Poke! Gadhafi's death; RAAF's last addition to the fleet (21st October 2011)

Gadhafi's death signifies the end of tyranny in Libya [ABC]

With the sudden explosion of tweets, Facebook posts, and rumours during the late hours last night, unconfirmed news of Gadhafi's death has became viral and at first, I'm not sure whether I should believe it since there are too many sources has reported the news and that might also mean they haven't confirmed in a journalistic manner. But after awhile after reading the news just an hour later, it is confirmed. Muhammar Gadhafi has been killed during the crossfire while freedom fighters captured his hometown of Sirte.

Libyan TV showed mobile phone footage which showed Gaddafi wounded and bloodied, but still alive. Later it screened pictures showing rebel fighters posing with his bloodied corpse. Other rebels were seen brandishing what they said was Gaddafi's gold-plated pistol.

Leaders from around the world also hail Gadhafi's death as the end of tyranny. The capture of the once ruler of Libya has ended the regime that spanned across 40 years of brutal dictatorship. Now that he's gone, it is interesting to see how the country will progress, whether being handed over to another military group like before, or developed into a democratic country.

RAAF receive final Super Hornets, rare flybys took place in Brisbane [Australian Aviation]

It is a very rare case where the sky of Brisbane was cleared for a formation flight for the latest addition of 4 Boeing F/A-19F Super Hornets into the 24-aircraft fleet, so today I went to Kangaroo Point and have a good look of it.

The four aircraft completed the final leg of their trans-Pacific delivery flight, which originated at Naval Air Station Lemoore in California on October 13. The aircraft were supported by a USAF KC-10 tanker for the journey, and stopped en route at Hickam AFB in Hawaii, Andersen AFB on Guam, and RAAF Base Townsville. For the final leg from Townsville to Amberley, Super Hornet A41-222 was piloted by Chief of Air Force AIRMSHL Geoff Brown, while A41-224 was piloted all the way from the US by the outgoing Officer Commanding 82 Wing, GPCAPT Steve Roberton, who was previously head of the Air Combat Transition office (ACTO) which managed the Super Hornet project from inception.

We don't get to see fighter jets flying by Brisbane and the surrounding area so I'm very glad to be one part of the crowd. Although their flyby to the inner city was only a few second's worth of time, the experience of waiting and anticipating is totally worth the case.

D.

Poke! Eviction turned destruction in UK; exotic animals ran wild, got killed (20th October 2011)

Irish travellers eviction turned into violence in UK [The Australian]

An eviction of traditional nomadic society turned into a riot as hundreds of Irish travellers resist eviction from the British police in Dale Farm, Essex, UK. There has been several evictions in the past but apparently this is one of the most serious ones British police has done so far.

"I've been through a lot of evictions, but I've never seen anything like this ... they have come in and started a riot that we never wanted," said resident Kathleen McCarthy, who accused police of roughing up traveller at the site, injuring three women. [...] (The) council has estimated that the total cost to taxpayers of evicting the traveller from the site - including clean-up and post-eviction security - could rise to $28 million.

News topic like this makes me curious about this kind of nomadic people: their lifestyle is similar to Gypsies and they don't have a fixed residence. In UK, there are around 15,000 to 30,000 Irish travellers in Britain, which is fascinating. This is one kind of a minority group in society where people used to ignore and I can see why. In their minds, they cause trouble and hogging government resources. They don't have education from the system and basically, they're like wild people. I wonder what their cultures mean to us. 

US Exotic animal slaughter: Lax laws to blame [ABC]

In the state of Ohio, US, an owner of bears, lions, tigers, wolves and monkeys has committed suicide after releasing all the animals from the enclosures, and police has to follow the shoot-to-kill orders to keep the public safe from the potentially lethal animals. However, those are not ordinary animals we'd usually see in the wild. They are tremendously exotic and rare, and simply put, this stirred up a debate whether the authorities have done the right thing. Almost 50 animals were killed in this incident and still, a monkey was thought to be on the loose as well.

However in hindsight, the lax laws regarding animal protection have provided a safe haven for people to trade exotic animals in this state. There are no apparent regulations to control what animals are allowed to be purchased without permits. This news has caused a journalistic investigation.

"There's an exotic animal auction that's notorious here in Ohio, where literally thousands of animals come in - kangaroos, grizzly bears, hyenas, wolves, a wild menagerie of different animals,""And people can just go and they put maybe a horse trailer on the back of their car and they purchase them and they buy them."

Indeed, even though a powerful country like the US, local state governments are still doing their crappy job over issues like this. It looks as if no one is taking notes of their lawmaking and regulations at all.

D.

Poke! Space tourism starts now!; 1,000 palestine for one Israeli (19th October 2011)

Whoops, sorry. Missed the last one, but here are the stories for today's Poke!

Space tourism starts as Virgin opens the world's first spaceport [Courier Mail]

Isn't it nice to see this huge leap within our lifetime? Virgin boss Richard Branson has finally announced the opening of the world's first spaceport, dedicated to send people and payloads into space.

It was six years ago that Virgin Galactic and state officials reached an agreement to build the $209m taxpayer-financed spaceport.Officials said the completion of the terminal and hangar facility marks another major milestone that brings the dream of rocketing tourists into space closer to reality. Still, the question many are asking is when the first ships will launch from Spaceport America.

Indeed, a milestone. It used to take a fortune to take a plane across the ocean but now it can be affordable as ever, and hopefully this will happen to space flights as well.

Releasing 1,000 prisoners in exchange for one person, Shalit, Palestinians freed in prisoner swap [ABC]

I doubt this will be a good piece for me to write here, but I'll try my best to understand the whole situation. The foremost thing we know about this news is the Egyptian government has negotiated with the militant group Hamas, by releasing 1,000 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons, in exchange for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who has been imprisoned for 5 years.

But what makes so much of a deal is because they are in exchange of 1,000 Palestine people who've been imprisoned due to their acts against Israel in the past, for just one person. And yet, the Israeli are very joyous of his release. In their culture, they see themselves as a big family, everyone helps each other no matter they are strangers or not. The Shalit family has done a tremendously huge effort to make Israeli aware of their family's son was captured by the militant group, and therefore gaining a lot of support from the people.

Now that over 1,000 prisoners are released, it is disputable if it is politically adequate to let them run free because, you know, they are prisoners. But since Israeli view themselves as a family, no wonder most of them are very supportive even though they could retrieve only one soldier out of many more high profile Israeli imprisonment in other political dispute.

However there are still concerns about Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel's decision, because there are military traditions among other countries and they are not always prepared for the negotiations to the terrorist to swap deals with terrorists. But in the mean time, we will see as the story progress.

D.

Donny Recommends: Lecture screening - "Page One: Inside the New York Times"

Who would have known while we are aspiring to become a journalist, we can also indulge ourselves into being a little bit of a film critic? For this week's lecture, the whole lecture room has moved to the Schonell Theatre, where we are very honoured to participate in a premiere screening of "Page One: Inside the New York Times", a fascinating documentary about several issues in journalism.

While we are watching it, I couldn't help but think of how many issues exactly that the film has covered. I believe there are almost 10 of them, covering in a variety of topics like media reporting, plagiarism, the current media landscape, blog-like journalism, being a foreign correspondent in the war-torn Middle East, bad outcome of evil news business, and many things that surrounds the history of the New York Times.

In the film, we get to understand how they write news, personally I found it not surprising, but breathtaking that they have to write almost 5000 words for a featured topic; how they have meetings on what to put on the front page, and looked at how pessimistic other people working on alternative media see the traditional, and declining newspaper industry.

We also followed David Carr, who was a cocaine addict but turned journalist in the New York Times, his interviews are sublime and outstanding, and most of the time, funny because of his cheeky personality. His prominent role in the film helps me understand his role as a journalist is very important on informing and uncovering truths behind the shades, in this case, the scandals surrounding the ex-CEO of Tribune Company, Randy Michaels (NYT feature by David Carr), about his misconducts towards colleagues and sexism across the newspapers under the company.

This film is a must-watch, and since I'm not a professional movie critic I'm very good at writing details and opinions about this film, but I wholeheartedly recommend this movie for everyone, especially people who are interested about the news industry, because you'll never know anything about it until you've seen it.

D.

Focus: Lecture - Investigative Journalism

Another deep look at a very interesting topic of journalism - investigative journalism. Investigative journalism has a very crucial role to the news industry, because it acts as a medium to discover truth, to discover things people wouldn't normally know or see. We get to see the facts and opinions inside a certain topic or story, and we can identity lapses between media. One thing to point out though is that investigative journalism is distinctive from police investigation.

Bruce introduced us 5 "IN"s of investigative journalism:

• Intelligent: something that is well thought out, and how it fits into sinister things
• Informed: journalist is briefed on the facts, otherwise it will be missing out the story
• Intuitive: having a fresh mind
• Inside (intimate): something like a real story behind average media coverage, and sometimes getting into people's lives
• Invest: being an investigative journalist, you have to invest yourself into there, the whole scope, but still need to draw the line between good and bad moral values

Investigative journalism is a deep subject, and there are quite a few deeper meanings behind this name.

• Critical/Thorough: Journalists have to be an active participant of the investigation, the key idea of this is to have active intervention to a topic, and put in substantial effort to it
• Custodians of conscience: The investigation has to meet up to the society's moral view and give exposure to something bad, and let the public to observe and examine the issue
• To provide a voice for people without them: Public interest is the main objective and we need to give power for the powerless, and voice for the voiceless
• Watchdog/4th branch of the government: Looking at the doings of a government and ensure free flows of information that is needed for a democracy, the role of a function of democracy is important to interrogate judiciary, executive and legislature

An investigative journalist has to be like a "shoe leather", and standing back to see the big picture of the whole issue, and most importantly, take nothing for granted. Be always sceptical and do not believe in everything you see.

John Pilger, an Australian investigative journalist has a very nice sum-up for it: "It's not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understanding the hidden agendas of the message and myths that surround it."

Interestingly, investigative journalism not only exist in the past as well, but they have done tremendously great deed to the society. It's like a trailblazers that leads us to the modern method of investigative journalism.

Several men throughout the history, like Edward Smith Hall, W.T. Stead, Bob Woodward, and surprisingly, Julian Assange has given breakthroughs towards the society. It is not like they have completely change the course of history, but major adjustments to the society like law change for the Age of Consent are made because of investigative journalism. And they helped uncovered some never-before seen and known facts and truth about the world, like what Wikileaks does to uncover the inner workings of governments.

Nowadays, we tend to do investigative journalism in a much more subtle, localised way. ABC's Australian Story is a prime example of this, the programme leads the audience to the daily lives of a normal person, and give us insights about something we might have overlooked.

However, we aren't always exactly sure about what we investigate. But there's an old journalism saying, "If your mother says she loves you, check it out." That means we have to check all the facts, assume absolutely nothing, and of course, don't trust whistleblowers as they might be misleading and sometimes, crazy even.

So, with all these knowledge we just learnt, how about something practical that we can apply to our jobs? There are several methods that are mentioned in the lecture, on different types of investigation interaction. Some of them are holding at a high moral standards, but some are just the opposite:

• Interview
• Observation
• Analysing documents
• Briefings
• Leaks
• Trespass
• Theft

However, with the advent of technology recently, we seemed to take Wikipedia and Google for granted. Easy, convenient access to information we need. However, this is of course not the case prior to their existence. Again, this goes back to the "not taking anything for granted".

So, what are the threats investigative journalism is facing?

One of them is being Online News. Because there are less money involved in the online news business, that means news companies may not be able to employ a lot of journalists, making less news and having less time, resulting in a lesser investigative journalism.

The other thing we fear is the "Public Relationship" field. PR is all about bonding the public with the clients and in this case, government or corporations. They provide selective facts just to give the public a persuasive image of themselves, putting all truths behind the bars. This is exactly the opposite we journalists would like to see. If PR continues to grow, we would result in a shrinkage of quality journalism. No exposure, dodging questions, massaging "talent", and cleaning up stories leave us no way to intervene and investigate. They are literally our "cause of death" in quality journalism.

But will the future of social media and paywall save us from all these nasty things? Probably, as I've said this several times before in the lecture blog entries, the audience is the most important part because if they prefer crap news and crap investigations, we can't help but falling into the culprit of horrible journalism. But if our audience wanted to be a well-informed, critical, and open-minded bunch of scholars, they can change the whole story.

D.

Poke! Cannibalism; Queen's coming to Australia (17th October 2011)

Yachtman feared eaten by cannibals in South Pacific [Courier Mail]

Hmm, a rather freaky story about a German traveller who probably had been eaten by some tribesmen in South Pacific Nuku Hiva Island.

He set off on 2008 with his girlfriend and traversed the globe looking for paradise - but it took a horrible twist when he reached Nuku Hiva in French Polynesia.The remote tropical island was the last place Mr Ramin was seen before remains, believed to be his, were uncovered. Experts believe he was "hacked to pieces and burned" and eaten by suspected cannibals. Testing will conclude whether the ashes belong to Mr Ramin, Radio New Zealand International reported.

Adventures aside, it's probably a bad idea to hop off an unknown Island because you'll never know what to expect: toxic plants or wild carnivores that's going to eat you. But this time, the cannibal has probably got this man eaten alive. Tourists, be warned!

Queen Elizabeth II to arrive in Australia, Monday in Brisbane [The Australian]

Royal fans and Anglo-Celtic Australians rejoice! Her Majesty The Queen will be visiting Australia, followed by a Brisbane tour on next Monday. Prepare yourself with long-range cameras and join the crowd! But sadly, this low-key visit might be her last. While sharing the joy of her arrival, I, as a foreign student, I looked behind the whole fuss and had a read about her influence to the Australian society.

When the Queen first stepped ashore here in 1954 she was an innocent 26, a radiant, newly crowned titular head of an empire on which the sun seemed destined never to set. Fifteen visits, 57 years and at least one "annus horribilis" later, she has changed - and so has Australia. [...] The Queen herself has cut the ribbons at many of the milestones on Australia's path to real adulthood - from the opening of Canberra's new parliament house, the High Court, the National Gallery and the Sydney Opera House to Brisbane's World Expo and even the stockman's hall of fame.

Looking back, seems like the Queen has brought in so many good things that help Australia grow as a country, as well as an independent entity. Although her impact has considerably lowered as the time gone by because of the majority of Australians, whose generation has not heavily influenced by the Monarchy don't really care about it as much as the older generations, I believe this also signifies a new era where people in Australia are living in a much different society than before.

D.