New and old media struggles

If you bother to read to the end I won’t promise you’ll be amused but this story about new and old media is at least interesting. The new represented by X and the old in this case represented by the Sydney Morning Herald. X has been here I think since 2007 the SMH since I think 1831.

I saw a tweet by someone I follow and I won’t include his name here because I don’t want to cause any consternation or upset. I don’t have a problem with this poster usually but this event was so extraordinary that I just had to comment. He wrote:

Now I'm not one to speculate as you know but if you were Justice Lee picking up the paper today and seeing a headline saying a lying recidivist and alleged rapist should receive compensation, I dunno, I'd probably be taking a dim view.

I immediately thought that there had been an announcement in the Bruce Lehrmann defamation case. It had been in the media a lot the previous year. I personally had heard nothing so when my acquaintance tweeted this my ears pricked up. Had the judge said something? Surely I would’ve seen an announcement if the case had been brought to a conclusion.

So I responded with a question and my acquaintance replied with a link to the story that had appeared on the SMH website a day or two before. I had seen this story and it was just word of what the lawyers for one party had suggested should be done. I asked if the SMH had done wrong by publishing the story.

But the judge hasn't announced anything, this story is just reporting on the progress of the case. There doesn't seem to b anything abt this story that's exceptional from a legal standpoint. Were you suggesting otherwise?

He said “No” and I asked again if the SMH had done something wrong.

But [name removed] your tweet suggests something different. It seemed to me that reporters who had been invited into the court and had done their job as the judge wanted them to do were the object of your opprobrium. Correct me if I'm wrong. Did the SMH do something inappropriate here?

He told me to let it go, I told him to be wary of defaming the plaintiff.

This highlights a certain problem that new media has with regard to the instruments of government. People who use new media have trust issues for whatever reason, I can’t fathom what they are in every case, in fact in most cases there’s no way to know why a person might distrust authority, but the fact is that my acquaintance worked for a media company for all of his adult life.

What to make of this event?

It’s funny how posters like my acquaintance crow with delight when an election result that is favourable to them transpires, how they celebrate when someone they hate is successful convicted of some offence. Yet they still don’t like authority, in this case simply the authority the SMH has to be trusted based on 190-odd years of operation. 

If this situation doesn’t illustrate the conflict between the new and old medias I don’t know what does. You see here a electronic platform that is being used to publish defamatory material with the assistance of a company that is legally going about its business as the judge wants. My acquaintance is exploiting the company for his own purposes.

Calling someone an “alleged” rapist is bad enough, the word at least shields the poster from possible action. The other accusation? Bruce Lehrmann has shown no inclination to let things go, and his case in court at the moment hinges on what the judge thinks about his testimony and the testimony of the woman he is accused of assaulting. 

This is the thing with social media, the release is instantaneous, you can get things off your chest but they can come back to bite you. I contacted Seven West Media, which had paid for Bruce Lehrmann’s accommodation. I had tried to find out who was representing Lehrmann and in the news stories had only been able to discover the names of his barristers. Now I needed that of his solicitor.

UPDATE

• The initial poster blocked me then about five days later unblocked me saying “I’m sorry”. Another person’d gotten involved who also blocked me, but so far no apology from that quarter. I did find out where she works though (in an art gallery).
• I sent an email to Lehrmann’s solicitor but they never got back to me. As at the time of posting this the judge in the case still hadn’t made an announcement.

Mainstream media to play a growing role as Trump media comes online

In the old days, in other countries, when the military decided to take over they first went to the TV station so that they could control messaging. In China today – even in the heart of our own century – the government decided to play by different rules and to set up alternative public spaces to harbour discussion, and so new social media companies came into existence. Now, Donald Trump has just appointed a new CEO for his new socmed company, a former Republican Congressman named Devin Nunes.

Since many people were disgusted by Trump’s encouragement of the January Congress riots, and since many on the other side will follow Trump anywhere he leads, what you’re going to have in the United States is an increasingly polarised public sphere where the mainstream media – which will include people with stronger stomachs than most, who’ll be paid to take out accounts on Trump’s platform so they can monitor developments and trends there – will play a growing role in the community.

Because of this there’ll be times when Trump might disenfranchise journalists who don’t follow his line, disabling their accounts, removing posts, or even provoking pile-ons. As a result many journalists will use anonymous accounts in order to monitor debate, and so that they can get information without being blocked or censured. Anonymity is a pressing matter in Australia, where the government is developing laws that’ll make it mandatory for social media companies to divulge the identities and contact details of people whose remarks are deemed by a court to be offensive and defamatory. If they don’t do so, the government says, they themselves will be liable in any court case brought as a result of actionable comments made on their platforms.

It’s important for the Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government to carefully word such laws as it’s clear that anonymity is going to remain, in many countries, an important resource for the legitimate participation of various actors in several spheres of endeavour. You need to balance the requirements of many different parties if you’re not going to cause harm in one way by achieving justice in another way. I look forward to what eventuates, and no doubt the mainstream media will, as usual, report in a balanced way on such developments. At least, in Australia, we don’t have rogue politicians seeking to establish a personal public domain where their messages can go unchallenged. We’re lucky to have the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which supplies reliable information for all citizens (and even for some people living overseas).

The Age selectively turns off replies to tweets

Having posted yesterday on a tweet involving Gina Reinhart that had replies turned off I’ve scouted out some tweets from the same source with the reply function still on. This seems to be the default position.

The following tweets had replies enabled. First, one about supermarkets and the competition offered by retailer Aldi.

Next is a tweet about a local Australian Netflix employee.

Next is a women’s health story. Another noncontentious one.

Finally there’s one about vaccines for Covid – potentially contentious but still getting the liberal treatment.

It seems that consumer affairs, health, and industrial relations are less contentious than climate change. The newspaper's editors are obviously concerned about the High Court decision that makes media companies liable for comments on posts they put up. That case resulted from comments left on a Facebook post.