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The Forum > Article Comments > 'Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes' or, who guards the guardians? > Comments

'Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes' or, who guards the guardians? : Comments

By Helen Dale, published 10/1/2007

Given that the media enjoys (and often abuses) so much power, could it be made more accountable without stifling free speech or strangling it in red tape? Best Blogs 2006

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The media is owned by only a few people, and these are some of the most powerful people on this earth.

The media will only do a proper job when it is fragmented and has not followed what the big boys upstairs want it to.

there is no such thing as free speech anymore, this is 2007.
Posted by Realist, Wednesday, 10 January 2007 9:40:28 AM
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I'd be exceptionally wary of Beattie's suggestions. The man has an atrocious record when it comes to FOI.
He's always keen to pose for the camera, or trot out an unimportant yet admirably distracting story (honestly, who gives a toss if the premier's trying to lose weight?) but when it comes to stories critical of government operation, he won't let any information free without one hell of a fight.
Posted by TurnRightThenLeft, Wednesday, 10 January 2007 9:58:10 AM
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This is a very sensible and well thought out article. Media abuse including misinformation and bias is rampant.
Posted by baldpaul, Wednesday, 10 January 2007 5:05:27 PM
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You are right about Beattie - as I pointed out in a longer piece I wrote for Quadrant that canvassed this issue. His ideas are interesting, however, although I have my doubts about them because of the potential they have to add yet another layer of regulation to an already overegulated system.

Concentration of media ownership is only one aspect of the issue, in my view. The real problem is that the media is not accountable to anyone - there are no checks and balances, as it were. By the same token, it seeks to make others accountable, and eviscerates people for shortcomings that the 'media' as a body evinces in spades. This process cannot be allowed to go on - it turns good people away from public life, and makes the average punter respond with an entirely reasonable 'well, there's no free speech any more'.
Posted by skepticlawyer, Wednesday, 10 January 2007 5:10:18 PM
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Helen Dale's article is timely, in view of the discussion about media ownership in general, but Realist's comments are beginning to answer "who guards the guards?"
That answer is: "we do"!
The media power that he refers to comes about only because of our lifelong passive acceptance of the "media" in the forms we have come to know.
But we, the consumers, have the ultimate power of scorn and disdain, thus rejection, of poorly performing media.
The attendant financial losses to the owners due to falling readership and audience means that advertisers do not get cost effective returns.
Gone are the old days when readers and audiences had to accept whatever the media chose to present.
Now, with the presence of the newest interactive media in the form of the Internet, wide and sometimes challenging discussion of all news is the norm.
I find that sites such as OLO and Crikey present items in a way that actually invites thought and comment; far better reading than the daily rags, whilst ABC radio and TV news give good coverage of local issues, and SBS is excellent for international stories.
"Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"
"Ego cum cura!"
Posted by Ponder, Thursday, 11 January 2007 8:47:49 AM
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I am unsure if electronic news is liable to solve the problems with our news media. How, after all, does one differentiate between those who are writing simply for the satisfaction of seeing their name in the public zone and those who are willing to work for no remuneration in the hope of - a phrase that had been rendered trite by repetition - making a difference?

In either case, although both are liable for the scorn and criticism that attaches to blogging, the same question remains: what disinterested body exists to ensure the views expressed are not partisan rhetoric allied to specific agenda?

In fact yet another danger in blogging exists: a click through blog streams in this publication will show instances where articles based on valid research and objective opinions have been traduced by those with personal axes to grind.

In these instances the voices of unreason carry the day and subvert even the empiric evidence supplied: making the end result - misinformation - the same as that supplied by unscrupulous journalists.

I think that Ponder is correct. To rely on any specific source for information is naive - perhaps even irresponsible if the source is one which is compatible with our own politics and beliefs. The only way to try to approach an objective or approximately factual opinion is to trawl through a variety of sources; the more disparate the better.

I am idealistic enough to consider this a sad indictment on society as a whole.
Posted by Romany, Thursday, 11 January 2007 4:54:24 PM
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OLO and Crikey aren't blogs, as such (although they're analogous in lots of ways). I'm not sure what you'd call them, but to me they're in between the MSM and blogs in that they generate their own content, but the writers are upfront about their biases, too. At this stage bloggers are good at putting a 'flea in the ear' of the MSM, but only generate news content (at least in Australia) now and then.

This is changing, however, and will continue to change - various studies have shown that newspaper audiences are dribbling away and that their audience is slowly moving on-line. Certainly news media are in flux, although the lack of accountability is still troublesome. Bloggers are accountable to their readers, and that accountability is spreading to the MSM. Doctor a pic on your blog, and people will be onto you. Do it in the MSM, and bloggers will be on to you.
Posted by skepticlawyer, Thursday, 11 January 2007 5:33:24 PM
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HD, Well for starters the thesis here is not new, see Chomsky,Hartley,Marshall Mcluhan, etceetera,

But if you're out to feed the great unwashed who congregate here in droves arguing about ideological impurities -something they havn't tasted before, fair enough.

Here is some morsels from me:

Following this link; http://www.safecom.org.au/do-not-disturb.htm
and read Mungo McCallum's excellent review of Robert Mann's book - Do Not Disturb: Is the media failing Australia?

• See also the ABC Radio National transcript of interview with RM.

An excerpt from this review reads:

"It is certainly true that the Howard years have produced a major shift in attitudes, and that even the broadsheets are now dominated by conservative columnists: there is no longer a shortage of right-wing Phillip Adamses. But the problem goes deeper: journalism itself has become more cautious, more ready to toe the line."

• and

"The situation appears hopeless, but not desperate, because the public seems not to care. David Marr cites the ongoing issue of asylum seekers as an instance where the clear dereliction of the media has been matched by the callous indifference of its audience. Guy Rundle suggests that this is part of a more general cultural change in which the neo-conservative right has become the paramount force in Australia." http://www.theage.com.au/news/reviews/do-not-disturb/2005/09/08/1125772645221.html

And this is what gnarly old Noam said;

" The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate."

• And this, my fellow cyber punters is exactly what the Murdoch press does here in "Straya". I eat it you eat we all eat and get constipated and then blame each other
Posted by Rainier, Thursday, 11 January 2007 5:38:02 PM
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“David Marr cites the ongoing issue of asylum seekers as an instance where the clear dereliction of the media has been matched by the callous indifference of its audience.”
That one line just speaks volumes for what the mindset of the leftist elite actually is.
Neither the press nor the general public are interested the way I am in the plight of illegal immigrants, sorry, asylum seekers, so therefore there is just something inherently wrong with society. It is totally beyond the comprehension of these people to consider that perhaps this great wrong, this humanitarian injustice, might be just something that exists in their head alone.
Why is it so hard for some to understand that while Australians might care about what happens within our borders it is just too much to ask a country of twenty million people to accept responsibility for the wrongs in a world of six billion.
Getting back to the issue, nothing more portends the road to totalitarianism than when, in one name or another, a Minister of Propaganda is appointed with powers to discipline the media so as to prevent the public being subjected to “untruths and biases” .
The best information system a country can have is that of a free media. No government owned so called independent media because it doesn’t solicit advertising revenue but just gives us “pravda”, but a truly independent free media where anyone and everyone, non-profit or for profit, broad based or esoteric, secular or religious, professional or amateur, local or foreign can have their say and where we eventually glean from numerous sources our best possibility of gaining the truth.
Posted by Edward Carson, Friday, 12 January 2007 6:50:05 PM
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At a time when the Courier Mail should have been informing in the public interest, they buried a stem cell opinion piece in the back of the paper. Who made that decision? Why did they make that decision?

How can the public develop a perspective or voice an opinion on anything if they're not fully informed?
Posted by Cris Kerr, Thursday, 25 January 2007 2:10:33 PM
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