Poke! Plane crash, Aussie pilot survives; Police prefer not to bear arms, even after Oslo attack (14th October 2011)

Bad weather caused plane crash in PNG; Australian pilot survives [Courier Mail]

A tragic accident took place last evening in PNG where an Dash 8 aircraft crashed in PNG, there are totally 28 confirmed death. One of the pilot who happened to be Australian, has survived the crash as well as 3 other crew members on the plane. A lot of things has to follow up after this.

It is believed that most of the passengers were parents on their way to attend a ceremony involving students at the Divine Word University in Madang. Airlines PNG this morning confirmed one of its Dash 8 aircraft crashed and grounded its fleet of 12 aircraft until further notice. In a statement on its website, the airline said there were 28 passengers and four crew members on the plane and there appeared to be some survivors, while a number of people remained unaccounted for.

The airline who owns the plane, Airlines PNG has a notorious flight safety history, and this time one of the causes of the crash is believed to be the poor weather during flight. People say big aeroplanes are much safer than small planes and I believe in this case, it's true.

Norwegian police don't want to carry guns [Norway International Network]

Strangely, even after the Oslo attack back in July in Norway, police are stil reluctant to carry firearms with them when on duty, because they want to keep everything low and easier to deal with, apparently.

We want to have a police force that can handle the most demanding assignments with the least amount of force,” Arne Johannessen, head of the police officers’ union Politiets Fellesforbund, told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) this week.

For a Scandinavian country like Norway where serious crime doesn't take place as often in the society, I bet people living there are quite confident with the police force. But since the terrorist attack, I am still in shock that why wouldn't they raise up their alertness and try to arm themselves when they need it. But for them, perhaps, it doesn't really matter because I think their places are much safer when compared to the sky-high crime rates in the US and other countries.

D.

Poke! Government threats to intervene Quantas union strike; Bali earthquake, great timing? (13th October 2011)

Federal government threatens intervention to industrial dispute at Qantas [Brisbane Times]

It has been a disastrous month. The trade unions has started their strike on both domestic and international airlines, causing major groundings of cancelled flights. This not only affects the transport system alone, but the whole airline industry. Now the federal government is not satisfied on what the union is doing to the local economy and industry, and Tourism Minister Martin Ferguson threatened they would take action if both the company and the union could not settle it sooner.

"If they did not, the government could require the parties to resolve their issues under the umbrella of the Fair Work Act. [...] The Australian tourism industry depended on a vital and strong aviation sector. The act already provided that, in exceptional circumstances, industrial action that had wider implications than for just one business can be suspended or terminated if it threatened significant damage to the economy or to the welfare or safety of the population. The sooner the parties get in a room and sort it out the better," he told reporters.

Same in Hong Kong, there were several disputes among airlines and union members in the company where they were not satisfied with the working shift and lowered salaries, and it has stirred up quite a big mess back then. Clean up your acts and start action, and stop being a disturbance for the local industry.

6.8-magnitude earthquake in Bali [Courier Mail]

Was mother nature angry about the Australian boy who got caught with drug trafficking in Bali? Today, a 6.8-magnitude earthquake has struck Bali. There are at least 50 people injured, and many buildings are damaged. And yet some Footy stars react in a lighthearted way, kind of childish I assume.

St Kilda's Jason Gram didn't seem the worse for wear, tweeting: "Just had my 1st earthquake hahaha awesome".

About the Australian boy, the building he is detained has been evacuated, and he is reportedly not injured. Wow, what a week in Bali for him. Hope he's learnt a lesson as mother nature is trying to hurt him as well.



D.

Poke! Oil spill mayhem; twin difference (12th October 2011)

Oil spill near New Zealand shore line raises fear [Courier Mail]

Dear lord, first there was the BP oil spill at the Pacific Ocean, now this container ship has cracked open an opening, spilling oil all over the sea. This won't end well, I reckon.

The cracks, after Rena was pounded by heavy swells, have elevated fears that it could break up and send more than 1300 tonnes of oil into the sea. Oil already leaked from the ship continues to wash up on the Bay of Plenty coastline, and critics have asked why so little oil was salvaged in the days immediately after the boat first struck the Astrolabe reef last week.

Now that the New Zealand government has to deal with this while cleaning up Christchurch, this can't go any worse. Other than that, the container ship is shipping some of the most hazardous substance on the deck, if this situation worsens, the cleanup effort will probably be massive. Damn oils.

Study founds identical twins aren't actually identical [ABC]

Wait, what? Of course, identical twins looks the same because they share the same genetic codes, but in a psychological perspective, they develop different personalities, as environment hold the key on individual development, study says.

The research has implications for everyone, because it shows that environmental factors along with genetics play a role in determining who we are. Led by Professor Susan Clark, researchers spent eight years studying teenage twins to find out why identical twins can be so different. What they found is that while identical twins have the same genes, the biochemical reactions that turn those genes on and off are controlled by the environment.

So that explains even twins look the same, they behave differently and at my first hand experience it's quite true. Take my friend's twin cousin for example: they are completely different beings, and that's also something you can tell them apart. One is clever and playful, and the other is rowdy and shoot Nerf bullets onto my eyes. Ouch, isn't that amazing? 

D.

Focus: Lecture - News Values

It's a pity that I've missed the lecture due to some personal clish-clashes, but here it is!

What is "News Values"? What are the underlying factor that makes news, valuable? In this theory-oriented lecture, you'll be able to find it out.

In journalism studies, there are 4 categories to define News Values:

1. Impact
2. Audience Identification
3. Pragmatics
4. Source Influence

In short, News Values is "the degree of prominence a media outlet gives to a story, and the attention that is paid by an audience". So if a story is without any value, people will not care about it, and media outlets like newspaper will not use up a page to report it. Simple!

News are like a surprise present for readers every day because it gives us an impact on what happened during the day, and with their information we get to know everything around us.

But people are sometimes selfish, they wouldn't care about anything unless it is related to them. To make a news piece valuable, it has to locate its audience, to get them interested about what's happening in the world.

To make a story valuable, the ethics and practice on how to report it also makes it valuable or not. A journalist has to write in complete facticity, also not to mention about their ways of investigating the story, which could determine the outcome of it.

Public relations has a hateful relationship with journalism because of its influence to the neutrality of journalism. PR is done with controlling the facts and truth behind a client whereas journalism is practiced with true and factual reporting. For a journalist, it is very hard to get over the PR people to get the truth behind all the spinning stunts.

News Values are held differently across the globe, in which values are different between news services and cultures. However, there is a simple definitive value that we all use commonly:

Most newsworthy information will be put in the front

Important details are followed immediately

...finally, general information are put at the end

To put in perspective, it's like an up-side-down triangle, where the most eye-catching topics will be put forward, and leave in information by the end of a story, allowing audience to do their own follow up.

There are a few examples in the lecture which perfectly depicts how this works:

"If it bleeds, it leads!"

Simply meaning if something relates to death, injuries and crime, the story will instantly become "newsworthy"

"If it's local, it leads!"

For Brisbane, if a story is about local affairs like Footie, flooding, ongoing case of Daniel Morcombe and duck race fund-raising for cancer research, they all go straight onto the front page.

But how does an organisation/institution shape their own distinctive News Value? To be honest, this "sense of news value" is the first quality of editors because they determine how the news are reported and published, as told by Harold Evans, who worked as the editor of the Sunday Times from 1967 to 1981. And they have the job to filter anything unwanted and give out anything that is newsworthy.

Newsworthiness is an interesting topic that's mentioned in the lecture. It's included more than 12 kinds of News Values and each of those are associated with what kind of stories in nature they are. They include, but not limited to: negativity, closeness to home, recency, currency, continuity, uniqueness, and so on. Some news pieces can be in more than one news value, that means they are not mutually exclusive. The additivity, the complementarity, and the exclusion of a story also benefit itself into something newsworthy, and these are hypothesised by Galtung & Ruge. (hmm, researches are always done in a "partner" arrangement)

However, this is not universal, as other scholars have also hypothesised in another method in which news values are differently categorised. For example, Goldings & Elliot's News Values. But in general, they can be summarised as follows:

1. The power elite
2. Celebrity
3. Entertainment
4. Surprise
5. Bad news
6. Good news
7. Magnitude
8. Relevance
9. Follow-up
10. Newspaper agenda

So, what are the threats of News Values? In short, three main points:

• the bad, lazy and incompetent journalism;
• PR influence and the ensuing tabloidisation;
• and hyper-commercialisation.

These are the threats that makes news values not valuable anymore, in which people nowadays don't want to watch TV news, read newspapers and listen to radio because they think these journalist bastards are just reporting crap every day: they don't dig into the fundamental problems in the society, they don't inform us about concerns, they no longer provide an appropriate outlet to educate people on a certain issue.

But we can all change this by selectively choose our own trustworthy news outlets and be a sensible and well-informed reader. Even if the world has only one true, honest news company, we will follow them whether they may go.

D.

Poke! Hendra case; Iranian actress controversy (11th October 2011)

New Hendra case, 12th in the year [ABC]

Another case of horse infected by Hendra virus was discovered from a Beachmore property north of Brisbane. After the discovery on Monday, the horse was immediately put down on the next day. And apparently this is the 12th case in the year, and we humans are getting afraid of the unknown disease.

"As part of our protocol now, we do test the dogs - it has to be though that the dog's had some some close contact with the horses."If the dog was a house dog and had no contact with horses, there's no reason to test the dog."

At this stage, I'm not really sure we should be afraid of this minor incident, but god forbid there would be a massive outbreak in the future, who knows?

Iranian actress sentenced and whipped [ABC]

The ever regressing culture and government of Iran has caused an actress who featured in an Australian film to be lashed and put behind bars. Apparently it is because of role where she portrays a young actress whose stage work was banned by the authorities. Ironically, the Iranian government is doing the same for the very film and now, the actress has to endure the needless "consequence".

The actress and another Iranian filmmaker were both arrested in July when black market copies of the film reportedly began circulating illegally. Vafamehr has now been sentenced to a year in prison and 90 lashes of the cane. An Iranian opposition website says her lawyer has already lodged an appeal. Adelaide Film Festival director Katrina Sedgwick says she is shocked and distressed at what she believes is a harsh sentence.

The repression of freedom has caused the outrage of many people who heard the news, including me. I mean, how absurd it is that the country is still holding this sort of values? I literally was shocked as I heard this piece of news on the television, and simply it's not acceptable they have to imprison an actress who haven't done any harm to others.

D.

Poke! South Bank "safer" now; Female soldier alleges sex assault (10th Oct 2011)

South Bank behaviour improves [Brisbane Times]

Looks like the company behind the South Bank Parklands and the vicinity has come out a report saying after the floods on January, troublemakers has dropped by two-thirds. But I don't really think it's related to the floods anyway, seeing there are still many people walk along the riverside and the parks. But at night, it's a totally different story.

The improved behaviour could be largely attributed to the long period of time that South Bank's popular pool areas were closed after the January floods, the corporation's report says.

I live near South Bank, and as I observed around the area for over a year, I noticed it's true that during nighttime and especially Fridays, there are more crazy people loitering around, especially at the train and busway station, where people sort of yell very loudly and they are somehow ruder as well. But overall, I think it's still a little bit better than the Valley, right?

Department of Defence now investigating alleged sex assault to female soldier [Courier Mail]

Earlier, I heard the news about they are going to reopen registrations for female soldiers to deploy in Afghanistan, and now here comes the allegations where a female soldiers were being sexually assaulted during her duties in Afghanistan. At this moment, we just know they have confirmed investigations are underway, however, no further details are provided.

The probe comes after a Skype sex scandal earlier this year when a female cadet at the Australian Defence Force Academy was allegedly filmed having sex with a male cadet while the footage was beamed live to other cadets.

Inner beast? I'm not disagreeing about not allowing females to work in military duties in the Middle East, but apparently the blokes back there are having such bad times, making things a bit out of order, I presume.

D.