Opinion versus facts – Part 1

ANALYSIS: This is not a blog.
This is StreetWise Media: Fremantle’s fiercely independent magazine and online publisher.
Followed and shared by thousands of ‘friends’ and readers across WA, StreetWise draws on more than 30 years of journalistic endeavour and experience reporting in Australia and overseas to present stories about the people, places and events in WA’s much-loved destination.
Adhering to the MEAA Code of Ethics, this “busted arse magazine” (as one of its cheeky sponsors jokingly describes it), provides regular reports written, edited and published by trained journalists. The first edition of its flagship Freo StreetWise magazine was launched in High Street (now copper HQ) in 2015.
Independent, informative and user-friendly, local businesses, schools and community groups continue to support and sponsor the successful publication distributed every three months in Freo, Cockburn, Melville and select sites in Perth and WA.
Blogs, or weblogs, are informal pages or sites run by individuals or groups sharing their views and opinions on a variety of subjects, film, arts, politics, sporting feats, upcoming events and other community announcements.
We have a few such blogspots in Freo, many of them subsidised by City ratepayers.
Blogs are not journalistic pieces of work because by their very nature they offer opinion and ideas, usually written in diary style and linked to previous posts or other sites where readers can access additional information.
Journalists also blog, but their views and opinions are still based on facts, their writing style and investigative reporting focused on the ethical pursuit of information sourced from people, ‘contacts’, and public documents, including FOIs and archival records.
Importantly, journalists will distinguish between fact-based reports and opinion or analysis pieces such as this one. Bloggers by their nature do not need to.
Non-journalistic blogs do not meet this standard. Not even close. The only similarity between blogging and news reporting is a desire to share information with the wider community.
Blogs can take as little as a few minutes or several hours to write whereas professional journalists will spend days or weeks, sometimes months, to research and ‘firm up’ facts on important ‘public interest’ issues.
Whether in print, radio, TV or online, journalists are trained to be accurate, fair and sensitive when reporting such issues which often can polarise communities, such as the ‘tent city’ fiasco in Fremantle.
Importantly, they understand defamation law, libel, sub judice, the need to protect sources and the sensitivities of covering mental health and indigenous affairs issues, to name a few. They are highly skilled and experienced in their ability to present, in print or online, informative and engaging content and images, particularly when covering court cases, council meetings or parliamentary debates.
Most bloggers and Facebook users are not trained in defamation law and ethics and face the legal risk of repeating defamatory comments (sullying another’s reputation) to audiences unaware of the consequences of republishing offensive content, racial abuse, profanity, images of children and unfounded allegations.
Which brings us to Freo’s blogging community.

Weblogged watermelons

The current magazine edition of Freo StreetWise includes an article on the growing influence of social media in ‘Watermelon City’ – aka Freo (www.streetwisemedia.com.au/freo-streetwise-december-2020-edition).
Most administrators of private and public sites (including StreetWise) have rules or guidelines about what people can post without breaking the laws of privacy, decency and defamation or vilifying someone because of their personal or political views and opinions.
Social media and blog posts calling someone a liar, waste of space or their birth the result of an orgy (deleted by StreetWise from its hundreds of ‘tent city’ posts) is not on. Nor is trolling, dissemination of ‘fake’ news, racial abuse and personal threats (also deleted by StreetWise).
It is up to moderators of online sites and pages, public or private, to ensure removal of offensive posts which breach their rules, as well as inform its readers why they were removed.
Case in point – the City-subsidised South Fremantle Precinct, described by co-administrator Kavi Guppta as, “a group on Facebook for the neighbourhood to share information”.
StreetWise contacted Mr Guppta on Friday, asking for feedback (as the site promises) on why it chose not to share the latest revelations about Acting Mayor Andrew Sullivan’s role in tent city (www.streetwisemedia.com.au/acting-mayors-office-staging-post-for-tent-city).
Mr Guppta did not know. He said: “We review every single post. We read every single thing.” He said admins will post it or write back to explain why it was not approved. He said SFP will, “always tell you which posts breach the rules and you can go back to edit and repost it”.
StreetWise asked which SFP rule(s) it had breached in the ‘Sullivan story’? He said he would ask co-administrator Lisa Barnes, who blocked it. 
“What outcome are you looking for?” he said. “Feedback,” StreetWise replied.
StreetWise’s report was shared and accepted by mostly South Fremantle-focused online sites because Cr Sullivan is a South Ward councillor, as is Cr Marija Vujcic who is demanding an independent investigation into how organisers were allowed to camp in Pioneer Park without authority for nearly a month when it was supposed to be Boxing Day lunch for the homeless.
StreetWise also asked Mr Guppta why admins allowed City Ward Cr Rachel Pemberton to post a potentially defamatory comment about Cr Vujcic, whose January 27 post about her motion for an independent investigation into tent city Mr Guppta shared to the SFP site.
The post is still there, but was altered by Cr Pemberton after people had already read and liked it.
“It sounds like the councillors both worked it out within themselves,” he explained as justification for not as moderator having removed or altered the offensive comment. “I can’t really do anything about it,” he said.
StreetWise replied: “But you’re a moderator of the site and a councillor has publicly accused another councillor without any proof. You didn’t apologise nor explain to your readers why the post was changed. Why?”
Asked whether he would remove a StreetWise post that accused someone of lying, Mr Guppta said, hesitantly, “yes”. Later that day, Mr Guppta approved StreetWise’s report calling for an independent inquiry.
SFP refuses to give feedback. Instead, it decided to change its online rules.

Shifting the posts

“Apolitical” South Fremantle Precinct changed its Facebook rules after StreetWise pressed its admins to provide feedback on why they blocked important public information on tent city, the ‘Sullivan story’, while approving other tent city posts.
After several attempts to better understand where it went wrong, StreetWise was contacted by Ms Barnes on Saturday: “Apologies for not giving immediate feedback – at the time our rules didn’t properly reflect our community standards, particularly in relation to political posts and those which accused others of wrongdoing. I’ll send you pics of our standards/rules which were updated this afternoon.”
Mr Guppta’s follow-up post states: “In recent weeks, online discussions on the activity at Pioneer Park have resulted in a number of aggressive comments within other local FB groups as well as this one. It’s disappointing to see neighbours, residents, elected members, and others conduct themselves in this manner. We have updated the rules for this group to ensure better moderation practices, and improve the standard of content and information being shared here.”
Ms Barnes told StreetWise she did not see Cr Pemberton’s post because she was too busy enjoying life: “Kavi and I don’t spend our lives moderating. I never saw Rachel’s comment and it was never reported. I didn’t approve the enquire post … Inquiry rather. And wouldn’t have.”
As stated on its online sites, StreetWise values: “Respect for truth and the public’s right to information … Journalists search, disclose, record, question, entertain and comment. They scrutinise power, and exercise it with honesty, fairness, independence and respect.”
This is what sets StreetWise apart from local blog sites and social media platforms such as SFP, where the level of discussion is seldom based on facts or respect. Conversations often degenerate into so much hatred, ’fake’ news and opinionated prejudices the actual issue that started the online frenzy is lost in the noise.
Take contentious and highly sensitive issues such as ‘tent city’. StreetWise has posted and published 10 articles on tent city since the start of January, two of which were comment pieces exploring the role the City and its elected members played in the debacle before the State Government closed the unauthorised homeless camp on January 23 (www.streetwisemedia.com.au/tent-city-bust-up-exposes-council-homeless-fiasco).
Over the same period of time, StreetWise was busy posting and promoting its February 14 Charity Car Cruise; interviewed the first retail tenant in Fremantle Walyalup Civic Centre and started production on the next post-election Easter edition of the quarterly magazine.
News articles can take hours of research and writing and rewriting, questions to ministers and police, calls to politicians’ press secretaries and ‘contacts’ in business, government and the media.
Every fact and piece of evidence supporting its ‘premise’ (not to be confused with agenda) is carefully compiled and crafted – and triple checked (at least). They are not treated lightly nor posted after a few too many drinks, which is evident in many of the unintelligible posts and rants circulating online.

Part 2 continues this week when StreetWise explores the murky waters of ‘private’ blogs and ‘unfriendly’ sites which have popped up in Fremantle in the past few years.