Talk:Janet Albrechtsen

Unsourced

numerous statements in this article need to be sourced. Adam 08:17, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

As usual, Dr Carr is quite correct. I've tagged the article accordingly, and also tagged it as POV. I'll try to clean things up in the next week or so. CWC 16:08, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

(Three weeks later) I've pruned the article down, removing several WP:BLP violations, including an out-and-out lie.

The article needs more work, especially more sources. (I only added one. I'm afraid this article is not a high priority for me.) For instance, we could and should link to Albrechtsen's articles criticising the High Court and the Family Court. Please help! (If you find the {{cite web}} stuff a bit arcane, just add them as simple links and someone else will do the fancy formatting.) Cheers, CWC 17:32, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

The article now has some sources, so I've changed the tag to {{refimprove}}. Most of the statements are still unsourced.

Would anyone having links or other sources please add them to the article? If you're not sure how to do that, just do it anyhow and some one else will take care of the detailed formatting. Cheers, CWC 13:20, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Too much editing?

I only recently checked this page after a couple of months and noticed that is now considerably shorter than it once was, and it has clearly been heavily edited. However, I cannot understand why some of the material as it existed then (December '06) has now been removed. For example, the following section has been entirely removed from the article:

"Her commentaries also repeatedly criticise the advocates of certain broad theories or groups, such as feminism, Muslim culture, gay and lesbian rights, postmodernism, multiculturalism, trade unions, the Australian Labor Party, left-wing historians and anti-Americanism."

Anyone familiar with Albrechtsen's published work would realise that this paragraph accurately and succinctly summarsies the range of her published views. I doubt she herself would disagree! However, as the article currently reads, anyone not familiar with her work would incorrectly believe that her main focus of attention is foreign and legal affairs, whereas in fact these are just two of her interests.

I am also puzzled as to why the following paragraph was removed:

"Former Labor Party leader Mark Latham once described Albrechtsen as a "skanky ho who would die in a ditch for the Liberal Party".[2] ("Skanky ho" is an American slang term meaning "smelly prostitute," or more commonly in today's usage, "slutty whore." Latham later claimed he did not know the exact meaning of the term when he used it.)"

This was a story of national importance at the time, and surely deserves inclusion in the page of one of the two people involved (i.e. Albrechtsen)?

Further, I am suspicious about certain edits which, presumably, were executed on the grounds that they were a violation of NPOV (the comments above under the heading "unsourced" lead me to suspect this). For example, the sentence which once existed as follows:

"In 2002 the ABC's Media Watch programme demonstrated that she had misquoted a French psychiatrist, Jean-Jacques Rassial, and claimed that she had deliberately done this to make it look as though violence and gang rape were institutionalised elements of the culture of Muslim youths.[1]"

Has now been pruned to this:

"In 2002 the ABC's Media Watch program accused her of misquoting a French psychiatrist, Jean-Jacques Rassial.[1]"

The removal of one important element of the charge against Albrechtsen mis-represents the affair. It was not simply the misquote which was the source of Media Watch's criticism, but the alleged motivation behind it. The passage did not pretend to pass judgment either way on whether Media Watch's charge was correct, and was cited accordingly. Moreover, Albrecthsen's response to the charge was correctly and accurately included, and also cited. As such, it is not a violation of wikipedia's NPOV policy, which states that "The neutral point of view is a point of view, not the absence or elimination of viewpoints . . . Debates are described, represented, and characterized, but not engaged in." In other words, explaining the content of conflicting views and debates surrounding a person or topic is perfectly legitimate, so long as these debates are treated fairly. The paragraph noted above did just this - describing, representing and characterising the views, but not engaging in them.

Edelmand 13:21, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Will wait for 1 week from my original posting for justifications for the edits. If no valid reasons are given, will revert to previous version. Edelmand 05:01, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Changes made 29-Apr-2007

Here's my explanation of some of the changes I (User:Chris Chittleborough AKA CWC) made. I apologise for taking so long to reply (I managed to go two whole days without editing or even checking my watchlist!), and thank User:Edelmand for being so patient.

Unfortunately, The Australian does not make it that easy to link to old items, and charges for access. I just tried to find the 17-Jul-2002 column that MW criticised, but failed, so it may be that they don't keep her old columns because she retains the copyright. But there is some good news: her columns since 20-Feb-2007 are freely available here.

I'm not claiming that my edits were perfect, or even all that good, but I do think I removed some unsubstantiated negative claims, as required by the Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons ("BLP") policy. Many of my edits were to simplify the language and soften the claims. For example, the third paragraph previously started:

Albrechtsen's political views are strongly conservative. Her articles demonstrate a consistent and close alignment with the philosophical positions of the Howard government and the Bush administration, and she is often sharply critical of those who question these governments' policies, such as the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq. She frequently comments on legal issues, arguing against what she views as unacceptable tendencies towards judicial activism in decisions of both the High Court of Australia and the Family Court of Australia.

It now starts:

Albrechtsen's political views are strongly conservative, and she has supported the Howard government, the foreign policies of the Bush administration, the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq. She frequently comments on legal issues. She has criticised both the High Court of Australia and the Family Court of Australia for judicial activism.

I think that "consistent and close alignment ..." phrase is either a wordy way of saying "supports" (which is how a casual reader would probably interpret it) or is saying that she is an idealogical clone of Howard and Bush, which is only allowed if we can cite a Reliable Source ("RS") to that effect. Similarly, I think I retained the meaning of "arguing against what she views ..." in my shorter and simpler "She has criticised ..." sentence.

Since we already say she's a Howard/Bush supporting conservative, I thought this list was fairly redundant:

Her commentaries also repeatedly criticise the advocates of certain broad theories or groups, such as feminism, Muslim culture, gay and lesbian rights, postmodernism, multiculturalism, trade unions, the Australian Labor Party, left-wing historians and anti-Americanism.

It also seems overly wordy (why "criticise the advocates" instead of (say) "generally opposes"?) and (what really worried me) contains no citations.
OTOH, I have no objection to providing examples of her criticising her favourite targets — here's a good example.

I removed the statement that the political left

charge that she often fails to adequately address or acknowlede the diverse range of theories, movements or philosophies within each of the groups she attacks. Some have also accused her of sloppy journalism or outright misrepresentation and plagiarism

BLP forbids stuff like this; criticism must be cited, and must come from Reliable Sources. (See also WP:AWW.)

This sentence is unacceptable:

In 2002 the ABC's Media Watch programme demonstrated that she had misquoted a French psychiatrist, Jean-Jacques Rassial, and claimed that she had deliberately done this to make it look as though violence and gang rape were institutionalised elements of the culture of Muslim youths.

MW neither "demonstrated" the first nor "claimed" the second (though they did hint at the second). From her email to McEvoy:

My statements were not “lifted” from Sage’s Times article. You concede this in your use of the word “echoes” and thus to suggest I may have “lifted” these statements is an illustration of misleading conduct of the kind you purport to expose. I did read Sage’s article and acknowledge its influence. However, I did conduct research independently of Sage’s article and now that I have confirmed this to you, any suggestion by you to the contrary would be knowingly misleading. This research included, by way of example [...]

(MW used “echoes” in their 5-Sep-2002 email, to which JA was replying. In the show, they used "it seem to us she lifted the words". That soft suggestion belies "demonstrated". Also, I see no claim from MW that JA had "deliberately done this ...".)
So JA did "deny the misquote", contrary to what our article used to say. Also, it did not link to her response, which screams "hit job" to me.
So I contend that my version is much more accurate, and better cited.

This means that mentioning "her prior breach of journalistic conduct" without is unacceptable unless we call it "alleged". I said simply her appointment to the ABC board "was criticised by, among others, former Media Watch host David Marr".
If anyone wants to add detail about Marr's attack on JA, feel free (but keep BLP in mind!).

Finally, on Mark Latham's defamation of JA: Latham defamed pretty much everybody in or around politics, so I don't tend to regard his attacks as Notable, but that's just me. More importantly, there's no cite for "Latham later claimed he did not know the exact meaning of the term when he used it". Most importantly, we'd need a cite and a quote instead of just saying lamely that "Albrechtsen denied Latham's charge". So I just deleted the whole thing instead of trying to fix it. If someone can find a BLP-conforming way to put it back, I won't object.

To summarise: I know I deleted stuff that could well have been fixed and retained, and I'm happy for someone else to do the work of fixing and restoring that stuff. On the other hand, the article did violate BLP in multiple places, and that is not acceptable. Cheers, CWC 13:07, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Albrechtsen denies the charge that she plagiarised Sage's article but as far as I can see there is no defence to the charge that she deliberately micharacterised Rassial's views, as shown in the radical difference between what the article by Sage said and what she reported, backed up by Rassial's response. Unless it's possible to show that somehow Albrechtsen's use of Rassial's work accurately reflects its meaning, it is more correct to say that Media Watch demonstrated that she mischaracterised it, rather than merely "accusing" her of mischaracterising it, since this term places the accurate description of her behaviour on the same level as her inaccurate and dishonest defence of it. 124.183.7.181 04:13, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

The author of the above post is, in my view, correct. Albrechtsen denies the "lifting" charge but does not address (or deny) that she misquoted Rassial. The fact that she misquoted the academic is incontrovertible: all one needs to do is place the two quotes side-by-side (as Media Watch did) to acknowledge this. Is not simply an accusation. I have changed "accused" to "demonstrated" Edelmand 09:41, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Let's go to the replay:

My references to [Jean-Jacques Rassial and Dr Flemming Balvig] were fair representations, in their context, of the views attributed to them in:

• in the case of Rassial, the article by Sage in The Times on 5 December 2000; and
• in the case of Balvig, the article by Pete Westbrook in The Copenhagen Post on 6 July 2001.

If you believe the underlying sources misrepresented the views of Rassial or Dr Balvig you may wish to take that up with the authors of that source material. However, as you know, journalists are entitled to, and very frequently do, rely on such sources reasonably believed to be accurate.

So she clearly does address the charge of misquoting Rassial, she clearly does deny misquoting his reported statement and the "fact" that she misquoting him is clearly very, very controvertible.

Please do not ever again insert false, harmful statements about a living person into Wikipedia. CWC 11:16, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Doctorate

She has a PhD in law, not a LL.D. See here.

15/10/07 - why has this been edited back? she has a PhD, not a LLD. LLDs are generally given to people who have made an actual contribution to the law (such as Michael Kirby, for example) not to people who wrote a thesis. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.136.41.180 (talk) 18:26, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

POV "dispute"

An editor insists on placing a POV "dispute" tag. Could the editor please explain on the talk page (as required) how they have tried to fix this and where specifically the dispute is. Otherwise the tag should be removed. --Merbabu (talk) 21:21, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

I plan to rewrite the whole article tomorrow, don't need to follow policy so closely. Ottre 12:51, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

oh sure. Just let us know what policy doesn't apply to you and we will get out of your way. --Merbabu (talk) 13:46, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

You don't have to be sarcastic about it. Do you actually want to get something done here or not? Ottre 15:02, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not going to tag war, but I have hardly started working on removing the generally pro-Albrechtsen point of view in this article. Ottre 14:12, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Views and Influence

I've rearranged this section: there is a lot of detail about the mediawatch incident, then very little compared to what has been deleted previously. The comments about her political and legal view deserved to belong at the top of the section, and perhaps in the summary at the top of the article (I know when I look up a political commentator or journalist on wikipedia, I'm generally interested in their bias, which shouldn't be hidden or obscured in any way). Some interesting stuff on this talk page that should be added back in by the editors who have discussed it. Bendav (talk) 09:36, 5 May 2010 (UTC)