the interpretOr is based on the foundations of open media, deconstructing spin and sharing perspectives. Press freedom is curtailed by many influences and forces: overt, covert, obvious, subtle. Partisan agendas presented as news; PR driven ‘news’ stories that obfuscate and omit; the invisible restrictions of the editorial nods, winks and frowns.

When media organisations are answerable to share holders and the markets, the public interest is necessarily compromised. Objectivity cannot serve two masters. When media organisations collude and offer a seeming consensus of content and treatment, there is tremendous power in their ability to shape perceptions of actual and restrict perspectives of possible.

the interpretOr has thus far been able to provide coverage across a range of significant issues without the constraints of commercial considerations. We chose to use the WordPress platform as it is free, open source and relatively user-friendly.

Many of our ‘friends & links’ around the world are using non commercial platforms too. We encourage our readers to visit these sites – perhaps the real potential of digital Renaissance lies within non commercial realms, as opposed to Facebook – its narcissism and new partnership with the odious Goldman Sachs.

Well, that’s for you to decide…

From Reporters Without Borders report re Australia (http://en.rsf.org/):

“The (Australian) government has not abandoned its dangerous plan to filter online traffic, even though this will be hard to get parliamentary approval. A harsh filtering system After a year of tests in cooperation with Australian Internet service providers, telecommunications minister Stephen Conroy said in December 2009 the government would seek parliamentary approval for mandatory filtering of “inappropriate” websites. Blocking access to a website would BE authorised not by a court but by a government agency, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). The ACMA is already empowered to issue “take down” notices to Internet Service Providers under the Broadcasting Services Act of 1992.

“It maintains a “blacklist” of banned sites without transparent processes or criteria for the bans. The filtering would target websites with “refused classification” (RC) content, a category already applied to mainstream media, and would therefore apply to content unrelated to government efforts to combat child pornography, defamation or copyright, so creating a risk of overblocking.

Topics such as aborigines, abortion, anorexia, or laws about the sale of marijuana might all be filtered, along with media reports or related medical information. The government says filtering would be 100% effective – a claim disputed by experts – but Wikileaks has revealed that the blacklist includes harmless sites such as YouTube links, poker games, gay networks, Wikipedia pages and Christian sites.

Several examples of censorship have appeared. Pages of Wikileaks content on the SBS (Special Broadcasting Service) news site were reportedly blocked, leading to a demonstration in Sydney by supporters of the Pirate Party. All the country’s main ISPs (Telstra, Optus and Primus) are thought to have formally agreed to instal voluntary filters from July 2011.

The government still hopes to introduce mandatory filtering, with the support of independent and Green members of parliament, but it does not yet have such backing. An unpopular bill Journalist Ben Grubb, of The Age newspaper, said in July 2010 the government censored 90% of an official account of a meeting about censorship with ISPs and business figures in March that year before releasing it to the media. Australian law allows full access to all government documents. Claudia Hernandez, of the attorney-general’s office, said releasing an uncensored version could have set off “premature unnecessary debate.” Deputy senate opposition leader George Brandis said the episode showed how “truly Orwellian” the government had become.

Minister Conroy has made debate very difficult by calling his critics child pornography advocates. A Fairfax Media poll of 20,000 Australians in December 2009 showed 96% strongly opposed to the bill. Internet firms, including Google and Yahoo, are against the measure and the U.S. government said in March 2010 it was concerned about the proposal, noting the importance of freedom of expression. Hundreds of Australian websites protested against the bill in a national “Internet Blackout” day in January 2010.”

(Reporters Without Borders: http://en.rsf.org/)

“Early in 1982, ten months after he had taken over The Times and The Sunday Times, Rupert Murdoch went to see the Prime  Minister, Mrs Thatcher. They shared a problem: it was me. I was editor of The Times and Murdoch’s difficulty was how to dispose of me.”

 ‘Good Times, Bad Times’, Harold Evans (Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd, 1983)

Fast forward 30 years…it might be Rupert’s turn.

Harold Evans was a brave and conscientious editor of The Sunday Times when it was a great, compelling and fearless Fleet Street newspaper. Among his achievements are the creation and dynamic development of their investigative team, Insight. Using energy and talent on behalf of children stricken by latent effects of the toxic Thalidomide drug – a sleeping pill that pregnant mothers had used before the children were born, resulting in limbless babies and many hundreds with chronic deformities – the Insight Team exposed and challenged the pitiful compensation that families involved had received. It also sought to inform readers of the objective, evidence based realities of how the pharmaceutical company that manufactured and distributed the Thalidomide drug reacted to the terrible and delayed reaction of their monstrous and widely used pill. Within the scope of their investigation was intense examination and analysis of the legal machinations on this intergenerational disaster – the position of the Courts and the paucity of the advocacy on behalf of the prescribed poison’s victims. Evans and his staff were driven by the magnitude of their sense of professionalism and responsibility to society. They were acting solely in the public good and in the unadulterated pursuit of justice and recompense for suffering children and parents.

Fast forward 30 years and we’re at another turning point. The demise of The News of The World and the circumstances of its destruction are a continuation of the process that Murdoch set in motion back in ’81 with his acquisition of the Times broadsheets and subsequent dismissal of Harold Evans. That such towering newspapers succumbed to substantially diminished credibility, authenticity and authority was an incremental, and at times subtle, process. Murdoch had an agenda of intense engagement and promotion of both Thatcher in the UK and ‘showbiz Ron’ in the US, and Evans did not fit this mould, this new realpolitik. Would Evans have allowed the Insight Team to become cheerleaders for Milton Friedman and run away, unchecked corporate power? I think not.

Would Harold Evans have allowed The Sunday Times to obfuscate and mislead over Iran Contra and ignore the systematic destruction of the Roosevelt and Beveridge initiated social reforms in public health and education – defining elements of the social contract of the post WW2 era? Well, ask the victims of Thalidomide.

At one end of the chronology is analysis, context and enquiry; at the other…propaganda, churnalism and the stench of sleaze.

Hope versus fear. We deserve the former.

ps. the interpretOr encourages visitors to this site to share their perspectives on this timely and crucial subject. Please feel free to comment away…

we also wish to advise that we have a mobile compatible app that can be accessed through Android and also iPhone by simply selecting mobile site from our home page view options – no separate app download required…phew)

the interpretOr wishes to share perspectives on press freedom and to get the ball rolling, here’s Barack Obama on World Press Freedom Day…

“In every corner of the globe, there are journalists in jail or being actively harassed: from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe, Burma to Uzbekistan, Cuba to Eritrea…I lend my voice of support and admiration to all those men and women of the press who labour to expose truth and enhance accountability around the world.

In so doing, I recall the words of Thomas Jefferson:

“The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right: and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

(Barack Obama, May 2009)

the interpretOr would like to add that Obama should remember these remarks before embarking upon any extradition of Julian Assange – surely Wikileaks was motivated by a desire to “expose truth and enhance accountability around the world” too.

the interpretOr encourages visitors to this site to share their perspectives on this timely and crucial subject. 

Please feel free to comment away…we also wish to advise that we have a mobile compatible app that can be accessed through Android and also iPhone.

“All the corruption exposed in England – payoffs, dirty cops, hush-money settlements – is also happening here” (Rolling Stone, Aug 2011)

   http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/rupert-murdochs-american-scandals-20110803