Wendy Bacon Journalist, activist
MenuJournalists, especially those from News Ltd, and right wing commentators promote the illusion that the Australian Gillard Labor government is threatening to 'regulate' the media in response to rigorous scrutiny of its performance. It has even been suggested that the Australian Labor Party is bullying News Ltd which is by far the most powerful media owner in this country.
Richard Adey from the ABC Radio National's Media Report interviewed me last week about leaving UTS after 21 years.
Yesterday, New Matilda published the second part of my Pacific Solution Timeline. The second part begins on New Year's Day 2004. As champagne corks were popping in Australia, asylum seekers in Nauru detention centre were on a hunger strike. Some were in hospital after vomiting blood and losing consciousness.
Is Nauru the answer to the political impasse over asylum seekers? We must not forget the brutal realities of detention on Nauru and the trauma associated with it. Wendy Bacon continues her timeline.
In June, the Australian parliament debated refugee policy proposal put forward in a private member's bill by Independent member Rob Oakshott which if passed would have meant asylum seekers arriving by boat would be sent to Malaysia or to the tiny Pacific nation of Nauru, which had played a key role in the notorious Howard government's Pacific Solution.
Nauru is back on the agenda. Have we already forgotten the Howard years? Wendy Bacon has delved into the archive to recover a blighted history. Part one of NM's Pacific Solution timeline today.
In early July, Murdoch University academic Anne Pedersen and others wrote a letter about Australian refugee policy. The letter was circulated and along with 200 others, I was glad to support this initiative as I had become increasingly frustrated with the way the political choices in the refugee debate was being portrayed by the media.
This week, Green Left Weekly's Jay Fletcher interviewed me about the big job cuts and changes in the Australian corporate media.
I was asked to submit 400 words to the Sydney Morning Herald as part of regular feature which puts the same question to four people. I was the 'academic",
As if job cuts weren't enough, Rinehart's raid will inhibit the culture of journalistic independence that exists at Fairfax. Wendy Bacon on why journalists must speak out to protect their profession.