In my job I interview a lot of academics. They can be great people to talk to, they're often genuine experts and their job is thinking. Years ago, I read a quote from the Dean of Engineering at Auckland University. It went along the lines of "Few Cabinet Ministers, in my experience, are used to sustained thought". Well, yes. That's because the skills that make for an effective politician don't usually involve sustained thought, not in terms of grappling with an intellectual challenge anyway. But I digress.
The trouble with many academics is that they often don't appear to say anything. There is a disconnect between what we in the media want, something simple and definite, and the way that so much of the world actually works - complex and ambiguous. Academics are grappling with that complexity and ambiguity, and they don't want the simplification to be wrong. (They also don't want to be sniped at by their peers, who may be a bit - how shall I put this - jealous of any media profile)
All of this explains much of what can be an unhappy relationship between academia and the media, but as far as today is concerned, it's just background. Because today I interviewed an academic who had things to say and said them well.
We were talking about sex education in schools - something the Public Health Association (along with 28 other groups) is calling for a much more comprehensive approach on. I put it to Angela Taft that some critics of sex education oppose giving teenagers information, essentially on the grounds that they will use it to have sex.
She shot that point of view down so quickly it was the intellectual equivalent of watching a ninja take out an unknowing guard in the movies. Sweden, she told the Life Matters audience, has had a comprehensive sex education approach since 1945. Other Scandinavian countries have also been taking this path for decades. Their teenagers begin having sex later than ours and their rates of teenage pregnancy are half what ours are. The evidence is overwhelming.
Not that one or two newspaper columnists will let a few inconvenient facts get in the way of a good rant though. Watch this space.
*With apologies to Sam Cooke
Monday, June 30, 2008
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Matron!
My grandmother, who was born in 1901 and died almost 20 years ago after a long and noisy life, trained as a nurse. When she started there were no such things as antibiotics - so the focus was on hygiene, everything had to gleam. She could make a bed with creases so sharp they could cut you. She didn't do bedside manner, even for the grandchildren she loved. Instead she had a real facility for pointing out your faults. It was refreshing - in much the same way that swimming in the North Sea on Christmas Day* is refreshing.
She liked a drink and at Christmas parties she often drank too much. She was a member of enough clubs to attend perhaps 50 Christmas lunches every year, beginning in early November. She never tired of them. When libated she was known to have the ocassional cigarette - a habit she'd really tossed decades beforehand. She believed in saturated fats of all kinds - and had a weakness for strange foods from another age: brawn, dripping on bread, black pudding, tapioca.
When my mum, her daughter, produced a meal with rice as the carbohydrate, my Gran would say helpful things like, "What is this muck?" She consumed industrial quantities of salt, enjoyed the pokies, had an eye for much younger men and loved to embarrass her adolescent grandson.
She was exhausting, she was unforgettable. She was a Character.
I've been thinking about her a lot this week, partly because it was her anniversary earlier in the month but mostly because the government announced it had appointed a Chief Nurse - a capable and impressive woman. Australia hasn't had one for ages. In a small, almost ineffable, way it makes me feel better to know she's there. My Gran would have approved.
*Sea Palling, Norfolk, 1993. Never again.
She liked a drink and at Christmas parties she often drank too much. She was a member of enough clubs to attend perhaps 50 Christmas lunches every year, beginning in early November. She never tired of them. When libated she was known to have the ocassional cigarette - a habit she'd really tossed decades beforehand. She believed in saturated fats of all kinds - and had a weakness for strange foods from another age: brawn, dripping on bread, black pudding, tapioca.
When my mum, her daughter, produced a meal with rice as the carbohydrate, my Gran would say helpful things like, "What is this muck?" She consumed industrial quantities of salt, enjoyed the pokies, had an eye for much younger men and loved to embarrass her adolescent grandson.
She was exhausting, she was unforgettable. She was a Character.
I've been thinking about her a lot this week, partly because it was her anniversary earlier in the month but mostly because the government announced it had appointed a Chief Nurse - a capable and impressive woman. Australia hasn't had one for ages. In a small, almost ineffable, way it makes me feel better to know she's there. My Gran would have approved.
*Sea Palling, Norfolk, 1993. Never again.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
I blame the parents
Ten days or so ago, I was MC and facilitator of Parents' Night Out in Brisbane. It was a good night. There was music, from a vocal group I'd never heard of before (they were wonderful), comedy from mother of five Fiona O'Loughlin (she was brilliant) and a discussion with the cheery heading "Are today's cities destroying childhood?"
Not long into it, one of the panellists, I think it was Geoff Woolcock, wondered aloud whether the culprit wasn't so much cities as parents. After all, it's parents that hover like helicopters over their precious children; it's parents who drive their children everywhere rather than encourage them to cycle or walk; it's parents with the best of intentions who have lobbied to remove risk from their children's lives.
Another panellist, the geographer Paul Tranter, thinks about child-friendly cities a lot - it's his job. A while ago he went to a transport conference. Paul spent the day listening to economists and engineers talking about cost-benefit analyses and the efficiency of transport networks. Jeanie Mac!
Eventually someone (it wasn't Paul) asked "have you factored into your models the loss of children's joy and wonder?" I think you can imagine the response.
We have lost a bit of joy and wonder. Over the last year or so on Life Matters, several guests have highlighted the importance of children being allowed latitude and freedom. It's not good for kids if they're only unsupervised inside the house or garden - they need to be given the skills to learn to navigate their neighbourhoods safely and allowed to get on with it. In the long run, it's safer. Adolescence is too late to be learning road sense
Think of your own childhood and the best bits that come to mind are probably when you were away from the parental gaze. That's what too many of today's kids are missing out on - a bit of benign neglect.
Prue Walsh has spent decades consulting on play. She's the person that schools and local governments around the country and all over the world ring to make their playgrounds better. If they're too safe, she reckons they're boring. "I blame the safety-nazis," she says.
I don't. I blame the parents. With the best will in the world, and the most positive intentions, we've got this wrong. And our kids are missing out.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Cranky at Crikey
I like Crikey. As a journalist, it's hard not to. I've used Crikey commentators on various shows I've presented - they've been great talkers with something to say. Crikey at its best is irreverent, cheeky and sometimes fearless. It doesn't mind sticking it to those in power.
And sometimes it gets it completely wrong.
Yesterday in its Tips and Rumours section, Crikey ran this:
On October 23, 2006, the ABC's Life Matters program devoted itself to a warm analysis of The Dore Program which was offering help to parents with children suffering attention deficit syndrome ... at a price! It featured a lengthy interview with the program's founder, owner and chief evangelist, Wynford Dore. The Life Matters website still carries this gushing blurb:
The Dore Program offers drug-free treatment for a range of learning problems. It's based around exercises that stimulate the cerebellum - the part of the brain that controls eye-coordination, inner ear balance and motor skills.
The therapy is named after it's (sic) backer and founder Wynford Dore, who struggled for many years to help his daughter cope with severe dyslexia.
He's now calling for change in the way we manage and treat learning difficulties, such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
The program was presented by Richard Aedy, the producer was Amanda Armstrong and the story researcher and producer was Jackie May. Last year the ABC's Four Corners took a more sceptical view of The Dore Program and last night The 7.30 Report comprehensively buried it with the news that the business is now in receivership leaving debts of more than $13 million. Parents have been left high and dry, some owing money while others are in debt. We eagerly await Life Matters follow-up story as well as its apology. Or doesn't it matter?
The short answer is it matters a great deal. The longer version is that Life Matters did follow up stories. Two of them. If the anonymous Crikey writer had followed a few journalism basics, like making a phone call or spending 10 seconds using Google, he or she would have discovered that this was completely wrong.
Yes, I spoke to Wynford Dore - though the interview was anything but gush. In March last year, when his organisation put forward its lead researcher, David Reynolds, I interviewed him too. By then it was very clear that the science was disputed and controversial. The interview was rigorous, detailed and robust. By some distance it was the toughest interview Dr Reynolds had in Australia. I'm proud of it.
When Four Corners reporter Matthew Carney was doing his own story on Dore, he requested that interview. He told me recently it was a key piece of research for his film.
Last month, when the Dore organisation collapsed, Life Matters was one of the first to report the story. I spoke to a long-time critic of Dore, Max Coltheart, who's at Macquarie University. I also interviewed Michael Greenwood from Parkes Shire Council. Parkes had really embraced the Dore concept, it had a Dore centre and established a trust to pay for kids who it was thought would benefit to attend. When I did that interview, Parkes was still wondering where its $15,000 was.
I'm not perfect, far from it, and Life Matters isn't perfect either. But we really have tried to cover this story at key stages and from different angles. A few seconds with a search engine would have established this.
I'm sorry to go on - I'm about to stop. Life Matters executive producer Amanda Armstrong says it all far better, and much more concisely, in the response Crikey published today.
There still hasn't been an apology though!
And sometimes it gets it completely wrong.
Yesterday in its Tips and Rumours section, Crikey ran this:
On October 23, 2006, the ABC's Life Matters program devoted itself to a warm analysis of The Dore Program which was offering help to parents with children suffering attention deficit syndrome ... at a price! It featured a lengthy interview with the program's founder, owner and chief evangelist, Wynford Dore. The Life Matters website still carries this gushing blurb:
The Dore Program offers drug-free treatment for a range of learning problems. It's based around exercises that stimulate the cerebellum - the part of the brain that controls eye-coordination, inner ear balance and motor skills.
The therapy is named after it's (sic) backer and founder Wynford Dore, who struggled for many years to help his daughter cope with severe dyslexia.
He's now calling for change in the way we manage and treat learning difficulties, such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
The program was presented by Richard Aedy, the producer was Amanda Armstrong and the story researcher and producer was Jackie May. Last year the ABC's Four Corners took a more sceptical view of The Dore Program and last night The 7.30 Report comprehensively buried it with the news that the business is now in receivership leaving debts of more than $13 million. Parents have been left high and dry, some owing money while others are in debt. We eagerly await Life Matters follow-up story as well as its apology. Or doesn't it matter?
The short answer is it matters a great deal. The longer version is that Life Matters did follow up stories. Two of them. If the anonymous Crikey writer had followed a few journalism basics, like making a phone call or spending 10 seconds using Google, he or she would have discovered that this was completely wrong.
Yes, I spoke to Wynford Dore - though the interview was anything but gush. In March last year, when his organisation put forward its lead researcher, David Reynolds, I interviewed him too. By then it was very clear that the science was disputed and controversial. The interview was rigorous, detailed and robust. By some distance it was the toughest interview Dr Reynolds had in Australia. I'm proud of it.
When Four Corners reporter Matthew Carney was doing his own story on Dore, he requested that interview. He told me recently it was a key piece of research for his film.
Last month, when the Dore organisation collapsed, Life Matters was one of the first to report the story. I spoke to a long-time critic of Dore, Max Coltheart, who's at Macquarie University. I also interviewed Michael Greenwood from Parkes Shire Council. Parkes had really embraced the Dore concept, it had a Dore centre and established a trust to pay for kids who it was thought would benefit to attend. When I did that interview, Parkes was still wondering where its $15,000 was.
I'm not perfect, far from it, and Life Matters isn't perfect either. But we really have tried to cover this story at key stages and from different angles. A few seconds with a search engine would have established this.
I'm sorry to go on - I'm about to stop. Life Matters executive producer Amanda Armstrong says it all far better, and much more concisely, in the response Crikey published today.
There still hasn't been an apology though!
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
What do you do?
It's the classic question, isn't it, the one you get at parties.
"What do you do?"
I am not good at parties and the last one I went to was my sister's 40th. In a way this doesn't count as a party (not that it wasn't fun, L, if you're reading this) because I knew nearly everyone there and so didn't get asked the question.
The thing is, answering that question is pretty much where I peak at parties because my job is easy to explain: I talk to people on the radio. Most of the time is spent preparing to talk on the radio, which means a lot of reading, quite a lot of conversations with the EPs and producers, a fair bit of thinking and some writing. The actual talking is the smallest part of the whole process, in terms of time.
There - that's it. There's obviously more to it but that's really the guts of the thing. It's dead easy to explain.
A couple of weeks ago, sitting at Adelaide airport, it occurred to me how unusual this is. I was in conversation with a geologist, who agreed, but then didn't try to explain to me what his job involves. Mainly I suspect because it's not that easy to do*.
A few days later I was having dinner with friends - it was a special occasion so there were 15 people around the table. The group was made up of:
broadcaster, IT manager, nutritionist, anaesthetist, TV journalist, environmental NGO campaigner, TV journalist, lawyer, director of a childcare centre, financial journalist, IT specialist, channel manager for a technology firm, housewife/actress, investment banker and dental specialist.
I know exactly what I do (restrain yourself) and have a good idea of what the three journalists do and also the childcare director and the housewife/actress. But that's it. Of the 14 people there who weren't me, I can tell you what five of them really do. I have no understanding at all of what the investment banker does, but consider him one of my better friends. The channel manager has explained her job to me on three occasions but I still don't understand it. She has been immensely patient.
We live in a time of arcane specialties. Many of us become fluent in highly specialised and sometimes technical skills that are difficult to explain to someone who doesn't have them. There are plenty of jobs which require skills that are easy to explain - plumber, electrician, carpenter, butcher, baker, teacher, journalist. We all feel we have a handle on these occupations without any real understanding of what they do. These days though many of us have jobs that are difficult to even describe.
This ought to mean that we make real connections when we have conversations, instead of just talking about work. But I fear that what's really happening is we're not having the conversations with those outside of our circle - because they're too hard.
Talking to people is what I do and it's usually worth the effort. I just wish I could make myself do it at parties.
*To be fair, he thought that people weren't really interested in what he did, that they were just being polite.
"What do you do?"
I am not good at parties and the last one I went to was my sister's 40th. In a way this doesn't count as a party (not that it wasn't fun, L, if you're reading this) because I knew nearly everyone there and so didn't get asked the question.
The thing is, answering that question is pretty much where I peak at parties because my job is easy to explain: I talk to people on the radio. Most of the time is spent preparing to talk on the radio, which means a lot of reading, quite a lot of conversations with the EPs and producers, a fair bit of thinking and some writing. The actual talking is the smallest part of the whole process, in terms of time.
There - that's it. There's obviously more to it but that's really the guts of the thing. It's dead easy to explain.
A couple of weeks ago, sitting at Adelaide airport, it occurred to me how unusual this is. I was in conversation with a geologist, who agreed, but then didn't try to explain to me what his job involves. Mainly I suspect because it's not that easy to do*.
A few days later I was having dinner with friends - it was a special occasion so there were 15 people around the table. The group was made up of:
broadcaster, IT manager, nutritionist, anaesthetist, TV journalist, environmental NGO campaigner, TV journalist, lawyer, director of a childcare centre, financial journalist, IT specialist, channel manager for a technology firm, housewife/actress, investment banker and dental specialist.
I know exactly what I do (restrain yourself) and have a good idea of what the three journalists do and also the childcare director and the housewife/actress. But that's it. Of the 14 people there who weren't me, I can tell you what five of them really do. I have no understanding at all of what the investment banker does, but consider him one of my better friends. The channel manager has explained her job to me on three occasions but I still don't understand it. She has been immensely patient.
We live in a time of arcane specialties. Many of us become fluent in highly specialised and sometimes technical skills that are difficult to explain to someone who doesn't have them. There are plenty of jobs which require skills that are easy to explain - plumber, electrician, carpenter, butcher, baker, teacher, journalist. We all feel we have a handle on these occupations without any real understanding of what they do. These days though many of us have jobs that are difficult to even describe.
This ought to mean that we make real connections when we have conversations, instead of just talking about work. But I fear that what's really happening is we're not having the conversations with those outside of our circle - because they're too hard.
Talking to people is what I do and it's usually worth the effort. I just wish I could make myself do it at parties.
*To be fair, he thought that people weren't really interested in what he did, that they were just being polite.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
That's gratitude for you
Once, when I was whingeing to my mother about my son, she said something that stopped me in my tracks.
"Don't go expecting gratitude from your children."
Now there are two ways of taking this and I took both. She's right - absolutely right - it's the way of the world. And I think she was making a small point too. Incidentally, I think it's difficult to get your head around how much your parents loved you until you have your own kids. Then it blows you away.
Anyway, I say this because tomorrow on the show we're doing a talkback on feeling appreciated. We all need to feel appreciated, both at work and at home. Stephanie Dowrick will be my guest and I think quite a few people will ring in. Hope so.
"Don't go expecting gratitude from your children."
Now there are two ways of taking this and I took both. She's right - absolutely right - it's the way of the world. And I think she was making a small point too. Incidentally, I think it's difficult to get your head around how much your parents loved you until you have your own kids. Then it blows you away.
Anyway, I say this because tomorrow on the show we're doing a talkback on feeling appreciated. We all need to feel appreciated, both at work and at home. Stephanie Dowrick will be my guest and I think quite a few people will ring in. Hope so.
Monday, June 2, 2008
None of my business
Privacy is a mutable concept. Most of the time most of us never think about it. Roger Clarke, who's Chair of the Privacy Foundation and was on Friday's talkback, puts it very succintly: "It doesn't matter until it does." This is a pithy, IT-expert's way of saying that none of us care about privacy until we feel ours has been invaded.
I think that's right but also not the full story. It's likely I would feel my privacy is being invaded at a different point to when you would. Certainly, there's a difference between generations. Older Australians have a more attenuated sense of privacy, younger ones much less so. So a person in her 70s, is less likely to tell you how she votes or what her house cost, than one in her 40s.
Young people, for whom social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook and Bebo are de riguer, are extremely relaxed about privacy. Or at least, that's how it looks. I use Youtube to find old music clips when I'm supposed to be working but there's plenty of other, more embarrassing, footage out there. And spend five minutes flipping through bebo.com or myspace and you can see images of worse-for-wear party-goers that would not have been in the public domain a decade ago.
A couple of things are going on here. Firstly, these images are not being posted so the likes of me can pontificate about 'young people today'. They're not aimed at me at all, they're for their friends and acquaintances. Interestingly, Jonathan Nicholas - Director of Inspire Interactive, says the fact that anyone can see these pictures doesn't really occur to many people who post them(!)
But it's not just naïveté. This is the Big Brother generation (in the Endemollian sense rather than the Orwellian). It's used to the idea of a life lived in public - that's what the nobodies selected for the tv show do and it's what the high status celebs do too. Using myspace enables you to control your image as professionally as the craftiest PR firm, so why would you want to hide your light under a bushel?
However, you can't do this if you have a privacy threshold set at the same level as say, a 75-year-old's. Naturally there are 75-year-old exceptions to that rule - Joan Collins springs (unbidden) to mind, and I don't think any of us are looking forward to this guy getting older in his usual understated, discreet manner.
I think that's right but also not the full story. It's likely I would feel my privacy is being invaded at a different point to when you would. Certainly, there's a difference between generations. Older Australians have a more attenuated sense of privacy, younger ones much less so. So a person in her 70s, is less likely to tell you how she votes or what her house cost, than one in her 40s.
Young people, for whom social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook and Bebo are de riguer, are extremely relaxed about privacy. Or at least, that's how it looks. I use Youtube to find old music clips when I'm supposed to be working but there's plenty of other, more embarrassing, footage out there. And spend five minutes flipping through bebo.com or myspace and you can see images of worse-for-wear party-goers that would not have been in the public domain a decade ago.
A couple of things are going on here. Firstly, these images are not being posted so the likes of me can pontificate about 'young people today'. They're not aimed at me at all, they're for their friends and acquaintances. Interestingly, Jonathan Nicholas - Director of Inspire Interactive, says the fact that anyone can see these pictures doesn't really occur to many people who post them(!)
But it's not just naïveté. This is the Big Brother generation (in the Endemollian sense rather than the Orwellian). It's used to the idea of a life lived in public - that's what the nobodies selected for the tv show do and it's what the high status celebs do too. Using myspace enables you to control your image as professionally as the craftiest PR firm, so why would you want to hide your light under a bushel?
However, you can't do this if you have a privacy threshold set at the same level as say, a 75-year-old's. Naturally there are 75-year-old exceptions to that rule - Joan Collins springs (unbidden) to mind, and I don't think any of us are looking forward to this guy getting older in his usual understated, discreet manner.
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