Strong Article, and strongly worded too.

Protest is so much a part of democracy, and yet it is glibly ridiculed. I have been thinking about how to break through with messages that are subversive and contrarian. And your article clearly states the barriers to entry.

The mainstream media is being slowly streamlined into a machine of propaganda for unrestrained neoliberal market capitalism. And capitalism is not evil per se. It is the exploitation that prevails unrestrained in a market where the playing field is slanted toward the wealthy and the powerful.

Of course in a market where the channels are being streamlined, and the supply of a range of views remains constant, which views are going to be given the flick? Which will be over-represented? The loudest voices will prevail and the voices of contrarians will be muted.

The challenge is using the radio and internet to the advantage of contrarian voices. How to make it work, particularly given the diversity and size of both media?

Bloody good article though Tim. Thought provoking.

This article and the comments are evidence of the emergence of powerful media discussion and protest. A point in Nahum's second last para. contains a possible answer to the difficulty of being heard - "the diversity and size of both media".
Diversity, and to a lesser degree size, is what reduces monopolistic control of public thought.
With an increasingly more media savvy society, albeit with exhaustive research and effort of spin doctors to manipulate minds, many of us metally say "Oh yeah?" to those writers and commentators who try to tell us what to think and do.
Corporations and governments try to "dumb down" their communication with Australia, but it's so blatantly obvious that I suggest it produces the reverse result of creating enhanced criticm in our minds.
Time is a factor which can work against public opinion; issues are often forgotten in the plethora of daily messages, yet every time I hear or read a statement by government on some contentious matter, I immediately think "have more children been thrown overboard?"
OLO and similar internet media are a good facility for countering falsehood and revealing unpleasant facts which the mainstream media would like to suppress.

Thanks,Tim, for a thought provoking article.Try getting it run in Fairfax or Murdoch publications, or maybe Alan Jones will grant you an interview.

Such a thought provoking piece ! Yes ! Let's have annual prizes for journalistic criminality. There are obvious instances: e.g. those who continue to deny global warming in the interests of mining corporations; those who most assiduously promoted the big lie about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and I'm sure we can think up many other appropriate areas. Tim, you set up the presentation of these prizes and it will be bigger than Meredith Burgman's Ernie Awards.

Interesting item.

Not mentioned, but worth a mention, is the impact of ethical investment strategies and presence of people with a local community focus at board meetings of corporations. The majority of shareholders are all too often loosely coupled, or uncoupled from and ignorant of, the cities and towns their investments impact most directly.

My own assumptions about capitalism are strongly influenced by the Club of Rome Report of 1972 (Limits to Growth) and the more recent publications of the Club of Rome (see www.clubofrome.org), which make clear that, just as a joey outgrows its pouch, an economic system based on unlimited growth will outgrow its geographic base - in this case, the planet we share with it. People may classify me as they like - I don't think "neoliberal" would fit very well.

Direct contact between local community and top corporate representatives has a lot to recommend it. The audience provided by an AGM is inevitably swayed by such debate as can be reasonably and civilly pursued. Many of those people who attend AGM's are there because they are aware of a larger pattern, a big picture. Their views of social amenity are not so entirely profit-driven as the behaviour of the specific company in which they hold shares.

I'd be pleased to know more of the ethical investment funds and watchers currently affecting Australian investment patterns, as direct contact at AGM's is but a small part of any strategy to put the brakes on an economy which just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

“We compete, on ridiculously uneven terms, so as to be able to occasionally challenge their paid hacks who pump out reactionary and poisonous drivel, day after day. “

Poor old Lefties and Entryists, cut off from funds because unionists and their fellow even-more-left-leaning travelers no longer have unfettered access to the public purse through their labor party stooges.

The thing with “neoliberal market capitalism” is – it works, when the moribund and stagnant ideas of “the peoples central planning committee” failed to deliver a bent penny.

This is just another sour grapes whine about how the left lost the debate, the initiative and the right to direct the rest of us.

I guess the old saying

“if you are not a socialist by the age of 20, you have not developed a heart but if you are not a conservative by age 25, you have not developed a brain”

still rings true, every generation will have some left wing ranters marching to the Internationale, behind the red flag of socialist solidarity

But these day, not so often in Berlin, Warsaw, Moscow, Budapest, Prague or Beijing.

The problem is Col, they are not actually conservative but quite radical so your aphorism does not work. It manifests itself in a different form and a takes different direction but pressing these quite radical changes on the community surely does not meet any reasonble definition of "conservative".

For Colonel Makeup, who misses entirely the point of the article, another old saying is pertinent:

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt".

And then, there's putting sad cliches in print, for all the readers to see. That's icing on the cake, alright.

Perhaps Col is still expiating his "youthful follies", like so many fossilised intellects that were caught in amber when they discovered that lefties could on average be as cynical, propagandistic and manipulative as righties.

So Col Rouge becomes (metaphorically) Elmer Fudd, out to shoot the Easter Bunny in front of the (metaphorical) children. He still has a few months yet. Perhaps he could print a copy of Tim's essay and read it in the loo - I prescribe daily, from now through Lent. Mind the left hand.

And if you have your wireless laptop in the loo with you, Col, why not Google "Club of Rome", and get a clue about some of natural bounds of your style of economy?

I would suggest thay anyone who accepts and identifies with Col Rouge's definition of what we inevitably become after our 20's is confessing that they are effectively already dead. That they are
Dead at HEART, or at the feeling dimension of our being which is the very essence of our humanity. Quite simply heartless.

It would be pretty obvious by now to most regular OLO visitors that the old left/right, communist/freedom crusaders divisons poor old Col describes are a myth.

You'd be hard pressed to find an OLO commenter who thinks CEOs deserve their squillions or that market fundamentalism should apply to every area of life. Any more than believing that Medicare should be kept going automatically makes you a homosexual, tree hugging, bleeding heart multiculturalist.

Most of us have problems with what passes for media these days, knowing we're largely being fed BS and only ever being told one side of any story, which is probably why so many of us are here in the first place.

And as the sometimes furious debates that go on around here demonstrate, we're interested in what the other side has to say, even if it's only to argue with it.

Even though we're often divided on particular issues, we're united on the idea of open debate, and open debate is what is not happening in our mainstream media when one side gets an A4 sheet of paper and the other gets both the A-K and L-Z of the Sydney white pages.

What a delusional world Col must live in. McCarthyism at it's most extreme.

Everything is a communist plot:

- A balanced view in our media: Communist plot.
- Free health for those who can't afford it: Communist plot.
- Free education: Communist plot.
- Disability pension: Communist plot.
- Feelings of compassion for the less fortunate: Communist plot.

Here's a plan...

- Abolish Medicare. That way, any poor people, who would ultimately become Communist lefties, will die when they get sick. Less Communists!
- Abolish all welfare. That way, anyone who's poor and loses their job (Communist lefty just waiting to happen), will also lose their home as well, and then eventually, they'll wither on the streets and die. Less Communists!
- Abolish free education. That way, anyone who's poor (and hence, will become a Communist), will never be educated enough to make a difference in the world and spread their evil leftist propaganda. Hopefully they won't have a job good enough to shelter themselves either, and will then eventually die on the streets. Less Communists!

If George Bush is anything to go by (or Col's delusions for that matter), then I'll pass on the sudden intellect I am supposed to gain.

Quite frankly I'd rather be dead than share Col's so-called view of what Conservatism is. It's sick, twisted and delusional, just as his views on Liberalism are.

And another thing...

"This is just another sour grapes whine about how the left lost the debate, the initiative and the right to direct the rest of us."

Yeah, 'cos The Right don't want to direct anyone, do they?!

If the article was just a whine, then it wouldn't have suggested any solutions.

Gee, there may be a "superior" Conservative intellect in that head of Col's, but if so, the delusions and emotional immaturity prevent it from ever showing.

Back to the article:

Tim makes some very good points. One solution would be to provide media ratings. Most industries have quality and safety standards.

The media has only safety standards, ie you can't offend anyone and there are rules for libel and slander.

There are no quality standards. Any one can claim that all their news is fair and balanced. No one is held to account. This is like selling meat pies filled with offal and getting away with it.

We now have the kernel of this idea with the ABC. The ABC has a bias assessor. His role is to look at the overall output of the ABC and look for political bias.

Though oft maligned this is a very powerful change and we should have bias assessors at all major media outlets. Media can then get a rating on its overall bias (and hey how about news worthiness) of its content.

The rating should be made readily available. It would still be possible to broadcast biased news but people would know. A bit like you can buy a fridge with a one star energy rating if you really want.

Bias would be assessed at a monthly or quarterly scale. Not on a per program basis. That way an hour with Philip Adams can be balanced by an hour with Alan Jones.

It would take a brave government to implement such a solution and I doubt sen Noonan would take it on.

In the meantime we can always switch to the internet. I stopped buying the incredibly biased and increasingly vacuous West Australian years ago. The money covers my broadband connection. Unsurprisingly its major sponsors the super markets still reach me through the junk mail medium.

Gusi you are right we had a media watch dog. It was called "MEDIA WATCH" at 9:25 on Monday evenings. In 15 minutes the program outed the more egreious examples of sloppy and biased journalism in the country.

I am sure that the ABC media police unit has already silenced MEDIA WATCH and THE GLASS HOUSE.

Generally self regulation is far less effective at providing fair and reasonable service than expecting entities to work within regulations that are effectively policed.

I think attacking the role of Media is like trying to win WWII by banning the German language. You must attack the CEOs by showing the weaknesses and vulnerabilities in Friedman economics that their 'overt' behaviour exposes.

With that thought in mind:

CEOs are not very nice people are they daddy? Do they have a theme song?

Yes as a matter of fact, they do son. It goes a bit like the old Randy Newman Politics song:

No one likes us CEOs-just because we arbitrage you up the eye
We may not be perfect, heaven knows we try
We pay ourselves multi-million bonuses even with the kitty dry
But all around, even our old friends put us down
Let's pump and dump 'em and see what happens

We siphon off their evil money-but are they grateful?
No, they're spiteful and they're hateful
They 9/11 us, they don't respect us-so let's surprise them
We'll pump and dump them more

We'll save Australia
But we're gonna rape that flying Kangaroo
We'll build an All American amusement park there
Privatise their highways, mining, water, media, john howard and surfin', too

And every city the whole world round
Will just be another American town
Oh, how peaceful it will be

They all hate us CEOs anyhow
So let's pump and dump their women
With taxpayer funded childcare its as easy as ABC
So let's get cracking unzip your flys
I think we'll pump and dump 'em now!

Billie,

I think that media watch is just on a summer recess like four corners and other regulars.

The glass house is just satire with a bit of politics thrown in. Usually successful ABC satire moves to one of the commercial networks after a few years. Perhaps their ratings weren't high enough or no one wanted to sponsor them publicly. I am surprised as "The Panel" had a similar formula and ran on a commercial network.

Gus

I couldn't resist this - I wonder if the neo liberals ever stop and smell the "socialist" excess of the modern world ?

Taxes consume anywhere between a third and a half of GDP in pretty much all OECD countries. Government is pervasive in all areas of life, from whether we can stop people being born to whether or not we can stop our own lives. Is this the liberal vision of victory over the Left ?

Face it - the Left won , it's just neither side will acknowledge it!

Tim's article is excellent, and we do desperately need an alternative media voice in this country. Given probably at least 20% of the nation are Left of some sort , there would seem to be a commercial opportunity for some astute media investor to start a national left of centre media source.

The article refers frequently to the AWB scandal which was certainly an example of corruption and collusion between the current government and its machinery in DFAT with vested politically very well-connected elites. But the article fails to acknowledge that the media most strident in uncovering the scandal was "The Australian" - not a media outlet one normally associates with the Left. That newspaper even called for Downer's resignation. Now how does that fit in with the thrust of the article? On the whole, Australia is relatively well served by its media.

This British site has achieved some noteriety (aka public notice) for highlighting oversights by the mainstream media. Not too much trouble to Google.

MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media

December 19, 2006

MEDIA ALERT: BORN IN THE USA - PINOCHET'S BLOODBATH

The Apparatus Of Silence

"It is a feature of the bureaucratic mindset that trivial details are subject to meticulous attention, while issues relating to personal and moral responsibility are dismissed as non-existent. Thus correspondent Bridget Kendall's pinpoint pronunciation as she described the death of Chilean tyrant Augusto Pinochet - pronounced "Peenochet" by the BBC reporter. Kendall got the name right, but everything that mattered was swallowed up by what media academic Richard Keeble calls "the apparatus of silence". (http://www.medialens.org/weblog/richard_keeble.php)

"Peenochet's" rise to power was discussed, as were his crimes, as were the failed attempts to hold him accountable. But of the power behind the throne, the nation that birthed this monster, there was not a word. ('Chile's general dies': http://search.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/search/results.pl?q=pinochet+and+kendall&scope=all&edition=d&tab=all&recipe=all)

Kendall concluded her piece thus:

"To the very end judgements on Augusto Pinochet remained keenly divided."

"That can be said of a mass murderer like Pinochet, a Western ally, but not of official enemies like Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden."

Not to forget that the latter two were "unofficial friends", 20 years ago. Plus ca change, plus ca meme chose.

To the General Secretary,

Why do you so bemoan the impact of newspapers? The Age still has a very large readership. Have you ever read the opinion pages in The Age?

What about Al Jazeera Australia (SBS News) and Pravda Australia (ABC News.) It should be obvious that SBS does not share the assumptions of its government funders. Every time it refers to the War on Terror, it calls it the "So Called War on Terror." And The Age always puts The War on Terror in quotation marks, basically implying the same thing.

Work with what you've got. Nobody's going to take notice of just another University Socialist newsletter.

Dozer,

Read and listen:
“Nobody's going to take notice of just another University Socialist newsletter.”

If you rephrase that as a true - false statement, it is plainly false. Somebody will take notice, however fleetingly.

Or alter the context:
Say nobody’s going to start a bushfire by throwing a burning newspaper out the window. Again, false, but the perception of risk has changed, at least for me.

I think the laws are different, as well. Selling socialist news (Green Left) is legal because few seriously worry that the ideas therein will cause the body politic to “catch fire”. But I do not think the police would be sanguine about you throwing a lit copy out your car window, however unlikely it is to cause a fire.

We are protected from harsh censorship here, but that’s not the point. You can laud the freedom of expression in The Australian and The Age, and so on, but I see repeated examples of gross assumptions in these mainstream media. The mass impact of these assumptions, sensible or foolish, is not effectively countered by my freedom to say my thing in the letters columns.

For example, this morning, I was waiting in an office, with a copy of The Bulletin, 21 November, reading an article by Paul Toohey about how nuclear power is something Australians are going to have to get used to, as it is an important element of greenhouse gas abatement and a cure for global warming (my words, summarising).

No alternative hypothesis was given so much as a passing, derogatory remark (though “rope-headed ferals” got a mention), despite the robust arguments against developing more nuclear electricity generating capacity as a measure against global warming. I would say it was a uranium sales piece, pandering to bias and reinforcing bias.

A month has passed since then. The following week did not have any letters on that issue, but - hey, maybe this week’s?

Are many Bulletin readers going to take notice of just another letter in the letters column, about unacceptable risks of nuclear electricity? Maybe it would depend on the author.

Mr Man “Everything is a communist plot:”

Not really, that you choose to portray what I say in such a narrow way is up to you.

What I like is, under a capitalist system, you get to express your view and I get to express mine.

Under the communist system I am denied any right to voice any opinion and so are you, unless it happens to comply with the edicts of the central committee.

That is where communism got those who had to endure it, into a situation where no one was allowed to disagree.

I hope you continue to express your disagreement with me, it means the system I support has not been usurped by the communist swill.

RE “Quite frankly I'd rather be dead . . . “

Well the contribution you are making, would suggest you might be better off that way, so option 1, go to top if high building and jump, it is quite economic and saves you the cost of 3 meters of rope (option 2).

Col,

We're way off topic here so I'll finish my involvement in this thread by saying this...

Your last reply proves what others here have said about your idea of Socialism/Capitalism and Left/Right being so obscured.

Socialism and Capitalism are more economic ideologies. You seem to be mistakenly under the impression that Socialism is exclusively akin to dictatorships and capitalism exclusively is akin to democracies.

There wasn't much freedom under Pinochet and he ran a capitalist dictatorship.

I also noticed that your reply was cleverly written to imply that I don't believe in freedom of speech.

For the record, I'm not a Socialist, I am more a capitalist. But I believe that you need a balance between the two. Because unlike you, I believe that poor people, especially those who are poor due to no fault of their own, deserve basic services like health, education and shelter. You on the other hand, couldn't give a hoot how much poor people suffer.

In my last two posts, I was testing to see if you supported the idea of giving basic support the needy; I was trying to provoke you to see if you would say something like: "Well, of course I don't want to see poor people suffer and die." But unfortunately, you can't even bring yourself to say that. Instead, you try to paint me as a fascist and then suggest that I kill myself.

Your sheer cold-heartedness and lack of remorse for anyone suggests that you are possibly, in some way or another, clinically psychotic.

Thank you. You've proven to me something about yourself that I had always suspected.

Mr Man, I thought you were a bit of a joke, then I found your web site,

http://www.mrmen.com/site/flash/

what a funny fellow, you and Miss Naughty and Mr Jelly, “funny” in terms which a four year old or younger would appreciate.

Now quickly, “and then suggest that I kill myself.”

I was offering free advise and counsel to the person who previously wrote

“Quite frankly I'd rather be dead”

As for “Your sheer cold-heartedness and lack of remorse for anyone suggests that you are possibly, in some way or another, clinically psychotic”

“Cold-heartedness” and “lack of remorse”.

My partner would laugh at “cold heartedness” but she would also observe, one should only be remorseful when one is in the wrong.

It is simple, my “lack of remorse” is a consequence of being right.

But what I found fascinating was your diagnosis to me as being “clinically psychotic”

Psychosis is "a mental condition that causes people to lose touch with reality”

Clinical is "Based on the objective and analytical observation and treatment of a patient.”

But “Clinically Psychotic” or “clinical psychosis” is not a recognized medical term, disorder or condition.

I am not sure what vocational training you have, wiping tables maybe, whatever, but I do know one thing about you, to suggest I am “clinically psychotic” clearly establishes that you have no credentials in psychiatry or psychology.

Now, you might find that a little cold hearted and lacking in remorse, on my part and I guess you will just have to weather it but one thing it is not and one thing I am not is “Clinically Psychotic”.

Maybe we should have your logon changed, there is a "Mr Nonsense" on your website, that seems to describe you posts accurately.

Regarding “Thank you. You've proven to me something about yourself that I had always suspected.”

All that proves is that you are talking through your backside.