The introduction of new communications technologies have almost always been heralded with almost absurd optimism. When television was introduced, for instance, it was predicted that this new technology would lead to a new golden age of education and information. Instead, audiences almost immediately flocked to light entertainment and, ultimately, Keeping up with the Kardashians. Similar …
O, weep for Academia — he is dead - apologies to Shelley. Two years ago, Camille Paglia stated bluntly that “universities are a wreck right now”. Two separate events in recent weeks have shown that she is right. In the first, academic activists have forcibly purged published papers they didn’t like. In the second, three …
Recently, Australia’s newspapers took the unprecedented collective action of publishing their front pages entirely redacted. This, they say, is a united call for greater media freedom following a sustained attack on the rights of journalists to hold governments to account and report the truth to the Australian public. Are the nation’s newspapers really taking such …
Continue reading Principled Media Stand or Last Gasp of Hypocrisy?
In what should be essential viewing, Steven Crowder memorably outlined just how social media intrinsically leads to echo-chambers. This is just as true of the right as the left. Leading by example, Crowder’s “Change My Mind” videos attempt to break the groupthink by explicitly reaching out and talking only to people who disagree with him. …
Continue reading Why You Should Talk to People You Disagree With
It’s a sad irony of modern history that the free speech movement was birthed and then murdered by the left. In fact, the slow killing of free speech started when the movement had scarcely seen out its first decade. If you could pinpoint the moment the left turned against free speech, I would nominate the …
One of the touted benefits of Twitter is that it allows you to “find out what people REALLY think”. As many people have found out, that’s not always such a positive. In a culture ruled by the iron fist of political correctness, just as it was in the Soviet Union, saying what you really think …
Their voice has been digitally altered for their protection. https://youtu.be/YKiQJLNLIdM Clarification: According to The Financial Times, the extradition bill in question – provisions added to Hong Kong’s previous Fugitive Offender Ordinance – “if approved, would allow extradition of people not only to China but to any jurisdiction in the world with which Hong Kong has …
When Australia passed same-sex marriage legislation, the government has also acceded to calls to protect religious freedoms. Former Howard government minister Philip Ruddock was appointed to chair the Religious Freedom Review. As the review prepares its final report, senior government members have called for a religious freedom bill. Many Christians in Australia are concerned about …
Federal police raiding union offices in 2017. Photo: AAP. There’s not a lot that I agree with Martin Hirst about, but on one thing he is absolutely right: journalism operates on “fault lines”. Fault lines are those ethical conflicts that are part and parcel of the trade of journalism. Sometimes the fault lines are as …
Continue reading Shake the Fault Lines and Watch the Hypocrites Fall Out
Julie Birchill coined the term “cry-bullies” to describe the hideous hybrid of victim and victor that characterises contemporary “progressives”. Fuelled by the poisonous ideology of “intersectionality”, which argues that everyone is merely an accumulation of either privileges or injustices, “social justice warriors” pose as victims (or claim to speak for them) while behaving like the …
Continue reading What the cry-bullies don’t get about free speech
