Past Programs
Internet - 2008
ISP filtering
18/11/2008
Political pressure has been building for the federal government to enforce compulsory filtering of internet content at the level of the service providers, with the particular aim of protecting children. But critics claim that the filtering won't actually protect our computers from some of the most serious risks.
The jury system
12/08/2008
It's at the heart of our legal justice system but is trial by jury always the best way of delivering just outcomes? Questionable behaviour by some jurors has seen two recent trials aborted. Two other extremely high profile cases are to proceed, despite the accompanying media hysteria. So are there particular cases when decisions should be handed back to the judges? And with the number of exemptions and exclusions, does the jury still represent trial by peers?
Enough: Brands and Consumerism
22/07/2008
In 2006, Neil Boorman looked in the mirror at his Helmut Lang jacket, his Adidas runners and his Vivienne Westwood tie and decided he was obsessed with brands. Even worse, he'd started to judge everyone he met by the mobile phone they flipped and the labels they inhabited. So Neil Boorman decided to take radical action. He staged his own Bonfire of the Brands and burnt the lot. His experiences were recorded in an on-line blog and a book, published here this year.
But what is it that makes us want more, more brands, more products, more clothes and even more information? John Naish is a British journalist and author of Enough: Breaking from From the World of More. His research points to a kind of hard wiring in the brain that means we're continually striving. But he argues that more consumption isn't making us happy, nor is it environmentally sustainable.
So in Australia Talks, we're asking is it time to say enough to shopping and consuming? Should we follow the Neil Boorman lead and go brand free? And are there environmental factors that can no longer be ignored?
Authority of the media
05/06/2008
According to a recent study conducted by the UK's Guardian, there's been a serious decline in public trust for journalists over the past five years.
At the same time the internet enjoys growing popularity -- the number of blogs jumped from 50 a decade ago years ago to over 50 million. People are engaging in social-networking sites (despite a prediction that 2008 would be the year of social networking fatigue) and many have turned to making their own news for so-called 'citizen journalism' sites.
Has the traditional media lost its authority to the internet? Have you changed where you go to for what you consider to be accurate information? And how do you decide what's information or disinformation?
