Tag Archive for 'Melbourne University'

Journalism and political bias in Australia: Melbourne and ANU study

Published
by
Mark
6 months, 2 weeks ago
in Film, TV, Video etc, Media, Politics and Sociology
. 108 Comments

Blogging academics Joshua Gans of Melbourne University and Andrew Leigh of ANU have conducted a study into ‘media slant’ in Australian political coverage:

Australian journalists are close to the centre of the political spectrum, but their editors are more likely to take a party line, according to new research from The Australian National University.

The study, conducted by ANU economist Professor Andrew Leigh from the Research School of Social Sciences and Melbourne Business School economist Professor Joshua Gans, used a number of different approaches to measure ‘media slant’ in newspapers, radio and television.

Professors Leigh and Gans used three approaches to test for media slant; reviewing media mentions of 100 public intellectuals, rating election stories and rating newspaper headlines. The researchers found that although most media outlets showed no significant slant in reporting, there were some notable exceptions.

“In terms of content, Australian journalists seem to be a centrist bunch”, said Professor Leigh. “Using the first approach, only one out of 27 news outlets had a significant slant. This is ABC Television News, which had a significant slant towards the Coalition in the period 1999-2007. All other outlets (including six ABC radio stations) were essentially centrist.

I can’t say that the findings about the pro-Coalition bias of the ABC television news are greatly surprising to me, though they seem to have ruffled some right wing feathers.

The full paper can be accessed here.

Guest post by Tim Hollo: So what just happened with the National Academy of Music?

Published
by
Guest Poster
1 year, 3 months ago
in Music and Policy
. 57 Comments

[Cross-posted at GreensBlog]

So what just happened with the National Academy of Music?

Tim Hollo – Advisor to Australian Greens Senator Christine Milne

Yesterday, after a whirlwind six week campaign, Melbourne Uni and the National Academy of Music put out a statement the upshot of which is that the full 2009 program that the Academy had planned to run will now be run, with Brett Dean as Artistic Director, staying in its existing location, key staff remaining the same, and places to be offered to existing students. A new independent board will be appointed with a view to determining the Academy’s long-term programming.

Sounds an awful lot like a complete reversal of Peter Garrett’s decision to close the Academy on October 22. So how come the Minister’s spokesperson told AAP last night that

The Greens have got this entirely wrong… The government’s objectives have always been the continuation of elite classical music training into 2009 and beyond but with substantial changes to the way that is governed and administered, including new management and board. The intention was never that ANAM would close, but rather that the government would redirect its $2.5 million commitment to a new organisation from 2009. That will still happen.

It’s worth going through this story step by step to highlight the slow-motion backflip for what it is. Apologies for length, but I think it’s worth setting out the full story.

Continue reading ‘Guest post by Tim Hollo: So what just happened with the National Academy of Music?’

Peter Garrett and the ANAM defunding debacle

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 3 months ago
in Culture, Education, Government, Music and Policy
. 56 Comments

There’s been a bit of discussion about Arts Minister Peter Garrett’s defunding of the Australian National Academy of Music on another thread, so I think it probably warrants a post of its own.

Long time observers of arts and cultural policy in Australia won’t be surprised at various aspects of the debacle that constitutes the ANAM defunding. Several trends – all negative – are operating, and in effect what we have is bad policy by inertia, exacerbated by weak Ministerial decision making.

There’s the tension between excellence and equity, and Garrett arguably tried to defend his decision to close ANAM by a bit of dog whistling in his choice of words – “elite musical training”. Of course, given that little is known about what Melbourne University will actually offer through the Australian Institute of Music Performance, or what qualifications will be required of potential students, there’s not much to explicitly defend here, even if one were to accept the implicit premise. In his press conference, Garrett embarrassingly could give little or no information about the proposed replacement for ANAM, which is ironic given that ANAM’s supposed sin was one of ommission in reporting and planning. That takes us to the second default policy setting which has influenced this decision – the endless bureaucratic hurdles any institution has to jump in order to receive and retain federal funding. To put it in a nutshell, ANAM’s failure to meet the requirements set by the funding body appears to be more a matter of poor communication than anything else. What we have here is a case of bureaucrats mercilessly enforcing the letter of the law and ignoring the spirit – the decision actually acts to frustrate the aims of the policy.

Those of us whose hopes for a reinvigorated cultural policy from Labor have already proved to be in vain won’t be surprised by yet another disappointment. Continue reading ‘Peter Garrett and the ANAM defunding debacle’