The Victorian Government has awarded a fiction writer, Richard Flanagan, their highest award for outstanding journalism.
The judges awarded the John Curtin Prize for Journalism to Richard Flanagan for an article on “the tragedy” of Tasmania’s forests, a piece that was described by Australia’s Minister for Forests, Eric Abetz, in June last year as including 70 deliberate or inexcusable errors of fact, selective citing of fact, or twisting of facts.
The award comes just a week after Guardian journalist Nick Davies described journalism as increasingly about falsehood, distortion and propaganda at the Melbourne Writers Festival. Mr Davies has written a book on the trajedy entitled Flat Earth News.
My advice, keep reading blogs!
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Out of Control: The Tragedy of Tasmania’s Forests
Richard Flanagan, Published in The Monthly, May 2007, No. 23
http://www.themonthly.com.au/tm/?q=node/512
Hat tip to Alan Ashbarry
http://www.tasmaniapulpmill.info/home
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Unlike a journalist, a fiction writer drafting an essay, does not need to comply with the Code of ethics published by the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance.
Therefore to receive this award the judges should have ensured that the winner complied with the MEAA code in particular:
Report and interpret honestly, striving for accuracy, fairness and disclosure of all essential facts.
Do not suppress relevant available facts, or give distorting emphasis. Do your utmost to give a fair
opportunity for reply.
Do not allow personal interest, or any belief, commitment, payment, gift or benefit, to undermine
your accuracy, fairness or independence.
Disclose conflicts of interest that affect, or could be seen to affect, the accuracy, fairness or
independence of your journalism. Do not improperly use a journalistic position for personal gain.
Do not plagiarise. (see item 14 ABC ICRP report at http://www.nafi.com.au/files/library/ICRP%20finding%20against%204C.doc (note ICRP decisions are normally published on the ABC reports web site http://www.abc.net.au/corp/pubs/reportsindex.htm however this one is not, and the link is to a version that may only have been a draft)
Perhaps the taxpayers of Victoria should demand that Flanagean gives back his award for this PR spin.
“My advice, keep reading blogs!”
But you say you don’t even believe a lot of what is said here, you just put it up for some reason I don’t understand.
“But you say you don’t even believe a lot of what is said here, you just put it up for some reason I don’t understand.”
Hmmm and yet SJT you spend your life on this blog….
This topic reminds me a bit of Nobel Prize winner Al Gore who beat Irena Sendler for the Nobel Prize.
Irena Sendler saved 2,500 Jewish children from certain death during WW2.
Blogs are a very poor substitute for literature…
It seems that the Monthly is a hot house of literature, as this is its third win since the award was established in 2005.
A bit more about what the award is meant to be about. This from the 2005 media release that established the prize:
AUSTRALIA’S RICHEST JOURNALISM PRIZE TO HONOUR CURTIN
The Premier, Steve Bracks, today announced the establishment of Australia’s richest single award for journalism in honour of John Curtin – Australia’s great wartime leader.
The national award, which includes $15,000 in prize money, will recognise a feature in any medium that, through excellence in writing and reporting, helps define Australia’s place in the world.
“The John Curtin Prize for Journalism is a fitting tribute to a visionary leader – a Victorian who started his career as a copyboy at The Age and went on to become one of our greatest Prime Ministers,” Mr Bracks said.
“John Curtin is best known for the great leadership he showed as Australia’s Prime Minister during the darkest days of World War 2.
“But he was also a campaigning journalist who served as President of the Australian Journalists’ Association.
“The John Curtin Prize for Journalism will commemorate this great Australian’s work as a journalist and an international statesman.
“It will also foster the kind of groundbreaking reporting and writing that can define where our nation comes from – and where it’s going.”
The John Curtin Prize for Journalism includes features in the following forms: print or electronic newspaper or journal, or broadcast as a television or radio item.
NT
Blogs are a very poor substitute for literature…
Fact is not literature – but if that is how you view life, then that is unfortunate.
It does identify you as a Lyellian however.
Al Gore deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for at least two reasons.
The first, and most salient, is that it’s *not* a science prize.
The second, and most important, is that the Prize is handed down by a group which politically favors the notion of a central world government as a means to peace.
Al Gore has done more to support the notion of a central world government, via control of energy, than any man in history.
What has this to do with handing a journalism prize to a writer of fiction? It’s obvious. Flanagan has done political favors for anti-forestry people, and he’s getting kudos in return. See
http://tasmaniapulpmill.info/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/Flanagan_Article_Award.244203430.pdf
“Al Gore has done more to support the notion of a central world government”
Now where’s my tinfoil cap …
Actually I think Jen should be nominated for the the Booker. Her works of fiction on AGW are startling in their bold rejection of the orthodoxy and reveal an author who is not afraid to stretch the limits of credibilty and sucessfully asks her audience to suspend disbelief. Is there a special category for works of magic fiction? Maybe the Oz could help out by sponsoring a new prize.
BTW it’s good to see the pulp mill forging ahead isn’t it? Another win for all of us who “know” the “real” story of forestry in Tasmania. Although it might be nearly time to dump those Gunns shares Jen, Louis and co …
John Curtin should be turning in his grave at this abuse of his name and the high standards that he set himself both as a journalist and political leader.
John Curtin before becoming Prime Minister was the head of the Australian Journalists Association, which is now part of the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance that continues to promote ethical principles of journalism by advocating that respect for truth and the public’s right to information, are fundamental principles of journalism.
Surely the criteria for any award for excellence in journalism should be the principles set by the union in their code of ethics. The Flanagan article fails miserably, and the judges must be questioned on their failure to check the error riddled and twisted “facts”.
The MEAA should be demanding that the Victorian Premier act to protect the memory and achievements of this icon of the ALP, or is this part of the grubby preference deals that the ALP has done in recent years with the greens?
NT:
“Blogs are a very poor substitute for literature…”
You sure like to post frequently in them.
He he …..
I know Sunset. I have a mental problem 🙂
Hey Jennifers was on that Global Warming online debate on News.com today. Was that supposed to be Socratic Irony?
I wondered if others caught this interesting item on ABC 666 “Rural Report with Sarina Locke speaking to Frances Seymour, Director General for Forestry Research explaining why tropical forests are the new focus of global warming”.
There is bound to be more comments about our adaptation to climate change in agriculture and forestry with carbon trading in mind after this conference
http://www.crawfordfund.org/events/conference08.htm
Gavin, Anyone concerned about greenhouse gas emissions should be appalled at the green apologists continually writing to destroy the reputation of Tasmania’s forest Management.
Tasmania is one of three cool temperate western maritime climates in the southern hemisphere and thus is ideal for growing forests. But like the rest of the developed world has been subject to Deforestation, so much so that on December 5, the State Forests Act passed to halt the wholesale clearing of forest and the new law led to the appointment of G. S. Perrin as the first Conservator of Forests.
Like most of the developed world this was over 130 years ago in 1885. Today in modern Tasmania, official figures published by the Commonwealth show that there has been no deforestation since 1996.
According to the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) deforestation is occurring in the tropical regions and as a result the World Resource Institute estimate 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions is occurring due deforestation, see map and chart at http://www.tasmaniapulpmill.info/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/Greenhouse_tas.119212413.pdf
Sustainable forest management, reforestation and afforestation is either neutral or positive in reducing emissions, so misinformation such as the Flanagan article that seeks to close down sustainable forestry and devalue temperate forests is likely to increase emissions.
So too are attempts by the green political movement in Australian to hijack the United Nation’s REDD program, such as the recent ANU/Wilderness Society manifesto. REDD or Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation in developing countries aims to introduce sustainable forestry into these tropical areas.
The IPCC has identified that “In the long term, a sustainable forest management strategy aimed at maintaining or increasing forest carbon stocks, while producing an annual sustained yield of timber, fibre or energy from the forest, will generate the largest sustained mitigation benefit”
Cinders; it seems since Gunn’s Pulp Mill project dropped out of the limelight, neither you nor I can crank up the Tasmanian forestry debate hey
Cinders,
As you well know, the Amazon has been identified as the “lungs of the planet.”
That’s what the gang-greens call the Amazon, but what they don’t tell you is how accurate that depiction is.
Hardly none of the Amazon is used for timber, which means the rotting vegetation (via microbes) inhales O2 and exhales CO2 in vast quantities.
Trees have also been found to contribute significantly to urban smog.
What’s more, it used to be that the Amazon was home to some significant urban landscapes. See
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/08/080828-amazon-cities.html
Someday, someone will discover that this planet is a pretty durable thing, and even discover that life thrives quite a bit here.
I wonder who will make that discovery? And will they get a Nobel for discovering this odd fact?
Schiller Thurkettle, thanks for the link to the Amazon story on the recent finding that suggests that vast swathes of “pristine” rain forest may actually have been sophisticated urban landscapes prior to the arrival of European colonists.
This is a similar story to the pristine ancient ‘Tarkine’ rainforests in the North Western of Tasmania. The Australian Heritage Commission used a transliteration and bastardisation of the name of the family group that lived near an area on the coast now known as Sandy Cape to name this ‘wilderness’.
This group and other groups of the North West tribe each year journeyed inland and east of Sandy Cape to an area south of the modern city of Burnie to red ochre mines for ceremony.
They burnt the vegetation as they went, so as on their return walking and hunting was easy as the new green pick attracted the food animals.
It was not until the removal of this tribe by European settlers in the 1830/40s that the practice stopped and the rainforest was re-established. The Federal Government has allocated a million dollars for a bush walk in this area at the urging of the WWF and local environmental pressure groups, perhaps the walk could follow the original aboriginal ‘road’ that may have been used for tens of thousands of years.
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