Archive for the ‘Writing/Publishing’ Category
Birds of a feather?
Ha! I found this funny: I googled the term ‘disvalidation‘ this morning (I know it’s not a real word, but wanted to see if it was used, you’ll see why in a later post on the Filter Bubble) … and saw a web result that, on a glance, I thought had the word ‘education’ in […]
Astonishing corruption at Murdoch’s Wall St Journal
Crikey. If this is how Murdoch’s flagship Wall St Journal operates, what’s going on in the background at Fox News? This tale of corruption, money-channelling and ‘news’ articles used as bribes to keep the conspiracy alive is devastating. It’s from Nick Davies who exposed News International’s phone hacking and police & political corruption … The Guardian […]
Bradbury: Martyr or moderated troll?
There’s been a reflexive kerfuffle about hard-left attack dog Martyn Bradbury being told his services will no longer be required as a ‘political commentator’ by NZ public radio after he read a billious scripted rant on a recent ‘discussion panel’. Let me be clear about my own opinion of Martyn: I think he is a […]
Media bias: In the eye of the beholder
This comment from Ivan feeds into what I think is a perception about the ‘wicked-news-meed-ya’ today … My opinion is that there is a monolithic seachange in media approach. I believe that there has been a shift toward populist shockjock opinionated and quite trite media. They look privileged – they sound privileged and they act […]
A wittle bit of hyperbole? Or not?
There’s a saying in newsrooms which goes something like: “We’d better hope when the End of the World comes there won’t be a sports reporter on the newsdesk … because they’ll have used up all their superlatives.“ Look at this great lead paragraph regarding a Rugby League star: Last night’s game redefined the word irreplaceable. […]
Doing the anti-MMP campaign’s dirty work
I’ve been critical of partisan attack blogging (which I called “fixated, credibility-eviscerating attack blogging“). I am troubled (but not ‘shocked‘ or ‘outraged‘) by a demonstrated lack of what I called ‘fair-mindedness’ and the occasional deployment of untruthfulness (I regard that as a far more serious breach) I observe in some political blogs, some of whom […]
Sad saga of co-operation breaking down
Best line: Julian’s ghostwriter delivered a brilliant first draft of the book, bang on schedule, at the end of March. We read it and loved it. Julian didn’t. He didn’t love it. We’re not even sure how much he actually read. It was an extraordinary reaction to a manuscript he should have been grateful for […]
Black hat – the (shudder) ethics of spin
We’ve discussed ‘Black hat’ web ‘marketing‘ tactics before, in the context of so-called experts selling punters hyped-up snake oil like the Shaun Stenning-fronted Geekversity and, once that had collapsed, the Twalk and Snipr equally hyped and ill-fated enterprises that the Stenning performing troupe hawked around Asia like a cargo cult until the wheels fell off […]
An apology should cost you something
Wow. Things have been going off the rails for Johann Hari since he got ‘busted’ massaging quotes in his interviews. Now he’s issued an apology and given an explanation (again) for his lack of truthfulness, and touches on some of the points I try to make here now and then about the generalised loss of […]