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We all use the mass media- whether it be newspapers, online information or tv. But do we trust it to report fairly and accurately?
Some say that commercial sources are less trust worthy than public broadcasting. In Australia as well as some other countries such as the UK, Germany, Holland there is a strong public broadcast ethos, but less so in the USA, where National Public Radio [ NPR] is only a small player, but some say, a growing one.
A recent study, shown below shows that for the USA, we now have less trust in the mass media.
And this was before the recent scandalous stuff appearing about the various arms of the Murdoch media empire in the UK as well as in the USA.
Go figure........
Source:
LiveScience
Trevor - the rubbish king - is regularly seen around Darwin, doing what he sees as his God given work - keeping the place clean. He picks up the rubbish the paid rubbish people leave behind!His work appears on my blog here - http://monsoon-frog.blogspot.com/2010/05/art-installation-by-trevor.htmlDarwin has a tolerant attitude to the odd bod........and has had for a long time. The motto, well known elsewhere of "do no harm" applies. If a bit odd, but doing no harm, well....., tolerate!Trevor is a bit more than a garbo......read the op ed piece, which he wrote - below. Sort of says it all. It is a motto, a call to arms for the world of being a bit more caring and tolerant. While not being religious or evoking religion, it does have a ring similar to a few of the great people leaders around the world - from Christ, to Martin Luther King and Gandhi in recent times. Tolerance and care for the fellow man.Read it yourself......Towards a world embracing us all
Trevor Jenkins - is well known in Darwin for his work cleaning up rubbish. Ahead of Anti-Poverty Week, the man also known as the Rubbish Warrior, who was homeless for several years, argues that many may choose to ignore poverty and misunderstand those who are in that situation, but the poor and the homeless have their own strengths that enrich us all.
PAIN and human suffering is an important resource. It can be as rich as minerals, as powerful as diamonds. It is more prolific than sex.
It's more than a base from which to write welfare programs. It's an entry point into people's lives that is a gift to us all and enriches our lives.
Poverty allows us to once again see the distance we have placed between ourselves and others. Human pain and human suffering on the street is paradoxically what makes some human beings rich in survival skills: resilience, humanity, acceptance, humour, resourcefulness, mateship, friendship and loyalty.
People are living with pain, living with disability, and living with abuse and terror. Courage in adversity is an Australian gift we value think of the Anzacs.
Today these gifts, very visible in people suffering on the streets, have been overlooked and pushed away in our headlong pursuit of success, comfort, grandeur, programs, plans, ideologies, and careers. When reallife human suffering is right outside our doors it is all too much.
People say success breeds success and like-minded people should congregate together. If you don't succeed you are judged as having a loser mentality and told it's "your own fault for thinking that way".
People say: "Don't blame me for not wasting my time with negative thinking people like you."
Social and community thinking about poverty does not accept failures, reality, trying hard, earning respect, acceptance of suffering or humility. Instead, it's about appearances, about looking good, feeling great and hiding the truth.
When somebody doesn't hide their true suffering and their true, lived self, better watch out because they might spread their pain and destroy themselves, us and society.
I see all this on the street, and I look on in dismay at a society in love with its own image, its own self and its own plans. A society in which an honest, hardworking, single, poor man with good morals and values is somehow mentally ill. Where it's crazy to love, crazy to think and dream, crazy to be free and alive.
It upsets and saddens me, but it inspires me, too, to overcome my own ill ridden fears and challenge the status quo. And I love people all the same.
I intend to fight for myself and others in similar positions, hopefully helping to teach a society to truly love again.
Anti-Poverty Week events in the NT will run from Monday October 17 to Thursday October 20.[Article by T Jenkins sourced from NT News October 15 - but too good to not disseminate further!]
Source:
LiveScienceOne could assume that Australian communications methods are fairly similar to the US data.
Cyberslacker - it is a beautiful term to describe those who contribute to cyber forums etc while at work, in work time.Are you one?It seems an awful lot of Australians ARE.The following is from the Weekend Australian newspaper and says it all!! It is a very interesting set of statistics and ancedotal materials.......a great story. Digital forums being skewed by cyberslackers
Christian Kerr
From: The Australian
August 06, 2011 12:00AM
THE anonymity afforded by the internet makes it hard to know for sure who is driving online public opinion. But one thing can be said about this surfing, tweeting, blogging community busy putting links and comments up on their Facebook pages: it is made up of people with nothing better to do.
When the digital dawn arrived as the 20th century drew to a close, it was heralded as a new dawn, too, for democracy. But digital democracy is not representative democracy; representative in the sense it embodies the true vox populi.
Online political commentary is driven by what the pollsters would call a self-selecting sample. And just as many online opinion polls now come with footnotes pointing out that their findings are not scientific, online public opinion needs a similar qualifier.
Web-based activist group GetUp! claims almost 600,000 members. Since it was founded in 2005, its email-driven campaigns and web-based petitions have become influential political tools.
Its national director Simon Sheikh claims one in every 30 Canberrans belongs to the organisation. He also has said that contrary to its youthful image, the average age of members is 55.
This has led many on the Coalition side of politics to deride the group as a bunch of cyberslacking, bored and idle, middle to low-ranking, left-leaning, white-collar public servants getting older and grumpier every day as they strive to hang on to just a little of the idealism of their radical youth.
Tommy Tudehope, a social media expert who served as social media adviser to Australia's most cyber-savvy politician, Malcolm Turnbull, during his time as Liberal leader, warns against taking online opinion in isolation.
He compares the situation with looking at the polls. While one may contain dramatic figures, wise politicians will look at their longer-term patterns. They will study the trend lines.
"I would never taken one social media platform in isolation," Tudehope says. "You have to take them all together." Even then, he says, the information and opinion received from social media needs to be married with data from other sources to form a reliable view.
Tudehope points out some of the immediate distortions of the web world. Tradesmen and manual workers do not sit at desks with computers on them. He talks of cyberslacking, too. "It's an issue for all companies," he says, but goes on to warn that the problem is particularly prevalent in enterprises where employees are "given more freedom at their desks".
Michelle Prak, a social media consultant with Adelaide-based Hughes Public Relations, points to Sensis data from earlier this year that shows only 22 per cent of social media users say they visit social media sites at work, but wonders aloud if the market researchers have been told some little white lies.
She also cites data from Google Analytics that points out Twitter reaches 11 per cent of the Australian population, compared with 8.5 per cent worldwide; and Facebook 67.3 per cent, far higher than the global average of 50.8.
Web consultant ROI says social media dominates how Australians use the internet.
Nielsen research published last year found almost one-quarter of online time was spent on social networks and blogs, and this number was increasingly rapidly. The average visitor spent 66 per cent more time on these sites than was the case 12 months before.
Australians, Nielsen found, averaged the most time on blogs and social networking sites, seven hours and 19 minutes, and were logging on from work and home. Our time spent on these sites outstripped the No 2 nation, the US, by just under 45 minutes and the No 3, Italy, but just over. More industrial nations exposed our cyberslacking shame. Germans devoted only four hours and 13 minutes of their home and work time every week to blogs and social networking and the Swiss three hours and 43 minutes. Japan's usage rates were even lower, at two hours and 50 minutes.
Andrew Braun, director of mobile, internet and technology at Roy Morgan Research, says his company's Single Source data shows that more than a million Australians aged 14 and older have read or added a comment to a newspaper blog in the past four weeks. More than 1.3 million of us have read or commented on someone else's blog or online journal.
Almost 400,000 Australians have started or managed their own blog or online journal. More than a million have viewed or contributed to online forums. Monash University researchers have found workers spend more than one-quarter of their time on the internet on non-work-related activity.
The Australian's online traffic climbs noticeably as the working day begins. It stays high all morning, peaks during the usual lunch hours, stays strong through the afternoon, then falls noticeably as home-time looms.
All the experts agree; just what is done while cyberslacking is next to impossible to quantify.
But given all these patterns and figures it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that much of the political commentary offered on the web and through social media is produced on someone else's time. That fact itself may explain the snarky tone of much of it.
Vivienne Storey, of Blands Law, helps companies develop social-media policies governing all kinds of web-based interaction. Workers who spend too much time online on non-work-related activities, Storey says, may be unhappy or frustrated. "I always say wasting time on the internet, that's really a deeper issue in the workplace," she says. "It's got nothing to do with access to social media. It's: why are the employees bored?"
The Roy Morgan data lets us quantify another demographic with time on its hands that may also be bored or frustrated and shaping online opinion.
In the past four weeks, close to 250,000 people who do not work have read or added a comment to a newspaper blog. More than 400,000 have read or commented on someone else's blog or online journal. One hundred and eight thousand have started or managed their own blog or online journal. And 284,000 have viewed or contributed to online forums.
There are fears that the often angry tone of web-based political discussion is making mainstream debate derogatory.
The climate-change debate has raised temperatures, in recent weeks and in the past.
Coalition sources say some offices were receiving an email every second at the height of the emissions trading scheme dramas of 2009.
Last week an angry Turnbull tweeted the details of a serial text message pest. "I don't mind abusive emails or tweets but why does Thomas Lynch [Turnbull gave his phone number] think it's OK to send me abusive SMSes about climate change?" he asked.
Online political opinion is unrepresentative. Much is ferocious and fiercely partisan in tone. That is because many of its authors have too much time on their hands and, like everyone who finds themselves in that state, have got bored and cranky.http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/digital-forums-being-skewed-by-cyberslackers/story-e6frgakx-1226108577149is the link, and there are plenty of comments too.Does this represent YOU??
Today is a big day for the household...............the power went underground and was energised.
I guess the new power line has been under the ground now for about a year, but finishing off the requirements to finally move from the above ground system to undergound has been slow and tedious. All that remains to be seen of the old system at our place is the old above ground connection close to the roof.
There seem to have been so many minor and major problems, including the total reconstruction of the Casuarina sub station that basically exploded about a year ago, and meant a major diversion of resources to fixing that issue, as it impacted on about half of the Darwin population.
The most recent hiccup was the discovery, about three weeks ago, that many of the electrical boards in the household power boxes would have to be changed - why? They were made of, or contained, asbestos. I am not sure it was a big issue.......the meter board just sits there quietly doing its thing, rarely, if ever, being disturbed. At least in changing over the internal power board, we had a new digital smart meter installed, 
so that was some sort of improvement even if we do not get much benefit yet from that equipment. At least it does easily allow some time dependent charging among other benefits.
The whole process of undergrounding power in our suburb was supposed to be finished a year ago. And it pretty well was, but for lack of resources to finalise the process.
At least now, hopefully, with a new substation at Casuarina [it supplies us] and underground electricity cabling, that some of the wet season / storm season power outages will be significantly reduced. They will not cease..........that is almost too much to expect and 100% time supply is unrealistic here in a region well known for violent thunderstorms. But reliability should be much better.
The big cost benefit comes from power security and safety in the event of a significant storm or cyclone, often resulting in fallen power lines. Hopefully there will be reduced community costs in managing electricity through that type of event.
As for any significant change.............well, probably no. But it does make it a bit easier to grow a garden and not have to worry about the trees in the powerlines though.
As for the telephone...........another story. They were supposed to also be upgraded to an undergound system, but it seems to be still eons away. No one knows, no one can give advice and it seems to have disappeared into the behomoth that is TELSTRA. May a pox be upon them!!! Maybe it is all tied up with the National Broadband Network.........but it is a disgrace in communications, execution and customer treatment. Good old Telstra......and there is no real other option.
I am annoyed that it seems as if the new telephone system will be copper cabling. Fibre to the Premises would have really been nice, and this is becoming more common in new or refurbished developments around Australia. It seems as if Darwin will be treated to a second class system AGAIN.
Australia’s $31 billion National Broadband Network (NBN), a project announced by the Federal Government earlier this year, will catapult the country from 21st to 8th place on the world’s most fibre broadband-enabled countries worldwide by 2013, according to analyst Strategy Analytics. The government-backed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based solution aims to deliver 100 Mbps service to 90 percent of Australian households, schools and businesses over the next eight years.
“The future of broadband is clearly in fibre,” says analyst Ben Piper, a director at the company. “The existing Telco xDSL infrastructure is reaching the end of its useful life. Soon it will no longer be able to support increasingly bandwidth-heavy consumer applications.”
Rankings just released by Strategy Analytics show that eight of the world’s top ten most fibre broadband-enabled countries are Asian and Eastern European. At the end of 2009, 51 percent of South Korean households will have a fibre connection, making it the most fibre-connected country worldwide. Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Lithuania round out the current top five in the firm’s rankings.
Singapore will overtake South Korea for the number one position by 2013, says the company. Part of the Singaporean Government’s “iN2015” initiative is the construction of a 1 Gbps FTTP. Not only will there be high speed fibre internet to the premises, there will be free wireless coverage across most of Singapore. Many areas are covered by wireless already - major shopping centres and many public areas such as public buildings, even some commonly used open space areas such as parks. The high speed internet roll out started a few weeks ago, with finalisation slated for the end of 2012.Australia is clearly not among the top 5 players, but will be doing ok if the NBN ever gets up momentum and coverage improves.Singapore is making a major effort to be both wired and unwired. And a new breed of cafe sitters, along with their computers and PDA phones haunt major coffeee shops around the island. Not a bad option when it is 32C outside - and an iced latte is at hand too.Australia needs to hurry this process of higher connectivity and internet speed or we will be left behind - again. Without this access Australia will not be considered appropriate for a regional finance centre or other businesses that inreasingly rely on electronic communications. [partially sourced from Electronics News Australia]
Sometimes you read an article that really gels with your own experiences, or evokes some significant thoughts....on any one of a myriad of subjects.Recently Greg Sheridan wrote an article for the Review Section of the Weekend Australian. It covered his experiences with a range of older colleagues, who helped and mentored him, while a student as well as in his "formative" years as journalist. He is a very respected senior journalist these days, commonly covering politics and international affairs for The Australian newspaper. The link is http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25333293-5013460,00.html and it is worth reading not only for the information about some of his key contacts while a young journalist, but for some key messages.......the role of personal contacts and their influences, often without realising it.The last two short paragraphs are worth noting - "What Big Bob and Little Bob had in common was a generosity with young people, a willingness to take them seriously. I've forgotten almost everything they said to me about foreign policy or economics, but the odd lapidary phrase stays forever.
So take care when you speak with younger people. Against all your expectations, they may very well be listening quite hard." [ excerpt from his article]In this time when often young people are ignored or "written off", they may be listening to YOU.....so offer sage advice, particularly in the workplace, if you want a great workplace culture to thrive. It is the leaders that make that happen, and like it or not, leaders are often a little older, and a little wiser, something that younger people may just need. Not maybe right now.......but as a thought and action forming option to consider.
