Tag Archive for 'Tony Jones'

Affirmative action needed

Published
by
Phil
1 month, 2 weeks ago
in Film, TV, Video etc and Media
. 47 Comments

Just a follow up to a previous post.

It appears that no matter what the ABC does it just can’t find enough sympathetic Coalition voters to balance a Q&A studio audience and keep Senator Abetz happy.

Mr Scott said the ABC pursued “a number of different strategies” to bring together a more diverse audience, including contacting law and accounting firms, the Australian Retailers Association, the Sydney Chamber of Commerce, the Australian Christian Lobby, the Australian Family Association, Young Liberal groups and every state Liberal MP within one hour’s drive of the ABC’s Sydney studios.

“We have tried a number of different things to try and ensure that we have all the viewpoints represented in the audience and I think we have,” he said.

“I understand that Liberal MPs were approached asking whether in fact they were aware of people who might like to come and join our audience.”

Of course he forgot to memo the ABC board and I’m surprised the Young Liberals couldn’t find a bus load of guys like this charming young chap within an hours drive of the ABC studios?

Or maybe it’s just that they are all too busy charting the complicated metrics of bias in our cultural institutions and wasting everyone’s time making Senate submissions to attend.

Unlocking the metaphor of frozen interbank lending

Published
by
dk.au
1 month, 3 weeks ago
in Markets, Sociology and Technology
. 13 Comments

Tony Jones asked Will Hutton last night whether the interbank credit market was “run by cowboys or run by reputable people?” But between these two moral poles is enormous material and cultural complexity:

If a bank wants to borrow money, a broker needs quickly to find someone prepared to lend at an attractive rate; if a bank wants to lend, he – it’s a predominantly male profession – needs to find a borrower ready to pay a good rate. So a broker needs continuously to know who wants to borrow, who is prepared to lend, and on what terms. As one of them said to me, a broker might ‘speak to his big clients … have conversations with them maybe twenty-five times a day, which is twenty-five times as often as they speak to their wives’.
A broker needs to pass information to his clients as well as to receive it: that’s a major part of what they want from him, and a good reason to use the voicebox rather than the screen.

Continue reading ‘Unlocking the metaphor of frozen interbank lending’

The culture wars on tv… live!

Published
by
Kim
2 months ago
in Culture, Media and Politics
. 25 Comments

Tom Switzer, former op/editor of the Government Gazette and the Opposition Organ and subsaquently Nelson staffer is a panelist on tonight’s final instalment of the ABC’s Q&A. Switzer famously proclaimed that the right was now winning the Culture Wars. Let’s see if culture war logic stands up to questioning!

Ps: Media tart Peter Costello is also on, in close proximity to David Marr. Perhaps sales of teh book are disappointing? Can he revive them by starting another round of leadership rumours?

Q&A plug: Marcus Westbury and Germaine Greer

Published
by
Mark
3 months, 3 weeks ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, Feminism, Film, TV, Video etc, Indigenous, Media, Policy and Race
. 46 Comments

Occasional guest poster at LP, Marcus Westbury, is on Q&A tonight - ABC1 at 9.30pm. Let’s hope he can get a word in between the pompous comedy stylings of Greg Sheridan, and the litterateur/Macquarie Bank shill Bob Carr.

Germaine Greer will also be a guest. Greer has just released a new essay in book form - On Rage, which I’m very much looking forward to reading. I was interested to see her obvious frustration last night in a Lateline interview with Leigh Sales at the difficulty of articulating any position that goes beyond tired dichotomies on Indigenous Policy and the NT intervention (including those which claim to transcend tired dichotomies). Or perhaps it would be better to say the inability to hear any heterodox position. I suspect a lot of the rage directed at Greer herself comes from an inability to comprehend or recognise any thought that doesn’t follow the predictable grooves of a “debate”, and indeed any call for reflection on issues and stories a lot of us would rather not face. So it’ll be interesting to watch her in this format too.

Emma Foster: In memoriam

Published
by
Kim
4 months, 3 weeks ago
in Authoritarianism, Crime, Disasters, Ethics, Law, Media, Melbourne, Parenting, Politics, Religion and Sydney
. 56 Comments

I hope that Anthony Foster and his family, who intend to confront Pope Benedict XVI and Cardinal George Pell in Sydney this week over the Catholic Church’s treatment of their late daughter, Emma Foster, who took her own life in January and her sister Katie, both of whom were raped as primary school children by Father Kevin O’Donnell, aren’t dismissed as “Catholic bashing” and raining on the World Youth Day parade or subjected to victim blaming as Anthony Jones was. Foster told the tragic tale of his daughters’ abuse and how it marked their lives horrendously for the worse, and probably brought Emma’s life to a close, on Lateline tonight.

Continue reading ‘Emma Foster: In memoriam’