Ethical Martini live on Twitter

You can follow me now on Twitter, I’ve turned on the RSS feed.

I’ve been wanting to do this for a while, but as a digital immigrant, I’m sometimes a bit slow. Thanks to AM for this tip.

The beginning of the end of the ABC?

I’ve just seen this item from The Australian’s media pages about the possible sacking of ABC programme maker Stephen Crittenden. Stephen’s treatment by the aging Aunty seems to be a bit harsh, even though as The Australian points out, he technically broke the rules. [Off air after outburst]

Apparently Stephen lost his rag over planned changes to the ABC’s high-brow Radio National line-up. Among the programmes that have been euphemistically ‘decomissioned’ by the ABC are Media Report and Radio Eye.

Personally, I think Stephen should be regarded as a hero whistleblower for speaking out. Despite denials from the ABC, the axing of serious information and documentary programmes does appear to be a ‘dumbing down’.

I’m particularly upset by the demise of the Media Report programme, it was one of the finest media critique shows I’ve ever heard from anywhere.

Something to look forward to – Robert Capa photographs

Next week, my cousin Helen is taking me to see the exhibition of Robert Capa and Gerda Taro photographs that recently opened at the Barbican.

Capa and Taro are two important figures in 20th century war journalism. Taro was German and I must admit I know nothing about her beyond what I’ve read on the Barbican website. I’m keen to see some of her work and learn more about her. [Barbican notice about This is War!]

However, Robert Capa is much more well known. Unfortunately his fame comes from a controversial image he shot during the Spanish civil war. Known universally as the ‘falling soldier’, the image captures a moment of death on the frontline, but there has been doubt around the provenance of this image for 50 years.

My summary of this debate continues to be one of the most clicked on posts on Ethical Martini.

Just this week I came across another take on the image on a site I check out now again again called ‘Screw Asylum’. No, it’s not that sort of site. Ah, the pleasures of mucking about with Photoshop.

Anyway, the Barbican exhibition also contains some recently available documents from the Cornell Capa (Robert’s brother) archive that claim to prove that the falling soldier image is real.

I’ll let you know when I’ve seen it; in the meantime enjoy ‘death of an insane screw‘.

(Not quite) The end of journalism

Over the past weekend I was at a conference hosted by the University of Bedfordshire in Luton. The conference, of mainly journalism academics, was provocatively titled ‘The end of journalism?’ It turns out that the conference organisers were having a bit of fun with us.

Like all good journos (and former journos), they could not resist the punning headline. The ambiguity was at first lost on me. I assumed we were talking about the end of (as in the finish of), but Alec Charles and Gavin Stewart also had in mind the end of (as in the purpose of) journalism.

In this sense, they argued, bloggers and internet reporters could be seen as continuing a forceful and individualist culture of anti-authoritariansim that has motivated some of the best reportage for centuries.

So if we are not witnessing the end of journalism, at least we can be around for the birth (perhaps) of something new, but that also celebrates and continues the tradition of journalism into the digital age.

The problem with a conference like this (in fact almost all academic conferences) is that as a participant-observer, you only ever get to see and hear half of it. Parallel sessions allow the organisers to cram in more great papers, but audiences are then left with some difficult choices.

News workers are also today facing difficult choices. The  most difficult is whether to embrace or resist the intrusion of digital technologies into the news production process. Is it true, as I once read somewhere, ‘Resistance is futile‘