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."

"The Campaign"

I wasn't planning to see this - Will Ferrell isn't really my thing - but my newspaper's social club picked it for our movie night and I had nothing else to do, so what the hell.

In "The Campaign" (or "Citizens United 101 for Frat Boys" as I like to think of it), Ferrell plays Cam Brady, a North Carolina congressman running unopposed for his fifth term until he accidentally leaves a sexually explicit message for his mistress on a Christian family's answering machine.

The Motch brothers, two corrupt billionaires blatantly based on the Koch brothers, see this as a chance to buy the election so they can sell the district to Chinese sweatshops and save on shipping.

They pick an associate's son, Marty Huggins (Zach Galifianakis), to run against Cam, putting millions of dollars into his campaign. "When you have the money," Jon Lithgow's Glen Motch smirks, "nothing is unpredictable." But Marty is fat and silly and sounds kinda gay, giving Cam plenty of opportunities to make gross Will Ferrell jokes.

Friendship and Politics

In the end it was probably inevitable.

I'm sad to notice that a rift has opened between one-time friends and colleagues Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann. The two of them were a big reason why I got into news and politics, and their apparent break-up is a reality check about the pressures of show business.

When Olbermann left MSNBC in January 2011, he and Maddow had kind words for each other. He called her "my dear friend" as he signed off, and she spent a brief segment of her show explaining that she would never have found a place on the network without his support.

Mika Brzezinski, Journalist/Pin-up

Okay, I realise this is Vanity Fair we're talking about, but whyyyyyy. If you insist on playing up the "they have so much on-screen chemistry" angle, then shouldn't Joe Scarborough be making googly eyes at Mika Brzesinski instead of ignoring her and striking his I'm A Savvy Manly Media Figure pose? They've reduced the daughter of Jimmy Carter's national security adviser to a silly teenager trying desperately to seduce an older man.

US Weekly and the KStew Scandal

I feel so dirty about this, but I can't help it. The scandal of Kristen Stewart cheating on Robert Pattinson has me hooked - not because I have any interest in the actors or, God forbid, the Twilight series, but because of the fascinating way the tabloids are manipulating their consumers.

Here's my favourite theory (okay, conspiracy theory). This is the photograph that started the whole thing, splashed across the July 27 edition of US Weekly and revealed online on July 24.

Rabid "Robsten" fans quickly noticed the distortion where Stewart's right ear should be, indicating the face has been heavily Photoshopped. They spent the rest of the week accusing US Weekly of making the whole thing up by superimposing Stewart's face onto the body of Rupert Sanders' wife, Liberty Ross.