Archive for the 'Media' Category

Australian accents: Speaking Our Language

Published
by
Mark
1 month, 2 weeks ago
in Australiana, Books, Writers & Writing, Culture, Education, History, Imperialism, Language, Media and Nationalism
. 95 Comments

Bruce Moore’s new book, Speaking Our Language: The Story of Australian Language got a fair bit more press coverage - in the news pages as opposed to the reviews sections - than is usual for a tome authored by an academic. And why not? It’s a lively read, and one that is likely to inspire a lot of curiosity and interest above and beyond the questions of whether Ned Kelly spoke with an Irish or an Australian accent and whether talking like Alexander Downer and Crocodile Dundee at opposite ends of the accent pole is on the way out.

What I found most interesting about Moore’s work was the close attention he gives to the intimate links between language, place and culture. (Incidentally, there’s something of a moral here about how cultural studies first arose - a tale told neatly by Raymond Williams in Writing in Society - as a counterpart to the separation of supposedly timeless aesthetic qualities from their social contexts.) Moore tracks the creation of new words, shifts in meaning and the appropriation of Indigenous names to the distinctive geographical and social formations of a culture forged by the interplay between colonisation, landscape and dispossession. The ups and downs of the reputation of Australian English follow the ebb and flows of nationalism, particularly as related to Britain and the idea of Empire.

Moore is well placed to communicate the results of recent academic research on the origins of accents - dispelling misconceptions about the putative derivation of the Australian accent from “Cockney” (he demonstrates in passing that “Cockney” didn’t mean what we think it means in the Nineteenth Century) intermingled with Irish forms of speech. After all, as he argues, the population composition of all the British outposts in the Southern hemisphere was quite similar - yet very distinct accents developed in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the Falklands. He draws on research done in New Zealand to establish that new accents form through a process of selection among children of the second generation. Continue reading ‘Australian accents: Speaking Our Language‘

Review into the NT Intervention: on not reading and stereotyped debates

Published
by
Kim
1 month, 3 weeks ago
in Culture, Ethics, History, Indigenous, Media, Politics and Race
. 18 Comments

I have to confess at the outset that I haven’t read the report - I am really busy with work at the moment and I simply don’t have time (or energy when I do have time), but I wanted to comment instead on the practice of not reading. I was struck by this when reading Mark’s post from last night about the reactions of Gerard Henderson and Kevin Donnelly to the report released by Stuart Macintyre’s history curriculum panel. Donnelly, when interviewed on Lateline (and why is it necessary to interview him - for balance? … so that the substance of the story can be obscured by inscription in a “history wars” frame - what happened to journos perhaps reading the report and reporting on its substance not a press release?) couldn’t actually point to anything in the report which would support the line he wanted to run about a “black armband view” and wanted to mutter something dark instead about Labor being tricky about pretending not to be as left wing as they are. Incidentally, that’s the cunning new strategy that Chrissy Pyne came up with the other day, if we believe his ghost writer Glenn Milne.

Similarly, Hendo appeared to be reacting to a press release. Now these characters are held up as “public intellectuals” and their assemblage of titles (thinktank director, educator/consultant, etc) supposedly represent authority and expertise. Obviously, they’re just going to push the political line they run with constantly, but what’s happened to the idea that you should actually inform yourself about what you comment on?

(Hendo, I suppose, doesn’t have time, what with having to write 50 emails a day to Robert Manne about what they each thought about Indonesia in the 1960s, or monitoring the ABC all day for “bias”…)

Something very similar is operating with the reaction of Warren Mundine to the NT Intervention Review. Andrew Bartlett asks some pointed questions:

Yet almost all the attacks seem to be ignoring the evidence about what has been happening on the ground, and the views of the people that live there, instead treating policies such as universal compulsory quarantining of welfare payments and scrapping the permit system as sacred totems which cannot be touched, regardless of the evidence.

Continue reading ‘Review into the NT Intervention: on not reading and stereotyped debates’

Newspoll: Labor 55-45

Published
by
Mark
1 month, 3 weeks ago
in Media and Polls
. 7 Comments

After a break last Monday for the NSW long weekend, Newspoll is out with a steady 2PP lead for Labor and a jump in Kevin Rudd’s overall standing. Apparently the Preferred Prime Minister measure, which was so crucial in talking down Brendan Nelson’s leadership, is no longer important. At any rate it’s not been reported in the early story in The Australian, which talks up Malcolm Turnbull’s approval rating. It might be more to the point to note that Turnbull has had a negligible leadership effect by any historical measure on the Opposition’s voting intention numbers.

Elsewhere: The Poll Bludger.

Update: Possum. OzPolitics notes the large jump in The Greens’ primary vote.

Confidential sources

Published
by
Kim
1 month, 3 weeks ago
in Education and Media
. 32 Comments

Glenn Milne used to be frequently accused of being a mouthpiece for Peter Costello. Guess who he’s talking to now?

Pyne, one of Turnbull’s key leadership backers, has now been promoted into the frontline education portfolio and it is Julia Gillard, his opposite, whom he now has in his sights. Pyne has finally assumed his rightful position at the epicentre of the Opposition, a role that was bloodymindedly denied him by Howard for two reasons: he was a Liberal progressive and he was a supporter of Peter Costello. It was enough to generate such negative personal energy from Howard that he continually blocked Pyne’s promotion in what turned out to be part of an act of self-destruction.

Pyne is now where he wants to be in the Liberal pantheon and, more critically, where Turnbull wants him to be.

In case you don’t feel like reading the rest of this guff, Christopher Pyne has “lighted onto” a “proposition” - that while Kevin Rudd and his ministers are portrayed as “Howard lite”, they’re actually hiding their socialist lights under a bushel! Exposes such as Christopher’s clever realisation that transparency in private school funding might lead to Class Warfare will be their secret weapon as they go on the front foot…

Memo to Kevin Rudd: these guys think they can win. And they will now do whatever it takes to do so.

Whatever…

The state of capitalism today II

Published
by
Mark
1 month, 3 weeks ago
in Apocalypse, Disasters, Economics, Europe, Foreign Elections, International, Markets, Media, Nationalism, Politics, Sociology and USA
. 28 Comments

SocProf over at The Global Sociology Blog and I must be reading the same things, and thinking along similar lines, because I had planned to link to precisely the same articles she highlights in an update to my recent post on the state of the global financial crisis.

In The Guardian, Will Hutton explains why measures to halt the cascading crisis have been ineffectual to date. He might have made more explicit the implication that one of the basic structural problems is that action taken at the level of the nation state can be counter-productive given the disseminations and movements of capital, and that there are real domestic political barriers to coordinated action, as well as all the obvious problems of concertation through institutions such as the EU and the G20.

But he does make this point - harmonising with the note I’ve been sounding repeatedly - very clearly indeed:

There was no effective opposition. The left and organised labour collapsed as intellectual, social and political forces; there was no conviction that any alternative to this shareholder value-driven, financial, ’securitised’ capitalism existed, or any political muscle to support it even if there were. Mainstream culture moved away from public purpose and fairness; the new priorities were individual self-fulfilment, personal experience and loyalty to self.

Hutton is perhaps more sanguine than I am, though, about the capacity of state action to turn all this around. Continue reading ‘The state of capitalism today II’

The Costa Diaries

Published
by
Kim
1 month, 3 weeks ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, Economics, Media and NSW Government
. 41 Comments

Michael Costa has taken a leaf out of Mark Latham’s book… Forced out of office and Parliament? Write op/eds attacking your former party!

LISTENING to Kevin Rudd at Council of Australian Governments meetings as he tried to connect the global economic situation to the more mundane items on the national reform agenda was often excruciating.

Anybody with a rudimentary understanding of economics would have quickly concluded, as I did, that the Prime Minister didn’t have a good understanding of these issues.

Can a tell all book be far behind? Would it need to be a three volume set to contain slurs on all the people Michael Costa doesn’t like?

Here’s a suggestion for the under-employed former pollie - why not join the Liberal Party? You’ve already got News Limited Columnists eating out of your hand (you actually are one too!)… And your right-wing views should see you fit in nicely. Perhaps with your added ruthlessness, you could spark endless speculation about Malcolm Turnbull’s polling and leadership and unlike the Great Pretender seize the top job by the power of the Word!

The state of capitalism today

Published
by
Mark
1 month, 3 weeks ago
in Activism, Consumerism, Culture, Economics, Ethics, International, Markets, Media, Politics, Poverty, Sociology and USA
. 89 Comments

Iceland may be a barometer for what’s changing in the world economy. It was only very recently that the Milton Friedman fan club was hailing Iceland as a “Nordic Tiger”, lauding its flat taxes and praising its “economic freedom”. “Economic miracle” was a common phrase. What’s it looking like after the credit crisis?

Iceland right now is apparently in a state of shock and gives a snapshot of what a depression with the Great in it will look like everywhere - “cafes were half-empty, real estate agents sat idle, and retailers reported few sales” says the AP.

This after the government basically took over its banking sector, with Russian money, which as noted in the linked post, has real geopolitical implications.

Meanwhile, the British government is laying out 500 billion pounds to take equity in its banking sector, but basically proposing business as usual. Co-ordinated interest rate cuts are having very little impact on the stock market, and more worryingly, on the liquidity crisis. Paul Krugman writes:

We’re way past the point at which conventional monetary policy has much traction.

In America, in the eye of the economic storm, the Fed has basically become the financial system, but to little avail:

The time for a recession was 2005. At that time simple macroeconomic policy; simply raising interest rates, would have ended the bubbles in credit and housing at the cost of a standard if somewhat nasty recession. Trillions of dollars of intervention would not have been needed. Just standard macro policy. Even in 2006 it might still have worked. The Fed blew it, and they broke the system, and now with the system broken they may have to either buy it all out (and Paulson may be considering that after all) or just become the system. And even if they do that may not work, because, well, who wants to borrow and invest right now?

Bernanke and Greenspan are certainly in the “worst Fed chairman of all time” stakes in a big, big way.

Continue reading ‘The state of capitalism today’

The Henson Case and David Marr

Published
by
Kim
1 month, 3 weeks ago
in Advertising, Art, Books, Writers & Writing, Consumerism, Ethics, Media, Parenting and Politics
. 51 Comments

Well, I shelled out $24.95 for David Marr’s book, The Henson Case. I’m still inclined to think that Marr is being a bit disingenuous in claiming that he’s horrified and surprised by the furore that’s arisen over the “scouting in schools” affair/beat up and I still think it raises some broader questions about the appropriateness of the use of schools for any commercial/culture industries purposes, but that horse has probably bolted now. I’m not sure everyone’s aware that this particular media storm didn’t arise via some journo or researcher for tv or radio pouring over the book and striking headline paydirt on p. 108. Marr was actually the first to highlight this aspect of the book, featuring it in an article he wrote for his own Sydney Morning Herald on Friday - tagged as an exclusive. The book wasn’t on sale on Monday, and advance copies would have been tightly controlled by his publisher prior to that - I can’t see Alan Jones or Andrew Bolt or whoever being on Text Inc’s reviewers list.

I really don’t think Marr is so naive as to believe that others in the media wouldn’t pick up on that one aspect and make it into a very predictable story - as a senior journalist, and a former host of Media Watch, and incidentally someone who traces minutely and with great acuity the process by which the Henson story blew up in the first place (and displays an intimate knowledge of pr strategies) in his book. While Pavlov’s Cat has a lot of things to say that I agree with in this excellent post, I would respectfully disagree with her argument that Marr, publisher Michael Heyward and Text Inc. wouldn’t be attentive to the need for publicity for the book. Sure, Marr’s a very well known writer and the case was big news. But attention spans are short, and surely the whole point of marketing in book publishing is to create a buzz about a book and generate free publicity. When I bought it on Monday in a Brisbane CBD bookshop, it had been walking out the door and I was lucky to grab the last copy.

Continue reading ‘The Henson Case and David Marr’

Essential Research Labor 58-42; Interest rates cut by 100 basis points

Published
by
Kim
1 month, 4 weeks ago
in Economics, Markets, Media and Polls
. 10 Comments

As a bit of an update to my post last night, the Essential Research poll is now out, basically showing no change from last time. Possum has more on all the other questions asked. So, we can now be more confident about suggesting that Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership has yet to really shift any of the trends that were evident under Nelson - this also highlights the vast over-inflation of the importance of Preferred PM and Opposition Leader approval ratings in most of the punditariat’s commentary. It will be very interesting to see what the delayed Newspoll says - since this is apparently the only poll the punditariat focus on. Where to now for the famous “media narrative”?

Peter Martin has all the wonky stuff worth reading on the Reserve Bank’s 1% rates cut, which a number of banks and lending institutions have indicated will lead to a .8% cut in their variable mortgage rates. Dennis Atkins, writing at Party Games, thinks that the Reserve has given the Rudd government political breathing space.

No early Newspoll; interest rates to be cut

Published
by
Kim
1 month, 4 weeks ago
in Economics, Markets, Media and Polls
. 17 Comments

I wonder if no Newspoll is bad news for the pollsters and those who own them. This must be the first Monday in living memory (well, since anyone started paying attention to this stuff before last year’s campaign) when there hasn’t been an early release of selected Newspoll numbers. It couldn’t possibly be because the numbers don’t show any leadership bounce for Malcolm Turnbull, could it? [Update: Or could it be because NSW had a public holiday yesterday?] After all, last week’s Morgan face to face poll showed a straight swap of primary vote from the Coalition to Labor - 1.5%, with Labor on 57.5% 2PP. And ACNielsen and Newspoll a fortnight ago showed a very poor bounce by historical standards for the Opposition.

No doubt we’ll find out.

Malcolm Turnbull has been playing a dangerous game on interest rates. Continue reading ‘No early Newspoll; interest rates to be cut’

Bill Henson, visual shock and the democratisation of art

Published
by
Mark
1 month, 4 weeks ago
in Art, Books, Writers & Writing, Culture, Ethics, Media, Photography, Politics and Sociology
. 27 Comments

As no doubt everyone has noticed, there has been a vigorous discussion in comments about the latest Bill Henson brouhouha. I don’t want to comment explicitly on the issues raised by David Marr’s “revelation” that Henson had visited a primary school in St Kilda to scout for subjects for his photographs, because I honestly don’t think the debate’s much advanced over the last round, which was covered very extensively here at LP in a series of posts, and I haven’t shifted my own view. Except to note that I agree that David Marr is probably the person who should be brought to task for dealing unethically with Henson in his rush to find a salacious story to publicise his book, which was released today. I’m sure we’re quite sensitised now to the confection of “news” to help book sales after the unending Peter Costello sales job. As a professional journalist of long standing, Marr knows better than most how to manipulate a story, and perhaps it’s the ethics of his dealing with his subject that should also be questioned.

I did want to talk about one comment which really goes to the heart of the bigger issues around Henson’s art and his professional practice - and which when viewed from a long term perspective, I think explains more of what’s going on than the framing of the previous debate in terms of “freedom of speech”. Alison Croggon, who organised the petition to Kevin Rudd about Bill Henson’s images some time ago when they were seized by police from the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in Paddington, had this to say:

Alison Croggon, who organised an open letter supporting Henson from cultural delegates to the 2020 Summit, said the controversy also exposed distrust of the arts community.

“The thing that shocked me most of all about the debate was the perception that artists were above the law or were asking for special exemptions, but that was never the case,” she said. “There is a responsibility in the artistic community to address that.”

It has, of course, been addressed to some extent with the development of guidelines for artists working with minors by the Australia Council, after a request from Arts Minister Peter Garrett. But that, of course, is not as salacious a topic for the media than a beatup about putative pervs in schoolyards. Nevertheless, the disjunction between “the arts community” and publics who aren’t necessarily normally aware of its norms and practices is at the centre of all this. I didn’t know, for instance, that all manner of cultural and media industries folk seek permission regularly to utilise schools for casting, which has been the defence of Henson’s actions offered - see for example, this article in The Age by Peter Craven. A while back, my interest piqued by the whole Henson furore, I read American cultural historian Michael Kammen’s Visual Shock: A History of Art Controversies in American Culture.

Continue reading ‘Bill Henson, visual shock and the democratisation of art’

Happy blogiversary, Pavlov’s Cat and Hoyden About Town!

Published
by
Kim
2 months ago
in Blogging, Life, Media, Sociology and The Web
. 12 Comments

Spring must be the season when people turn their minds to starting blogs, or at least spring 2005 was when some excellent people did. It’s the three year blogiversary for both Pavlov’s Cat and Hoyden About Town. Warm salutations and felicitations to both!

Pavlov’s Cat also has some interesting reflections on being a sociable blogger, and how addictive it can be. It’s well worth remembering that there is stuff to do other than correct people who are wrong on the internets. Continue reading ‘Happy blogiversary, Pavlov’s Cat and Hoyden About Town!’

The Palin Biden debate haiku thread we had to have

Published
by
Kim
2 months ago
in Culture, Foreign Elections, Language, Levity, Media, Politics and USA
. 34 Comments

Jennifer Schuessler at the New York Times has been boosting the “turn the Veep debate into a poetry slam” movement. Two poems selected from her Paper Cuts blog post:

Haiku’s not the form
For Senator Joe Biden
Because the last line may come out slightly longer than is absolutely necessary due to the subject’s ability to analogize all topics to a seminal moment in the history of this great nation of ours, America, the UNITED states of America

-Henry Alford

So jobs, they … you know,
Health care’s really …. it’s — Katie,
That bridge? I said no.

-David Orr

[Via Quick Study]

More Governor-General dissing: Quentin Bryce a “radical feminist”!

Published
by
Kim
2 months ago
in Media and Politics
. 17 Comments

Those freethinkers and mavericks and contrarians at the Opposition Organ are at it again. In the wake of the serve Christopher Pearson gave Governor-General Quentin Bryce on Saturday, his colleage Frank Devine piles on today. But with even less sense!

This is not an attempt to portray the accomplished and charming Bryce as a Cromwellian dark star on the horizon.

Sometimes the kowtow can make a useful contribution to the common good, but to be characterised as a kind of household robot would have been hard to take for a girl from the bush who has raised five children and climbed to the top in the demanding profession of the law.

There was also a disconcerting ambiguity about Bryce’s announcement that her first travels would be to the Murray-Darling. Did she mean she would traverse these two immensely long rivers and make whistlestops at all the settlements within their vast embrace? Or was she intending to brief herself on the politics of climate change, conservation and state-commonwealth relations now implicit in the phrase Murray-Darling?

Entirely shamefully, as I contemplated the elegantly coiffured and accoutred new GG, admired her perfect profile and struggled to share her angst, it crossed my mind that if we had played our cards differently we might have recruited Boris Johnson.

Go figure.

Biden Palin debate! Open thread

Published
by
Kim
2 months ago
in Blogging, Foreign Elections, Media and USA
. 152 Comments

As everyone probably knows, the Veep debate will be televised live at 11am AEST on both ABC1 and SBS (which also has live streaming online if you’re not near a tv).

Any links to liveblogging of the debate appreciated.

Context in this earlier post and Amanda’s post on Biden at Hoyden About Town.

Update [by Mark]: Liveblogging at Firedoglake, Feministing and FiveThirtyEight.com.