Lone Wolf Films

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tom van Laer, Reader (Associate Professor) of Marketing, City, University of London

Every holiday season, you have new worlds at your fingertips. Reading books, listening to podcasts, and watching films and TV shows can help you break away from the frenzy of everyday life, and journey into other possible worlds.

As with any kind of travel, the journey affects you. The degree to which you become engaged with a story is known as narrative transportation. This effect causes feelings and thoughts consistent with the narrative world. The more a story transports you, the more likely you are persuaded to adopt the beliefs espoused within it.

Deeper changes occur too. Previous research shows that changes of attitudes and intentions are part of the narrative transportation effect. My colleagues Stephanie Feiereisen, Luca Visconti and I were interested in what factors predict a greater narrative transportation effect, so we used meta-analysis to measure the power of stories to both engage and change people.

Read more: How telling the right stories can make people act on climate change

Factors that increase narrative transportation

Meta-analyses aggregate the results of a large number of published empirical studies, which can greatly increase confidence in a phenomenon. No meta-analysis had been performed on narrative transportation for five years, so we investigated all the published research since.

We averaged the results of 64 different papers, reporting 138 separate effects, based on results from more than 20,000 participants.

We discovered that three factors reliably influence the narrative transportation effect: whether a story is commercial or noncommercial, whether it is user-generated or created by professionals, and whether there are other people present while you are engaging with the story.

Profit motive

A transporting story is 16% more likely to affect you if it has commercial profit, rather than an artistic or other value, as its primary aim.

Many films and TV series are primarily made for commercial purposes with the intention of making a profit. If you are not aware of this profit motive, the effect of narrative transportation is strengthened. As a result, you will be inclined to buy products – and even animals – featured in films and TV series.

For example, 101 Dalmatians made families want spotty dogs. Likewise, Finding Nemo led to a rapid growth in the trade of clownfish as pets – which, in turn, contributed to the decline of wild populations.

Read more: How the films you’ve seen influence your choice of dog

Self-publishing

A transporting story is 11% more likely to change you if it is made publicly available, reflects a certain amount of creative effort, and is created outside of professional routines and practices.

Many books and podcasts are user-generated, meaning they are self-published at their authors’ own expense. A creator’s emotional participation in the story strengthens the narrative transportation effect.

Take Andy Weir’s book The Martian. In 2011, after a long search for a professional agent, he gave up on big publishing. Instead, he posted the book to Amazon. It was soon climbing the charts and he attracted a dedicated, worldwide following. It was later made into a feature film starring Matt Damon, that was hailed for its attention to scientific detail.

Other examples of this kind of creator influence include teenagers like Charlotte D’Alessio, who became an overnight Instagram fashion sensation. Stand-up comedians at open mic nights are further examples of nonprofessional creators who are telling impactful stories.

Whether you’re alone

A transporting story is 10% less likely to influence you if you are with others, rather than alone, when you are consuming it.

Social groups weaken the narrative transportation effect. As a result, you are less likely to be persuaded if you share the experience with family or groups of friends.

Live-action role playing games are a case in point. These increasingly popular fan happenings encourage you to experience beloved films and TV series together with others. This collective form of narrative consumption protects you somewhat against the influence of a story.

Read more: Post-truth politics and the US election: why the narrative trumps the facts

The more you are transported by a narrative, the more likely that your beliefs, attitudes and intentions will converge with those of the story. This is neither good nor bad. Yet being aware of this effect – and the factors that increase it – could help you think critically about your desire to get a new pet after watching a movie.

When vacations return there is only one place many people want to be: ensconced in a story. Books, podcasts, films and TV series are prepackaged journeys. Just make sure that you steel yourself for what lies within.

– ref. Hooked on a book, podcast or TV show? Here’s how the story changes you – http://theconversation.com/hooked-on-a-book-podcast-or-tv-show-heres-how-the-story-changes-you-106062

MIL OSI – Source: Evening Report Arts and Media

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alice Gorman, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology and Space Studies, Flinders University

This is an article from Curious Kids, a series for children. You can send your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au. You might also like the podcast Imagine This, a co-production between ABC KIDS listen and The Conversation, based on Curious Kids.

Why does the world store nuclear waste and just not shoot it into the Sun or deep space? – Jason, age 16, Mackay, Queensland.

Hi Jason. Thanks for the question. I research space junk, so I have also spent some time thinking about what we blast into space and where it ends up.

It would be nice to send dangerous nuclear waste far away from Earth where it won’t cause any harm. However, it’s not as simple as it sounds.

Read more: Curious Kids: How does the Moon, being so far away, affect the tides on Earth?

What is nuclear waste?

Nuclear waste is what’s left over after nuclear fuel has been used in a reactor. Many countries across the world use nuclear reactors to make electricity for homes and industries.

The energy is made by fission, which is when an atom breaks apart. The problem is that some of the waste – called high-level waste – is very radioactive. It releases particles that can make people, animals and plants sick. It also lasts for thousands of years.

High-level waste is only 3% of all the nuclear waste produced. A lot of it is recycled, which reduces its radioactivity. This leaves the problem of what to do with the rest.

At the moment, high-level waste is stored on Earth. Usually it is isolated in water, glass or concrete to prevent the particles escaping. The containers are buried, but they have to be somewhere where earthquakes don’t happen, and terrorists can’t dig them up.

We wouldn’t have to worry about this if we could send the waste to the Sun, where it will disintegrate. But there are a few reasons we don’t do this.

It’s not as easy as you might think

One is that this is very, very expensive. When the Parker Solar Probe was sent to take measurements of the Sun this year, it cost US$1.5 billion just for a spacecraft the size of a small car to get that far.

It seems simple to shoot an object towards something as big as the Sun – which is 1.3 million times the size of Earth. But it’s actually very hard. The Parker Solar Probe (a NASA robotic spacecraft en route to investigate the outer corona of the Sun) has to swing past the planet Venus seven times to slow itself down enough to get close to the Sun.

The other reason is that rockets sometimes blow up on the launch pad, or in the atmosphere. This would release the waste into the environment and make the problem even worse.

What about deep space?

You also asked about deep space, and it’s a good question. Why don’t we just send nuclear waste away from the Sun, into the outer solar system?

Well, there is a risk the waste storage spacecraft could go off course and crash into a planet, moon or asteroid. Some places may have life we haven’t discovered yet, like Mars and Europa (which is one of Jupiter’s moons).

Even if the waste is safely sealed in a container, there is a risk it could end up polluting other planets. It may pose a danger to us or other life forms. The life forms might be just microbes, but we still have an ethical responsibility not to harm them.

Of course, there are already nuclear-powered spacecraft out there. They use an RTG (a type of generator called a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator). In the film The Martian, astronaut Mark Watney (played by Matt Damon) digs up an RTG to keep him warm in the freezing temperatures.

In reality, the RTG container is very safe and would not be dangerous.

At the end of the day, the problem is that no one on Earth wants nuclear waste stored near them, and it’s not safe or cost-effective to blast it into space.

Read more: Curious Kids: what would happen if the Earth’s core went cold?

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– ref. Curious Kids: why does the world store nuclear waste and not just shoot it into the Sun or deep space? – http://theconversation.com/curious-kids-why-does-the-world-store-nuclear-waste-and-not-just-shoot-it-into-the-sun-or-deep-space-108675

MIL OSI – Source: Evening Report Arts and Media

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robyn J. Whitaker, Senior Lecturer in New Testament, Pilgrim Theological College, University of Divinity

Dear tiny Jesus, with your golden fleece diapers, with your tiny little fat balled-up fists … Dear 8 pound 6 ounce newborn infant Jesus, don’t even know a word yet, just a little infant so cuddly …

So goes the now infamous grace prayed by aspiring racing legend Ricky Bobby in the movie Talladega Nights. When his family interrupt to remind him that Jesus grew up, Ricky Bobby says:

Look, I like the baby version the best. I like Christmas Jesus best.

My lowbrow movie tastes aside, this comedic scene makes a powerful point. Christmas Jesus is easier. Christmas Jesus is safe. After all, how challenging can the story of a newborn baby really be? Well, it depends on which story you read.

This year, millions of Christians around the world will read the opening of Luke’s Gospel in their Christmas services. Luke chapter 2 contains the fairly well-known classic version of Jesus’s birth: Mary wraps her infant son in swaddling clothes and lays him in a manger because there was “no room for them in the guest room”.

Read more: What history really tells us about the birth of Jesus

Only two of the four gospels in the New Testament include the story of Jesus’s birth. And it is Luke’s version of events that has arguably had the most influence over Western art and music when it comes to depicting the birth of Jesus. Without Luke, we would not know the story of the angelic announcement to the unwed Mary that she would have a son. Without Luke, we wouldn’t have the story of shepherds visiting the manger or the heavenly host of angels singing.

Angels, shepherds and a family huddled around an infant seem charming and make excellent fodder for nativity plays and Christmas carols. The problem is that in the ancient world the birth of Jesus was not a safe story nor a domestic one. It was highly political, a product of a time when religion and politics were inseparable.

“In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus…”, Luke begins, reminding the reader that Jesus’s birth takes place under Roman Imperial rule in the occupied territory of Judea. Mary, Joseph and their firstborn are displaced from home precisely because of an imperial edict requiring them to travel for a census. As Jews living under Roman rule, they are part of a minority religious group – ordinary people, at the whim of a powerful authoritarian state, with fewer rights than a Roman citizen.

Why might Luke emphasise the political setting? What is his agenda?

Of relevance here is the Priene Calendar inscription celebrating the birth day of Emperor Augustus. Yes, that’s the same Augustus Luke mentions just prior to Jesus’s birth. This inscription, found in an ancient marketplace in Asia Minor, dates to around 9 BCE and lauds Augustus as a “saviour”, “benefactor”, “god”, and a bringer of “good news”.

Since providence … has set in most perfect order by giving us Augustus, whom she filled with virtue that he might benefit humankind, sending him as a saviour, both for us and for our descendants, that he might end war and arrange all things, and since he, Caesar, by his appearance excelled even our anticipations, surpassing all previous benefactors, and not even leaving to posterity any hope of surpassing what he has done, and since the birth day of the god Augustus was the beginning of the good news for the world…

Written decades later, Luke’s Gospel echoes much of this imperial language. In the opening chapters, Jesus is called “saviour” and “mighty saviour”. The shepherds are told Jesus’s birth is “good news of great joy for all the people”, much like Augustus’s birth was good news “for the world”.

The Greek term for “good news”, euangelion, is precisely the word used in the New Testament to announce Jesus’s birth. It is often translated as “gospel”, hence the title of these biblical books. Finally, like Augustus, Jesus is proclaimed as God (or, more precisely, son of God) and is said to bring peace to the world.

According to Luke, this baby boy will upset the social order and create political upheaval. Poetic uses of language – of light dawning upon a people in darkness and the rich being sent away while the poor are lifted up – are further ways Luke portrays this new era ushered in by Jesus’s birth.

Read more: Jesus wasn’t white: he was a brown-skinned, Middle Eastern Jew. Here’s why that matters

Contemporary Christians are divided between those who see their faith as inseparable from their politics and those who’d prefer to keep the two discrete. Keeping politics out of the pulpit is the preference of this latter group. Yet Luke’s Gospel does not offer that option. Religion is political and always has been. What one believes, who one worships and even the stories one tells shape political views and values.

Whether one believes Luke’s version of events, or not, is a matter of faith. It remains, however, that Luke’s Gospel, as a first-century literary work, has carefully crafted Jesus’s birth as nothing less than the arrival of a new political power whose rule will challenge the prevailing world order, redistribute wealth, end oppression and bring peace.

It makes sense then, that at the end of the gospel, this Jesus would be put to death by the Roman state. “Tiny baby Jesus” is not as safe and cuddly as he might appear.

– ref. A Christmas story: the arrival of a sweet baby boy – or a political power to change the world – http://theconversation.com/a-christmas-story-the-arrival-of-a-sweet-baby-boy-or-a-political-power-to-change-the-world-108508

MIL OSI – Source: Evening Report Arts and Media

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jennifer Jamieson, Trauma Fellow & Emergency Physician, The National Trauma Research Institute

As most workers wind down to enjoy the holidays, staff in hospital trauma units are preparing to ramp up. This is because between November and January, there is a 25% increase in trauma presentations. Around 30% of road fatalities for the year occur during this period.

A hospital’s trauma unit witnesses the extreme of physical injury and pain that occurs over the holiday season. Here’s a snapshot of what we see.

Inside the trauma unit

The first trauma patient of the day is handcuffed uncomfortably to a hospital trolley. He is under arrest after an early morning brawl at a nightclub. A deep stab wound to his leg has damaged the artery. He is being examined by the on-call surgeons as two uniformed police look on.

The decision to take the patient for surgery is made quickly. Studies in trauma reception show doctors are required to make a critical decision every 72 seconds in the first 30 minutes of a trauma patient arriving in the emergency department.

Trauma can include broken bones, head injuries, internal bleeding and death.

Violence and assaults, including family violence, often peak around Christmas and New Year. This is due to a combination of triggers, including stretched household budgets and separated families coming together.

More people are drinking in the holidays, and this provides more opportunities for dangerous situations. On Christmas day, for instance, there is a 50% increase in ambulance attendances for alcohol intoxication.

In the next bay is an agitated young man in his late teens. He was weaving his motorbike in and out of traffic when he lost control at high speed. He was rushed to the CT scanner and, despite wearing a helmet, has blood inside his skull that needs to be drained by a neurosurgeon.

Although the patient may survive, it is still too early to know what the long-term effects will be. Motorbike crashes have twice the rate of fatal or serious injuries compared with cars, and similar to cars, comprise 30% of road fatalities over summer.

Read more: Cycle, walk, drive or train? Weighing up the healthiest (and safest) ways to get around the city

In a neighbouring trauma bay, an elderly lady has been brought in after a fall. She is awake but looks uncomfortable lying flat on her back with a hard neck collar immobilising her spine. She slipped and hit her head while playing with her grandchildren.

Older people are often in unfamiliar environments on Christmas day, visiting friends and family, where there are more opportunities for injury.

Two-thirds of female and one-third of male injury-related deaths occur in those aged over 65. Falls account for 73% of cases of major trauma in patients over 65 years of age.

Read more: Why hip fractures in the elderly are often a death sentence

We hear the sound of a helicopter. A 4WD has rolled when the driver swerved at high speed to avoid another car, smashing head-on into a tree. He was killed instantly, but his female passenger survived and is seriously injured.

Not every hospital has a trauma unit. In Victoria, where we work, two adult and one paediatric hospital have been designated as the state trauma centres: The Alfred, the Royal Melbourne and the Royal Children’s Hospital. Patients with major trauma are usually transported to one of these hospitals.

The awaiting trauma bay is a hive of focused preparation as the patient is wheeled in by the helicopter crew.

The trauma team springs into action checking the airway, breathing and circulation. An ultrasound is performed to identify any internal bleeding. Chest and pelvis X-rays are taken from overhead and reveal a collapsed lung and a crushed pelvis.

In anticipation of ongoing bleeding, the blood bank has been notified and a blood transfusion is started to boost the blood pressure.

As you end your shift, today reminds you to stay safe over the festive period. Because Christmas should be the most wonderful time of the year.

– ref. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas – inside a hospital’s trauma unit – http://theconversation.com/its-beginning-to-look-a-lot-like-christmas-inside-a-hospitals-trauma-unit-106537

MIL OSI – Source: Evening Report Arts and Media

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michal Carrington, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, University of Melbourne

Are you an organic shopper? Into fairtrade? A greenhouse gas warrior? All about free-range and animal welfare?

Even if you said yes to all the above, the chances are that, when you shop, only a few products that meet these ethical concerns actually make it into your basket.

Generally, we all have the blinkers on when shopping with our ethics. We select specific ethical causes and concerns to integrate into our shopping choices while ignoring others.

In their book The Myth of the Ethical Consumer, management professor Timothy Devinney his co-authors cite the evidence that while consumers might profess a social consciousness in surveys (where there is no cost), they usually fail to live up to this when their behaviour is examined.

Rather than a myth, perhaps a more accurate description would be “one-eyed”.

So why do we exercise ethical favouritism at the cash register, turning a blind eye to all but a select few ethical concerns?

Creatures of habit

Shopping is highly habitual. Think about how you do your own grocery shopping. It is usually at the same stores, buying the same stuff. Chances are you take the same route around the store every time.

Mobilising our ethical concerns into our shopping baskets generally requires breaking old habits and making new ones. This takes conscious effort.

Research is required. You have to the read the fine print on labels. Then you have to assess if the claims made are accurate, and weigh them against other choices. It takes time. To integrate a new ethical concern into our shopping basket may even require a whole new store visit and travel routine.

A Fairtrade coffee stall in Gloucester, Britain. Fairtrade certification is one of the few labels guaranteeing fair conditions for producers, but it applies only to a small range of products, such as coffee, chocolate, tea, vanilla, cotton and gold. Jacek Wojnarowsk/Shutterstock

Priority principles

All the effort to make new habits and break old habits is generally reserved for the ethical concerns we give the greatest priority.

Prioritisation is an important coping mechanism to maintain our sanity while juggling complexity – and there are few better examples of the increasing complexity of modern life than your average supermarket. Here we are confronted with literally thousands of choices.

Read more: How too much information can stop people from being sustainable consumers

Price, weight and kilojoules are generally the only standardised information provided. A label may carry a logo certifying the product is organic, or fairtrade, or sourced sustainably from a forest or ocean, but very few products meet all those ethical standards simultaneously. If you are concerned about carbon emissions or modern slavery in supply chains, for example, there are no explicit certification schemes.

It is not surprising, then, that with limited time and resources to source and verify the ethical credentials of products, we prioritise our ethical concerns into primary and secondary importance.

Primary ethical concerns resonate with our sense of values strongly enough to mobilise us into action. Primary ethical concerns often make it to the checkout. Secondary concerns rarely do, being traded off against other priorities such as price.

Read more: What comes first: the free-range chicken or the free-range egg?

Weighing the sacrifice

When it comes to any issue effectively downgraded to secondary importance, we are notoriously commitment-phobic.

Part of the reason is because we associate commitment with sacrifice. Whether accurate or not, we have an idea that shopping ethically will usually mean paying more, as well as sacrificing on quality, choice, trendiness and so forth.

Even if there is no or minimal obvious sacrifice, we still harbour suspicions of some cost lurking beneath the surface, and avoid the potential risk. Only for those highest priority concerns to which we feel a strong moral obligation are we willing to commit, take the risk and make a sacrifice.

Guilt avoidance

As we become more aware of questionable ethics in production — such as the epidemic of modern slavery tainting so many of the products and services we consume – the guilt we feel could fast become unbearable.

Research has highlighted the common justification techniques people use to avoid feeling guilty about enjoying the goods produced using modern slavery. These include blaming the slave for their own enslavement (denial of victim), trivialising the experience and impact on the enslaved individual (denial of injury) and regarding the slave as different to ourselves, and therefore worthy of different treatment (dehumanising the slave).

Read more: Modern slave trade: how to count a ‘hidden’ population of 46 million

These are perhaps the most extreme forms of guilt avoidance. But we are all adept at deploying some degree of psychological justification to neutralise any sense of personal responsibility for contributing to the problem through our consumption choices.

Turning myth into reality

Can the myth of the ethical consumer become a more lived reality?

Yes, I’m positive it can.

To do so, we need more help from all those interests that shape the choices available to consumers. Laws, regulations and decisions by owners and managers all along supply chains play a part in curating and constraining the choices we have as consumers.

Making it easier for us to assess the ethical credentials of products – through in-store information, accredited labelling systems or apps – would help.

And perhaps simply being more aware of the unconscious justifications going on in our heads daily may help to remove the blinkers, nudging us to shop with both eyes open.

– ref. Organic, free-range, fairtrade or vegan: how ethical consumption got so selective – http://theconversation.com/organic-free-range-fairtrade-or-vegan-how-ethical-consumption-got-so-selective-106177

MIL OSI – Source: Evening Report Arts and Media

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Gregory, Journalism Lecturer, La Trobe University

Open justice is a fundamental principle of our system of goverment and central to maintaining confidence in the justice system. But in many of the most high profile trials, when public interest is high, open justice comes into conflict with the potential of negative publicity about an accused to prejudice a fair trial. In recent weeks, the question of how to balance a free press and a fair trial has been hotly debated. But it has been a topic of controversy for many decades.

What happens if jurors read about an accused’s previous convictions, or access material that is not part of the trial? Will jurors listen when the judge tells them to ignore it? In the digital age, can suppression orders even work when they are routinely ignored overseas?

Numerous judges and lawyers working in the criminal justice system have disagreed about whether we should retain juries to ensure accused people are judged by their peers. In his review of the Victorian Open Courts Act last year, former Supreme Court Justice Frank Vincent noted that the Walsh Street murder trial jury in 1990 delivered acquittals, despite intense publicity and community discussion.

Opponents of juries will cite the secrecy of their deliberations, and examples of jurors befriending accused criminals on social media, or telling their followers they planned to convict. Then there is the argument that juries cannot be adequately protected from publicity that will make a fair trial impossible. Before Adrian Bayley was convicted of murdering Jill Meagher, the police and Meagher’s husband were forced to plead with the public to remove Facebook hate pages directed at Bayley.

Read more: You wouldn’t read about it: Adrian Bayley rape trials expose flaw in suppression orders

The capacity of members of the public to derail a trial through online publishing is a relatively recent development. Reporting at the Supreme Court in 1989 was a long way from today’s global digital village. The main news agencies were the daily newspapers, the ABC and the wire service AAP. Journalists took notes in court to record sentencing remarks, although some judges would allow reporters to use tape recorders for accuracy’s sake.

In those days, suppression orders were relatively rare. Justice Bernard Teague wrote in 1999 that he had granted non-publication applications, but had also warned journalists about the prospect of being in contempt of court through publication. He attributed the appointment of a courts information officer (former Age court and law reporter Prue Innes) as a major reason for the lack of contempt cases in Victoria in the 1990s.

It might also be news organisations remembered the $80,000 fine given to The Age publishers and editor in 1981 for a feature article that referred to two brothers who were facing trial on drugs charges. Writing for The Age, Innes reported the penalty was the highest for contempt in any Australian court.

Another brake on suppression orders at the Victorian Supreme Court was the presence of reporters in the building. Media lawyers could be called quickly to court, and be given a detailed summary of the suppression arguments while on the way. It meant they could make specific submissions instead of general points about open justice and potentially improve their prospects. Judges knew the regular court reporters by sight, and could anticipate their interest.

In the mid-to-late 1990s, the law firm Corrs Chambers Westgarth published the glossy magazine called Medialine, which featured numerous articles about media law issues. In one edition, Sydney barrister Angela Browne quoted High Court decisions supporting jurors’ ability to put aside outside information about a case and reach decision based on the evidence. She wrote:

Jurors are not expected to have extraordinary qualities of impartiality or fairness. What is expected of them is that, having given a solemn undertaking to do so and being properly directed by a judge, they will return a true verdict according to the evidence.

London law firm partner Alaisdair Pepper wrote in 1995 about UK contempt of court rules restricting international pre-trial reporting of the Rosemary West multiple murders case. He acknowledged schools and businesses received news bulletins from other European countries. He said:

In years to come attempts to keep the public in Great Britain in ignorance of what the rest of the world knows about a trial of considerable public interest in this country may render the law looking more and more out of touch.

We might expect these sentiments in a publication that regularly featured media lawyers and journalists. In 1997, Justice Bill Gillard delivered much-repeated remarks about writers commenting during legal proceedings when fining The Australian and a reporter over a column published during the Supreme Court fraud trial of Coles Myer chief Brian Quinn.

Even the most unpopular defendant is entitled to a fair hearing,“ Justice Gillard said. “I would expect that a first-year journalist would know and understand the sub judice rule.” He continued:

All members of the media would be well advised on the basis that, other than reporting the actual proceedings of the court, nothing should be stated in the media concerning the trial, the court, the accused or witnesses. If it is thought that a fact or a comment concerning the trial should be published, then legal advice from those experienced in media law should be consulted.

By 2009, the world, and Victorian court reporting, had changed. Commercial lawyer Isolde Lueckenhausen wrote in Precedent magazine that suppression orders applying to all community members had replaced sub judice contempt as the main method of attacking prejudicial publication. A report commissioned by major media organisations showed Victoria had the largest number of orders made in 2008, although South Australia had proportionally more when population was considered.

Read more: Law and order is no get-out-of-jail card for floundering politicians

Facebook publications were an issue when a man was charged with arson over the 2009 Victorian bushfires, a fictionalised television series was suppressed in part while underworld court proceedings were continuing, and terror trials attracted suppression orders. Lueckenhausen said:

Suppression orders do not stop discussion or prevent determined people from getting information from internet sites. However, they do stop the gradual discussion and analysis of issues that occur with contemporaneous reporting.

She quoted then New South Wales Chief Justice Jim Spigelman, who suggested temporary removal of references to an accused and sequestering jurors might be necessary to support fair trials. She said Justice Spigelman saw the heart of the issue was the conflict between two principles mentioned at the start of this article – open justice and a fair trial.

Recently, the Victorian government asked the Department of Justice to inquire into the prospect of judge-alone trials as an option for those charged with criminal offences. It would provide accused people and their lawyers with an alternative if they were concerned about the possible effect of social and mainstream media publications. But such a move could also open judges to more scrutiny, attack and commentary.

– ref. When a fair trial could be at risk, suppression is the order of the day – http://theconversation.com/when-a-fair-trial-could-be-at-risk-suppression-is-the-order-of-the-day-109181

MIL OSI – Source: Evening Report Arts and Media

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tristan Moss, Lecturer, UNSW

It was on December 21, 1968, that Apollo 8 launched from Cape Kennedy, in Florida, sending US astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell Jr and William Anders on the world’s first human mission to the Moon.

Apollo 8 astronaut Frank Borman leads the way as he, James Lovell and William Anders head out to the launch pad for the historical Apollo mission to the Moon. NASA

A few days later – on Christmas Eve Houston time, Christmas Day in Canberra – the three astronauts had just passed over the Sea of Tranquility on the Moon and were approaching a lunar sunrise when they sent back a historic Christmas message to the people of Earth.

Read more: Curious Kids: Why can I sometimes see the Moon in the daytime?

Located among the gum trees and kangaroos just outside Canberra, Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station listened for the crucial acquisition of signal as the spacecraft emerged from behind the Moon on its final orbit, having fired its engine to return to Earth.

Australia’s Honeysuckle Creek tracking station acquired the Apollo 8 signal in December 1968. Hamish Lindsay, Author provided

Honeysuckle Creek received and retransmitted astronaut Jim Lovell’s first words to Mission Control on their way back home:

Houston, Apollo 8, over. Please be informed there is a Santa Claus.

Apollo 8: the mission that ‘saved 1968’

The Apollo 8 mission was just the second crewed outing for the type of spacecraft that would ferry astronauts to the first lunar landing the following year.

Initially the mission was to test the lunar module in the safety of Earth orbit. But with that spacecraft still not ready, NASA took the bold decision to launch a command and service module around the Moon by itself as a precursor to a crewed landing.

Astronauts (left to right) William Anders, James Lovell Jr and Frank Borman in training for the Apollo mission. NASA

Also spurring the decision was the belief that the Russians were close to launching their own Moon shot.

Apollo 8 was the first manned launch of a massive Saturn V rocket, the first rendezvous with the Moon, and the first time human eyes saw the far side of the Moon.

The six-day mission was a spectacular success. The three astronauts completed ten orbits of the Moon and the spacecraft and ground support were thoroughly tested.

NASA was now one step closer to that “giant leap for mankind”.

Earthrise, taken by astronaut William Anders, December 24, 1968, from on board Apollo 8. NASA

The astronauts also took the now iconic “Earthrise” photograph of the Earth behind a lunar landscape. This was a profound image, containing all of humanity, bar the three astronauts.

Read more: Earthrise, a photo that changed the world

Although the religious nature of Apollo 8’s Christmas Bible reading caused some controversy after the mission, it was heard by hundreds of millions of people.

That the message was transmitted from further than humans had ever been – the distance led to a delay of one second into all communications – made it all the more remarkable.

One member of the public famously wrote to NASA to credit the mission with having “saved 1968”, a year otherwise plagued by war and protests over Vietnam, civil rights and other issues.

Supporting Apollo down under

The Apollo program that enabled the first humans to leave Earth’s orbit was overwhelmingly an American endeavour, but not exclusively so.

At a time before dedicated spacecraft communication satellites, NASA relied on a chain of tracking and data relay stations around the world to communicate with Earth-orbiting satellites and astronauts. To ensure adequate coverage, these included stations in far off places such as Madagascar, Nigeria and Woomera in South Australia.

For missions further into the solar system, NASA used three principal stations: one near Canberra in Australia which included Honeysuckle Creek, another at Madrid in Spain, and the third at Goldstone in California.

At least one of these three stations would have a dish that would face the spacecraft at any given time, receiving their communications and passing them to Mission Control in Houston, Texas.

Honeysuckle Creek. Hamish Lindsay, Author provided

This was a global network of instantaneous data and voice communications, at a time when even a single international telephone call had to be booked weeks in advance and was extremely expensive.

For Apollo 8, Honeysuckle Creek received telemetry and voice communications when the spacecraft first went into orbit behind the Moon, when it first emerged back into communication with Earth, and when it began its fiery re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere on December 27.

Australian technicians were responsible for the vital task of aligning the dishes with the spacecraft and troubleshooting any problems that might arise with the equipment, a not unlikely occurrence with 1960s technology.

Technicians work at Honeysuckle Creek. National Archives of Australia (A1500, K20417), CC BY

Support for other missions

While only Lovell would fly again, on the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, all the equipment and procedures tested on Apollo 8 – the spacecraft, the NASA technicians and the global network of tracking stations – would support the remaining Apollo flights.

Honeysuckle Creek was shut down and dismantled in 1981 but its receiving dishes moved not far away to Tidbinbilla.

Read more: Australia’s part in 50 years of space exploration with NASA

Australia continues to play an important role in space exploration with scientists and technicians still supporting support NASA.

They are involved as part of the Deep Space Network, tracking spacecraft such as the New Horizon’s mission to Pluto and multiple missions to Mars.

As for the two Voyager spacecraft, which have travelled the furthest of any object made by humans, they now only have contact with Earth via Australia.

Even on Christmas Day, Tidbinbilla will be receiving messages from spacecraft around the Solar System.

So when you send a Christmas message this year, spare a thought for those messages from the Moon 50 years ago, and the role Australian scientists played in receiving them.

– ref. 50 years ago: Australia and the Apollo 8 mission that sent a Christmas message from the Moon – http://theconversation.com/50-years-ago-australia-and-the-apollo-8-mission-that-sent-a-christmas-message-from-the-moon-104391

MIL OSI – Source: Evening Report Arts and Media

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Manning, Adjunct Professor of Journalism, University of Technology Sydney

A series of memoirs are appearing for Christmas – by Mike Carlton, Kerry O’Brien and the like – as the baby boomer generation of journalists gets some quality time to reflect, laugh, and reveal some new secrets.

As the receiver of a cheapo massive cardboard screed in 1972 for “investigative journalism” from my colleagues in the ABC’s This Day Tonight, my recollection was that “investigative journalism” was a cool, new genre any young journo wanted to be associated with.

Read more: Four journalists, one newspaper: Time Magazine’s Person of the Year recognises the global assault on journalism

I accepted the award with honour. It was mainly the result of reporting the corrupt antics of then NSW Liberal premier Sir Robin Askin.

Amid denials that illegal casinos existed, we found one well-known establishment across the road from the ABC’s radio headquarters in Forbes Street, near Kings Cross, and arrived with cameras at the front door one night to see if we could film inside. The answer was no, but we phoned our TDT presenter, the great Bill Peach, and asked him to ring the police because we had helpfully found one of these establishments for them. At the end of the show we reported the constabulary had not arrived and wished to remain in ignorance.

It was a laugh, but had a point. Not long later, I repeated this method with a mate of mine from Sydney University, conscientious objector Michael Matteson. When federal Liberal Minister Phillip Lynch said he couldn’t find any “draft dodgers” refusing to go to Vietnam, we found the very articulate pacifist in the university canteen where he sat every day. He gave a great interview.

Back then, no-one in our gang of young troublemakers had formulated a methodology for what we were doing on a daily basis. But we instinctively knew it was a different form of the trade from what we had learned from crusty old news heads as cadets. It was:

• evidence-based

• “transparent” in inviting the public to see our reasoning

• balanced in giving the “other side” a time and place to respond

• not pursuing a government or opposition agenda.

A decade later, both ABC’s Four Corners and Brian Toohey’s National Times would make an art of developing “the document trail” or “the money trail” and letting the public see for itself where these trails led. Many of the stories were about “secrets” that security agencies such as ASIO or the CIA didn’t want revealed (for example, Pine Gap and how it operated).

Hundreds of books have since been published on what constitutes “investigative journalism”. I taught at UTS from some of them (and my own experience) a decade ago.

Now comes what I detect to be a new form of journalism. It is often badged as “exclusive investigation”, but in fact has little in common with traditional methodologies. Very often it appears to be a leak from security agencies, not about them. The stories become a convenient form of government propaganda.

The great investigative journalist Seymour Hersh recently called this new form “access journalism”. In this form, journalists report the access, usually an allegation, and do not either prove or disprove the allegation. This form has the following features:

• the evidence is based on sources who cannot be named

• there is no evidence base (such as a document or money trail)

• it lacks transparency, in that the evidence cannot be independently verified

• it serves one side’s agenda (usually the government’s)

• it uses words in the text that have little definition (especially “is linked to”

• it can be written and published very quickly.

The form is undoubtedly a response to the need for media to move faster for stories with big impact. But while allegations might suit US law, in Australia, where depth of research can be a useful legal defence, it is also particularly dangerous under our defamation laws.

Compare the traditional form of “investigative journalism”, which bears these traits:

• it is based on identifiable sources whose standing and credibility enhance the claims

• it is evidence-based (including documents, finances, and so on) proving a specific thesis or proposition formally stated in the text

• its evidence is available for checking

• it serves no-one’s agenda, in that several sides of the argument are heard, allowing readers/viewers to make up their own minds as to the truth

• it does not use words that unnecessarily pre-judge the final conclusion

• it takes a painstaking amount of time to build the evidence base, allow balance, and get legal advice if needed.

No media are immune to taking shortcuts in this transition to a digital future. Even the best, including Fairfax (now part of Nine) and the ABC can be seen to be sipping at the “access journalism” spring.

Read more: Nine-Fairfax merger rings warning bells for investigative journalism – and Australian democracy

But an allegation is not necessarily a story, nor is a “link to something” automatically evidence. There needs to be larger conversation about what constitutes proper public evidence, proper reliable sources and transparency in both.

– ref. How ‘access journalism’ is threatening investigative journalism – http://theconversation.com/how-access-journalism-is-threatening-investigative-journalism-108831

MIL OSI – Source: Evening Report Arts and Media

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alfred Allan, Professor, Edith Cowan University

During the end-of-year holidays families often come together to exchange gifts and, sometimes, to confront long-held grudges. What better gift than a peace offering?

Conflict is rarely pleasant and arguments in families can be particularly upsetting. We all know that knot in the pit of the stomach, the flushed face and sweaty hands we experience when we feel we have been dealt with unjustly.

This is a primal stress response to when we feel personally or socially threatened. Our natural reaction is to fight or avoid the person. Revenge might feel instinctive, but that can lead to a cycle of unpleasantness that rolls on and on.

Trying to forget or rationalise a hurtful incident, usually to avoid further confrontation, seldom works. Even if the unpleasant feelings might start to fade, they generally linger in our subconscious and any reminder can reignite them. A constructive way of getting rid of them is to forgive.

But how do we do this and what helps us in the process? We’ve been asking these questions since we started doing research with the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (set up by the South African government to help deal with the trauma of apartheid) witnesses more than 20 years ago.

Victims who had indicated they had forgiven perpetrators were less angry and distressed than those who did not. We also found victims were more notably forgiving if they received an apology.

Read more: Do encounters with perpetrators help or hinder recovery after traumatic loss?

What actually is forgiveness?

Forgiveness does not mean forgetting or minimising the pain we feel; nor is it about excusing others. Forgiveness means making a conscious and deliberate decision to let go of our feelings of resentment or revenge, regardless of whether the person who has upset us deserves it.

Forgiveness is a process that takes time and patience. www.shutterstock.ocm, CC BY

Forgiveness is, in the first place, not about others. It is about stopping us from allowing resentment towards others to make life miserable for us.

People want to return to how they felt before the offending incident occurred. And they want to think of the event without bitterness and anger, a tightness in the chest, and endless rumination.

Forgiveness takes time. It sometimes helps to think of occasions when we have offended people in the past or to try to look genuinely at the situation through the offender’s eyes.

We must start by forgiving ourselves for any contribution we think we might have made to the incident. People often blame themselves partly for what may have happened.

Survivors of sexual abuse or harassment say the most difficult part of the forgiveness process is accepting they were not to blame and to stop being angry with themselves.

After forgiving yourself, it’s easier to then privately forgive other people involved. Research shows forgiveness helps us feel better and may help us live longer.

We can also tell or show someone we have forgiven them, such as by helping them out in some way without them asking.

A successful apology

One thing that often helps people to forgive is receiving an apology. While we may dread apologising, we usually think back positively about the times we’ve offered apologies.

A good apology ideally has three parts: an admission of responsibility, a demonstration of sorrow, and doing something to remedy the offence, or prevent a repetition of it. This could even just involve promising not to do it again.

When we asked people who had been offended by an intimate partner what convinced them their partner was truly sorry, they said actions spoke louder than words. One said it would help if their partner went out of their way to do something that would be an inconvenience for them.

Promising not to repeat hurtful actions makes an ideal apology. priscilla du preez unsplash, CC BY

An apology is not telling others we feel sorry they are angry; it is telling them we understand why they are angry with us, regret making them feel that way, and want to take their anger away. An effective apology is showing the person we understand why they are hurting.

Read more: It’s not just sex: why people have affairs, and how to deal with them

A study that explored medical errors and the responses of those affected showed an apology was most effective where it focused on the needs of the patient. We might not always know how we can take away the anger, so it is usually good to ask the person we are apologising to what their needs are.

If the apology wasn’t good enough the first time, you can try again, but first listen carefully to what the person you are apologising to is saying, and address those concerns.

Misdirected apologies can make a situation worse, they can make people more angry and make it more difficult for them to forgive. So, don’t apologise unless it’s sincere.

Prioritise your safety

Forgiving ourselves is always good. But forgiving others is only beneficial if the advantages exceed the potential costs. We should therefore not forgive others if that might expose us to further abuse or exploitation.

The stress response we experience to being hurt is protective because it motivates us to stop people from abusing or taking advantage of us. Anger is sometimes functional.

We should not feel guilty if we do not forgive because some behaviour is simply unforgivable. www.shutterstock.com, CC BY

We should also not feel guilty if we do not forgive because some behaviour is simply unforgiveable and carrying our anger might be less harmful than the potential harm of forgiving.

There are also times when everyone may feel they are the victim or some people may not realise they have hurt others even if they can sense someone is unhappy with them.

A good way forward is to ask people what the issue is and then listen to understand, rather than listening to be able to respond. When we listen without instinctively thinking of a way to defend ourselves, we may realise there has been a misunderstanding or we’ve behaved inappropriately.

And if you feel offended by something that’s said or done, you could avoid unpleasant feelings by telling the other person how you feel.

Read more: Eye for an eye? Why punishing the wrongdoer helps us forgive

– ref. If someone hurt you this year, forgiving them may improve your health (as long as you’re safe, too) – http://theconversation.com/if-someone-hurt-you-this-year-forgiving-them-may-improve-your-health-as-long-as-youre-safe-too-106253

MIL OSI – Source: Evening Report Arts and Media