Ms. Janet Albrechtsen

• 
  www.fabcact.org/mediareleases.html?44 - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 2/10/2006    Last Visited: 3/5/2007  

  But in selecting members of the ABC Board the government appoints Ms Albrechtsen, Dr Windschuttle and other "usual suspects" time after time,' Ms O'Connor said. ,When you get so many Directors who have been such open critics of the ABC and such a preponderance of the same political views, we say the ABC Board is screaming out for a bit of balance.
  ...
  Why is it OK for Janet Albrechtsen, who works for News Ltd, to be appointed by the board, but not a staff-elected director?
  ...
  Reply from Janet Albrechtsen, SMH 27 February 2005.
  ...
  Appointment of Janet Albrechtsen to ABC Board
  ...
  Janet Albrechtsen, Bronte
  ...
  Appointment of Janet Albrechtsen to ABC Board
  
  Board appointment makes it plain just whose ABC it is
  
  What sort of independence can ABC viewers and listeners expect Janet Albrechtsen, the latest appointment to the ABC board, to respect ("Columnist appointed to ABC board", Herald, February 25)?
  ...
  Appointment of Janet Albrechtsen to ABC Board
  
  Following the appointment of Ms Janet Albrechtsen to the board of the ABC, Friends of the ABC have called on the government to reform the process by which appointments are made to the ABC board.Ms Albrechtsen, who writes for the Australian, has been a fierce and unrelenting critic of the ABC.
  
  Commenting on the appointment Friends spokesperson Ms Margaret O'Connor said: "I think it is fair to describe Ms Albrechtsen as an ideological zealot, which, in itself, does not disqualify her from the ABC board.
  ...
  But in selecting members of the ABC board the government appoints Ms Albrechtsen and other ,usual suspects' time after time," Ms O'Connor said.
  ...
  Appointment of Janet Albrechtsen to ABC Board
  ...
  The appointment of Janet Albrechtsen to the ABC Board shows the Government's contempt for all that a public broadcaster should stand for.How could they appoint an employee of the Murdoch press to a board which among other things is charged with the duty "to ensure that the gathering and presentation by the Corporation of news and information is accurate and impartial according to the recognized standards of objective journalism" (ABC Act- Section 8).At the very least there is a conflict of interest for a journalist currently employed by any media outlet, let alone by the Murdoch press powered by its ethos of commercialism.What sort of independence (another quality which the ABC is statutorily required to protect) can we ABC viewers and listeners expect Ms Albrechtsen to respect?

• 
  onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6373 - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 12/9/2007    Last Visited: 8/9/2009  

  Or so Janet Albrechtsen believes.
  
  Last Friday, conservative commentator, Janet Albrechtsen, let fly with her thoughts on John Howard and his reluctance to surrender the office of Prime Ministership in favour of one Peter Costello (The Australian, September 7, 2007).
  ...
  Yes, Ms Albrechtsen, current polling is indeed a shock for conservatives (including me) but your petulance regarding John Howard's grip on the nation's highest office is frankly unwarranted, undignified and more to the point, misreads the evidence.
  ...
  Where Ms Albrechtsen sees symptoms, such as recent (bad) polling, just like a graduate med student with sweet little medical experience, she draws the wrong diagnosis and ponies up the wrong prescription.
  ...
  What part of "Blair was not on the eve of an election when he and his vulgar, loud mouthed, leftist wife moved out of No. 10" don't you understand Ms Albrechtsen?

• 
  www.newmatilda.com.au/home/articledetail.asp?ArticleID= - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 5/30/2007    Last Visited: 6/20/2007  

  Janet Albrechtsen began composing pieces for the Australian media around 15 years ago.In that time, she has never managed to write the words ‘habeas corpus' in any of her columns.
  
  This was perhaps understandable back in 1992, when she was writing in the Sydney Morning Herald about how bus companies break highway safety rules (‘Coach Lines Break New Safety Laws,' 15 January), or about the woes of the Tokyo stock market (‘Tokyo Trauma Is Likely to Continue,' 23 January).But by the time she began writing for The Australian in September 2001, Albrechtsen was moving on to weightier matters like Western civilisation and how to defend it.
  
  Nowadays, Albrechtsen regularly instructs her readers that the rule of law is a central and non-negotiable part of Western values.Given that the most fundamental guarantee of liberty under the rule of law is indisputably the right of habeas corpus, her failure to mention it is very curious.
  
  What is going on here?
  ...
  Albrechtsen asserts that neither Habib nor Hicks was entitled to the protection of the rule of law or the benefit of Western values, on two grounds: first, that both Habib and Hicks were terrorists; and secondly, that neither is a very nice person.
  ...
  Albrechtsen initially broached the topic of the detention of Hicks and Habib in a column in The Australian in early 2002. (‘Soldiers of Terror Don't have Rights,' 13 February) From this first column, through to her most recent discussion of Hicks's return to Australia two weeks ago, Albrechtsen has pronounced that neither Hicks nor Habib was entitled to judgment by their peers in a court of law, and that the presumption of innocence had no role to play in their fate.
  ...
  By some power superior to that of a court of law, Albrechtsen was able to discern what the ‘facts' of the matter were in both cases, long before any charges had even been laid.
  ...
  Albrechtsen, in her column in The Australian ( ‘Brown Blind to Immoral Reality,' 29 October 2003), promptly retorted: ‘ No, Senator, David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib are precisely where the facts show they belong' - that is, in indefinite detention at Guantánamo Bay.
  ...
  In the same piece, Albrechtsen went on to make various allegations about Hicks's record, adding, ‘According to intelligence sources, as bad as Hicks's record looks, Habib's is worse.' The evidence?
  ...
  According to Albrechtsen, ‘a spokesman for Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has told The Australian that Habib was in fact training with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan before September 11.' Albrechtsen concluded Habib and Hicks ‘are illegal combatants and have been treated as such' - handily delivering her verdict before any examination of evidence in a legal proceeding.
  ...
  According to Albrechtsen, ‘a spokesman for Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has told The Australian that Habib was in fact training with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan before September 11.' Albrechtsen concluded Habib and Hicks ‘are illegal combatants and have been treated as such' - handily delivering her verdict before any examination of evidence in a legal proceeding.
  ...
  As a lawyer, Albrechtsen would know that none of this stew of unattributed allegations, unnamed witnesses, and one too many trips to Pakistan would last five minutes in a court.
  ...
  Albrechtsen also really knows David Hicks better than anyone else.Two weeks ago, when Hicks was returned to Australia, Janet pushed to the front of the media line, saying, ‘let me be the first to welcome home David Hicks.' She also offered to help him write his memoirs because his friends don't know him like she does.
  
  Albrechtsen went beyond Hicks's guilty plea to the US military commission and rehearsed his earlier ‘admissions' - such as when he called himself a ‘well-trained and practical soldier' in letters to his father.
  
  But the clincher for Albrechtsen was a passage from a letter Hicks had written from Guantánamo Bay to former flatmate, Louise Fletcher:
  ...
  If any real doubts remained that Hicks's admissions to the US military commission provide an ex post facto justification for his disentitlement to the right of habeas corpus and the presumption of innocence, then Albrechtsen believes that Hicks's desire to fuck good-looking women with big tits should dispel them.
  ...
  Arguments about the rule of law need a more serious and considered forum than Albrechtsen provides.

• 
  www.icjs-online.org/index.php?article=139 - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 3/13/2009    Last Visited: 3/13/2009  

  The point is, political hyperbole aside, the furore over the appointment to the board of Janet Albrechtsen could well be spurred by a paucity of precise knowledge about what the board actually does and how it views its role.
  ...
  Albrechtsen isn't, of course, exactly short of opinions, not least about the ABC.A regular Wednesday columnist for The Australian, she has slammed ferociously into the national broadcaster on a wide range of matters.
  ...
  Albrechtsen has claimed the ABC is "staff-captured".She has accused it of having an "anti-[George] Bush agenda".She didn't think The 7.30 Report's coverage of the inquest into Thomas (T.J.) Hickey - whose death triggered a huge disturbance among the Aboriginal community last year in Redfern, Sydney - was fair to police.
  
  Rejected in 2002 as a potential presenter for ABC television's Media Watch, Albrechtsen has frequently lashed at the media-monitoring program.
  
  She has accused it of highlighting the perceived shortcomings of the political Right, of going soft on the Left.She claimed MW's former presenter, David Marr, was "ingrained" with pro-Left bias and implied the program's political complexion explained why she hadn't got the presenter's job.
  
  When Marr accused Albrechtsen of lifting an article from London's The Times - without attribution - then altering it to buttress an argument about Muslims' alleged propensity to pack-rape European women, Albrechtsen was indignant.
  ...
  Interviewed on ABC Radio's Sunday Profile series by a sharp, watchful Monica Attard, Albrechtsen was taken to - arguably - the most important question for her to answer.
  ...
  Albrechtsen: "I think so.Absolutely.
  ...
  Albrechtsen: "Well, I think it's as the charter says.It's to present programs that add to a sense of national identity, and entertain us and reflect the cultural diversity of the Australian community.I think that's absolutely vital and I don't think we can leave that up to commercial stations to do."
  
  Albrechtsen thus put to the sword one of the most serious community criticisms of her appointment: perceptions that she doesn't, fundamentally, believe in public broadcasting.
  
  In the light of Henschke's remarks about individual opinion there's irony in Albrechtsen's appointment in that, effectively, she will replace a former board member whose opinions were sought and highly valued.
  ...
  After Koval had been widely accused of leaking board matters to Media Watch and Newman had resigned, Albrechtsen wrote: "Koval's antics reveal the idea of a staff-appointed director, introduced under Gough Whitlam, is a remnant of the Soviet-style workers' collective ... Reform [of the ABC] cannot come soon enough."
  ...
  Albrechtsen: "Biased organisation is, I think, an incorrect way to sum up my views.
  ...
  Albrechtsen: "Systemic?I don't know.I'd want to have a closer look at that."
  
  Albrechtsen will find at least a proportion of her six colleagues - two board vacancies remain - are already looking.
  ...
  Thus Albrechtsen's may not be quite the fiercely dissenting lone voice that some imagine and fear.

• 
  www.abc.net.au/tv/fora/stories/2009/04/03/2534072.htm - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 1/1/2009    Last Visited: 4/5/2009  

  An unlikely team gathered to argue the affirmative - the Reverend Peter Jensen, Lawyer, columnist and ABC Board Member Janet Albrechtsen, and Journalist David Marr.
  ...
  Janet Albrechtsen is a Columnist for The Australian, a lawyer and current ABC Board Member.

• 
  www.worldproutassembly.org/archives/2007/09/australia_i - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 1/1/2007    Last Visited: 11/26/2007  

  Such allegations were fuelled when Janet Albrechtsen, a right-wing columnist for the Australian, last week called on Howard to step down.
  ...
  While Albrechtsen has long backed Howard, her husband is an active supporter of Turnbull.

• 
  www.newmatilda.com/2006/02/08/apologies-sam-kekovich - [Cached Version]
  Last Visited: 7/18/2008  

  Even his greatest admirers, like The Australian's opinion writer Janet Albrechtsen, are unable to point to one truly innovative achievement, or identify the smallest element of original vision in Howard's years in office.Writing on the 28 December last year ('An excellent year for conservatives and the country'), Albrechtsen gushed that:
  ...
  Albrechtsen and her supporters need to stop by Detroit the next time they're doing the New York-Washington-Boston trip, or venture as far north as Liverpool or Manchester when they're next in the UK, to see how, after years of Clinton and Blair reforms, lives in these working-class cities are just now or were, in the US beginning to recover from those social policies of the 1980s that sought to control people by exploiting envy, and maintaining a state of constant fear.

• 
  abc.com.au/news/stories/2009/10/01/2701356.htm - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 10/1/2009    Last Visited: 10/2/2009  

  Janet Albrechtsen, outspoken right-wing warrior and regular Murdoch polemicist, sits on the ABC Board.

• 
  www.humanrights.gov.au/about/media/speeches/race/2002/m - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 12/16/2002    Last Visited: 9/20/2008  

  Just recently you may have heard how The Australian's columnist Janet Albrechtsen was caught out conjuring moral panic about ethnic gang rapes.Albrechtsen took the findings of an academic study that talked about rape as a male initiation rite, twisted them around, and cited the study as proof that rape of 'white' women was an initiation rite for Muslim males.

• 
  www.wsws.org/articles/2007/jul2007/hane-j28.shtml - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 7/28/2007    Last Visited: 6/9/2008  

  This is in line with the role played by Beattie, who last week aligned himself with ardent right-wing champions of the anti-terror laws, such as Australian columnist Janet Albrechtsen and former National Crime Authority head Peter Faris, calling on the Howard government to drop the case because it was undermining public confidence in the whole "anti-terrorism" framework.

Page:  1 2 3 4 5