Legacy media has decided to put on its shocked and appalled face to discuss “online trolling” when what they actually mean is cyberbullying and cyberstalking (as mentioned by Chris on our own latest cyberbullying thread). Of course the abuse being highlighted is contemptible, but suggestions equivalent to gated cyberestates overseen by Homeland Cybersecurity are ridiculous: their only result would be a false sense of security.
Also Kevin Rudd said something, allowing a bunch of churnalists to dust off stuff they wrote about Rudd vs Gillard ages ago and recycle it with a thin veneer of current affairs analysis.
Meanwhile, what started out as a promising public debate following the release of an independent report advocating drug law reforms in the wake of the failure of the prohibition model, has had almost no media discussion in the last 48 hours. How unsurprising.
As usual for media circus threads, please share your bouquets and brickbats for particular items in the mass media, or highlight cogent analysis elsewhere, on any current sociopolitical issue.
A fab analysis (with internal link fest) of the recent spate of articles around levels of intervention in public or private hospital birth.
http://the-little-leaf.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/im-sorry-is-my-uterus-in-way-of-your.html
No mainstream party wants to do this because whoever passes the legislation will be held responsible for the first person to die as a side effect of a newly legalised drug. Even if it means in the long term less deaths. If they keep them illegal they can always claim they’re doing something. It won’t happen until there is overwhelming public support for it.
Job losses in Qld Rural Fire Services a mistake says Minister. Well good, says I, it is probably going to be a nasty fire season. But, no, read on…
So they aren’t going to lose their jobs, yet. Not until after this fire season at least. Wait until winter when people aren’t worrying about fire as much and do it then. Great idea, cause it’s not like fire season rolls around every year. *headdesk*
I find it interesting that the hue and cry about online “trolling” has manifested only now, after a big manly footy player experienced harassment. Also amusing to me is the part where The Daily Telegraph has “launch[ed] a campaign to catch trolls who post abusive messages.” So… their journalists?
Ah yes that bastion of accuracy, The Terror. Heartwarming to see their concern for us all. /snark
I’ve been reading around on the many levels of oddly disturbing that surround the film critical of Prophet Muhammed which has led to unrest and deaths this week: it looks like the producer didn’t give anybody his real name, that he lied to the actors and the director about what the film was about, with a script supposedly about ancient Egypt, and edited the soundtrack in post-production to make the character they all spoke to/about as “George” become Muhammed. There also appears to be nothing more to the film than the 14-ish minutes that was released on YouTube – no distribution company, no industry press, nothing which would indicate that this footage was ever meant to actually be shown in a cinema of any sort. It appears to be agitprop of the coarsest kind, aimed at deliberately stirring up exactly what has happened – deaths of Americans in the Middle East.
That’s pretty sickening stuff if it proves to be true, tigtog. What benefit are they gaining from this? Further division and suspicion, hatred on both sides. Yuck.
Twitter tells me this morning that the NYPD has againt started arresting people at the OWS demo – including more reporters. Haven’t heard a whisper of it on the morning news.