Mortality and Social Networks

As usual, I apologise to my one and only reader for my lack of posting recently. I had resolved to end this blog for good. Basically, I regularly fail to find the time to contribute to a blog that no one reads. That being said though, I have found time today.

And so here we are.

I’m thinking of changing the tone of this blog (to the extent that I write anything on it). I originally wanted it to be something really intense and academic. Something that was different from so many other blogs out there that are, that can be a bit misinformed. I had hoped to watch long deliberated arguments unfold in the comments boxes but alas, the topics I’m interested in only excite a very small group of people.

Or at least that’s what I tell myself.

So maybe I will change the tone a little and try to talk about more than just political economy.

Which brings me to mortality and social networks. A bit of background?

Very well.

Recently I’ve had the opportunity to pause and contemplate the nature of mortality and death. (Don’t worry I’m not a psycho!) Basically what has been striking me is something that has undoubtedly been troubling philosophers since the inception of intelligence. I’m talking about how death can at once be so inevitable and yet also so unexpected.

But there’s one question that has plagued me for a while: What happens to your facebook page when you die? 

A rather morbid thing to find oneself thinking about, granted, but nevertheless, what right would facebook have to delete that page of their own accord? Sometimes these pages become tributes to the deceased with mourners leaving blessings, well-wishes and memorials in remembrance. But on the other hand, where do you draw the line, as it were. Surely at some point a decision must befall someone to remove pictures and comments that may, in death, appear to have been made in bad taste.

I’m going to leave this question open.

UNTIL NEXT TIME FOLKS!

 

a.

Veitch Volleyball.

David Fisher has, in this morning’s Herald on Sunday, written a very curious article. It is basically set up to look like a review of the media’s coverage of the 41 weeks (and counting) saga that has come to be known as the Veitch affair. On the surface it looks like a well thought out, well written 3-4000 word review of how the media, and in particular, Sunday print journalists have covered the story of Tony Veitch.

What it really is though, I think, is a defence. I wonder if the New Zealand public is thinking ‘Hang on. This all seems like a bit of a beat up. If most of the allegations were false, or were not serious enough to be brought before the courts, then, well, where did they come from?’ The easy answer is of course that the press made them up, or at least printed them without doing any investigative research. Which might be the case. Who am I to say? But it certainly isn’t what the Herald on Sunday is trying to make us believe. They have now made themselves the victims. And I might add, have done a very good job of it indeed.  The most revealing quote came from Bill Francis, Veitch’s former boss at the Radio Network surmises thus: “We in the media need to pull back from personal degradation. It will end one day in someone’s death.” Compelling stuff right? Goes nicely with the previous quote from the editor of the Sunday Star-Times who says “There is no doubt whatsoever that the Tony Veitch Case – or saga -  sells newspapers. The proof is in the numbers.”

I guess what I’m trying to highlight here is that the media, just like the public figures the report about will always try to cover their asses when the proverbial excrement hits the air-conditioning. In this article, the Herald on Sunday  is saying “Listen, these folks did this to themselves by feeding us tips and by hiding behind media managers. All we could do was report on the facts we had at the time.” Well in my opinion that is a cop out. They may not have created the news but they certainly pushed it to the front page to sell papers. They might have gone one banner headline too far though and people are now blaming them. They wouldn’t have ever had to have gone into defence mode if they had given less prominence to what have been proven to be mere allegations.

BainimaramaBanana Republic

This is the third attempt i’ve made at writing an opening sentence for this blog. What’s going on in Fiji, to me, is unfathomably backwards and unintellegent. In case you hadn’t heard. Old Frankie has now stationed police officers in the newsrooms of newspaper publishers and broadcasters. What are they doing there? They’re seperating the news articles the citizens of Fiji are allowed to have access too from the ones they are not.

And get this: they report to the rather Orwellianly named “Ministry of Information”

Basically, there is to be no criticism of the miltary government. Whatsoever.

But, without criticism, without debate, without discussion there can be no legitmacy.
Listen:

Censorship begets suspicion. Suspicion begets distrust. Distrust begets frustration. Frustration begets anger. Anger begets revloution.

So why bother with censorship if it will ultimately lead to your political demise?

Now even international journalists have been banned from fiji including TV3′s own Sia Aston!

So the internet is going to be our salvation right? possibly. There are some vigilante bloggers who call themselves the Freedom writers or something who hope to get stories to the wired Fijian population.

Blogosphere to the rescue!

*sigh*

I’m Back

I find it hard to blog in Summer, there seem to be much better things to do than sit inside staring at a computer screen when you could be drenched in sun and warmth with some aural and liquid refreshments to transport you as far away from the monotony of regularity and the troubles of the world.

So I figure I will only blog in winter now, much like I only watch Campell live in winter. It’s just one of those quirky things.

Heaps of stuff has happened media wise in this country and around the world since my last post. Most of them have upset me in some way.

A couple of upsetting things involve broadcasting transactions:
1) First I was gutted to wake up one morning to find that George FM had been sold to Mediaworks to use as they please for three years. I shudder to think what they might do to it. It’s not been making much money recently and I fear they will ty to strip it back to make it more profitable or worse, make the music more mainstream and the commentary less edgy. Great. Now I have to find a new radio station to listen to. At the moment it might be BaseFM or b, actually at the moment it’s still George, but I’m laying the ground work for a transition if necessary. Some folks thought this was a really shady transaction. You see, the frequency was given to Maori by the government to fulfil treaty obligations. Which is cool, George plays maori programmes in the middle of the night, but the trusts which managed George and oversaw the transaction were run by Willie Jackson and John Tamahere. Two fellows who just happen to have a radio show on Radio Live. Which just happens to be owned by Media Works. Cough.

2) Alt TV ran out of money and borrowed $3 million from Easy Factors. Now Easy Factors owns alt. I used to like that channel but the problem was hardly anyone knew about it or knew how good the shows were and so advertisers wouldn’t touch it.

So what’s next for Alt TV, I reckon TVNZ will snap it up cheap and stick it on Freeview. They’ve been shopping recently. They bought the rights to TiVo in NZ too. I wonder how they’re going to incorporate that into their digital strategy. I’ll have to ask around and find out.

Speaking of TVNZ they have sacked a whole lot of staff from their News and Current affairs department. That really sucks. I knew this would happen. TVNZ shouldn’t have to cut back in an economic crisis rather, government pressure to return a rather handsome dividend should be eased to ensure our children have decent news coverage to watch.

I’ve been blogging here for about 9 months give or take and i still haven’t figured out most of how to use this website properly. Leave a comment if you want. I don’t care anymore, it’s all too complicated.

French Stuff.

French people have the capacity to effortlessly confuse me. It’s quite troubling actually. Everytime something happens in France I have to think twice as hard about why it’s happening. Americans are generally quite predictable. A rephrase: America’s decision-making elites are generally quite predictable. You can see their motives for acting the way they do. But the French are more enigmatic.

Last week President Sarkozy announced that he would help out the failing newspaper industry. Now, the funding of news has always been a terribly triky affair, because the money has to come from somewhere and whoever provides the funding is usually quickly accused of manipulating the media. Desipite this, it is generally best to have state  funded news. State funded news is the lesser of two evils for one reason. Quality investigative journalism is not profitable. It can exist in a commercial environment, supported by softer news stories, but it simply costs too much to generate. Not to mention the market failures that exist in the news-media market which is another blog for another day.

Listen,

Sarkozy is a former minister of communications and he knows better than most the problems that are facing the newspaper industry. On top of that, most of the folks who own the French media are his chums and he is regularly accused of getting of lightly in the press because of this. So what does he go and do? He gets smart.

He decides that young people are not growing up with the same enthusiasm for print media as their parents. He is right. Nobody can deny that he’s right. So to garner their interests, he is giving them a free years worth of newspaper subscription when they turn 18.

Now, first of all this could mean that newspapers will take longer to die in France than they will elsewhere on the planet, but it’s also a way of giving money to the newspaper industry without being accused of manipulating it. Neither he nor the government will own or run the papers, but they will be responsible for broadening circulation which will drive up the cost of advertising and the subsequent revenues it generates. The newspapers will still be operating in a commercial environment though, so quality journalism won’t flourish.

Now this could all be in my head and if someone can explain to me how this is more noble than having state funded (not government funded) press in France then please feel free.

Two thousand and fine

And so now it’s 2009. Now that the country is slowly starting to get back into the swing of things there’s all of a sudden an abundance of stuff to blog about.

Last week the world was treated to media coverage of Barack Obama’s inauguration. I saw the action unfold live and was uplifted by the expectations and hope of the many spectators who had braved Washington’s sub-zero temperatures to witness history.

Estimates put crowd numbers between 1.5 and 2 millon people. some of these had waited hours to see the ceremony.

Police did not make one single arrest.

Already Obama has taken action on closing down the notorious Guantanamo Bay Prison in Cuba showing that he is a man who will act swiftly when necessary.

Obama has also spoke critically about certain facets of the American Media. He told Republicans to stop listening to Rush Limbaugh- which was an interesting move from a freedom of expression perspective. However, before we’re too quick to judge we ought to take a moment to reflect on how many people have had their freedom of expression trampled on by the talkback tyrant.

We shouldn’t be surprised either, really given that during one of the presidential debates Obama took a swing at Fox News.

Moving closer to home, it seems as though no one wants to buy APN. Tony O’Reilly has been trying to sell it since November but the share price seems to be moving the wrong way. The man is practically heamorraging money in the UK because alot of print’s advertising revenue (especially the classified stuff) is moving or has moved to online

So what is the future of NZ herald, the listner, woman’s weekly and the radio network? I personally believe that these will be sold by INM as individual publications. It’s likely they will take longer to sell this way but let’s face it the man’s desperate.

For Christmas I was given Michael Wolff’s book on Rupert Murdoch. I will start reading it some time next week and probably won’t be able to put it down. I have been reading Wolff’s stuff in Vanity Fair for years and the man is a wealth of information on the political economy of the American media institutions.

I will let you know how I get on.

Fairfax News

John B. Fairfax

 

We probably all know by now that David Kirk has resigned as the CEO of Fairfax effective immediately. How could we not know? It was proudly plastered across the front page of the Weekend Herald yesterday. It has been known for a few weeks that the owner of Fairfax Media, John B. Fairfax, has been agitated by the lousy performance of his company’s shares and it’s worth noting that immediately after the resignation announcement, share prices gained 9c to A$1.58.

No proper replacement has been appointed although Brian McCarthy will be acting CEO until a suitable candidate is found.

Closer to home, the movers and shakers of Fairfax’s kiwi publications have been, well, moving on out. The editors of Cuisine, House and Garden, and controversial Sunday newspaper insert Sunday, have all been replaced in the last little while.

But what does all this mean for the potential sale of APN? Professional opinion, sought by yours truely from none other that Matthew Horton himself last week, is that no one wants to buy APN as it stands and that it’s likely the companies holdings will be divided up and go seperate ways. I wonder now if a change of CEO in Australia will see Fairfax advance rumours of a takeover?

Time will tell, watch this space.