Volume 3, Number 2, 2003

Remembering the life of Edward Said

Edward Said (1935-2003)

Introduction

I was working in the early hours of the morning the day that Edward Said died. Within minutes the news of his death had spread electronically around the globe. Feelings surged unchecked: shock, disbelief, sadness, and a gnawing realisation that a great man had finally slipped irretrievably into the night.

Sonja Karkar


Speakers

Professor Alan Knight

Professor Amin Saikal

Professor Gillian Triggs

Professor Emeritus Stuart Rees

Abstracts

Globalised Journalism in the Internet age

By Alan Knight

‘Globalisation’ may be the catchword of the moment in both the academy and popular imagination, but it’s not new to the business of news. At least since the establishment of Reuters and the invention of the telegraph, news reporting has gone global. But what is happening today seems to be both qualitatively and quantitatively different from previous technological revolutions.

Global journalism today accesses instantaneous, multimedia communication networks, products and sources. However, these same technologies also remove journalists’ monopoly on international news, forcing a re-evaluation of who creates, transmits and ultimately owns the news. ‘Globalised journalism’ may be an oxymoron; it is certainly a paradox.

 

One Temple, One Bomb and Three lines of Political Narrative

By Kasun Ubayasiri and Linda Brady

Twenty years of civil war between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and predominately Sinhala-Buddhist government forces has cost the tiny island nation of Sri Lanka an estimated 65,000 lives. But it was the 1998 Tiger attack on the country’s most venerated Buddhist shrine which struck the majority Sinhala-Buddhist population the hardest. The bombing of the Dalada Maligawa (Temple of the Tooth Relic) resulted in unprecedented news coverage and in doing so exposed the inherent socio-political biases within the Sinhala media. Using the accepted standard that a newspaper’s front page presents the most newsworthy, alluring coverage and is the publication’s window, this paper examines the county’s three main stream Sinhala daily newspapers the Government owned Dinamina, and the independent Divayina and Lankadeepa.

 

Online journalism education: Reaching and teaching globalised media

By Alan Knight

This paper considers how digital convergence of text, audio and image on the net might impact on the content, structure and delivery of journalism education. It will review course development at Central Queensland University where online journalism programs have been unfolding for two years. It will consider the construction of an action research project, examining how online delivered, industry mentored programs might be funded, offered and organised for journalism students located in widely disparate regional locations. The project, centred on the regional city of Emerald, will review how online distance learning materials might be delivered face to face to remote students brought together by data base analysis, internet interactivity and other online resources.

 

State Terrorism and the Indonesian press: The 1998 reform movement

By Paul Franks

This paper examines the 1998 reform movement in Indonesia and focuses on the role of the press in exposing state-sponsored terrorism that was perpetuated by the security apparatus of Soeharto’s New Order government. As the reform movement, led by university students, gained momentum in early 1998, the press became increasingly bold in its reporting of the abduction by security forces of anti-government activists and in its reporting of other government abuses of power. With the Indonesian economy in freefall, the Soeharto New Order government lost control over a press emboldened by the rising tide of anti-government and anti-Soeharto sentiment. Many writers have acknowledged the key role of students in the reform movement. This paper will explore some of the links between the press, students and other pro-reform activists.