Review: The Landgrabbers

Originally published in the Greymouth Star, 27 September 2012

Environmental journalist Fred Pearce adds to his list of reasons why the planet is in big trouble with The Landgrabbers: The New Fight Over Who Owns the Earth, which chronicles his year travelling the globe to find out why the super-rich are buying as much foreign land as possible.

Capitalism cops the most scrutiny as Pearce describes Saudi oil billionaires snapping up land for agribusiness in Ethopia, Christian evangelists preaching to the natives in Kenya while draining their wetlands, and bulldozers flattening Asian forests so Westerners can have cheap paper and sugar. Even New Zealand's Crafar Farms warrant a mention.

The corporations bring in big profits but contribute little to the country in return, while locals often find their ancestral lands sold out from under them. In the meantime the gap between rich and poor continues to widen. "Will they feed the world," says Pearce, "or just the bottom line?"

Election 2012

h/t @moikl

I love politics. For some reason.

Thoughts on Fact-checking

The American presidential election is over, thank goodness, and I'm in the process of separating the important lessons from the emotional drama of the last few months.

On the journalism side, one of the most interesting topics has been the conflict between balance and fact-checking, which I find to be just as polarising as the Bias vs Objectivity debate in some cases (hi there, PolitiFact).

The issue was summed up in this article from The New York Times's public editor Margaret Sullivan. The rise of fact-checkers, she said, was "all a part of a movement — brought about, in part, by a more demanding public, fueled by media critics, bloggers and denizens of the social media world — to present the truth, not just conflicting arguments leading to confusion."