Archive for the 'Media' Category

Guest post by Possum Comitatus: The real Rudd unveiled

Published
by
Administrator
2 days, 3 hours ago
in Budget 2008, Health and Media
. 113 Comments

LP has often been critical of the standard of mainstream political commentary in Australia, arguing that it concentrates too much on day by day horse race piffle framed by a narrow range of possible narrative scripts. We’re pleased to be able to bring you what we think is the best of the independent media coverage of the 2008 budget, a piece by Possum originally published in Crikey and reproduced at his blog - Possum looks beyond the headlines and delves deeper into Rudd’s governing style, and its implications.

Hands up who’s thoroughly sick and tired of reading about how Kevin Rudd is John Howard lite, a bloke that substitutes spin for government activity in those times when he’s not actually doing the big “Me-Too”?

Finally, hopefully, we can all now put that piffle to bed.

Continue reading ‘Guest post by Possum Comitatus: The real Rudd unveiled’

Opposition Budget politics, 2008 style

Published
by
Mark
2 days, 4 hours ago
in Budget 2008, Howardia, Media and Parenting
. 15 Comments

It was interesting to read the acres of newsprint devoted to Budget specials today for two reasons - one to note that so much of the “interest group” reaction is typical - one headline - “teachers say more is needed for schools” - probably writes itself, and could be run nearly every year. That’s not to have a go at the teachers, but it might be more to the point if the media spent more time on doing specialist analyses of each portfolio (as New Matilda has been doing for a few) and less on highlighting understandable (from the point of view of those concerned) calls for more spending. An assessment of priorities and discrete policy initiatives might be more informative than a de facto assumption that the cake is of infinite dimensions - which it would almost have to be if every interest group were placated. In some ways, being Treasurer would be an unenviable task, and as I argued last night, the politics of the budget include a real attempt to persuade people to look at the collective public good rather than “what’s in it for me?”. Obviously people want to understand how they (and policy areas they care about) are affected, but the sort of “thinking” that goes into this sort of nonsense - “Yet again, Generation X gets screwed” - makes me wince, even as a member of said generation (not to mention the factual vacuum contained in that silly little article).

This leads me onto my other observation - the paucity of any reference to any views that the opposition might have. Shadow Ministers were clearly not - on the whole - interested, informed enough or motivated to release anything portfolio specific. So all we got was short shrift - at least in the print media - to the rather inconsistent and confused bleatings of Malcolm Turnbull and Brendan Nelson, who according to Trevor Cook, looked like he was “on life support” on the telly. A couple of paras on average across the two 30 something page budget liftouts I read. So, how do the attention deprived respond?

By musing (threatening might be far too strong a word) about blocking the changes to the baby bonus in the Senate. Continue reading ‘Opposition Budget politics, 2008 style’

So how about that credit crunch?

Published
by
Kim
2 days, 16 hours ago
in Economics, Markets, Media and Sociology
. 80 Comments

Terms like “securitisation”, “derivatives”, “longitudinal diversification” and “dynamic hedging” would make most of our eyes glaze over, I suspect. Yet all this arcana is now having an impact on us - vie the subprime mortgage crisis and the shock waves it’s set off in the world economy. There are at least two factors which mitigate against discussion and examination of causes and solutions - the arcane nature of the math and language used by the finance wonks, and the reactive press coverage - attuned more to reporting on what pollies and regulators are saying or doing than assessing causes and debating the way forward. So I’d thoroughly recommend taking the time to read author and sociologist Robin Blackburn’s article The Subprime Crisis. It took me about half an hour to read, but I think it was time well spent, as Blackburn takes great care to demystify the nature and history of the crisis, and thus provides a basis for thinking about its implications which is far better than skimming spin laden or impenetrably written articles.

Continue reading ‘So how about that credit crunch?’

America NBC News decides

Published
by
Kim
3 days, 2 hours ago
in American election 2008 and Media
. 5 Comments

John Amato at Crooks & Liars has a really fantastic post about the media narrative on Hillary - first they crack the puzzle on how to anoint Obama as the presumptive nominee:

The media have figured out how to end the Democratic race. Declaring it over doesn’t work. Urging Hillary Clinton to drop out doesn’t work. Putting Barack Obama on the cover of Time as the nominee doesn’t work.

What does work–ah, this is fiendishly clever–is to simply ignore the race. Many journalists are just moving on. What will become a tsunami of speculation about whom Obama will pick as his running mate is already under way. That’s not to say the MSM isn’t reporting on Hillary’s campaign stops, her $6-million loan to her struggling operation, the trickle of superdelegates toward Obama and similar developments. But we are now treating Obama as The Man.

Continue reading ‘America NBC News decides’

Budget politics, 2008 style

Published
by
Mark
3 days, 6 hours ago
in Budget 2008 and Media
. 52 Comments

I actually enjoyed liveblogging the Budget a tad more than I thought I would, perhaps because it forced me to think quickly about the politics rather than sitting back and watching the flights of rhetorical exuberance which were missing - deliberately. The media meme about Wayne Swan’s speaking style misses the point - Kevin Rudd’s no more flashy. The whole message of this government is that they are careful, measured guardians of the nation’s future, thinking long term, thinking about fairness, and thinking about all Australians.

The presentation is the politics - because the politics is all about disabling the political game, and leaving the Opposition very little space to operate in, while the Government occupies a space above the fray. So Swan - and Rudd - are speaking way over the heads of the punditariat and the press gallery, and carefully targeting budget messages on one hand, and using the set piece of the budget speech on the other to reach a citizenry who are usually disengaged from the day to day noise of the parliamentary and media cut and thrust. Hence all the reiteration of election promises - first to build trust (and contrast with Howard’s non-core promises) and secondly to announce them once again to people who missed them during all the frenzy of the campaign. They’re also wrapped up in a narrative of Labor’s choosing - designed to put to rest any lingering suspicions of “me-too-ism”. The Libs? They become the background noise.

If you were expecting a Keatingesque or Costelloish performance, you’ve missed the change to the rules of the game. As I remarked earlier tonight, it’s a very niche piece of political theatre. For most people, it’s not the decisive political moment the press gallery thinks it is. And Swan and Rudd are putting much more effort into swaying the electorate rather than wow-ing the political commentators (the market wonks are a different matter, of course).

Continue reading ‘Budget politics, 2008 style’

Liveblogging Budget 2008

Published
by
Mark
3 days, 11 hours ago
in Blogging, Budget 2008, Economics, Media and Polls
. 31 Comments

I’m going to have a go at it. I’ll leave comments closed on this post until 7pm-ish. Until then, comments can be left on Rob’s speculation thread. Once the liveblogging starts, remember to refresh periodically to see the updates, and please leave your own updates in comments.

A thought to start off with - the lack of a “budget bounce” for the Coalition in recent years led to (accurate, I think) commentary that the importance of the budget as a political event had been massively overplayed. This year, everyone knows the tax cuts are coming, and it’s a much more complex messaging/communications event - as Bernard Keane captures in this piece at Crikey, noting that the leaks have been finely targeted to particular publications covering particular demographics (for instance, “soak the rich” going to the tabloids, climate change for the Sunday Fairfax papers):

Crikey and others have been lamenting the Government’s mixed Budget messages, but we were missing the point. The messages were only mixed for the commentariat itself, which analyses everything the Government says. The media diet of most people is far more limited, and they would’ve only heard what the Government targeted at them.

Similarly, speculation that the budget will establish or damage the Rudd government’s “economic management” credentials is another elite preoccupation. As demonstrated by Kim in this post, that famous phrase is a piece of bad polling anyway - literally asking the wrong question, with endless narratives built on something that has nothing to do with how people vote. It’s much more likely that people are awaiting evidence that Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan will do their utmost to protect them from economic uncertainty, than that there’ll be some sort of collective scoring exercise on what is increasingly a very niche piece of political theatre. The Opposition probably know this as well - though they’re caught in the headlights having set Brendan Nelson up as a bunny who’ll need to perform or face the consequences. They should be much more worried about the polling that demonstrates that “welfare for all, not just the poor” is going down like a lead balloon even among their own voters.

Elsewhere: Riffing off Kim riffing off Zoe’s crystal ball liveblogging, tigtog proposes a budget drinking game. Demonstrating the odd time sense that surrounds budget night, Zoe reports on reports of struggling working families with babies earning more than $150000 already bemoaning how they’ll find it hard to make do without the nanny state. And Trevor Cook deconstructs some of the spin about the budget that’s been going on for quite some time already.

Update: GreensBlog will also be liveblogging from 7.30pm.

Further update: Comments now open. Liveblogging will start below the fold at 7.30pm.

Continue reading ‘Liveblogging Budget 2008′

More complacent denigration

Published
by
tigtog
3 days, 14 hours ago
in Culture Wars, Health, Indigenous, Media, Poverty and Race
. 34 Comments

Last year Paul Norton wrote with some sadness and much asperity “Is David Burchell brain-dead?”

Referring to the particular column which prompted the post, Paul contrasted ex-communist Burchell’s stance with the positions taken by anti-communist Robert Manne thusly:

David Burchell’s column, by contrast, repeatedly trivialises left-liberal positions on those issues and complacently denigrates those who hold such views.

Well, Burchell appears to be at it again, holding up as if it is an entirely new concept that the panoply of social ills afflicting many indigenous communities are more a product of poverty than of racism per se, because many of the same problems afflict the non-indigenous urban poor.

It’s true that some remote Aboriginal communities, caught in a morass of isolation, neglect and joblessness, have sunk to levels of dysfunction unknown to white Australians.

Yet dysfunction is remarkably colour-blind. If, as we did until relatively recently, you put white families, preselected for their turbulent family histories, into welfare ghettoes on the fringes of the main cities, they will struggle to hold their lives together, too. And then, exactly like indigenous families, they will weave narratives of defeat and despair to console them for their marginality.

Unlike Burchell, I’m not a literary academic writing in the area of public policy, and have only a few undergraduate course credits in social studies from the early 80s under my belt, yet I’d be amazed if he could point to one, single, solitary social studies course which did not identify poverty as the primary component of social disadvantage in blackfella communities here in Australia (as well as in communities of colour amongst our immigrant population and in other nations as well). That correlation with poverty, and particularly de facto ghettoised poverty, has never been in contention. The question he studiously avoids is - why is there such a strong correlation in so many countries between socioeconomic class and the melanin content of one’s skin?
Continue reading ‘More complacent denigration’

Big Brother eats its own (princess): a cautionary tale of the S word

Published
by
Kim
4 days, 2 hours ago
in Australiana, Big Brother 2008, Ethics, Media, Television and Women
. 38 Comments

The Big Brother narrative takes yet another snarky turn. As Eye on Big Brother notes, all the glee on the panel show tonight (Big Mouth or whatever) was directed at the hapless Brigitte. The evictee’s privilege of doing something really nasty, not very well justified by the not so redeemed Saxon, was to take away her wardrobe and her makeup for the week indefinitely. This from part of the loathsome “Spa Mafia” whose idea of fun was hiding “Princess Sparkles” - her toy unicorn - as the first of their japes. I can’t help wondering if Brigitte’s failure to fulfil the FHM dream girl role of flirting with the boys - she’s too obviously occupied just being Brigitte (it’s a bit like Being There) - led to this particular nastiness. But as Eye observes, she’s quickly (and predictably) earned the ire of the other women in the House as well. Now Big Brother, in the form of the almighty narrative, piles on too.

And there’s another ethical conundrum here.

Continue reading ‘Big Brother eats its own (princess): a cautionary tale of the S word’

Noel Pearson goes to America (well, not really)

Published
by
Kim
4 days, 7 hours ago
in American election 2008, Books, Writers & Writing, Culture, Indigenous, Media and USA
. 39 Comments

It must have seemed a bright idea at the time to get Noel Pearson to write an article for The Monthly on Obama. Trouble is - Pearson may or may not know anything about American politics, but almost his entire article is a discussion of Obama seen through the prism of a book written by Shelby Steele. Those who saw the recent (and totally disappointing) Four Corners show on Obama might recall that Steele was the dude from Stanford who kept banging on about how Obama was manipulating “white guilt”. You can watch (if you can be bothered) his entire schtick via this link.

Pearson has the answer for Obama - emphasise “Black responsibility” and end all that liberal rights claimin’… How boringly predictable. Continue reading ‘Noel Pearson goes to America (well, not really)’

Cuts both ways

Published
by
Kim
4 days, 10 hours ago
in Blogging, Media and Politics
. 42 Comments

Remember all the agonising when Tim Dunlop shifted from The Road to Surfdom to Blogocracy under the Newscorp banner? And remember all the loud denouncin’ when Mark wrote *one blog post* for the Higher Education Supplement and some were quick to assume that this meant LP was about to be swallowed by the Murdoch beast? Well, they were assured at the time it wouldn’t mean that, but that didn’t stop all the conclusion jumpin’… As it turns out, I think there was an interesting issue of trust raised - and one that went precisely to some people’s false assumptions about what exactly is at stake when bloggers get co-opted. We’ve always argued here that one of the most important reasons for preserving an independent blogosphere is not just analysis and posting without fear or favour but also the distinctly different nature of the community and commenting it can foster - there’s no doubt at all in my mind that the News Ltd blogs, while they’ve been quite successful in occupying some of the space the independent blogosphere might have taken up (and might still take up - watch this space!), can’t replicate the latter. Aside from the fact that there’s probably little loyalty to most individual MSM bloggers and blogs per se (particularly where - as with most of the MSM columnists who “blog”, there’s zero interaction with the audience and commenters are perceived as “the audience”), the whole set up - seemingly arbitrary deletion or non-appearance of comments, strict barriers for defamation and other legal concerns, time lag between comments being posted and appearing - means that it’s very difficult to lift the threads beyond the bulletin board model and foster genuine interaction and community.

So I think - anyway - the real issue here is not any moderation of the bloggers’ own politics, but the literal difference in moderation on MSM blogs.

What’s interesting to me is that this evidently cuts both ways - left and right. Tim Blair has moved his blog over to the Daily Terror website. And his commenters are well aware of what the implications for them are. If you don’t want to read the whole thread, there’s a neat summary at The Blair/Bolt Watch Project.

Update: More from Jason Wilson at gatewatching.

Howard preferred PM on economic management. 4 Eva!

Published
by
Kim
1 week, 2 days ago
in Budget 2008, Culture Wars, Howardia, Media and Polls
. 44 Comments

Howard’s talking again.

“Be proud of what we’ve achieved - don’t take any cheek from the other side.”

Andrew Elder wrote an interesting post the other day critiquing Gerard Henderson’s critique, and pointing to a fundamental problem the Liberals have:

The Liberals and Nationals do not take the intellectual debate seriously, which is why it is left to pinheads like Miranda Devine, Tony Abbott, Janet Albrechtsen or Gerard Henderson to carry the (empty) can of rightwing intellectualism. If you really want people to take on the challenge of right-of-centre intellectual development, create an environment conducive to it.

The point’s been made here a number of times that too much political commentary relies on stale analogies with the past, and a complete inability to grasp the challenges of the present. Perhaps that’s because no intellectual work goes into it. The Nelson/Turnbull mob have been talked into the view that they can’t “disown the legacy of the Howard government” lest they lose their advantage on “economic management”. Never mind the fact that ALP polling found last year that when the question was posed as “whom do you trust to manage the economy best for your family?”, Rudd was streets ahead. It’s the distinction between a “beautiful set of numbers” and paying attention to people’s actual financial struggles. In other words, you could simultaneously think the government was keeping the shine on the numbers, but managing the economy for the benefit of big biz and the top end of town. Howard understood that back in about 1996.

But the Libs are now stuck in some Shanahan of a universe where whatever wording Newspoll uses is gospel. Continue reading ‘Howard preferred PM on economic management. 4 Eva!’

Under the radar

Published
by
Kim
1 week, 2 days ago
in Activism, Howardia, Immigration and Media
. 29 Comments

… Maybe Kevin08 is one of those tricky housemates who tries to keep a low profile while attempting to snatch the big prize by doing nefarious work out of the gaze of the cameras.

I probably can’t stretch the Big Brother analogy too far, but one of the big concerns I had about the election of the Rudd government was that the momentum for campaigning around a whole range of vital issues would stall. That’s partly I think because elections provide a convenient end point - if you were horrified by what Howard was doing on refugees (for instance), the most immediate and pressing issue was to vote him out of the House. But it would be a fatal error to assume that’s the ball game.

Margaret Simons has a story in Crikey today reporting on the deep concerns the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre has about the exercise of Senator Chris Evans’ ministerial discretion on asylum seeker claims since the election. 42 claims have been processed, and 41 rejected, a 97.6% rejection rate which is the highest it’s been since 2001 (the year of the Tampa.) According to Pamela Curr of the ASRC, one of the claims rejected has been that of a woman who escaped captivity while her “owners” were in Australia on holiday - she was being held against her will as a sex slave. She was originally from Africa, and had been trafficked to the Middle East.

This may not be the intent of the Government. Continue reading ‘Under the radar’

Griffith Review goes “Forward from the Summit”

Published
by
Mark
1 week, 3 days ago
in Australia 2020 summit, Books, Writers & Writing, Brisbane, Media, Notices and Urbanism
. 11 Comments

Our friends at Griffith Review are holding an event in Brisbane tomorrow at the State Library of Queensland from 1 to 4pm:

The 2020 Summit was just the beginning. The more substantial and critical task is to advance the process by building consensus, by continually developing engagement and cooperation between traditionally divided streams, factions and ideologies. Join us for a free seminar featuring twenty Summit delegates who will report on their impressions from the Summit proceedings and consider pragmatic steps forward to identify and achieve Australia’s goals. Come early to enjoy lunch - your own or from Tognini’s Cafe - outside the State Library’s beautiful new building. Panellists include Julianne Schultz, Michael Wesley, Michael Good, George Williams, Matt Foley and many more.

RSVP here.

Incidentally, my copy of the May edition just arrived in the post. It’s on Cities, and I’m looking forward to a stimulating read as always. We’re hopeful we’ll be able to announce a discount bulk subscription offer for LPers in the not too distant future.

Guest post by Terry Flew: Farewell to liberal Hillary

Published
by
Administrator
1 week, 3 days ago
in American election 2008, Media, Sociology, Television and Video
. 18 Comments

LP’s Indiana correspondent, QUT academic Terry Flew writes:

Bloomington, Indiana is where I am at the moment, at the University of Indiana. It is best known as the home of Albert Kinsey, John Cougar Mellencamp, and the ‘Hoosiers’, a basketball team about whom a film was made in 1986 starring Gene Hackman as a coach and Dennis Hopper as a drunk.

Indiana is one of the two states voting tomorrow (Tuesday May 5) in the protracted and increasingly acrimonious Democratic Party primaries. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have worked these two states hard, even though they both typically vote Republican, as the long march to the Democrat nomination continues.

The striking feature at present is just how far to the right Hilary Clinton has turned in the course of this campaign. Having struggled against Obama for most core Democrat constituencies, she has over the last month increasingly pitched her campaign at what are known here as the ‘Reagan Democrats’ - white voters, often older or less educated, anxious about change, deeply patriotic, and suspicious of liberal reformers.

Given that the Clinton years in the White house were viewed by most outside of the U.S. as at least notionally progressive, and that Hillary Clinton was for so long the bete noire of American conservatives, this has come as a bit of a surprise, at least to me. She appeared on the FOX News Channel’s O’Reilly Factor last week, her defence of religion and guns, and her threats to get tough on China and to ‘obliterate’ Iran if Israel is attacked seem to be straight out of the Republican campaign book. And the favour seems to have been returned. She is getting endorsements from FOX News, The Weekly Standard and Rush Limbaugh.

Continue reading ‘Guest post by Terry Flew: Farewell to liberal Hillary’

Back to square one

Published
by
Mark
1 week, 4 days ago
in Blogging, Books, Writers & Writing, Culture, Media, Notices and Sydney
. 0 Comments

Just a quick plug - via the LP facebook group - for our friends at sQuareOne, who have a number of events coming up in Sydney targeted to people interested in independent publishing and freelance writing and blogging.

sQuareOne is a project of independent non-profit youth media and arts organisation Vibewire Inc. Vibewire exists to create communications platforms that facilitate and encourage young Australians aged 15 to 30 to express themselves on the issues that matter to them.

Check out what’s happening here.