[LINK] Online news - actual documents

[Jan Whitaker]

The Age today has a story about a 2009 killing in Afghanistan where 
Australian forces killed an armed man and 5 children in a house. The 
story is mostly about the media communication strategy of the 
military about the event, otherwise known as 'spin'. What I thought 
relevant to Linkers is the fact that the Age has published not only 
their own story, but the strategy document itself that was obtained 
through FOI. It's not prominent on the page, just a little link 
labeled FOI next to the Age story on the online front page at the 
moment (WILL disappear once the online version moves on).
http://images.theage.com.au/file/2011/12/17/2845817/foi.pdf

That's the first time I've seen the online paper provide a PDF 
document and certainly, wikileaks style, to provide an actual 
document behind a story, all 85 pages of it. Not much redacted 
either. Plus you can save a copy of the document.

This is excellent because now we aren't at the mercy of the limits of 
the story space (in the print version), but can make up our own minds 
by reading the actual document instead of just the journalist's 
interpretation of it. For example, the story says 1 man and 4 
children. The beginning of the strategy document says 2 adults and 4 
children. Then later on page 14 it says 1 adult and 5 children 
killed, 2 adults and 4 children injured. Facts are important and 
there are errors in this report, or at least inconsistencies. Another 
insight is how scripted the spokesmen (usually men in the military) 
are with regard to answers to the press. They are essentially robots, 
or newsreaders. I give them credit to be able to do that, learn their 
lines that well. I always though Angus Houston actually used his 
brain during those press conferences. Seems not. See page 32 and the 
majority of the report.

The fact that this required an FOI to expose the information set out 
in the questions is also interesting in terms of the transparency 
decision of government. Re the talking points (my eyes glazed over 
mostly because I wasn't terribly interested in the content, just the 
process of how this has been approached from a risk management 
perspective): the content in them, if factual, are the kinds of 
public education information about these sort of government processes 
that would be quite informative about how courts martial work, how 
international courts fit in, etc.

As an aside, it would be interesting to see a similar balanced set of 
ideas (the actual document themes) in the US military justice system 
re Bradley Manning, but given his treatment, I very much doubt it (3 
years in the brig without coming to trial until now, and he didn't 
kill anyone).

Jan


Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com

Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or 
sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
~Madeline L'Engle, writer

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