In his appearance on Q&A last night, editor of Spiked and libertarian gadfly Brendan O’Neill said more than he ought to have.
O’Neill is apparently an alumnus of some Trotskyist group or other, and like other leftie turned righties (or Euston Manifesto Decent Lefties), has remembered how to use his time honoured bag of rhetorical tricks.
This sort of argument, or very loud and repetitive non sequitur, is now the stock and trade of right wing columnists more generally.
Just as Christopher Pearson, for instance, can argue, apparently seriously, that the timing of Kevin Rudd’s aorta valve replacement is all about his continued leadership ambitions.
It’s this reductio ad absurdum set of debating maneouvres that takes on a life of its own, and sometime reveals more than it intends. This febrile ‘win at all costs’ mentality – characteristic of the culture wars – is now almost dominant across the mediascape.
So, last night, we had Brendan O’Neill arguing that journalists had to be allowed their illegality. They’re the fourth estate!
The problem is that it’s not just left libertarian gadflies who believe this. O’Neill, far from being a contrarian, is actually reflecting back at twice the size the emptiness of the Fourth Estate We Hold The State To Account excuses of the media as it thrashes around attempting to escape democratic accountability.
So, we had all the usual “ZOMG! Press Freedom!” stuff we’ve come to expect, before O’Neill was unwisely pushed into speaking the secret hidden in plain sight out loud. The press actually believes that the law does not, or should not constrain it. Or, rather, if it does, it ought to be some sort of question for pondering in newsrooms and in the arcanae of journalistic codes of ethics. “How can we get our stories?”
Sadly, there are some Australian media commentators, and I’m not thinking of News Limited ones, whose blindness to questions of democratic accountability is such that they’ve actually aired this professional view in public. It’s characteristic of a profession stripped of meaning, of future, and of purpose, a machine blindly hurtling in the only direction it knows.
It’s more charitable not to name these people. They should know better.
This is premodern.
If sovereignty is about the decision as to when the law applies and when it does not, then it must stand above law, and stand above democracy. The media seems to arrogate to itself the position of King Louis. The Enlightenment actually existed to counter this arrogance.
We’ve gone beyond ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’…
What O’Neill and his journalistic colleagues appear to argue is that it is they who determine law and right.
That is rubbish, and should be called as such.
It’s all very well to prattle on about holding the powerful to account, but the media needs to be judged by what it does, not what it says. “By their fruits you shall know them”: hacking phones, murder pr0n, tawdry celeb exposes, casual but relentless Islamophobia, ad hominem attacks on critics, “campaigning journalism” that lies and distorts. That’s what we have.
Nor is it about ‘freedom’ or ‘censorship’. A considered, judicious and measured conversation needs to occur, and might well occur by way of public inquiry, about the danger the press Leviathan poses to democracy itself. That transcends questions, trite as they are, of ‘the future of journalism’ or the prevalence of the right wing noise machine. What it goes to is how we can protect ourselves from dying dinosaurs.
Brendan O’Neill and his spiked colleagues were erstwhile members of the Revolutionary Communist Party. They were apparently known as the best dressed people on UK picket lines, forsaking the donkey jacket look favoured by the SWP.
I didn’t like the black shirt and white tie look on Qanda last night, Terry!
If Oswald Mosley and Dan Ackroyd had a baby, it would be Brendan O’Neill.
It was interesting that O’Neill used an example from the sixties to try and justify the need to be outside of the law. I am not familiar with the example he used so wont comment on it’s validity. That there was not a more contemporary example to hand speaks volumes.
One of the many criticism’s of the NOTW scandal is that for all the hacking that went on, all they seemed to dredge up was titillation and gossip. No big scandals to turn a blow torch on corruption.
I watched last night’s Q&A at my mother’s place with her and my slightly right leaning brother and they both couldn’t believe how absurd & offensive that Brendan O’Neill guy was throughout the night.
The topic turns to Rupert & News Corp and this guy arcs up about lefties being too gleeful in their condemnations of Rupert and co. We were all sitting there with our mouths open.
Aptly timed given the woeful attack by News Corp. on Professor Quiggin today! (no linkage to that garbage)
It certainly is time for an Australian press inquiry.
Wifey had Q&A on, and the only thing I heard in the 60 seconds it took for me to find a pair of earphones was this clown carrying on about how the left says Rupert Murdoch controls this and controls that and that’s the same thing people used to say about the Jews in the 30s.
d
Include the friggin’ ABC in any media enquiry.
Which incidentally is closing its arts unit. I guess some of those arts types can be a bit lefty and unpredictable.
As a general rule, there’s only one kind of person less worthy of attention than a Trot and that’s an ex-Trot*. Re-double that rule for ex-Trot journalists. Brendan O’Neill is a professional troll.
Next.
* Fran Barlow excepted.
O’Niell is on the Drum now.
In fact they were the authors of corruption.
I didn’t see QandA last night, but it seems from Kim’s post that Mr O’Neill has spent too much time at the Emperor’s knee.
It puts me in mind of the reverse morality espoused by the unfortunate convicts on Norfolk Island, although I suspect they had more reason than Rupert’s orcs for adopting that position, considering the appalling treatment they received.
As for Christopher Pearson’s piece of dross, you can only laugh, I suppose. No doubt, in Pearson’s fevered imaginings, Rudd has been planning this aortic valve coup to snatch back the PMship since his first operation as a child.
No mundane reasons like Rudd’s or his surgeon’s availability or convenience, for the timing of the operation for our intrepid conspiracy theorist. This latest fantasy must have coincided with the arrival of his Junior James Bond kit.
Brendon O’Neill did us all a favour last night merely by exposing what an insufferable prat he is. Incapable of reasoned argument and capable only of talking over the top.
O’Neill’s a professional troll no doubt, but what’s the ABC doing allowing itself to be professionally trolled multiple times?
And double re-double it if they appear on Q&A.
Point of Order and Jane, I would say the most telling part of the whole hacking scandal was that they didn’t dredge up corruption because the Government, Police and 4th Estate have become enmeshed in a process that is reciprocally corrupting and the supposed oversight function of the media has long since been subsumed by dealmaking, backscratching and influence peddling. One of the many Fukushima stories that has sunk like a stone was the Guardian’s report on a memo between the members of the Brit Government and major corporations involved in the Nuclear industry; Westinghouse etc, literally colluding to deceive the public as to the true nature of events in the ongoing disaster at Fukushima Daiichi.
The goverment needs a distracted, lazy and corrupt media to make sure that any inconvenient news on topics that affect government policy is quickly buried, and with honorable exceptions like the Grauniad, a lazy, distracted media has obliged them. No wonder the purported grilling of the Murdochs alpha and beta lacked the fires of conviction.
So, last night, we had Brendan O’Neill arguing that journalists had to be allowed their illegality
Yep. Much as I enjoyed Tanya and the prat from Crikey getting a good slapping, I was uncomfortable with that statement. He actually said that journalists could bend the rules a bit if the story warranted it – and I suppose that is the sort of defence that whistle blowers and anti-logging activists rely on.
Note the normal bias in the Q&A panel – conservative, Labor, conservative, Labor, Trot, Pinko (L to R)
As soon as I read this, I knew that the video would contain no such argument, and sure enough, it doesn’t.
I saw it and he deplored the hacking. Imagine a press where a journalist had to reveal their source. Sometimes they operate in the grey.
Plibersek did her best to brick him but she came undone. That was after the hyperbole, or should that be superbowl about Kakadu.
Q&A seems to need court jesters. Why does providing balance have to rely so heavily on the unbalanced? Suppose anything is better than listening to Peter Dutton mouthing the spin without any insights of his own.
I don’t mind Peter Dutton, but he does remind me of Keating minus the haughty wit.
Q and A is everyone talking over the top of everyone else, all the time.
Loving the contrast between this analysis and that on the Cat, by the way.
I saw a bit of the show and agree O’Neill’s tie was very strange and a bit wrong. So there you go, a controversial opinion finds its way onto LP yet again… when will the trolling stop?!??
Actually apart from O’Neill’s tie the only other thing worthy of note seemed to be the dagger stares Tanya Plibersek was directing at Dutton. Is there bad blood between them or something? (Apart from them being on opposite sides of parliament obviously…)
PeterTB said:
O’Neill doesn’t count as a Trot unless he utters at least one thing that would have made it hard to believe that he was from the Sydney Institute, the IPA, or a Liberal senator. As he didn’t, that makes the panel 3 rightwingers, one non-aligned (Nixon), 1 ALP centre-rightist, 2 small-l liberals (Jones and Mayne).
This week, they’ve again announced 3 rightwingers (Richardson, Switzer and O’Dwyer) and one non-aligned — Noni Hazlehurst.
Interestingly. despite the fact that as far as I know, O’Neill has never repudiated any of Living Marxism’s positions, there was not a single reference to this at all. It would have been ingteresting had someone asked him how a Marxist analysis differed from rightwing Libertarianism on the environment, media control or race war, or whether Murdoch had ever censored his adovcacy of worlds socialist revolution in The Australian. IIRC even Gillard got one question about Socialist Forum.
From the charming Brendan O’Neill. It may be a bit too subtle for CraigMc, but to the rest of us it backs up Kim’s reading.
” In this 1960s, one very famous tabloid journalist used secret recording devices to expose extreme police corruption. I’m very worried that we’re going to throw the baby out with the bathwater here and just say that journalists can never bend the law in order to get a story, which would be a very bad thing to do. The thing is that this depiction of the British media as the seventh circle of hell, where the most terrible, unspeakable things happen, it might make people happy and it might give you a bit of a laugh attacking the British media as this terrible, terrible place that’s been ruined by Murdoch. I, as a British journalist, am worried about the consequences of it and the fact that we now have a government inquiry into how journalists should behave. The end result is going to be to incubate powerful people from criticism, even though it is justified on the back of protecting weak people from that kind of intervention.”
The full comment that he made is somewhat better than some cherrypicking.
Great post Kim. Not a great ‘fan’ of the show and last night provided a mountain of evidence for that position.
This quest for ‘balance’ on the ABC is completely off the rails. Astronomers ‘balanced’ by astrologers? Dentists balanced by ‘tooth pullers’ armed with doors and strings? Climate scientists ‘balanced’ by whoever?
O`Neill also said:
He only gave one example of an illegal act which he approved of: clandestine recording of police. That doesn’t seem like something to get too upset about.
Everyone is still cashing in on Watergate. If we were still getting the investigative stories we used to get from the 60′s-80′s I’d be nodding my head too.
Bend != Break. To the rest of us that have dictionaries, it contradicts Kim’s reading.
I had some thoughts on O’Neill after digesting his Bolt style attack on the “the left commentariat and liberals” over Norway which led me to think he was some kind of former left leaning trendoid who now realised his bread was buttered by the mainstream establishment. When he opened his mouth and kept flapping his jaws in an imitation of some stranded goldfish on the fourth estate beach I was motivated to wonder (not for the first time) what gives the ABC the right to foist such blatantly right wing bullshit onto an unsuspecting public under the guise of a fair and balanced public affairs program.
I thought the best question was regarding our Julia’s little dinner party tonight with the Murdoch empire.
“right wing bullshit” Are you serious?
Mr. O’Neill believes that in the interest of free speech, we should be able to say what we like,regardless of the consequences.
Well I am going to do something I am averse to to. I am going to attack the messenger.
Mr. O’Neill you have a problem with hearing what people are saying. You hear things that are not being said. No one is suggesting that the media should be muzzled.
The PM has said once that I know of that the media could have some hard questions to answer. There is a right to privacy bill being introduced that was recommended years ago by a earlier inquiry.
What most people are asking that we have a inquiry into the media. This has not occurred for years.
Surely you are not suggesting that the media, unlike all else in society should not be held to account.
I am afraid this is what you are saying, that the media according to you has the right to be policeman, judge and jury. You are also demanding the right to hand out punishment as you see fit. Hounding people you do not like out of jobs and positions.
Why those on the right and the media in general are so upset and frighten about what is being said, I fail to understand.
I can only come to the conclusion that many suffer from guilty consciences.
Mr. O’Neill I find you to be paranoid and obsessed with what you believe others are saying and want.
We do want a free press, but one we can trust because it puts truth above all else.
We do not have that today. We have the opposite and it is a danger to our democracy.
Personally I think you are a joke and you are making a fool of yourself.
Watch a rerun of Q&A. Look at the audiences reaction to your ravings, especially the looks on the faces of the young. Listen to how you sound and then tell me I have it wrong.
You have a problem when our have to put words in the mouths of others to prove your point.
“I don’t mind Peter Dutton, but he does remind me of Keating minus the haughty wit.”
and intelligence.
“
Well I’d say that anyone who thinks B. O’Neill is anything other than a prize tosser is themselves guilty of the act of tossing. I followed a link from Loon Pond to piece he wrote on religion, would that I could get those minutes back. And what’s with the whole “spiked” idea. They get spiked because they write crap not because of they have dangerous ideas. And what’s TimT on about, there isn’t any analysis of “the Cat”??
Oh and the Spectator is having some sort of Big Ideas fest. The smugometer will overload as will the detectosmarm and they’ll have to hand out umbrellas to anyone in the first 4 rows.
I mind Peter Dutton very much.
And good on Stephen Mayne for sticking up for Christine Milne.
Gramcshi was right.
The long march through the institutions does work.
Keith Windshucttle
Brendon O’Neil
Christopher Pearson
Frank Furedi
etc..
minus the h – too late – sorry i live in (an overly) phonetic world.
by institutions i mean crap opinion pieces.
Eh, a quick google of Brendan O’Neill + Wikileaks or BO + Assange shows us he isn’t very keen on Wikileaks holding anyone to account for anything. So much for his vibrant culture of muckrakery in defence of the public good.
Gotta say, as someone who is okay with what Wikileaks has done, I read what O’Neill says, and I think, ‘Okay, I’m never again going to make an issue of how personally disgusted I am with Assange. I don’t want to get anywhere near the slippery slope O’Neill is on when he sneers at a “Wikileaks-backing liberal class”.’
Kim, I didn’t see ‘Q&A’, but I take it he was raging against the chattering classes in general? If so I really don’t have a problem with you adding a little spice to the man’s spoken context. Guy’s begging for that kind of treatment. That also explains the motivations of the people defending him here.
Ex-ideologues – left or right – are a bit like ex-smokers. Just a little too militant about it.
The more disapproving a Q&A audience is, the more mainstream you probably are. They’re not exactly a broad cross-section of society – ABC viewers obsessed with politics enough to trudge into a studio late at night in order to listen to people arguing? Talk about 90% lefty activist self-selection.
Quite wrong, Craig Mc. Because of the whole ABC “balance police” mentality, they actually survey prospective Qanda audience members as to their voting intention, and then weight the audience accordingly. They put out a tweet at the start of the thing that goes something like “Tonight’s audience is 47% Coalition, 30% Labor, 13% Green”. And guess what? They get the said numbers from… wait for it… Newspoll!
That’s one of the many reasons why the program is a complete waste of time, and only makes the pathetic standard of Australian political debate even worse than it might otherwise be.
… Sort of, Nickws, he did work in his previous line (original to him or borrowed, not sure) that ‘only elites care about the News of the World phone tapping, and you know, the general public is indifferent or really wants to read about soccer managers’ medical records and Princess Kate’s sister’s friend being teh gay and anyway hasn’t she got a really top bum! ZOMG! in the newspaper… and all this is Teh Enlightenment Fourth Estate Holding Teh Powerful To Account’.
Something odd about hearing this bullshit spoken. We might be too inured to it in print or on the screen. But the basic absurdity of the non sequitur pile up was evident about ten seconds after he opened his mouth (which he was most reluctant, then, to close…)
Kim, I think it’s really worth comparing these new comments of his to his older expressed views (published at spiked.com, and on the op-ed page of the Australian) that Wikileaks was of interest to nobody but the ‘elite’.
I have to say I’ve underestimated the importance of Wikileaks outside of American civil liberty politics, as I don’t think they’ve captured the same lighting-in-a-bucket as Ellsberg did, but reading the attacks from O’Neill makes me wonder. Why is spiked.com harder on Assange than almost all the conservative pundits in Oz and the UK? And why the anti-anti-Murdochism? I don’t think it’s mere contrarianism at work.
And weren’t the producers of ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ aligned with spiked.com?
I’m not a Cold War leftist nostalgic by any stretch of the imagination, but I wonder if these jokers are beneficiaries of a Wall Street version of the financial support ‘Encounter’ and ‘Quadrant’ used to get from the CIA.
This Brendan O’Neill was on The Drum tonight too (the ABC suffers from stockholm syndrome?) and Rudd’s former adviser Lachlan Harris was champing at the bit to get stuck into him but was unable to get much of a word in with O’Neill banging on, Peter Reith looking suitably smug at the end of it too.
To be honest I thought that Brendan was a most effective communicator on that forum and that he was making a very convincing and realistic argument. If you don’t like what is said in the Murdoch press then don’t consume it,but more importantly don’t run with the false assumption that the public are just sheep being led by an evil Shepard (in the form of Murdoch’s minions). The whole “media inquiry” push is ignoring the elephant in the room which is that the vast majority of the people just don’t buy all of the far left ideology of the Greens and that they resent Labor being forced to dance to Bob Brown’s tune to retain office.
As O’Neal was suggesting anyone can set up their own newspaper to propagate their own point of view to the public as long as they have the money to do so. However given the capital cost of such an enterprise, what makes anyone here think that any new or alternative voice in print is going to be any less inclined to support the interests of business and the advertisers who will pay its way?
Iain, O’Neill makes the same mistake as you do in misunderstanding the relationship between language and power (and violence, too). Words are not just a consumer product to be chosen and purchased in a market of words. Language is the basis of our social and political order. O’Neill’s defence of free speech as the absolute right to say anything, untethered to reality or the reality of our social order, is a kind of anarchism. Actually, it shares something with authoritarianism, too, whereby language, so untethered, becomes wholly subservient to politics. Free speech is the absolute right to reconnect language with the real world so as to expose its misuse.
Iain Hall, the real elephant in the room is your apparent inability to compose a comment that does not include the phrase “the elephant in the room”. A brief comb of your comments reveals the truth of this elephant.
But seriously, if a bunch of journalists digging for sleaze in dustbins is all that stands between the free society and jackbooted oppression, we’re in more strife than I thought!
Really, I think these journalists and opinion columnists DESERVE to have their puffed-up self-importance deflated. Mark Steyn might find it hard to believe, but Western Civilisation will carry on just fine, even if he stops talking. Somehow, we’ll get by!
Western Civilisation depends on trawling through celebrity garbage cans! No, really, stop laughing, this is serious!
As quoted by TD @ 25, BO does have a point.
Government control of the media can only harm insurgency. At the moment, the know-nothing, populist right comprises the most dynamic insurgency in the Anglosphere. I cannot believe that this ascendency can last long. After that, who knows? Perhaps a rise of the countercultural left.
The most egregious attempt to suppress opinion in Britain since WWII was the attempt to destroy Oz Magazine in the early 1970s. The cultural left were persecuted by right wing zealotry led by the Home Office.
Certainly, prosecute and gaol the phone hackers. They broke the law. Hopefully, Jamie Packer may also end up in choky. But don’t bet your life on it.
But only scared, despairing folks in the battle of ideas rely on government to stop their opponents from self-expression. The left should be confident that their ideas are better and more persuasive in the long run. The right will not hesitate to use the power of the State to suppress the Left. Why give the Right more weapons than they have already?
To be honest Brendan O’Neill knows about as much about communication as a cardboard box, but at least a cardboard box is less annoying. If your idea of communication is to interrupt anyone who disagrees with you, aggressively talk over others and pile bullshit upon bullshit in the vain hope that the sheer accumulation of words will persuade people, then good luck to you.
If you think that he actually persuaded anyone to his warped point of view, rather than turn most completely off, then I have a friend in Nigeria that would love to contact you.
MH at 8:05 am
No I think that the ones showing a misunderstanding about the relationship are lefties who postulate a conspiracy on this issue.
Really? that sounds like utter nonsense to me, at best words are a tool for communicating ideas and it is the ideas that form our political order, not the words used to express them.
Strangely enough I did not think that he was advocating any sort of absolute right to free speech, rather he was suggesting that the moves to have an inquiry was a rather blatant attempt to censor a free press when the government is quite legitimately being criticised for its general incompetence.
George Orwell would be most impressed that you have so well grasped the concept of “new speak”
What does thsi nonsense mean? More “new speak” by the sound of it
What it says to me is that you want to ensure that only words conveying the approved line of argument should be allowed.
Mercurius at 8:20 am
Which means what precisely? That you don’t want journalists to dig through the political detritus to find the little bon motts that add up to a deeper truth? Or is thsi just you expressing a disdain for the insatiable appetite that the public have for gossip about the icons of our celebrity culture?
The thing is no one obliges you or anyone else to read opinions that you don’t lik, however if you succeed in silencing voices that you dislike how long will it be before others use the same mechanisms or rationales to silence the voices that you approve of?
Free speech is an issue that transcends political affiliations and it is something that we qualify at our own peril.
You’re right Merc! A quick google reveals that the pachydermically pre-occupied chappie has used the term dozens of times.
A case of trunk envy, perhaps?
MH said:
However that may be, free speech has never, in practice, permitted such usages in any jurisdiction. Whatever is boasted about every jurisdiction restrains free speech. You can’t infringe trade marks, or intellectual propoerty. You can’t tip off friends about stocks if you have privilged knowledge. There’s national security, p*rn*graphy, defamation, incitement, criminal conspiracy and so forth. The principle of free speech is not an affirmative defence in any of these things.
We have seen that the trade in privileged information is extremely lucrative — so much so that senior police were capable of being bribed to directly abandon their duty and breach serious taboos to trade in it. So it seems that the phrase notwithstanding, the kind of speech that Mr O’Neill suggests should be protected is not free at all, but a valuable asset of the most powerful people in the land. He has put himself forward as someone who wants to preserve his right to a slice of the trade.
Patrick B at comment thirty-something-or-the-other,
The Cat = Catallaxy.
Spiked Online seems to be a piece of work. Just clicked over to have a look – sample headline: “The elitist struggle against Mein Kampf”. Oy.
It’s interesting to me how old commos often end up on the Right. Makes me think my decision to spend my youth on rock’n'roll rather than overthrowing the system was the right one.
Given that he said the phone hacking was wrong, what has he said that supports that assertion?
Wolw, I had no idea they were imposing such strict legally binding commitments which can’t possibly be hacked, you know, by lying.
For once, I’m in 100% agreement with Katz.
Tim T said:
Inspired by this I took a wander over to Catallaxy. It won’t come as a shock to those here that their take on Mr O’neill was somewhat more “generous” (hello Brian!) than over this way.
The post there by Howard-era ABC hack Judith Sloane is entitled:
Brendan: We Love You.
In true hagiographic fashion, Sloane fancied that his performance deserved an Oscar and Gold Logie all rolled into one. Given that these are awards for acting in an entertaining fashion, perhaps she had a point. Needless to say, the cheersquad was soon along to furiously agree. Adjectives like “brilliant” “steelwilled” and “articulate” were wheeled out for this dissembling rightwing loudmouth.
Bloghost Sinclair Davidson, ever the man to sort the wheat from the chaff, opened the chaff bag to pick out the most absurd of comments from O’Neill for special praise:
Jason Soon noted that the interesting thing is that Brendan and the Spiked team are rehabilitated Marxists. That didn’t discourage perhaps the most foulmouthed flamer at Catallaxy, one called “JC” who surely expectorates as he types.
This is very much this chap’s style. For him the difference between reasoned inference and the slippery slope is moot if it leads in the direction of concluding that left|sts are mass-murdering psychopaths. I stopped responding to him after he directly asserted the Greens qualified in that respect as I concluded that he was asserting that I must be one too. Tellingly, that logic wouldn’t apply to the Blotosphere and Breivik, but I digress.
Jason Soon continued to THR (a lefty regular at Catallaxy):
Another poster called “sdog” observed:
Prompting the circle jerk response from JC …
Sdog then affirmed that it very much was, pointing JC in the direction of the environmental policy of Sp!ked, which, it will come as no surprise, sounds a lot like the environmental policy of an organisation run by a global polluters’ cartel. Pollution is life don’t you know? Articles have catchy titles like “The rise of the
eco-imperialists”; “Admit it: environmentalism was an ugly experiment”; and from O’Neill himself: “The icy grip of the politics of fear”.
JC was suitably impressed:
Wow Dog … He’s a kindred spirit.
Charged up, JC continued on another theme to O’neill’s liking:
Certainly, JC has learned what O’Neill dogwhistled. Another rightwing poster, “papachango” cautioned:
JC was undeterred however:
Yet is it the case that the best libertarian, in the view of Catallaxians, is a “reformed” Marxist, or is he simply as, Sloane implied, a great actor?
SIked self-describes in part as follows:
An article by O’Neill himself in 2008, still on the site, in response to the official appearance of the GFC, commences as follows:
Deliciously, in that article, O’Neill takes a swing at another libertarian icon, Freddy Hayek, who had his own brief flirtation with social|sm before abandoning it:
So according to O’Neill himself, he’s still a Marxist. I leave it to the Catallaxians to work out how avowed Marxists can be the best libertarians.
Fran, leaving it “to the Catallaxians to work out how avowed Marxists can be the best libertarians” might be asking a bit much.
The call to violence in defence of their beloved Oz is interesting.
I’m shocked, shocked(!) that commenters on Catallaxy would write such things.
Dave said:
Not so much interesting as revealing. These people argue that the climate of “hate speech” is a fantasy or that in any event how people respond is simply about individual choice. I very much doubt that “JC” is anything more than a loudmouth, but one needs only someone who is just slightly megalomaniacal and angst-ridden to take it upon himself that the voices he’s hearing are urging him to strike out at evil on their behalf, for some nutbag to cross the line and do just that.
As someone said the other day, wolves as well as dogs can hear a dogwhistle. JC’s post attests to that. It’s hard to imagine that he would post such a thing if he thought his crew would pile onto him for doing so. It’s why Alan Jones can talk of drowning the PM, Bob Brown and Clover Moore at sea and others describe it as “a joke”. At this stage, bloghost Davidson has not so much waved a finger. Yet here we have not an example of yelling fire in a crowded theatre, but a call to get the matches ready to carry out collective retribution for some event that is entirely a product of their fevered imaginations. They accuse The Greens of being “f@scists” but JC’s proposed conduct is exactly what real f@scists would do.
I agree with Tom Davies and Katz. The danger is that new privacy laws will be carefully crafted to make the job of the few mainstream media organisations, and others like Wikileaks or the Bureau of Investigative Journalism that do try to hold the powerful to account, that much harder. They will almost certainly become another means by which to criminalize the publication of material that is impossible to come by except by covert means. I think this is why Assange himself was pretty vocally pro-phone hacking.
Please, please can someone please tell me of any MSM publication or journalist that has ‘held the powerful to account’ in Australia in the last 5 years.
This is a total fallacy: they are the powerful, which is one of the reasons why O’Neill is opposed to Assange.
Fran @59
Thanks for that breakdown – reading the threads at Catallaxy so we don’t have to!
Iain Hall @46
So, you admit that business has a disproportionate influence on News Ltd and the “news” they publish.
Noticed when use our freedom of speech to criticize the media, we are told to shut up. Words are put in our mouth accusing us of attempting to muzzle the media.
It appears that freedom of speech only belongs to the media.
It appears they are above the law.
It appears they have the right to be judge and jury,
They have the right to convict and impose sentences on people.
It appears that we do not have the right to demand they be held accountable. We do not have the right to criticise.
In the debate over how the extreme language used by a number of right wing bloggers may contribute to some unhinged person going over the edge, a defense I have seen many times is that there are similar left wing blogs. I do not spend a lot of time trawling through the various political blogs but I have not come across any left blogs that incite the responses of even of say, Janet Albrechetsen who whips a storm of vitriol. Let alone some of the more extreme like catalaxy. Other than LP I may look at Deltoid, John Quiggan, Crikey and one or two others. I have never seen an equivalent of the type of responses you see at the right wing blogs. Is it just because the sites I visit are well moderated, more civilised? Are there left wing blogs out there that I have not tripped over where similar outrage and foaming at the mouth occurs?
I agree with you Adrian, there is a confluence of interests between Newscorp and the British Government (to me the questioning of the Murdochs looked like a pythonesque ordeal by comfy chair), neither particularly want to be scrutinized and as long as they can still turn a profit some way, I don’t think News cares if their actions and the consequences that ensue cruel the pitch for real investigative journalists. I just think that the chances of any legislative response having the effect of further shielding those Corporations and Government bodies from scrutiny is very high.
Fran @62. Exactly. The problem is responding with violence when your reason fails. It is blatantly self-serving and arguable indefensible for those who enjoy authoritative positions in the “media” to on the one hand bandy emotive language around advocating violence in one form or another and then claim that its a joke or that words and pictures have no effect on what people do.
But has anyone actually argued that there should be state action to restrict political speech, Katz?
I think it’s a straw argument, and that’s what I was getting at with my comments about the reductio ad absurdum methods being used by right wing commentators and the defensive media.
It doesn’t follow that calls for a media enquiry imply censorship. It just doesn’t.
It might lead to changes to ownership laws, which might in turn require divestment of some ‘assets’. Now, it might not either, but legislation to prevent or mitigate concentration of ownership is not uncommon and is not the STATE STOPPING BOLT. Or whatevs.
@54
I know that, the place where there is no such thing as analysis. Just a bunch of very grumpy men.
Perhaps TimT would care to revise his choice of the word “analysis” when he attempts to describe the activities of “the Cat” in the light of Fran’s report? It is interesting though how a lightweight like O’Neill who has nothing to offer in terms of well articulated and challenging arguments sends “the Cats” (is this a beatnik reference, do they wear berets?) into flights of ecstasy. It’s like a drug to them …
So what’s the point? I’m as interested in finding out stuff about the Murdochracy as anyone. But in this case the criminal proceedings against the phone hackers are likely to turn over enough rocks to satisfy us ghouls for months.
What is to be gained by government regulation of media ownership? The media landscape is changing so rapidly that today’s solid gold asset may well be tomorrow’s dog. Some of these assets, like bandwidth, are public assets. The public will get maximum return for the lease or sale of those assets only if media moguls are allowed to bid each other to the hilt to buy them.
Remember what Kerry Packer said of Alan Bond when he bid way over the odds for Channel Nine and ruined himself and his shareholders in the effort:
“You only get one Alan Bond in your lifetime, and I’ve had mine”
Alan Bond bought Channel Nine for 1 billion. Kerry Packer bought it back for 700 million.
These are the guys we need to bid for public assets.
The point, I’d suggest, might be ensuring some democratic accountability. I don’t know criminal trials necessarily achieve that. I think the culture of disdain for legality needs to be addressed, not just the crimes of individuals.
But what would these individuals and corporations be accountable for?
Is simply being big prima facie evidence for misdeeds?
Or might even a small and subversive organ like a latterday Oz Magazine or Wikileaks be accountable not for their size (they were and are tiny) but for the challenge they pose to the State and public decency?
Maybe an increase in the diversity of views and ideas would result from an increased diversity of ownership. At present the News Ltd view of the world, generally echoed by the ABC is of course all pervasive.
Imagine how much we’d all know about the devious and criminal methods of News international without the kind of true investigative journalism provided by The Guardian.
The fact that we don’t have an equivalent in Australia is a sad reflection of this lack of diversity, and Australian society is poorer as a result.
I watched O’Neill on Monday night, and I thought he was well and truly dispatched by the calm logic of Tanya Plibersek.
That said, I’d actually approve of journalists breaking the law in some cases – for example, where the law is used to shut down or conceal appropriate scrutiny of government. I suppose I’d ask O’Neill where was the public interest in anything that NOTW has done?
It’s not a case that something permissible in one case for specific reasons should therefore be permissible generally. Think of legitimate self-defence in some cases of homicide, for example. The existence of such a defence in very limited circumstances does not render homicide generally acceptable. If you’re going to hack phones as a journalist, you’d better have a bloody good reason, not merely the profit motive of tabloid journalism.
I also agree with Plibersek in her estimation of the ability of the media to incite violence and hatred – not to mention dangerous ignorance of vital issues such as climate change – through arguments in which the volume of the megaphone far outstrips the rational merit.
It’s not a case of shutting down the megaphones (though in some cases that might be appropriate); instead, it’s a case of supporting the access to media of countervailing voices – think climate scientists as a counter to Andrew Bolt, for example.
That’s it. Haven’t been here for a while. Good to see the interesting discussions are still being had.
Katz said:
Diversity, until such time that it really is “a dog”? The ACCC regulates competition so that a handful of plays cannot engage in cartel-like behaviour. Similarly, obstructing the domination of markets by one player makes for more competition over what constitutes fair comment. That does not amount to an edict from the state over what to say, but it ensures that excessive horizontal integration of these assets does not limit it to one single thing.
Clearly, there are some basic drivers of news content that would apply whether there was one player or three in a given market. All commercial papers have an interest in the general interest of business, and accordingly, we have little reason to suppose that diversity would guarantee at least a left-leaning media outlet in any capital city, though it would make it likely that there would be at least one small-l liberal one.
The other issue with News Ltd is that its position is so powerful that Murdoch can accept losses and low profits in all of his papers because the papers enable him to protect other interests that are highly profitable, so in a sense it doesn’t matter if his papers are, in a commercial sense, “dogs”. Their barking is profitable elsewhere*. No paper the business model of which relies on being profitable in its own right can compete with that.
* As odious a character as was Teddy Roosevelt, this comment from 100 years back isn’t far off the mark:
In terms of aggregation of media power, the biolded remarks are very apt.
I think I agree with Xenophon as quoted here. There are known precedents for privacy laws being used to shield powerful figures who have engaged in misconduct and so we should be extremely wary about restricting journalists’ exemption from the Privacy Act. The article also mentions an ALRC report from 2008 which actually recommended extending those exemptions.
oh dear … {players cannot engage; bolded}
FB:
Yoe appear not to have been keeping up with the news.
Some of the biggest shareholders in NewsCorp are suing Murdoch right now because they believe that he is failing to maximise returns on their investment. Clearly, if there is a conspiracy of self protection, either these major shareholders aren’t in on it or they don’t like its results.
La Famiglia Murdoch could well lose control of News long before any enquiry is complete. And Murdoch’s enemies in News want to divest themselves of Murdoch’s dogs, including perhaps the Opposition Organ.
A considered, judicious and measured conversation needs to occur
Certainly.
Nor is it about ‘freedom’ or ‘censorship’.
Oh of course not. After all we need a measured conversation and to get that we have to exclude certain dangerous ideas. The notion that the ‘Fourth Estate’ (why the FUCK are we still using these outmoded French terms?) is supposed to be a watchdog on the state for example. That’s, like, soooo 19th century.
It actually has to do with the capacity of corporations to invest in one another and the erosion of the freedom of speech and thought and the duties attendant to that. But forget that. These days it’s all about the Brand War: News Ltd/Fairfax; McDonald’s/Hungry Jacks; Coke/Pepsi; Liberal/Labor.
Facts don’t matter. What matters is will the good guys win the war to brainwash the people.
Katz said:
I have heard the chatter and hope it plays out that way, but at this stage, there’s merely an asterisk next to the story. Can he raise the funds needed to buy back some control? Maybe not.
Adrien said:
Depending on who one thinks “the good guys” are, Adrien might be on to something. Bolt, Akerman and Jones are certainly doing their best, guided always (ça va de soi!) by the invisible hand of the market.
That’s the rub, Darren – I think you have to add lack of ethics to illegality before you can condemn it entirely.
It’s been on my mind this week because of the arrest a few days ago of a local pollie called Steve Meacher, for handing a report to a DSE officer at a logging coupe in Toolangi. This has been thoroughly ignored by the media, except for the local paper, as far as I can see. (He was handing the DSE officer a copy of their OWN report, according to another activist there, showing that the coupe was likely Leadbetter Possum habitat. That must have been pretty embarrassing.) I assume the illegality of the action consisted in the DSE/Vic Government declaring the area a no-go zone, in order to prevent the very protests that it knew the logging activity would provoke. I find it difficult to condemn Meacher’s action. It hurt no-one – unless he had actually slapped the officer with a rolled up copy of the report, that might have stung a bit, but as far as I know the report didn’t even make it into the guy’s hand. Which is very different to the Milly Dowler situation.
We see that kind of “illegality” happening all the time in a good cause. And that’s before you even start on the ethical conundrums inherent in the global phenomenon which is Wikileaks.
Depending on who one thinks “the good guys” are
Oh yes indeed. Any lies, distortion or twisting of the facts is a-okay as long as its for a good cause.
Bolt, Akerman and Jones are certainly doing their best, guided always (ça va de soi!) by the invisible hand of the market.
Indeed and in engaging with them the Left’s best is to come back with a lot of wanky prattle about ‘othering’. And you wonder why the hoi poloi ignore ye.
But that’s okay. Just compile a list of unacceptable uses of not-so-free-speech and write laws that issue appropriate guidelines. That helps just grand.
Adrien said:
Precisely. That is the position taken by Jones, The Blot and that gang of scoundrels. The Australian’s War on Science, documented over at Deltoid, now has 60 features. Pure Poison too has also done a pretty good job documenting the systematic lying and dissembling of the RWDBs.
Strawman. We talk of much more than ‘othering’. And those ‘polloi’ understand ‘othering’ perfectly well.
Fran @82 “Can he raise the funds needed to buy back some control? Maybe not.”
I dont think he needs to raise the cash Fran. Now the BSkyB deal has been shelved I understand they have a mountain of cash which was to be used for that deal. I also understand that as part of a strategy to prop up the share price, News would use this cash for a share buyback deal, essentially putting a floor under the price. A neat side effect of this arrangement would be that after the share buy back the Murdoch family would then control roughly 50 % of the class B shares (these are the ones with voting rights). At the moment I understand for about 13% of the company they control just over 30% of the voting rights. I am doing this from memory so these are rough figures. Stephen Mayne is a good source for the latest on the corporate maneuvers.
“It appears that we do not have the right to demand they be held accountable. We do not have the right to criticise.”
The free speech right contains within itself the right to criticise the content and delivery of other’s free speech.
The ‘right to free speech’ does not entitle you to ignore evidence, logic, relevance, or basic decency, nor to claim immunity from accountability (and even strong condemnation) when you fail to abide by these minimum responsibilities.
Don’t journalists break the law every now and then?
And don’t they do it publicly with full disclosure and as much publicity as the can raise, often with universal support from the media?
In fact it was the preparedness of journos to go to prison – to break the law in the public interest and go to jail for it (even Hinch does this, as much as I dislike him and what he stands for I do get where he is coming from with that particular issue. Its not the same as being sued for saying people are too white to be indigenous.) Didn’t Andrew Wilkie initiate a law to change the presumption to favour journos protecting their sources as a matter of public interest?
I don’t think you can compare that sort of action in the public interest – it includes the preparedness to do the time as well cos they felt the public interest was more important than their freedom – to what has recently happened in the UK. That is what O’Neill was doing the other night. One is a literal case of people with the courage of their convictions, the other isn’t.
That should read:
“In fact it was the preparedness of journos to go to prison – to break the law in the public interest and go to jail for it – that gave the idea of the 4th branch some cred when it challenged government, even democratically elected government.”
For me a public interest test is a critical issue in the privacy debate. There has to be one.
If you are minding your own business, including in public, then you have a right to privacy.
Only those in power, or seeking it, or doing serious legal or social wrong, should be obligated to submit to close scrutiny (by the media or the authorities). Even then it must only be to the extent necessary to hold them properly accountable. Everybody has a right to some privacy.
That is the position taken by Jones, The Blot and that gang of scoundrels.
Fran, just in case you think I’m a lifetime member of the Fox fan club allow me please.
Strawman. We talk of much more than ‘othering’. And those ‘polloi’ understand ‘othering’ perfectly well.
You seem to have trouble comprehending my criticisms of the Left’s style of speech these days. ‘Othering’ is a clunky word that’s opaque to most people. Dehumanize, ostracize, vilify, alienate, scapegoat, smear… there’s a list of much better terms. Why not use words that people can understand without a sidebar into Introduction To Over-rated French Writers? How ’bout this? Haters. It’s the Aussie Hip Hop thang right now. Simple, easy heaps of illiterate people understand it.
Thanks for the corrections btw. Putting the English definite article before the Greek one scans better, sorry. And I guess I left out an ‘l’ by mistake. That’s simply devastatin’ to my argument. You may lack wit but you have bucketloads of pedantry
The ‘right to free speech’ does not entitle you to ignore evidence, logic, relevance, or basic decency
Sure it does. The liberty means you are able to lie your head off. Sorry.
nor to claim immunity from accountability (and even strong condemnation) when you fail to abide by these minimum responsibilities
You’re right there.
I don’t think many people actually even know what free speech is anymore. It’s a shitfight between two different armies both determined to impose their own ideas of Correct Speech.
I’d like to veto articles that discuss anything to do with QandA in favour of discussing shows that actually provide meaning to everyday existence. Like Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Adrien said:
There’s no way I’d use ‘othering’ in front of my year 10s or at a community meeting. I wonder if you get the concept of register. This place is not where the masses hang out. Here the concept of ‘othering’ is easily grasped. I would add though that although your suggested alternatives are close and each takes some of the ground the concept in some contexts covers, none is quite a synonym. “Othering” concerns the erection of frontiers between authentic identity and all else.
It’s not personal and it was just in passing. I also self-correct out of disgust at things I’ve typed that look inelegant. I’ve put lines through things on a restaurant menu, much to hubby’s chagrin. You should see what happens when I mark students’ work or am asked to review meeting minutes.
Adrien quoted Skeet as follows:
then continued:
Here you are correct. Skeet should probably have added the qualification: with impunity. People are entitled to object loudly, and if the exercise of speech tortiously or criminally violates the legitimate claims of another, to expect the state to act on his or her behalf to restrain the behaviour and effect a remedy.
Nothing better than a visit to LP with Kim in a combative mood. And the story is typical of the ideological trajectory of “their” ABC.
Are LPers supposed to take some of the nonsenses offered by the T-bagger types here seriously, or do we just take it for a troll?
Fran’s patience with these people remains legendary, so I suppose it comes from professional teaching.
Disappointing for her tho, the kids at least pick up eventually, employing honest effort, but not even her skills can reach supposed adults who don’t want to know.
Yeah, but don’t call it “free speech”, call it “lying your head off”. And when you do it, understand that has consequences for the social and political ties that bind us together as a society. i.e. it undoes them.
“Sure it does. The liberty means you are able to lie your head off. Sorry.”
We don’t allow people to lie in a number of important areas of human society, such as parliament, science (and academia in general), the protected professions and trades, advertising, defamation, legal proceedings (including commercial contracts), etc, and the formal penalties for doing so can be serious indeed.
How does deliberate suppression or misrepresentation of (relevant) factual reality in public debates about public policy, especially by those claiming to be neutral and fair reporters of the debate, produce good outcomes for community?
Free speech has always been qualified and accompanied by the equal obligation to use it responsibly. As it should be. Not sorry about that at all.
Also, MH and Tssk, the right to free speech doesn’t mean I’m not to call a particular instance of that speech racist, sexist, hate, or whatever. This is something on which the majority of Australians seem confused. Saying “you shouldn’t use that epithet / spurious theory of brain “hardwiring” / etc because…” is not legally preventing anyone from doing anything. I know Tigtog’s pointed this out any number of times. But the denizens of News Ltd are still convinced that people who disagree with them are OUT TO LIMIT THEIR FREEDOM OF SPEECH!1!
none is quite a synonym.
This is true. But I find the use of language by left wing political commentators, art critics, architects etc to be overly technocratic not to mention aesthetically displeasing. The least useful thing about postwar French philosophy is the way they write. The English tradition which emphasizes clarity over fancy allusion might do with a revival.
‘Othering’ concerns a body of philosophical work that deals with… well we both know what it deals with. But what it deals with is multifarious and not quite well understood. We don’t have a word that quite nails it. I think ‘othering’ is a little too vague, like the theory that underpins it. My taxonomy does well enough for fascist mass murderers.
“Othering” concerns the erection of frontiers between authentic identity and all else.
Oh yeah? I took the word from one of Mark’s posts concerning the cultural dehumanization of ethnicities by racist and racialist discourse. As for ‘authentic identity’ well that’s the existential dilemma of the 21st century
I also self-correct out of disgust at things I’ve typed that look inelegant. I’ve put lines through things on a restaurant menu, much to hubby’s chagrin. You should see what happens when I mark students’ work or am asked to review meeting minutes.
You need a holiday.
Skeet should probably have added the qualification: with impunity.
Indeed. I agree.
MH – Yeah, but don’t call it “free speech”, call it “lying your head off”.
I call it both.
The categories aren’t mutually exclusive, that’s my point.
And when you do it, understand that has consequences for the social and political ties that bind us together as a society. i.e. it undoes them.
The ‘political ‘ties’ consist of the law, those who make it, those to whom it applies. Winding back the freedom to speak because its a threat to the state is a dangerous tactic.
Social ties are eroded by lying and various other moral failings, true. In this the media as a whole and News Ltd in particular are guilty as charged. But the problem isn’t the sole province of the Right. Michael Moore uses many of the same truth-twisting tactics as Andrew Bolt. Try telling that to one of his fans.
Coming up with a list of proscribed subjects and making it illegal to express certain views will not improve people’s standard of behaviour nor will it enlighten them to the desirability of being open minded and tending to dispassion when dealing with views contrary to one’s own.
Again with the reductio ad absurdum?
Who, precisely, has suggested this be done?
@kim
Absolutely nobody, of course. Saying that people who say certain things should be mocked or shamed for saying those things doesn’t seek to make such views illegal, it seeks to mark them as unreasonable and worthy of criticism and denunciation.
It’s already been done Kim. Try anti-vilification legislation. Does that not make it illegal to express certain views?
As for proscribed subjects:
Okay you’re not suggesting that we ban ‘Islamophobia’ but there’s a list of things said that you don’t like what do we do about it? Oh yeah:
So we’re to have a public inquiry. And what results will this yield? Especially as this is not about
‘freedom’ or ‘censorship’.
They die. No problem. See?
Tigtog – This is not simply condemnation, it’s a call for public policy action. Public inquiries, the threats of the Leviathan press to democracy? C’arn.
Reductio ad absurdum is not a strategy I’ve used by the way.
‘Phone hacking’ isn’t proscribed subject btw. My mistake. It’s an invasion of privacy that is and should be illegal.
Free speech has always been qualified and accompanied by the equal obligation to use it responsibly. As it should be. Not sorry about that at all.”
Yes. Certain flavours of speech are proscribed by law. Otherwise this whole statement is tosh because of the practical difficulty of having an arbiter of responsibility.
@52
“Which means what precisely? That you don’t want journalists to dig through the political detritus to find the little bon motts that add up to a deeper truth?”
Er .. do you actually have any examples if this? No I thought not, you just make sh*t up. And why do you think that an enquiry into media ownership is a blatant attempt at censorship? Sounds like a bit of a conspiracy theory to me.
Otherwise this whole statement is tosh because of the practical difficulty of having an arbiter of responsibility.
Usually that’s the culture in general. But the culture in general has forgotten what free speech entails and cries out for in depth exposes of Lady Gaga’s latest boots whilst yawning at anything that requires more brain power to absorb than an ad for disposable nappies.
I think you’ve been spending too much time at Catallaxy, Adrien, and not enough time reading what I have actually written.
The point of a media inquiry should be to establish whether there is a need for changes to the laws regarding media ownership and whether a right to privacy should be established to protect citizens from wrongful media intrusion.
My point in listing the sort of guff we actually get from the media is that in practice they don’t hold the powerful to account. Nowhere have I called for banning or censoring anything.
Meanwhile, the Australian media continues to hold the powerful to account *cough*: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/keneally-curly-one-questions-posed-extensions-granted-20110802-1i9tu.html
@80
I think you’re stretching it a bit. Some shareholders appear to be suing over a failure to take action wrt to the phone hacking which extends an action that alleges “rampant nepotism” wrt to some acquisitions. I think the point about cross subsidy is a valid one. I also think the shutting down of the NOTW was a stunt and is indicative of the price Murdoch is prepared to pay to nip this nasty business in the bud. It’s not an uncommon tactic for corporates in trouble, just depends if they can afford it.
Kim @ 112 – and yet at the moment its trending as the most clicked on articles in the national times sections. Are the media just delivering what the majority want to read and see?
Who knows, Chris? There’s not much actual choice offered. Most of the Fairfax website is trash content.
With online websites the newspapers would know for sure what attracts clicks and what doesn’t. I’m pretty sure thats why the online sites of newspapers have more trashy stories than the dead tree versions. If you look at the lists of most popular website stories its nearly always (unless there is say natural disaster or something similar) the trashy/sex related/weirdo stories that rate most highly.
O’Neill’s argument for the Fourth Estate being ‘allowed its own illegality’ is code for being his allowed to be sloppy,offensive and unfactual.
My impression of O’Neill was that, like a lot of these young and very earnest libertarians, he is all received ideology and no ideas. Every issue was just an excuse to beat the same empty drum – the ‘left liberal elite are trying to suppress the true voice of the people and take away our freedom’. I mean honestly, it was almost cartoonish.
I agree completely with Kim. This adolescent, undergraduate Right that the ABC puts on display to give the Young Libs and Catallaxy readers something to air punch about desperately wants to represent any attempt to exercise scrutiny of media power as an attack on ‘freedom of speech’. That these people position themselves as on the side of the powerless should be enough to tell you that change is needed.
It’s interesting also that libertarians, who would normally champion market competition and anti-trust law, see as healthy that a single company controls 70 percent of the market.
I’m not sure we need an inquiry to tell us that News Ltd has unhealthy dominance. My preference is to strengthen the Press Council and ACMA, while placing limits on how much of the print market one company can control.
We actually have many limits on free speech when it’s deliberately deceptive. Confidence tricksters and false advertisers can no longer (unless they’re politicians) claim free speech as a defence.
We deserve to be able to have other people, whether other media, or inquiries, point out self serving bullshit. We don’t even need it stopped, just exposed. Why are people using free speech arguments to prevent an inquiry – surely an advocate of free speech would support a public inquiry where we could be free to investigate and discuss the issues? The ‘free speech advocates’ seem very keen to prevent discussion of the media.
Mr Denmore is right. There is a big rhetorical pea-and-thimble trick underway, trying to hide the peas of ‘phone hacking’ and ‘effective monopoly’ behind the cup of ‘Freedom of the Press!’
Ain’t buying it. Freedom of the press does not depend on journalists’ untrammeled ability to hack phone messages of murdered children. Nor does freedom of the press depend on effective monopolies. I thought Murdochs were in favour of competition — so why do they want the ABC shut down, Fairfax run out of town, and Crikey tarred-and-feathered?
Oh, and if you dare to disagree with the Murdoch editorial line, then you’re guilty of trying to “shut down debate”. How does that work?
It’s a bit scary when the only acceptable way to support the “contest of ideas” is to nod and agree with every editorial line The Australian puts out…I guess that’s the kind of “contest” Murdoch finds agreeble.
Isn’t the risk here that people on the left have simply brought into the “media effects” paradigm? Except that its now not about whether watching video nasties or violent video games turns people into violent people, but rather that they fail to accept policies such as the Carbon Tax because they are being brainwashed by the “hate media”?
Also, isn’t it a bit odd to be calling for an inquiry into newspapers – and as far as I can seem, the media inquiry discussion is all about the Murdoch press – at a time when, by any indicator, newspapers are at their least influential for over 100 years?
The Economist routinely makes this point about the problem with Rupert Murdoch beign that he is too attached to newspapers to the detriment of Nes Corporation’s share price, when there is far more money in Avatar than there is in The Australian.
Terry, newspapers don’t make much money, but they still set the news agenda. Radio and television – which don’t do much news gathering of their own – routinely take their cues from the morning’s press.
So when 70% of the print media is controlled by one company, its chosen narratives have a sway far beyond its own mastheads.
That Rupert Murdoch holds onto his print properties – despite their low ROI – tells you it’s about more than money. Papers buy him influence. That’s why he does it.
I also think you need to be wary about attempts to shoe-horn this debate into the ‘left-right’ paradigm that News Ltd wants to frame around every single public issue.
It’s really about poor professional standards in journalism – my chosen craft – and the leaching of corporate imperatives into editorial judgements.
The ABC in this arena is like a bunny in the headlights, naively and passively buying into News Ltd’s manufactured culture wars and attempts to define the ‘mainstream’ in terms of its ideological ambitions.
We critics from the outside are seeking to expand the range of voices, but the volume and reach of News Ltd means that other mainstream media narratives get drowned out.
By the way, I have never called for an inquiry into newspapers. I HAVE urged the proper application of competition law and the establishment of professional standards bodies that are not the poodles of the media that funds them.
News Limited can easily reduce its newspapers market share from 70% to 50% by divesting itself of teh Courier-Mail and the Adelaide Advertiser. But who would buy them: The ABC? Fairfax/The state governments?
The 70% of newspapers figure both presumes siolo-sied media markets and that Australian newspapers have a national reach, like UK newspapers. Neither is true. A more realistic figure on media concentration would need to work across media platforms, using a concept such as share-of-voice.
And the point that would inevitably arise out of a share-of-voice calculation is that the ABC, as the only truly integrated cross-media organisation in Australia, has for more significance than is allowed for in calculations that only deal with commercial media, and start from the premise of platform-based media siols.
Joe Hildebrand on The Punch is also attempting to shoehorn reactions to the Norway terror attacks into a simplistic ‘left-right’ paradigm, based on some people being nasty to him on Twitter that he’s holding up as ‘representatives of the left’ without any proof that they even self-identify as lefties.
Terry, the ABC gets its cues from News Ltd. That was my point. Radio and television does not set the agenda. Newspapers do. That’s why you can’t have one company controlling so much of the print media.
Terry asked:
That danger lurks, but I don’t agrere that this is what we are doing here. The point is really about cultural context. Media can’t make you do things you don’t want to do, but it can prompt you to act out existential angst in ways that you wouldn’t if you felt stromg cultural taboos against doing so. Consider the etiology of the democidal events in Rwanda last decade.
As to whether an inquiry into media concentration can do anything useful, I’d regard it as useful if nothing more was achieved than to put into the front of people’s minds the actual extent of media integration in this country. What remains unexamined is a large part of the problem.
But aren’t there “media effects” in the coverage of Australian politics?
If you take something like the BER, how did a large number of people come to agree that it’s “wasteful Labor spending”?
I think that it was because they all independently reviewed the evidence and came to this conclusion. It had nothing to do with News Ltd, the ABC, Fairfax or the TV or radio stations which have absolutely no effect on perceptions at all.
There is a vast difference between saying that ‘video nasties’ turns people into violent individuals and acknowledging that the way that the media reports events effects perceptions of those events.
As Mr Denmore said, if newspapers didn’t help set the agenda and influence people, why the hell would Murdoch bother with losing money with The Australian.
In fact the “media effects” paradigm is utterly misleading because if you accept it as a premise for discussion then you wind up in argument about free will which as Fran alludes to, directs the discussion away from the ways the media does influence our thoughts and behaviours.
What is argued by O’Neill and others is this, since people have free will the media has no effect. It’s an either or situation. You appeal to our instinctive belief in free will thus eliminating the idea that the media can have an effect. Yet strangely this idea about an idea is at odds with the reality of a media industry around the world, an industry the exists to influence our thoughts and behaviour. So the debate about media effects when tied to the concept of free will is a red herring which distracts us from the what effects the media has and how it goes about doing it. You could claim the media industry doesn’t exist to influence our thoughts and behaviour but if that’s the case, as Adrian says, why does Murdoch bother with the Oz?
Mr Denmore sums it up well
There is something Orwellian in these shallow protests about scrutinising the scrutineers. This O’Neill’s protest points on qanda seemed about as relevant as the media’s own outrage a while back when the budget apparently cut into the $150,000 a year battlers.
He sort of accepted that maybe the hacking went a shade too far, albeit it was giving the public what they want, but I can’t remember if he made any reference to the integration of the police into the NI payroll. Over here, we’d regard this as evidence of corruption, especially combining it with so many breaches of the law.
The influence on politicians is another major concern, even though it occurred right across the spectrum, and has in the past with other media groups and politicians.
Mr Denmore’s key point is spot on. The media cycle feeds on itself. The print media sets the agenda. Radio and 24-hour TV get their day’s talking points from there. The evening TV news creams off all that. So Murdoch owning 70% of the print, and with a tendency to present the news (not opinion) in a selective way does have an impact. As Stephen Mayne has said, it is a deliberate campaign to dislodge the government through creating fake impressions of disarray and incompetence.
We shouldn’t dwell too long on batts and BER, but the Set Top Box beat-up is yet another example. A program agreed to by all MPs, administered under guidelines to take into account all costs is suddenly blown up into “another example” of “government waste”.
Through this chain a fake impression is fed into the cycle about the competence of a government which among OECD countries led the world in coping with the GFC, currently still has record low unemployment, low interest rates and low inflation. In current credit risk worldwide we are rated triple A and 5th of 17 countries given AAA ratings. Surely a government cannot be this incompetent and concurrently this lucky?
There is something seriously wrong with this degree of dissonance.
Noen of this has answered the question of who would actually buy newspapers off News Limited if it was forced to divest. Are we OK with a media inquiry that leads to the closing down of capital city newspapers in several Australian cities?
Also, if the ABC takes its news cues from The Australian, isn’t there a stronger case for an inquiry into the ABC?
I think that calls for a media inquiry have become a kind of cargo cult, with no clear idea of what the underlying purpose is other than sensing an opporutnity to publicly embarrass News Limited executives. Schadenfreude is nice, but is not a good basis for media policy.
it is also quite concievable that within about a decade you will not have newspapers to worry about anymore. I can’t think about anyone other than bloggers or other media outlets that taks about what is in newpspers any more. Politicians are actually much more interested in getting their faces onto the breakfast TV shows on the commercial networks.
Chopped logic. This may be Murdoch’s motivation. That doesn’t mean it works.
I’d be surprised if the Hun and the Telegraph fail to make a commercial return on investment.
However, as I suggested upthread, the media landscape is changing so rapidly, newspaper owners cannot guarantee that their properties won’t be dogs in five years.
The likes of Bolt doubtless have direct electoral influence. Greg Sheridan, on the other hand, yells into a mostly empty echo chamber.
It would be fatuous to assert that the media have no influence on opinion. It is necessary, however, to attempt to isolate and identify the kind of influence they may have, which is likely to be varied according to the type and size of its readership.
Terry, I think an inquiry should look at the whole of the media. There may also be some legitimate questions about the degree to which the ABC serves the public interest. I’m not suggesting some sort of inquisition, but I don’t know why some people are resistant to the idea of actually having a measured and judicious discussion about this. That’s what I’d like to see – not some sort of hyperpoliticised Senate Committee.
The point you make about the death of print is a relevant one. But the question is whether as the beast thrashes about dying, it might not be doing preventable damage to the rights of citizens and the quality of informed debate.
Fran @127
Actually Fran, that was the decade before last. Scary how time flies…
In reply to Helen @99…sorry for the delay in replying. I think you misunderstood my early comment.
What I was trying to say is that I’d be fine with the media having the free for all they wanted if it was actually used to inform and reveal corrupt activities or if it enlightened us.
What the phone tapping scandal in the UK shows us is that with this power the end result has been becoming political kingmakers and apologists for the powerful. (Using celebrity scandal and crime reporting as a sort of modern day bread and circus distraction routine.)
As for a media inquiry…there’s no way the ALP could run this without it looking political. (Whereas of course the Libs could run one quite happily, look at how they eventually tamed the ABC!)
Indeed so Tim. How careless of me!
Adrian @129:
You mean the citizenry all independently investigated – they visited all the schools, interviewed the people involved, etc? The ‘evidence’ reviewed to condemn the BER, the Batts, the stimulus etc was in all cases the narrative driven by the media you say had no effect. When reports based on real evidence came out vindicating the programs they were virtually ignored.
The common understanding of the success of these programs owes more to media narratives than evidence.
Its the Greens who want a media inquiry. Just as Steve Fielding was able to use his balance of power status to get a Senate committee into his favourite hoby horse, which was the “sexualisation of children”, so too do Bob Brown and Christine Milne want a Senate Inquiry into their bete noirs, News Limited. The complete disinterest in inquiring into any media outlet other than News is the giveaway here.
The question of “Who will buy the newspapers?” is missing at least half the full query: “Who will buy the newspapers at the price that Murdoch would be willing to sell them?”
I’d give him $50 cash for the Brisbane operation, but he would probably decline the offer.
Well, I’ve been getting Spiked for their monthly book reviews, and just not reading much of the rest unless it was something to do with the arts. But right now, after Q&A, I feel a bit like some-one who has been getting Playboy for the articles. When I can bother to load the thing up, I’ll unsubscribe.
You learn heaps more from the Guardian anyway.
Thanks, Tssk, my comment was a “yes, and” not a “but.”
Terry, just because The Greens want a Senate inquiry that doesn’t mean it’s the only form one could take.
I hope you aren’t suffering a media effect in thinking Bob Brown is de facto PM ;-
“We actually have many limits on free speech when it’s deliberately deceptive. ”
Exactly. Robust public debate about what the relevant facts are, and how to interpret them and respond to them, is both legitimate and desirable. Deliberate misrepresentation of the facts is neither.
There is nothing special about the professional media that exempts it from this part of the social contract, especially if they are taking the high moral ground and claiming to be holding others to account for, among other things, dishonesty in dealing with facts.
••••••••••
Adrien, & then Fran, quoted me as saying
“The ‘right to free speech’ does not entitle you to ignore evidence, logic, relevance, or basic decency,…”
Fran said
“Skeet should probably have added the qualification: with impunity.”
To which I can only say see the unquoted second part of my original sentence
“…nor to claim immunity from accountability (and even strong condemnation) when you fail to abide by these minimum responsibilities.”
Adrien then said he agreed with Fran’s statement
“Indeed. I agree.”
Sorry, Adrien, but you can’t say that the right to free speech allows people to lie, and then agree they can’t do that with impunity. That is just inconsistent nonsense.
Either you accept there are limits to free speech, and hence that there must be effective sanctions for going beyond them.
Or you believe that free speech has no limits (including people being allowed to lie in any way and any situation they like), and accept that means there are no legitimate sanctions for any exercise of that free speech, no matter what the real world consequences.
You might want to think about the broader implications of the second option.
“Noen of this has answered the question of who would actually buy newspapers off News Limited if it was forced to divest. Are we OK with a media inquiry that leads to the closing down of capital city newspapers in several Australian cities?”
“it is also quite concievable that within about a decade you will not have newspapers to worry about anymore.”
And the problem with this is…?
Jonathan Holmes from Media Watch on The Drum: a few weeks ago he thought regulation unnecessary, now he has some more information and has changed his views.
paul @ 138. I think your sarcasm meter is severely defective.
The point about The Courier-Mail or the Adelaide Advertiser having to close down for lack of a buyer if News Limited was forced to sell them obviously doesn’t matter if you live in the Sydney-Canberra-Melbourne triangle. My point is that if the purpose of a media inquiry is to promote more media diversity, as distinct from an occasion to publicly name and shame people at News Limited, then a consequence of requiring News to reduce its newspaper holdings from 70 per cent may see less media diversity in some parts of Australia, not more.
A figure like 70 per cent is always relative to something, and with newspapers we are talking about an industry that is declining, not growing.
Terry said:
That’s doubtful. All it would mean is that the asset might have to be offloaded at a lower cost. Plainly, News Ltd is not simply going to simply toss the asset into the Spencer Gulf. I don’t see that as a serious problem.
Of course, even if, utterly improbably, that did occur, having one less troll on the block would not mean “less diversity” — any more than if McDonalds closed all of its restaurants in Adelaide that there’d be less diversity in Australian fast food. I presume The Australian would continue to be sold there, and of course they could still exist online.
It’s more likely Murdoch would hang onto that precisely because he’s got a monopoly there. He might cut back come place else — like Sydney and Melbourne.
Frankly though, the kind of “diversity” Murdoch brings is the kind of diversity we could do without. Imagine if we in Sydney hadn’t had The Telegraph to lie to us and also keep us up to date with the standing of Kristina Keneally’s hair extensions. What sort of society would we have become?
Is it just me or is there something especially creepy about News Ltd’s pictorial focus on and highlighting of Kristina Keneally’s new hair style?
No Joseph, it isn’t just you. It’s absolutely un-effingly-believable. If the SMH report is to be believed it stopped Parliament stone cold. How old are these people? Twelve?
Yeah, but as Helen notes, and as I linked to before, it’s not just News Ltd, it’s the Smage too. Fairfax may not have the same politics as News Ltd, but I’m very far from convinced the journalistic rot isn’t pretty much everywhere.
If the Courier-Mail can’t sell 100 000 copies a day in a city with 1.8 million people, what’s the point of it? Does anyone in Brisbane apart from people in their 60s and 70s read it? What public good is it serving?
Terry, there are many potential buyers of Murdoch’s Adelaide and Brisbane papers. The question is price. These are established mastheads with a monopoly in local advertising markets.
They could be quite profitable as slimmed down operations. I’d create apps for both for daily news and publish a Brisbane or Adelaide Weekly/Monthly in glossy magazine format with lots of high-yield display advertising.
The hard part for Murdoch is the sunk costs in printing and distribution. That’s something he’ll have to write-off. But the mast-heads and writers and goodwill are worth something.
In the meantime, I’ve been inspired by the O’Neill appearance on Q and A and the reaction in the Murdoch press to write a paen to Freedom of the Press:
http://thefailedestate.blogspot.com/2011/08/freedom-now.html
Boy, people on this site sure like to see industries closed down. First coal, now newspapers
Apologies adrian, was in a rush as lunch was ending. Post in haste, regret at leisure
Well, I like to see industries grow. Solar, wind. New media. But Terry, your earnest concern for the welfare of entrenched billionaires is adorable.
Aaanyway, back on topic.
Freedom of the press and phone hacking are not the same thing .
Freedom of the press and effective monopoly are not the same thing.
There was freedom of the press before phone hacking. And there will be freedom of the press after the phone hackers are locked up.
There was freedom of the press before effective monopolies. And there will be freedom of the press after the monopolies are broken up.
Do I have to draw you a picture, Terry?
There is freedom of the press. With the Internet, there’s considerably more freedom of the press than there was 20 years ago. So where again is the need for a public inquiry to tell News to get rid of some newspapers?
I think Terry’s true agenda shines through in that last comment.
Yes, we’re like those bastards in the 19th century that wanted industries closed down. You know like blacksmiths, horse and buggy manufacturers and drivers, chimney sweeps, satanic cotton mills…
No worries, Paul – apologies not required.
If The Advertiser in Adelaide came up for sale I wouldn’t be surprised if the people behind the now online-only Independent Weekly (InDaily) made a run at it. It was a pretty good paper until then editor Hendrik Gout’s bias towards the Liberal Party tookover during last year’s state election campaign. He now is CoS to the Libs leader in the SA Legislative Council I think.
InDaily’s blog:
http://indaily.wordpress.com/
re: courier mail – “What public good is it serving?”
Back page Brisbane Broncos boosterism.
which i should point out is another murdoch business interest.
Kim – The views on this matter that I’ve expressed at Catallaxy are hardly a ringing endorsement of Mr O’Neil.
I haven’t accused you of wanting to ban or censor anything but I feel that you’re not taking the freedom of the press as seriously as you might. The tone is that it is a problem that needs to be dealt with more than a right that is being abused or is inadequately balanced by its corresponding duty.
Doubtless News Ltd have too much power of influence currently in Australia at the very least. There is a certain denial of this by the Right who approve of Mr Murdoch’s posture on most issues. Meantime the Left howls for his blood because he gives them a very hard time. But I think there’s a danger when you propose to limit media ownership because the line taken by a particular owner as unacceptable. Where does that lead?
The fact is that the extension of Mr Murdoch’s empire has been granted on a bipartisan basis in exchange for electoral support. I remember a Labor guy commenting on Keating’s extension saying: what people don’t understand is if you don’t get into bed with these guys you don;t get elected. And when you do?
Because of the scandal in Britain this submerged war between political parties and News Ltd has come to light. I’m quite happy about that. But I’m cautious about an approach that says we need a conversation but that it isn’t about ‘freedom’. If you can remove property from its owner because of the bias of its issue then you create a precedent that is even more of a threat to democracy than a monopolistic advocacy of a certain hardline that treats the ALP as if it has no right to govern. In my opinion it’s the wrong approach.
As to the ‘right to privacy’ I wonder how this is to be established, what guidelines it will have and whether or no it has the potential to be exploited so that the powerful can evade even more scrutiny.
“Boy, people on this site sure like to see industries closed down.”
Let me fix that for you…
Boy, people on this site sure like to see unprofitable propaganda arms of certain industries closed down.
I agree!
Joseph.Carey @150
something especially creepy about News Ltd’s pictorial focus on and highlighting of Kristina Keneally’s new hair style
Kim – I think you’ve been spending too much time at Catallaxy, Adrien, and not enough time reading what I have actually written.
At Catallaxy I’ve hardly been a spruiker for Mr O’Neil Kim.
The point of a media inquiry should be to establish whether there is a need for changes to the laws regarding media ownership and whether a right to privacy should be established to protect citizens from wrongful media intrusion.
We have no laws that prevent a newspaper from hacking into our private communications? If that’s case I hardly think an inquiry necessary. The government should simply write them.
The media ownership laws have been liberalised on a bipartisan basis by parties in exchange for the support of News Ltd outlets. Now the ALP regrets this deal with the devil they want to launch an inquiry that says it’s okay to deprive a proprietor of his property because they don’t like what his newspapers say. Do you not see a danger there?
My point in listing the sort of guff we actually get from the media is that in practice they don’t hold the powerful to account.
No, they don’t. There’s avery cozy relationship between the media and the politicians and this is, likewise, bipartisan.
Nowhere have I called for banning or censoring anything.
I didn’t say you did. But this is a direct salvo fired by a government at a particular player in the press because they don’t like the trouble he’s caused them. If you force Murdoch to sell papers on that basis it is in effect censorship. The problem lies elsewhere.
A high school student told me yesterday that her English class consists in regurgitating the views of her teacher. I remember similar courses at university. I wonder if this is becoming standard and if so if it is having an impact on the critical capacity of the public to distinguish between propaganda and information.
PS I’m hardly a supporter of Mr O’Neil – http://catallaxyfiles.com/2011/08/03/from-q-and-a/comment-page-6/#comment-261258
Spot the contradiction:
Spot the strawman:
Spot the irrelevant bullshit:
“Boy, people on this site sure like to see industries closed down.”
Let me fix that for you…
Boy, people on this site sure like to see opinions they disagree with, silenced.
Apparently the allegations of phone hacking are wider than the Murdoch empire. Whoowooooodathoooooht?
@134
“Noen of this has answered the question of who would actually buy newspapers off News Limited if it was forced to divest.”
I don’t know but lets do it anyway and see what happens
“Are we OK with a media inquiry that leads to the closing down of capital city newspapers in several Australian cities?”
Possibly, it could be a catalyst for change. One thing is for sure, having 70% ownership is leading to a homogenised narrative that appears to strongly back one set of opinions on major issues. If you need an example have a look at the recent history of the coverage of climate change. I doubt that people like Monckton would be even known in this country if it weren’t for the efforts of News Ltd press.
Joseph Carey, Helen,
re Kenneally. No, its not just you. I read the article on line. The headline was exceedingly misleading. What I expected to read was Keneally making some sort of well-merited stinging attack on FNile’s attack on ethics classes, and what I got was the mindless guff about which you both so rightly complain. If I had a suspicious turn of mind I would think News Lts was trying to distract from FNile’s nasty little backroom deal supporting O’Farrell’s return to Workchoices or worse on return for compulsory Xtan education. I thought similar sort of shit went out with Governor John Hunter in 1798 when the convicts burnt down Australia’s first church because they were forced to attend services every Sunday.
Adrian, if you’re going to evoke the strawman fallacy you may wish to understand what it entails. I am not refuting a position, nor have I misrepresented anyone’s view. I have made a specific assertion about the consequences of this method of dealing with media concentration.
I’m sorry you think that the tendency to regard education as propaganda as irrelevant to the rise of what Vaclav Havel termed the “global dictatorship of advertising, consumerism and blood-and-thunder stories on TV” but I’m afraid you’d be quite amiss there.
And again with the hostility.
Paul Burns @173
Do you suspect that the SMH had the same motivation? Surely not.
From both News Ltd and the SMH they are just fluff pieces intended to grab the attention of the readership’s lowest common denominator.
From both News Ltd and the SMH they are just fluff pieces intended to grab the attention of the readership’s lowest common denominator.
Indeed. People who attribute some kind of cultural micromanagement on the part of the media forget that people are flat out just getting the shit together and on the streets. The control is simply military. News Ltd hires editors that comply with the spirit of its interests, #1 is to get an audience. The editors hire people to do this.
There’s a policy that’s explicit, there’s a bunch of rules that are never mentioned and….
Just so Adrien.
But Leonard Cohen wrote it and does it best.
Grigory M, I don’t know why you keep rabbiting on about the SMH as though most people here think it’s the paragon of journalistic integrity – IMHO it’s only marginally better than the News Ltd papers, but it does have quite good CD reviews.
Adrien – re the strawman argument. You are claiming that people are advocating that Murdoch sell his newspapers because he’s giving the government a ‘hard time’. I don’t believe anybody is advocating a sell-off for that reason, but please correct me with a quote if I’m wrong.
Re education – I called bullshit because your use of anecdotal evidence. So what if a student told you something yesterday. It hardly proves a thing.
You should be congratulated, however on your continued engagement with the posters on Catallaxy. If nothing else it will bring you a deeper and more profound understanding of futility.
Well I have to agree with you about Mr Cohen, Grigory M.
He’s a bit of an optimist though:
Adrain,
Rabbitting on = talking in a noisy, excited, or declamatory manner
Not my style, really. But I do like to see more balanced commentary.
Yes, lock in those lyrics. Careful, you might need to pay him some royalties.
Bon apres midi.
I will take it that your miss-spelling of my moniker was entirely accidental Grogory M.
@178 – spot on, Adrian.
“Indeed. People who attribute some kind of cultural micromanagement on the part of the media forget that people are flat out just getting the shit together and on the streets. The control is simply military. News Ltd hires editors that comply with the spirit of its interests, #1 is to get an audience. The editors hire people to do this. ”
Tedious much? The editorial line is set in News Ltd establishments, yep folks, including on a micro level. Adrien doesn’t know this? Then he’s either a fool or a troll. Either option = YAWN.
Apologies Adrian,
It was entirely unintentional.
Grogory. Heh heh.
Well it is Friday arvo.
But Leonard Cohen wrote it and does it best.
True, but I haven’t heard Concrete Blonde for a while.
Adrian – You are claiming that people are advocating that Murdoch sell his newspapers because he’s giving the government a ‘hard time’. I don’t believe anybody is advocating a sell-off for that reason
No? So you believe that there is an advocacy of a sell-off? And why would there be such advocacy? Is the interference that News Ltd runs against the government completely immaterial? I don’t think so. In any event it’s not a strawman fallacy it is a dangerous precedent. Think of it this way: the Tories won’t be out of power forever and governments tend to adopt all the skullduggery of their predecessors with a view to going one up on them.
Re education – I called bullshit because your use of anecdotal evidence. So what if a student told you something yesterday. It hardly proves a thing.
You may have meant that but that’s not how it came across, you just said the point itself is irrelevant. It’s an anecdote. Anecodotes are not conclusive but there’s an awful lot of them that say the same thing. Your response is dismissive, it simply says I’m not listening, and why…
You should be congratulated, however on your continued engagement with the posters on Catallaxy.
Ah, I see.
If nothing else it will bring you a deeper and more profound understanding of futility.
I don’t find that the Right have the monopoly on lessons given in that bleak field in the human heart. It seems to me that 90% of what I read these days is a master class in same.
The editorial line is set in News Ltd establishments, yep folks, including on a micro level. Adrien doesn’t know this? Then he’s either a fool or a troll.
The way it works is this:
Executive control at News Ltd selects editors who know the line and toe it. They do not go thru each paper and examine each bit of copy. Why? Because it’s a. not necessary and b. impossible.
Now that’s what I said. Can you please understand the difference between policy like ‘we’re pro- Iraq war’ and micromanagement? And moreover would you please refrain from calling me names. It’s most uncivil. I may differ from you on this minor point but it’s no reason to abuse me.
Adrian – I have made an interpretation of Kim’s piece which advocates an inquiry into media ownership and does so because she believes the media is conducting itself above the law and poses a threat to democracy. In support of this she cites the ‘excuse’ of the media that it it’s supposed to provide a check on political power and makes a list of News Ltd’s themes she finds objectionable.
Well I find many of them objectionable myself but I believe that that is insufficient reason to compel a proprietor to sell of his property. In fact I think that’s kind of dangerous. You haven’t addressed these points specifically. I’m not sure anyone has You’ve made an assertion that I’ve raised a strawman. At best what I’ve done is misunderstood what has been said. But I don’t think so.
My anecdote was simply that. I wasn’t out to prove anything. I could attempt to but I’ve found it futile in the past. Catallaxy may well provide lessons on futility from time to time but they have no monopoly on that bleak field.
Again I really see no reason for the hateful tone.
Adrien, have you ever worked as a journalist for News Ltd?
And Grigory, I’m well aware who wrote the song, cheers. I like Concrete Blonde’s version as well, hadn’t heard it in a while.
Adrien, have you ever worked as a journalist for News Ltd?
Hell no! What do you think I am, evil?
It pretty much works the same way everywhere old bean. News Ltd’s just taken it to exciting new depths is all.
So you’re talking thru your arse, Adrien. Who would’ve guessed.
Well what a gracious and eloquent response Joseph. I’m sure your mother is very proud of you.
The political line at both macro and micro level is set at News Ltd by many means, including management one-on-ones with writer-journalists and at layered editorial meetings at Holt Street, above all initially in Mahogany Row.
If you call that a hateful tone, and you’re a regular inhabitant of Catallaxy, you need a bit of perspective mixed with the futility.
Anyway, no hard feelings – perhaps this discussion is heading towards a dead end anyway.
Adrien @ 190
No offence meant. Glad you like Concrete Blonde’s version.
Actually, I’m the only one in my family and friends who likes Leonard Cohen.
There is nothing particularly controversial or unprecedented in the state busting cartels or monopolies. It’s called competition law. The media is no different.
The fact is Keating made a mistake in allowing Murdoch to buy the Herald and Weekly Times back in the mid-80s. In those days ‘print’ and television were seen as separate entities. Not so now. As well, the Internet has extended audience reach beyond regional markets and encouraged publishers to pursue economies of scale.
The advances in technology have broken down redundant barriers and led to more homogeneity in output? For instance copy is now shared much more readily across titles; political, business and sports coverage is pooled and production is outsourced.
At the same time the migration of readers and advertisers to the web has crushed profit margins and led to ever tighter cost control.
The upshot is that what looked like diversity 25 years ago now resembles extreme concentration.
The cost focus and shift to page impressions as the key success metric has also led to a shift away fro straight news gathering to opinion – simply because it’s cheaper and it gets a rise out of people.
That’s the situation we now find ourselves in. And it’s why efforts to lessen Murdoch’s overwhelming market dominance are completely legitimate.
True Mr Denmore. But you don’t a parliamentary enquiry to establish the metrics of Murdoch’s domination of the media.
I missed QA and only discovered the totality of this fortune last night after completing an odyssey that included a view of the whole episode and a consolatory laugh at Mr Denmore’s blogsite.
Honestly, where do they dig these IPA types up from?
The unsung heroes of the adventure were Milne, Plibersek and Mayne, Ridout avoided giving offence and Dutton remained nonedescript.
How painful Jones gets up a viewer’s nose, with his quizzmaster innanity when one of these stunts is ushered in.
O’Neill, wtf??
No one but someone like that would have been allowed to get away with his crap, the cherry paramount being what seemed a rather stupid comment about Jewish people.
And why was Plibersek forced to sit beside him, if it was a joke only Mark Scott’s humour could have appreciated it.
Actually, I’m the only one in my family and friends who likes Leonard Cohen.
Aaawwww that’s no good man. Must be lonely.
Joseph I don’t actually think we’re in disagreement about the way it works, maybe there’s just a different understanding of the term micromanagement.
There is nothing particularly controversial or unprecedented in the state busting cartels or monopolies. It’s called competition law. The media is no different.
Or anti-trust legislation, whatever. I’m not sure the government’s all that concerned about media concentration. I think they’re more concerned about media opposition. If you can lay emnity against News Ltd aside for a second consider to what extent the media and the political public relations apparatus are simply one continuous stream. The last time I heard anyone ask a politician or state bureaucrat or corporate player a tough question was when Robert Hughes grilled Alberto Mugrabi about Damien Hirst. You don’t see this kind of journalism in politics anymore.
News Ltd is definitely part of the problem but the attitude of the Gillard government isn’t a solution. IMHO.
Chris Mitchell returned several weeks ago from the biannual international confab of Murdoch editors and execs held in Aspen, Colorado with the firm, unambigous message from Murdoch to his Oz management that the grand poobah supports Tony Abbott. End of.
If that’s not macro-micro-managing in one glorious interrelated package…
That’s what I mean Joseph, it’s not micromanagement, it’s a policy line. Murdoch isn’t going to write anyone’s headlines. The line is Kill the ALP government (d’uh). No-one’s disputing that News Ltd do this. Murdoch, himself, admitted it in Britain.
But when you portray the operation as if Imperator Rupe programmes everyone who works for him like a drone you just give material to those who’d use it as a basis to label everyone who criticizes News Ltd a conspiracy nut.
Anyway that’s not the problem. The problem is that we’ve come to accept a culture where our choices boil down to which brand of agit-prop we swallow.
Just by the by, I hear from highly placed sources inside News Ltd that Mr O’Neill was paraded around The Australia’s newsroom the other day by Mr Mitchell himself, who was apparently wetting himself over O’Neill’s trolling on Q and A.
@208 Mr. Denmore – Not really surprising. In many institutions which house those with aberrant belief systems you will find that those whose symptoms are most closely allied will seek each other’s company. It sustains their worldview.
It was very clear to me, from watching the way O’Neill clutched his pen and wrote a note anytime someone on the panel seemed to disagree with what he was saying, that there was a certain imbalance in his thinking. I’m sure the retributions to those “named” in his notes will continue to be in the same vitriolic style the clan at the various News Ltd. outlets display.
I am still intrigued to ascertain any valid rationale for News Ltd. to limit it’s own Review to the last three years and some assurances regarding the independence of the Review.
Just by the by, I hear from highly placed sources inside News Ltd that Mr O’Neill was paraded around The Australia’s newsroom the other day by Mr Mitchell himself, who was apparently wetting himself over O’Neill’s trolling on Q and A.
Oh well done, a sweet plum at Fox. I haven’t yet seen the whole performance but it’s getting plugged well and truly. I wonder if Mr O’Neil actually believes that the Revenge of Everyone Who Rupe Ever Fucked Over is truly like the Nazi persecution of Jewish people or simply pushes the line because it’s been demonstrated to work in focus groups.
Rupe used to be a Marxist when he was a lad. They called him Red Rupert at Geelong Grammar. Maybe he’s taken a shine to the boy personally. Or maybe he’s just analyzed his brain waves and decided to afix him with a central control chip in order to micromanage the dude from his console.
Custom-made by Sony.
Joseph – If we can agree to disagree on micromanagement issues and instead focus on the existence of a smudged line between hard news and straight-up propaganda, I think the real problem lies elsewhere.
Peace.
Trotskyite turned right-winger. Hmmm.
I’ve never understood why those on the right think it’s some kind of badge of honour to have once held extreme left-wing views. Prodigal son complex perhaps? Lauding someone who has seen the error of their ways? From the middle ground it looks like a case of “once an extremist, always an extremist”. Poor thinking before, poor thinking after, and without even the small saving grace of consistency.
This bloke’s Q&A perfomance was nothing more than narcissistic, bellicose rhetoric.