will in a living hell  — the giant internment camp at Menik Farm  — in violation of their rights under international and Sri Lankan law. Alarming eyewitness testimony trickles out, of food and clean drinking water in desperately short supply, filthy conditions and  — for any who might be tempted to protest to the occasional foreign visitor  — the ever-present threat of disappearance. That’s a fate that has befallen thousands over the years, in Sri Lanka’s dirty war with the Tamil Tiger rebels, which ended just over five months ago. Various commissions of inquiry were set up, only to fail in bringing any of the culprits to justice: a “sham”, in the words of Amnesty International. So the bullies carry on with impunity, and impunity incentivises repetition: we got away with it once, why not do it again?

The menace spreads, potentially, far beyond the shores of this small island. Sri Lanka hijacked a meeting of the UN Human Rights Council and managed to get a resolution passed, congratulating itself for its “victory”. How many other governments are watching, making the calculation that they, too, can wade in to quell a non-state armed group, regardless of how many civilians they slaughter, and get off with little more than hand-wringing from the international community?

Now, though, the US State Department has issued an authoritative report, marshalling evidence of war crimes in the final desperate months of hostilities. It’s restrained in its language, and also even-handed. It identifies several occasions when the Tigers took boys as young as 12 to be soldiers, and intercepted civilians fleeing from danger to use them as human shields. But it lists credible reports from multiple sources that the army  — or government-linked paramilitaries  — attacked the so-called no-fire zone with heavy weapons; opened fire on medical facilities; killed senior Tiger leaders after they had agreed to surrender, and abducted and killed large numbers of Tamil men and boys.