Raising Hell: Issue 16: Getting Ambitious
"A good journalist is not the one that writes what people say, but the one that writes what he is supposed to write." - Todor Zhivkov, Premier of the People's Republic of Bulgaria.
Over the last 15 issues of Raising Hell, I have watched the readership of this newsletter expand and a small group of paying subscribers step up to help support my work.
From the start, however, I have nursed certain ambitions for what might be possible. Early on, I figured I’d take a leaf from the book of I.F. Stone, who had it right when it came to reader-supported journalism, and eventually build up to the point where this newsletter can support stand-alone works of public interest journalism. Though I am still new to this medium, I have long seen scope to cover more of those under-reported stories or explore issues at a depth that isn’t possible when marching to the drum-beat of the daily news cycle.
Thanks to the ongoing support of my generous subscribers, I have been able to set aside some time over the last few months to do just that. I am also at the point now where I feel confident enough to talk about the work I have been doing in a public format.
Cracking COVIDSafe
The first of the projects I have planned is a deep-dive into the creation of the COVIDSafe contact tracing app. The idea came back when I was doing some reporting on its release int he early days of the pandemic. In an further attempt to pull apart the legal, economic, social and political forces that created it, I began lodging Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to hone in who, exactly, did what on the project. While it began — and remains — something of a fishing exercise, when the first application came back with a $750 price tag I — somewhat stubbornly — doubled down with the idea of eventually turning it into a feature series.
The precise approach would be shaped when it was pointed out to me while asking for FOI advice that it was the method that mattered, not necessarily the result. Since then I have taken that observation and run with it, putting together a series of four features that track my attempts to use FOI to learn more. The idea is this will provide a narrative through-line that, in turn, allows me to flesh out the background for each player in the story. Hopefully, others may in turn learn how to do it themselves from my success and mistakes.
Should all go well, the plan is to begin publishing these as a stand-alone set of features through Raising Hell in the next fortnight — though with this being my first series, I am no in rush to get it out the door as I intend for it to be written to the standard it deserves. When the series does go live, each feature will be published on a Thursday, with a expert QandA the following Tuesday that fleshes out the issues raised. While it will be written with some assumed knowledge — and won’t be focussed on the specific tech issues with the app — the idea is to provide the background to events and key players that made it possible. As more is learned through FOI, the series will be expanded upon. By its end, a complete list of all sources, decision letters and documents obtained under FOI will be published — along with a total cost for the project.
Laramba’s Water
The second project also began as a follow-up to a story I wrote for NITV in July. The issue concerned high levels of uranium in the drinking water at Laramba, a remote Aboriginal community in the NT. If the problem had been discovered in 2008, it made headlines in 2018 and still hasn’t been fixed to date.
Back in July the story was that the community, in trying to get someone to do something, took the NT government to court but lost. The issue for me has been the total lack of transparency among the various institutions involved. Water in remote communities within the NT is provided by a Kafkaesque arrangement between the government, the government-owned utility company NT Power and Water, and a not-for-profit company, Indigenous Essential Services (IES). Not only has Power and Water remained steadfast in its refusal to answer basic questions about what — if any — plans it has to address the issue, it is also protected from scrutiny by the NT’s FOI laws.
None of this has stopped me from working to find out more. So far I have filed six FOI applications, with at least two under appeal. It has taken months to start hearing back, but I am now finally at the point where I have been able to start publishing stories outlining how these operations work. The first of these are set to be published by NITV — and will hopefully be followed by more as I work to keep the pressure on until the situation is addressed.
While I will not pre-empt any stories I will write for NITV, I am planning a stand-alone feature for Raising Hell pulling out the issues I ran into, including a complete list of all documents obtained, decisions and research I relied upon.
My hope is that, from this point, I can continue to work on similar projects and collaborate with others. Anything I publish will always be free and open to the public but this work — the sort that involves long-lead times, deep dives, special expertise and no guarantee of immediate results — is only made possible by those generous subscribers who pay to support my work. Your money goes towards helping me pay my bills, cover the cost of production including FOI applications, paying for books and other research materials and — most of all — buying time.
To you all who have stuck with me: thank you. You make this possible.
You Hate To See It
A dyspeptic, snark-ridden and highly ironic round-up of the news from our shared hellscape…
I Mean, Whatever Works…
Every day the US seems to find a new way to shred its credibility. This time around, wealth management agencies have been advising America’s rich to squirrel away their assets ahead of a possible Biden election win. Biden has so far been at pains to emphasize that he wants nothing to do with the leftwing socialists and their calls for rich people to share the wealth, but Jere Doyle of BNY Mellon Wealth Management — who is concerned about the possibility of a wealth tax — has been telling that firms customers to “use it or lose it”.
Announcing: Country Pravda
In an unlikely victory for the fourth estate, the Victorian Nationals have announced they have solved the crisis facing industrialised news. Last week the party announced it would tackle the problem by (drum roll) starting a blog. This ambitious new media start up will publish only good news stories that will be vetted by the state’s party leadership. To run the operation, the party will recruit fresh-faced young journalism undergrads who won’t be paid a cent to churn out this propaganda, but will be mentored by an ex-journo in the solemn business of reporting only the Nationals latest press release.
Good News, Everybody!
News, generally speaking, is bad for a reason as it’s stuff that’s not supposed to happen. When everything is bad enough, however, sometimes the good is so unusual it becomes news. In one such instance from Canada, researchers handed $7500 cash to homeless people and found — shock — that it worked better than the standard modus operandi of governments the world over: help people up by kicking them while they’re down.
Personally, I Blame Chemtrails
In yet another timely reminder that the biosphere is in freefall, here is some video from bushfires raging in Tanzania.
Lowest Prices, Guaranteed
In events that should surprise no one, the Prime Minister’s Office has been managing the media with the expertise of a used car salesman of late. First of the Coalition government ended last week “leaking” its own talking points the very same morning as New South Wales Liberal MP Daryl Maguire was getting grilled by the state’s ICAC for corrupt conduct. This was a tactic the PMO deployed deployed last year on pretty much the same day and ensured its narrative dominated the news cycle for a couple of hours. But then, one prominent Twitter user has suggested this is par for the course having observed how the Prime Minister’s social media has been drip-feeding a string of endorsements to Bunnings, that mausoleum to hard work that seems to spring up on shuttered factory sites across the nation. The user noted that the Cormack Foundation — an investment company and big donor to the Liberal Party — has a fairly significant stake in Wesfarmers, which in turn owns Bunnings. Make of that what you will.
Failing Upward
Where we recognise and celebrate the true stupidity of the rich, powerful and influential…
On Sunday morning, Jennifer Hewett, a pundit with the Australian Financial Review, appeared on ABC’s Insiders and demonstrated clearly in whose interest she works. Comfortably seated in the studio, Hewett declared Victoria’s response to the pandemic “one of the greatest failures of political and public policy Australia has ever seen”. With a straight face, Hewett went on to explain that the lockdown — which has reduced the rate of new infections into the single digits and saved hundreds of lives — had “destroyed the economy”. Sure, the Australian government once abducted an entire generation of Indigenous people as a matter of government policy and offered to pay the Brits to nuke South Australia, but yes it was the right of the Australian business community to make money at the expense of human happiness and well-being that counts among our greatest failures.
Since we here at Raising Hell are big believers in the meritocratic ideal, and considering Hewett unfit to continue her tenure, we cordially offer our services to The Fin. You know where to find us, boys.
Good Reads, Good Times
To share the love, here are some of the best or more interesting reads from the last fortnight…
Not so much a read, but this hour-long chat between Professor Mark Blyth and FT columnist Rana Foroohar is worth a listen for the incredible clarity it brings to world events.
Horatio Alger has long been celebrated as the inventor of the rags-to-riches narrative formula that is the bedrock of the boostrap capitalist mythology. Unfortunately it turns out the stories — synonymous with individual self-reliance and meritocratic achievement — were, in truth, the product of something much darker. Alger was actually a pedophile who used the formulaic narrative device to live out his fantasies in public, for all to see.
And if that wasn’t enough, new research into the KKK has outlined the role white women played in helping the organisation o recruit, run public relations campaigns and destroy the careers of undesirables through “whisper networks”.
Meanwhile, The Atlantic have this fantastic profile of alt-right propagandist Lauren Southern who is now being rehabilitated by Sky News in Australia.
If you trust the polls, Biden may be looking like a winner in the US election but the Democratic party is already working to prep its supporters for disappointment and disillusionment. In the face of all evidence, party apparatchiks have been telling anyone who will listen that even if he wins the Presidency, Biden doesn’t actually have much power at all.
Before You Go (Go)…
Are you a public sector bureaucrat whose tyrannical boss is behaving badly? Have you recently come into possession of documents showing some rich guy is trying to move their ill-gotten-gains to Curacao? Did you take a low-paying job with an evil corporation registered in Delaware that is burying toxic waste under playgrounds? If your conscience is keeping you up at night, or you’d just plain like to see some wrong-doers cast into the sea, we here at Raising Hell can suggest a course of action: leak! You can securely make contact through Signal or through encrypted message Wickr Me on my account: rorok1990.
And if you’ve come this far, consider supporting me further by picking up one of my books, leaving a review or by just telling a friend about Raising Hell!