Media

As soon as news filtered through that a “Muslim riot” was taking place in Sydney on September 15, it was clear a racist backlash was going to occur. It was also clear on what grounds the backlash would take place.

Independent newspaper Green Left Weekly today slammed attempts by Liberal Senator Brett Mason in the Senate to inflame anti-Islam sentiment and intimidate a media outlet that opposes this.

The decision by WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange to seek asylum in Ecuador’s London Embassy triggered an international media campaign that highlighted the “hypocrisy” of his decision to choose a country condemned for supposed attacks on press freedom.

The compelling nature of the second series of SBS TV's Go Back Where You Came From highlights, by contrast, the atrocious nature of 99% of Australia's mainstream media. The myth-busting and heart-wrenching show, where six prominent Australians take a refugee's journey in reverse, reveals how media could challenge injustice — if it were not dedicated to a diet of celebrity, unreality TV, repeating falsehoods, and endless cooking shows. Go Back smashes anti-refugee lies that have been promoted by Liberal and Labor, and stoked by corporate media.

Ecuador's granting of asylum to WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange has thrown a spotlight on the country's media policy. In 2008, Ecuadorians voted overwhelmingly for a new constitution.

Author and filmmaker John Pilger sent the speech below to be read out at an August 19 protest outside the Ecuadorian embassy in London to defend Julian Assange. * * * I have known Julian since he came to London and gave the world vital information about Afghanistan and Iraq, which governments had suppressed and denied.

"Why is it that an Australian, facing prosecution from a European country, decides to appeal for asylum to a South American republic?" Tariq Ali posed and eloquently answered this important question when he spoke outside the Embassy of Ecuador in London on August 19, 2012.

Venezuela and the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (ALBA) have backed Ecuador against “threats” from Britain, after Ecuador granted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange diplomatic asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London on August 16. ALBA is an anti-imperialist bloc of eight nations that includes Ecuador, Venezuela, Cuba and Bolivia. Swedish authorities want to extradite Assange from Britain to investigate allegations against him of sexual assault.

NASA scientist James Hansen was in an August 3 blunt about the future Washington Post  article: “When I testified before the Senate in the hot summer of 1988, I warned of the kind of future that climate change would bring to us and our planet.

Opposition leader Tony Abbott says he wants to open a “new debate about freedom of speech”. But Abbott is most interested in defending “free speech” for Australia’s rich and powerful at the expense of oppressed and marginalised groups.

As a child, David Cromwell got an invaluable insight into the way the corporate media skews the news. Scattered around his family's Scottish home were "mainstream" newspapers like the Daily Record and Glasgow Herald.