Equal rights for gay marriage – it’s a no brainer

The Melbourne rally for equal marriage rights yesterday was great fun. A crowd of around 3000 or so marched from the State Library to the Treasury Building – the home of Melbourne’s marriage registry and the scene of many civil marriage ceremonies.

By far the most entertaining couple on the march was this pair of beautiful zombies.

They stayed in character the whole time and marched hand-in-hand along the entire route.

At one point they had fallen behind – apparently zombies are not quick movers (so much for ‘the quick and the dead’).

The cops were trying to hurry them along, but they shuffled (as dead men walking do) and grimaced without a care in the world.

I don’t know who they are, but it was a magnificent, deadly and humorous way to get the point across.

Equal rights for gay marriage? “It’s a no-brainer!’

Brave Italian newsreader stands up to bully boy Berlusconi

An Italian journalist has resigned from the state-run TV 1 network in a protest against editorial interference and bias in favour of disgusting Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Maria Luisa Busi

Maria Luisa Busi has more than 20 years experience but dramatically quit her newsreading post last week angrily pointing the finger at her boss Augusto Minzolini. Busi said that Minzolini had consistently slanted TV1’s news coverage to favour Berlusconi and had actively prevented reporting of Berlusconi’s many crimes and sexual indiscretions.

Berlusconi is the Italian Rupert Murdoch (on steroids). Not only does he have political control of TV1 he also owns massive chunks of the rest of Italy’s print and broadcast minister.

Both Minzolini and Berlusconi are under investigation for corruption.

The Independent has the full story.

EM extends a warm hand of congratulations to Ms Busi for standing up and walking out for strong principled reasons. I’d like to suggest that her colleagues at RAI should follow suit.

Karl du Fresne sees some sort of reddish light down a dark blue tunnel

I must be the first to congratulate Fairfax columnist Karl du Fresne for a well-considered column about the collapse of newspapers:

Why newspapers are falling over – and why we still need them

Intent on maximising profit, the new breed of proprietors have slashed costs and shed staff. Inevitably, their papers have suffered.

It’s a vicious circle: profits fall, so the owners cut staff numbers and close branch offices or overseas bureaus to save money. The paper’s quality then slips, so fewer people buy it. Advertisers note the declining circulation figures and take their business elsewhere. Thus profit continues to decline, to which the company’s response is to … cut costs by getting rid of more staff. And on it goes in a downward spiral.

In the US, some newspaper companies compounded their problems by greedily acquiring other titles, using borrowed money, and are now struggling under a massive debt burden.

It all adds up to what American journalism professor Robert McChesney, in a recent interview on Radio New Zealand, called a collapse of journalism.

It’s amazing that Karl du Fresne didn’t break out in hives just thinking about writing the passages cited above.

And what about Karl’s rusted-on adherence to the “free market”? Surely the newspaper owners are only acting as they might be expected: maximising shareholder value by cutting costs etc. But “a vicious circle”…That’s exactly what I’ve been saying. the profit system is a vicious circle, it’s part of the problem. And “greedily acquiring other titles”…again that’s how the free market works. it’s a system built on greed and vicious circles. That’s why McChesney argues about the collapse of newspapers, the crisis and possible collapse of journalism.

Karl, you’re sounding like an “avowed socialist”. That’s excellent, comrade, keep it up. Maybe we could work together to prevent the collapse of journalism.

This is a remarkable turn-around. Just two weeks ago, Karl wrote a piece that appeared on his blog with the headline Why leftist academics hate the media. It was a strident attack on people like me who talk about McChesney and political economy in flattering tones. My reply is here: Old habitus die hard…

Of course Robert McChesney is about as left as it gets in US media criticism. He’s never been a journalist and he’s about as academic as it’s possible to be. One slight criticism, McChesney’s not a journalism professor, as Karl writes, he’s actually a professor of media and political economy of communication. A small point, but accuracy counts.

McChesney”s also a political activist for media democracy, through the organisation he founded, Free Press.

Anyway, the point is that Ethical Martini doesn’t bear a grudge and tries not to get too personal. So, well done Karl, keep up the right/left kind of thinking. We could have a beautiful friendship.

But, I really do need to ask: “Why Karl?” and “Why now?”

The best and the brightest? Qantas journalism winners announced

I guess we’d have to assume that APN boss Rick Neville had a good weekend. His newspapers took a truckload of prizes home from the 2008 Qantas Media Awards on Friday night (9 May). Dominion Post reporter Phil Kitchin is no doubt smiling too. It was generally agreed among his peers at the awards ceremony that Phil totally deserved Reporter of the Year for his coverage of the Louise Nicholls Schollum-Shipton police rape story that he covered for many years before finally seeing his hard work and persistence rewarded in 2007. Phil’s prize is a trip to Wolfson College, Cambridge (UK) for some research and, I’m sure, some fun too.

Bouqets not brickbats

I thought I’d keep readers up-to-date with the Blue Chip story from last week. I had a go at the Herald on Sunday for its front page piece about businessman Mark Bryers and his visits to an Auckland brothel.

I noted at the time that it would be interesting to see what the paper came up with this week. Well, it’s a much more detailed expose of some of Bryers’ and Blue Chips money trails. Much more like a good investigative piece; though still no allegations of criminal behaviour; just dodgy dealings and attempts to evade process servers.

And while I’m handing out some praise today, I thought the front page lead in Saturday’s NZ Herald about the difference in pay rates for New Zealand and Chinese flight attendants on Air New Zealand international services was great.

It had all the ingredients to make me really angry with Air New Zealand. It exposed their dreadful behaviour, one could almost suggest Air NZ is being racist in its dealings with Chinese staff. Of course the airline argues it’s contract is with a Chinese labour hire company and that the pay rates are about what the attendants would get in China – it’s all relative, the airline says.