But he threw it first!

Police rescued a couple from their burning car after it had crashed into an embankment in Frankston yesterday morning

Darren Browne, 24 and Sally Weinstein, 25, suffered injuries when a rock was thrown at the windscreen of their red Nissan Pulsar, causing the driver to loose consciousness.

The incident happened after a bottle was thrown near McDonalds restaurant on Wells street.

A gang of four Caucasian men was spotted at the scene.

Senior Constable Glenn Paxton said “you could see flames coming from the under carriage of the car. Once we had them out I grabbed a fire extinguisher from our patrol car and put the flames out.”

Browne was taken to the Alfred hospital with head injuries, however it is unknown what his condition is at this stage. Weinstein was conscious but has suffered a broken arm.

Both victims do not know the group of men.

The operation has led to an investigation, anyone with information is urged to call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.

Do YOU know what you are eating?

CHOICE, Australia’s leading consumer advocacy group has released a report that says supermarkets and food labels leave grocery buyers in the dark.

Supermarket aisles are full of foods with genetically modified ingredients that are not stated on labels, making it almost impossible to avoid GM processing.

“When consumers see ‘vegetable oil’ on a label they have no way of knowing if it is GM canola or cottonseed oil”. says CHOICE Senior campaigner Clare Hughes.

In addition, many of Australia’s meat, egg and dairy products could come from animals fed GM feed, yet this does not need to be mentioned on the label.

Under Australian GM labeling laws, consumers are supposed to see which products contain genetically modified ingredients. However, a loophole in the system is that GM products do not have to be labeled as GM.

Miss Hughes says, “you have a right to know if your food comes from GM crops, or GM fed animals, directly or indirectly.”

Scientific evidence suggests that these foods are harmless, however CHOICE argue that a lack of evidence of harm is not enough to prove that GM foods are one hundred per cent safe either.

Further, much of the research conducted is by the companies who produce GM crops, keeping their findings confidential from proper academic inquiry.

Miss Hughes argues that the connected environmental and ethical issues give more reason for full disclosure of GM ingredients to consumers.

Currently, Australian food labeling laws are being reviewed. CHOICE encourages consumers to demand better labels on GM foods in order to “have all the information they need to make a truly informed choice.”

So many ideas, so little time..

Week three’s blog is a little different to the previous posts as it is not an opinion on any pre read article, but instead, an idea for what future articles to come.

We were given the task to write and explore three possible news story ideas that will be submitted as our first piece of assessment.

Idea #1: Recently, someone I know was charged with possession and trafficking of amphetmines for commercial use at a poplar Melbourne nightclub. While they were summoned to court, they did not receive a jail sentence or community service, only a $300 fine. This news story brings us further associated issues such as leniency of the legal system as well as the club owners and themselves. I say this because without naming names, this specific club is renowned for drug use by both the public that attend as well as the staff and djs who work there. Questions arise too about the standards of this location and the fact that it is allowed to happen without a bat of an eyelid. To write this story, I would interview the person i know who got arrested, people who attend the club and what they think of what goes on there, and possible police officers and there thoughts as well.

Idea#2: A friend of mine knows a story of where there is a bitter legal battle between ex’s over their infant son. But this story is made even more interesting because the mother is an ex prostitute with a severe history of drug abuse and mental illness, most recently shaving her head bald, all to similar to the Britney Spears saga. Furthermore, before a couple of week ago, the woman was missing for six weeks, which of course, does not help her case in battling for her six month old baby. Prospective interviewees for this story could possibly be a child welfare unit and maybe the brother of the babys father. I am aware that this is a snsitive family issue.

Idea #3: The third story idea that I have is a little more on the brighter side compared to the previous two. This would be an event review of the A-League grand final at Etihad stadium this coming weekend. This has been a debatable topic especially because of the recent contest between AFL and Soccer heads about the ownership of Etihad  if Australia were to win the 2020 world cup rights. In writing this story, I would include a short review about the game itself, interview fans from both an AFL and Soccer perspective, as well as local coaches from both sport teams.

It’s all just a numbers game

The first thing that I noticed about this article written by Paige Williams was the quote included inside the image that reads “ Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort from the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice.” Personally, this simple quote taken from Dr Martin Luther King’s presidential address brought out a sense of inspiration from within me at the thought that somewhere in the future, society will be equal, despite the naivety of what it sounds like at the moment.

The most shocking value that I found in this article was $10.50- the amount that was considered a ‘living wage’ and one that would help low income workers climb out of the poverty they live in. What I thought made this amount even more sadder was the fact that employers were still trying to find loopholes past this, some paying there workers only $8.50 per hour, clearly only allowing for the bare minimum to survive.

Finally, the last story of the article was definitely the most moving out of the feature where we met Vicky and Will and their devotion to stay alive, as well as to each other. This specific part of the article is an example of where White uses highly emotive language to get the reader to feel empathy for the characters she is writing about and the people she has introduced us to, leaving us with the feeling at the end of reading that something does need to be done to ensure that this type of lifestyle no longer exists for anyone.

This article I felt was more effective in terms of hitting the reader with a more emotional bullet compared to Nick McKenzie’s “The minister, money and Ms Liu”. Due to the fact that it was so full of statistics, it did make the article feel more informative with a sentimental edge compared to McKenzie’s straightforward fact machine style writing. Maybe it’s just me, maybe I’m the type of girl who loves the trashy magazine gossip (actually I AM that girl!) but Williams’s article definitely has the upper edge because of the way she presents it, and for me at least the all round winner, if this was a competition of course.

A picture tells 1001 words

This weeks blog entry is based on the week one reading Tabloid Deconstruction by niall lucy, which I must say is a difficult piece of writing to get through, especially it being the first academic writing ive read in several months!

After eventually getting through it though, and yes it did take time, I slowly came to understand a few of the arguments that Lucy posed, one of which equates photographers as journalists also. Or should that be vice versa? I specifically like the quote in the reading where he writes, “…image-objects are not image-objects at all, but simulacra”,(p28) thus likening the art of images and storytelling to situations that we have already experienced and what is familiar to our cultural context.

Discussion in class brought up the issue of photography indeed being a form of journalism and the ethics associated with what ideas and connotations pictures bring.  Lucy’s article on page 24 states that “what distinguishes the moment of capture is that it is immediate: this was and here, now, it is.” It can be argued though that pictures do not tell the complete account despite the old adage ‘a picture tells a thousand words.’

While it only takes a millisecond for the camera shutters to snap what is in front of it, quality time has been taken in ensuring that the setting is perfect, there is a sufficient amount of light in order to set the mood of the shot and indeed, even the exact angle has been calculated as to where the lens should aim.

By saying this, it could therefore be argued that the image itself has been aligned to what the journalist wants their news story to achieve, and in a worse case scenario, be publishing news for self benefit as opposed to public want or need, obviously against the journalistic code of ethics. Furthermore, while the individual journalists have ideas about how they want there reports to be portrayed, there is no way of knowing exactly how varied audience groups will perceive it. Again, in Tabloid Deconstruction, Lucy mentions, “ textual references are never independent of their contexts, so that textual referents are not pre-given but produced.’ (p29) Situations arise where news stories as well as photographs become influential even though it truly wasn’t intended. But as the above statement alludes to, opinions are not only created by those who write the news, but also the people the news is written for. Social, cultural and economical contexts all play a role in our belief systems, and it is albeit impossible to have every single person in this digital world believing in the same way.

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