As I’ve indicated earlier in this thread, I am conflicted between satisfaction over the AVN getting whacked for its bad behavior and the free speech implications of this action (it’s not only the name change requirement - it is now to my understanding forbidden for state-owned media in Australia to interview AVN spokesmen for news stories. Never mind the obvious (that they’re a terrible source for information on vaccination and reporters should know better than to quote them) - but it’s now a sanctionable offense to do so.
It is apparently distressing to our non-American posters that in comparison to most other countries we have a free marketplace of ideas, some of which are good and others of which are bad or even atrocious to varying degrees. I can understand the attitude that the public must be protected from ideas which are false and presented in a misleading manner. When faced with propaganda from various sources I prefer informed debate and public pressure on news outlets to conduct reporting in a responsible manner (as well as our embarrassing the hell out of dingbats in forums such as these), as compared to putting Ministries of Information in charge of what we can see and hear (and what lobbying groups are allowed to call themselves).
*a recent lamentable example of which is subjecting newspapers in the U.K. to restrictions under a “royal charter” (something that would never remotely be tolerated in the U.S., with its "babble about “Freedom of Speech”).
That’s not an example of a “Ministry of Information”. It’s a wholly voluntary assention to public regulation in exchange for certain protections in defamation actions. Newspapers are free to remain unchartered and go on doing business pretty much as they have in the past; in fact, most apparently will.
As I understand it, the AVN can go on doing whatever it likes with its name. It just can’t do it under the corporate form in New South Wales.
…and yet when was the last time you heard the word fuck on network TV?
Cite?
What you have written is condescending dribbling nonsense. No one in this thread is distressed at all. Australia doesn’t have a Ministry of Information: it has nothing to rival the propaganda put out by the Bush Administration during The War Against Terror. There was no proper “informed debate” after 9/11 in the United States. Being at the eye of the storm you may have thought that there was: but from the outside we could see that there was huge pressure on news outlets to “report responsibly” and what that actually meant was that your news media parrotted government propaganda. There was dissent: but that was drowned out by the wave of “rah rah” handwaving. Powell’s presentation to the United Nations was literally “empty.” The strongest bit of evidence he presented was a guy talking about a modified truck and that the truck was from the al-Kindi company. Yet how many US media outlets made enquiries into the al-Kindi company? How many of Powell’s other claims were investigated by the media? “The marketplace of ideas” failed here. Thousands of people died. “The truth” did not simply emerge out of the competition of ideas.
You continue to act as if the United States is a “bastion of free speech in an unfree world.” But if you take you blinkered glasses off you would see that you guys are no better or no worse than practically everyone else in the Western world.
The efforts at tu quoque do not impress. And they are irrelevant. The claim that our-media-criticize-our-government-more-than-your media-criticize-yours has nothing to do with government restrictions on reporting, and arguably nothing to do with reality - but rather is a subjective impression based on ideological leanings.
…why are you making claims you choose not to defend? The marketplace of ideas clearly failed during TWAT. The truth did not reveal itself because it was drowned out by propaganda.
Your continuing efforts to portray this issue as a freedom of speech issue do not impress. Freedom of speech in Australia has not been curtailed by this issue.
Cite?
You bought up the charter. Are the networks buckling under the pressure of the FCC lamentable?
“The controversial Australian Vaccination Network is now effectively blacklisted as a media source after the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) reprimanded a regional broadcaster for using statements from AVN founder Meryl Dorey.”
So it’s not just public TV but all TV outlets that have been served notice that citing the AVN will get them in trouble with the government. My mistake.
To repeat, TV news editors should have enough common sense to not regurgitate AVN nonsense. But that should be their decision, not a government agency’s.
I regret that when reporting doesn’t comport with your views it has “failed”.
As for “TWAT” - how very clever.
You mean “driveling” not “dribbling”. A common error. Please take this as an effort to be helpful, not condescending.
…to be clear here, your cite is the founder of the AVN?
I’m sure you can do better than that. In fact you can find better in your linked cite. But Meryl’s claim is incorrect, and so is yours.
Why don’t you look up the actual decision and let us know what actually happened before you leap to conclusions?
Here is the decision: (quoted from an obviously biased blog)
No, the AVN is not effectively black listed. No, it is not forbidden for state-owned media in Australia to interview AVN spokesmen for news stories.
TWAT was an invention by dopers. I can’t claim it. Dribbling may not work for you, but it works for me. You claim that non-American dopers are distressed that the United States has a “marketplace of ideas.” Not only is this an inaccurate characterization of the posts in this thread (there isn’t a single distressed poster in these threads) it is also assumes that the “marketplace of ideas” works in the real world, and that the United States is an example of this.
This really needs to be emphasised. Most of the Western, Anglophone democracies are all pretty much equally free when it comes to speech from a practical standpoint, as viewed by normal reasonable people (ie the vast majority of the population) who don’t want to seriously advocate genocide or dangerous nonsense like that.
The founder of the AVN is nowhere quoted in that story or indicated to be the source.
And it should be obvious that if quoting Dorey in a news story lands you in hot water with the government, TV news departments are going to avoid doing so.
…your cite shows you were wrong. Quoting Dorey wasn’t want landed the TV station in hot water. The AVN is not effectively black listed. No, it is not forbidden for state-owned media in Australia to interview AVN spokesmen for news stories. There are no posters in this thread who are distressed due to the marketplace of ideas. Advocacy groups can have misleading names if they don’t want the protections of Association status. And free speech is alive and well in Australia.
There is no cause for alarm. We are not being repressed.
Keep repeating that to yourself. It must be soothing. :dubious:
It remains bizarre that anyone would be perfectly comfortable with the idea of a government agency looking over reporters’ shoulders to make sure their stories are “balanced”, but is aghast at the idea that such an agency prohibits “fuck” from being said in network entertainment shows. Your priorities are seriously out of whack.
Re vaccination - we just had an instance here where a prominent TV personality (Katie Couric) did a show on alleged dangers of the Gardasil anti-HPV vaccine. It was widely felt that she went way overboard in highlighting anecdotal reports of harm and presenting antivax views, and she took a pummeling in medical circles and the blogosphere. As a result, she published an apology on HuffPo (thought not yet to my knowledge on TV). No bureaucrats had to get involved to punish her or the network. The system worked.
If any government agency decided to launch an investigation and take action against a station/network in a case like this in the U.S., one of the first groups to get into the fray would be the American Civil Liberties Union. The A.C.L.U. has a long history of defending free speech rights, even for highly unpopular groups and individuals. I sometimes strongly disagree with their advocacy, but I’m glad they’re on the job.
Am I missing something, or is there a distinct lack of any organization like this in the U.K. and Australia stepping up when free speech challenges occur?
As we all know, network TV is king and hardly anyone is online, reading HuffPo or the myriad sites that quote or link to it. Right.
The 1960s ended awhile ago.
And citing “repression” is kind of silly. If you have overbearing government deciding what should or shouldn’t get into the news, even in a limited way, the media is that much less free. And by extension (if you live in such a country), you’re a little less free too.
Be serious. If she wanted the people who saw her piece to see her retraction, she’d have broadcasted it. HuffPo as a whole maxes out at 10 million unique views a day. You think even 10% of those people read the Couric article?
The revival of this trhead gives me a chance to highlight the Farm Animal Welfare Coalition, or as Gene Weingarten calls it the “Torturers and Murderers of Animals Coalition”. I’m not opposed to eating meat but this group takes the cake as far as misleading name.
Back to the OP, I think trying to tie down groups with misleading names is a futile effort as it is too hard to pin down what is or is not a misleading name. A better way to attack anti-vaxers should we decide to do so would be to have laws recognizing the consequences of disseminating harmfully misleading medical information. If a parents of children who got whooping cough could sue the site that gave them the anti-vax information I think they would dry up pretty quick.
…the truth is soothing. There is no cause for alarm. The only person alarmed is some random dude on a message board.
Who is aghast at the idea an agency prohibits fuck from being said in network entertainment shows? It certainly wasn’t me. Fuck is a regular word on the TV over here. If you think I’m aghast I suggest you read the thread again. I’m not aghast. You can’t complain against one form of government “censorship” and not another.
In the middle of a health scare a television station broadcast falsehoods that could get people killed. I am as happy for the government to get involved in a case like this as I am for them to stop someone advocating drinking cyanide because they claim it leads to a healthier life.
Calling what you described a “system” is an insult to systems. There is nothing systematic about what you describe at all.
If several organizations worked together to develop a voluntary code that they all agreed to follow, then they gave that code to a government agency and asked them to enforce it for them, and then one day one of those organizations breached the code and were sanctioned by the government agency, this would be a freedom of speech issue that the ACLU would get involved in?
You miss the point that the US are simply weird about lots of things. A group of men a few hundred years ago drafted a document that is basically worshipped by your populace. You guys invade countries like Iraq and Afghanistan and make them come up with their own constitutions and then get puzzled when those constitutions aren’t treated with the same reverence.
Start a copyright debate here on the dope and invariably we get side tracked into a discussion on the intent of the “founding fathers.” And the laws around guns are dictated by an amendment to your governing document written in 1791. And the way you guys think about freedom of speech is dictated by the first amendment again written over two hundred years ago.
The rest of the world doesn’t have your baggage. We think of “freedom of speech” in a very different, but not incorrect way. You won’t find many Australians or New Zealanders who would see this as a freedom of speech issue: they see it as an issue of public health. The AVN still has the right to say what they want to say and that ability has not been taken away. The code that was breached by WIN TV was a code developed by the television stations themselves, who then registered the code with the AMCA to act as an independent monitor. This isn’t “Big Brother Government.”
This is a culture clash: you are viewing this through a US eye and failing to see the nuance. You are applying your own hierarchy of values onto that of another country and are puzzled as to why the people who either live in that country or just next door fail to see your concerns. If you stop trying to see things from a US perspective and simply started listening: you might start to understand what we are saying.
Funny, I hear the same things about Saudi Arabia. How else should I analyze something except through my own eyes and with my own values?
I’m not trying to dictate how Australia runs their business, but I can speak my opinion that I believe it is becoming less and less free as a country. But hey, the people who live there can vote how they want. Unless they don’t feel like voting at all, I guess…
The fact is, if organizations in Oz are “advocating” that people buy cheeseburgers or knicknacks or sneakers, nobody gives a shit how misleading or downright fraudulent their marketing message is. But as soon as it gets political, it’s “ooh, we have to save the dolts from these dangerous misleading ideas”. And now journalists are forbidden (by law??) from interviewing or otherwise reporting on this organization? It’s censorship. Which fits right in line with how they’re treating the internet.
Look, you can do what you want with your country (unless, I suppose, you’re in the minority on an issue). You don’t need to look to me for validation. But while I still have the freedom of vocalizing my disapproval (this “less free” trend is by no means limited to Australia), I’ll do so. I just won’t be visiting your country any time soon.
Banquet Bear, as someone who previously said “(Australia) has nothing to rival the propaganda put out by the Bush Administration during The War Against Terror” - do you really believe there would have been more more and better criticism of the Bush Administration by the media here, if we’d had an Australian-style government agency in place ready to berate news organizations that it felt weren’t doing “balanced” reporting?
Are you convinced that your own media (with their “voluntary” acceptance of government oversight) don’t feel the least pressure to stay in the government’s good graces when they report on political matters?
