[LINK] Re:Alligators in the sewers, moon made of cheese, etc

[James Riley]

Your original comment was nonsense, and this doesn;t get much better. If
you're criticising a group (ie Business and IT journalists), then it would
be quite natural for David Higgins, who oversees a large number of these
said journo's, to take offence. 
Who did you mean? Tom Burton, because he wrote a comment piece? Who else?

As for spending your press conference time advising on various floats,
perhaps there is room in the financial services industry for you?

James Riley
Editor
InformationWeek
jriley@dwr.com.au 


-----Original Message-----
From: richard@auscoms.com.au [mailto:richard@auscoms.com.au]
Sent: Friday, June 23, 2000 9:21 AM
To: link@www.anu.edu.au
Subject: [LINK] Re:Alligators in the sewers, moon made of cheese, etc


David,

Well, sorry for being dunderheaded. Please note, I didn't say journalists
were
instructed what to write. And a criticism of the group needn't be taken
personally; I didn't accuse Davd Higgins, after all.

However, I did say and I do maintain that many individuals business press
and IT
journalists are compromised by a lax attitude to share ownership. Until the
dotcoms went sour, what-we-should-buy and what-I-got-at-IPO were considered
normal topics for pre-press-conference conversation.

Actually, the wire hacks seemed to have been, in my experience, equal
offenders;
and while Tom Burton says "the author owns shares", I don't see pieces of
uncritical puffery bylined "Pump and Dump Financial Press Journalists own
shares
in ...".

Journalists from your own stable have asked me "are you going to buy X?"
"Have
you heard about Y?" and so on. So I'm not saying a friend of a friend saw an
alligator in the sewer, I'm saying I have experience of the loss of
objectivity
by knowledge, not heresay. 

I stand by my assertion that the disclosure statement is an irrelevant joke.
Journalists are still free to pump a market: I could hold fifty telecomms
companies and say "Buy Telecommunications" and nobody would require a list
of
fifty company names at the end.  

Maybe Tom's piece isn't the best example of journalistic and proprietorial
interest coinciding. But a look over the history of reporting on Eisa is
unedifying, to cite one example.

I don't know about alligators in the sewers, David, but I'll put my hand up
as
an allegator.

Richard Chirgwin
____________________Reply Separator____________________
Subject:    Alligators in the sewers, moon made of cheese, etc
Author: "david higgins" <dhiggins@access.fairfax.com.au>
Date:       22/06/00 7:30

AAAARRRGGHH! When will you see how dunderheaded these comments are:

"Just another example where the business pages of the major metro newspapers
are used as tools to try to further the commercial interests of the
proprietors."

"And of the journalists themselves, Paul. A "declaration of sharholding" is
an
irrelevant joke. Journalism is as compromised by its practitioners' own
behaviour as by the interests of proprietors."

For the record, once again, I have NEVER experienced, nor have I heard of a
journalist -- during my time at the SMH or The Australian -- being told what
to write at the request of management.
Use your brain here, rather than jumping directly to the urban myth. The
vast majority of those involved in the Internet industry are against DCITA's
regulatory policies. It is hardly surprising that someone like Tom Burton
(who is in charge of the SMH's Web site) and the management of Fairfax would
have the same opinion on this matter.

In the case of Mark Westfield's pay-tv piece, isn't it likely that a
journalist who has just published an incredibly detailed history on
Australian Pay TV, The Gatekeepers, would be the first to hear about
negotiations on a pull-out by News and PBL.

Furthermore, both today (Thu) and tomorrow the SMH is running negative
pieces about f2 (the restructure and, well, you'll have to wait and see for
the other).

David Higgins