Brekkie Crumbs (Notes from the NewsRadio Breakfast team) for Friday November 20th
Glen - presenter …
Issues to watch:
The implications of the US Federal Court ruling that the deadly levee failures which led to the flooding of New Orleans during 2005’s Hurricane Katrina were due to negligence by the US Army Corps of Engineers. The $720,000 awarded to three homeowners and a business sets the stage for up to 100,000 more lawsuits which could end up costing the government billions of dollars.
Ouch ! Just what the Obama Administration needs - another billion dollar bill for a problem they didn’t create.
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Whether the frequent use of Catastrophic fire weather warnings leads to alarm fatigue among the populace in such areas. Beware the boy who cried catastrophe !
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Sarah Palin’s de facto run for the US Presidency as it picks up pace in the hand-picked parts of the American heartland she’s chosen to go to in promoting her new book - Fort Bragg Army base, for example. Will the return to the spotlight see her firm as a realistic candidate for 2012? Or see her stay as a kind of well paid cheerleader-in-chief who chips in from the sidelines between spots on Fox News without having to nut out and explain some coherent policies capable of demonstrating a capacity to lead the free world into the 21st century ?
What could possibly go wrong ?
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And further to our previous discussion of the push to make us all pay for news content online, this report from the AFP news service:
Britain’s Times newspaper plans to charge for digital content from next spring, two weeks after his boss Rupert Murdoch said such plans may be delayed beyond next June.
In a speech to an editors’ conference this week, Times editor James Harding said newspapers had to “re-establish the public expectation that they pay for what is a valuable — sometimes invaluable — part of their daily lives.”
“We are going to take on the culture of free. We have seen it all but destroy the music business. We cannot afford, as a business or a society, for that to happen to news,” he said, according to the speech given on Tuesday.
“So from the spring of next year, we are going to start charging for the digital editions of The Times,” he told a meeting of the Society of Editors in Stansted, northeast of London, according to the text released by the paper.
And he added: “We are still working on the exact pricing model, but I expect we will end up with a price to buy the day’s paper — ie a 24-hour price for The Times online — and a subscription price too.”
Speaking earlier this month, News Corp chairman and chief executive Murdoch said that a plan to begin charging readers of his newspapers online may be delayed.
Murdoch had previously outlined plans to erect pay walls around his vast newspaper empire by the end of News Corp’s current fiscal year in June, but he indicated that was now unlikely.
“We are working all very, very hard at this but I wouldn’t promise that we’re going to meet that date,” he told reporters in a conference call after releasing News Corp.’s first-quarter results on November 4.
The Times editor, addressing a conference on what the newspaper industry will look like in 2020, said: “We have to put the news business on an economically sustainable footing.
“For a democratic society requires a real Fourth Estate, a genuinely independent check on power and a real capacity to investigate the powerful. We are in the fight of our lives. And we are fighting to protect what we really believe in: namely what is at the heart of our journalism.”
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Marius: politics
Anyone who wants to see how good Malcolm Turnbull is should go to youtube and pull up his conversation with the broadcaster Alan Jones of November 2.
If democracy is a pantomime - and it is - Alan Jones is the Liberal Party’s Panto Dame.
Flouncing on to centre stage - he would be nowhere else - Alan Jones fills an auditorium with his shrill tones. Young Liberal chicks are gathered under his skirts as he thumps into the Rudd Government, belabours the Liberal doubters and sets out the one true path ahead.
Jones is brilliant and not un-mad.
He has the degree of certainty available only to shock jocks. And he has genuine standing in Liberal ranks which makes him a feared enemy and daunting interviewer.
Joe Hockey was recently hauled into the headmaster’s office at radio 2GB to be sharply reprimanded by Jones for causing needless grief to Turnbull with a clumsy answer when he was asked if anyone had approached him about being Party leader.
Jones hit him with the same question and rehearsed answers until the chastened Joe Hockey got it right to the headmaster’s satisfaction and he was allowed to leave.
On November 2 it was Malcolm Turnbull’s turn to face the music.
Jones had had enough of this climate change nonsense and he was ready to explain a thing or two to the muddle-headed, stands-for-nothing, aimless Liberal leader.
Being interviewed by Jones in this mode is a bit like being interviewed by a hurricane. The strongest can be blown away, the clearest thinker can lose their way.
Not Malcolm Turnbull.
MT: “….you believe climate change is a hoax
AJ: I do
MT: …and your view is shared by about 15% of Australians…..I believe climate change is a real threat, I believe the world should take effective global action……I believe you are a great admirer of Margaret Thatcher: well, Margaret Thatcher set up the the international panel on climate change, she was the first world leader to argue for strong action…John McCain….your friend John Howard….”
Turnbull remained calm and logical in the face of an increasingly pyrotechnic display by Jones. If there were 15% of Australians in the “climate change is a hoax” camp at the beginning of the chat, there were likely to be no more by the end.
I know Turnbull supporters who are already mourning his departure. His timing’s wrong, they say sadly. The next election is lost, after that he’ll be tossed out with a canteen of cutlery down his spine or simply leave the tent and walk off into the Point Piper non-wilderness.
If they are right, the theatre of politics and the national debate will be the poorer.
