Category Archives: Media

Counting out his money

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by Economics, Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

What slogan is above the door of the free marketeer’s think tanks? No, it’s not “Abandon hope all ye who enter here”, you naughty people. It’s “Government small enough to drown in a bathtub”.

These people believe that “government” should leave banks and financial institutions alone, get rid of regulation, has no business in business, as it were, should “get out of the way” of private enterprise, and so on. Any suggestion that the “government” should do something about CEO salaries, risky investments, fees, interest rates, is met with the outrage usually reserved for apostates from a religion. And the outrage in turn is largely met with acquiescence by the media, themselves determined not to be regulated in any way. Faced with the unanimity of “think tanks”, media, and of course the financial institutions themselves, politicians from both “sides” have quickly jumped in to say “oh my goodness gracious me heavens to betsy why no of COURSE we wouldn’t want to regulate banks etc. Reckon we are socialists or something?”

So let’s think about this for a moment. Twenty two million Australians elect several hundred people from among their number to represent their interests. Each one has gained the confidence of tens of thousands (in the case of Senators hundreds of thousands) of people. And yet, these people, combining to form a “government”, are told, by a handful of people with a bizarre ideology, that they must not attempt to have any control over the organisations that not only serve the financial needs of the 22 million, but through their activities fundamentally control the economy of the nation.

That is forget the word “government” as used pejoratively by this little band of reverse Sherwood Foresters, instead say to yourself – these financial bodies are supposed to have no oversight by we, the people of Australia? Really? How did that come to be a thing?

Well it came to be a thing because the banks and the think tanks kept saying it, and a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth for all practical purposes these days.

Look, money isn’t a get out of jail free card. Oh, sorry, yes it is of course. Let’s start again.

Just because your major activity, your role in society, involves money, doesn’t mean you can do what you like. I mean, banks aren’t churches, are they?

In almost all other major kinds of activities in our society we, as a people, through our government, decide how we want those things to work. If you are in medicine, teaching, building roads, serving food, police, flying planes, and all the rest, you work within structures, within limits, for the good of society.

Once upon a time only the church was, as they say, a law unto itself. the reason was obvious, they had you over a barrel, in an explicit, and exquisite form of blackmail – try to rein us in and we will damn your soul to eternal hell, no white robes, harps, bunches of grapes or virgins for you. So they were left alone and for centuries did very nicely thank you. Still do pretty nicely actually with tax exemptions, and ability to make their own laws, and avoidance of laws on discrimination, and largely a freedom from discrimination. Nice work if you can get it and they got it.

And then a second group achieved a similar status floating above and beyond ordinary mortals – the media. Achieved in the same way – hey, try to control us, even look sideways at us, and we will hack our phone, have you on the front page of a fish and chip wrapper; or running the perp walk between serried ranks of cameras and blonds with microphones as weapons, outside your own front door every morning. Wouldn’t like that would you mr politician, we know where you live, and we know where your children go to school, oh, and we have a copy of that ill-advised video you and your wife made on holiday in Bali. Any questions? Right then, piss off and leave us alone.

And now the third of this unholy triumvirate. The blackmailing style the same, the weapons slightly different. Not being poked by imps with red hot pokers for eternity, or junior reporters with red hot microphones, but worse, much worse, blackmailed by the guys, and gals, with the keys to the treasure chest. You want us to do what? Cut CEO salary from $20million to $19million, pass on interest rate savings to home buyers, lend more to small business, reduce fees on breathing while in bank, stop playing risky games with dodgy financial brothers? Right, we’re out of here, got a place to go to in Panama, Liberia, Burma, Zimbabwe, no nonsense about regulation there, few dollars to the country’s president and you can do what you like. See ya.

No wonder solidarity from the media, playing similar games. No wonder support from libertarians who mistake a license to print money for a statement about human freedom. No wonder that other industries, seeing the way these groups have got away with murder as effectively as Al Capone, are adopting the same tactics. MIners, clubs, supermarkets, manufacturers have all been at it, when faced with royalty payments, or regulation of problem gamblers, or food labelling.

So time we the people told our representatives we want the bluff called. Want banks behaving responsibly before we count to ten. Nine, ten, knockout. And the blackmail? To hell with it. Do you really think a rich country with 22 million people can’t develop new community banks if the others pick up their notes and coins and go home? Some genuine competition from groups prepared to work with community for a modest return rather than against it for greed would quickly emerge. Competition, you see, remember that quaint concept? Bit old-fashioned, but then I’m just an old fashioned guy with an old-fashioned idea about millionaires.

And with that victory under the belt the government could then tackle the media, and then, gulp, the church. Let’s move from the 14th to the 21st century in one giant leap. And put the fear of god into these other wannabe blackmailers while we are at it.

Oh, and that sound you hear? Tents being folded in the night as the freemarket think-tankers, no longer a job to do blocking regulation here and no money to be earned from doing so, head for Zimbabwe and freedom.

Boo

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by Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , ,

Every day commercial tv finds new ways to scare its viewers – bacteria in kitchens, exploding tables (yes, really), food poisoning, internet fraud, faulty electrical wiring, incurable diseases, end of world “prophecies” (yes, really), and so on and on and on. The reasons are simple, a belief that many readers will think “thank goodness that wasn’t me”, and a certainty that people will watch every day in case the next deadly threat has their number on it. Of all these potential sources of doom, the most regular and sure to succeed in raising fear levels is “home invasion” with the two related sub-categories “drive-by shooting” and “car ploughs into house”. No matter how rare these events are, no matter that the first two are almost 100% related to drug or gang conflicts, they can be guaranteed to scare people witless – our home is our castle and we must feel safe in it.

A slight variation of this scare has been successful in Australian politics since 2001 – “protect our borders” “illegals” “turn back the boats” “we will decide” and so on. This is “home invasion” where the “home” is Australia. And is just as much a nonsense – number of people arriving by boat is a tiny percentage of total immigrants in a year, and an even tinier percentage of those arriving by plane “legally” and over-staying visas. Non-Aboriginal Australia since 1788 has been built almost entirely on people arriving having escaped intolerable conditions of one kind or another – English, Irish, Chinese, South Sea Islanders, Jewish people, eastern Europeans, southern Europeans, Vietnamese and Cambodians, South Africans and Zimbabweans, Somalis and Sudanese. It isn’t clear to me why you would say that the arrival of Iraqis and Afghans and Sri Lankans was different, especially when, in the first two cases, we helped cause the conditions they are fleeing. Nor can I see why you would think this latest group of people seeking safety would make any less good citizens than all those who preceded them.

I hope they will stop getting on boats too, but if it was me, and I saw it was the only way to try to protect my family, I would get on a boat. Wouldn’t you? Maybe a regional processing centre in Malaysia or Indonesia would make a difference (certainly Nauru won’t) along with an increased refugee intake, I hope it will. But as long as there are wars, and dictatorships, the refugees will keep heading in all directions including here. And as climate change gets worse the numbers are going to increase. It would be nice to treat them as we would want to be treated if we were refugees.

Meantime ignore the political and media scare campaigns on “invasions”. The media who use them want you to watch their channel, politicians who use them want you to vote for them.

You’re all too smart to fall for this.

Now, exploding tables, that’s a BIG worry.

Fit to print

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by Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Much talk about the Australian media inquiry lately, and the inquiry into Murdoch’s activities in Britain. Calls for regulation on the one hand, outraged reaction about government control of a free press on the other. Fairfax Media chairman Roger Corbett said limits on media would be a ‘terrible mistake’. The Right emerged blinking from Think Tank bunkers and shock jock foxholes to announce that any limitations on, nay, any questions about, the media would lead to North Korea and Nazism and Green one world government.

Even the Left was a bit hesitant to be labelled as fascists who wanted to control the media for their own evil ends, and rushed about saying that they didn’t want media regulation oh my goodness gracious no, Rupert forbid. Even someone who has seen more than most of the media’s arseholery, Jonathan Holmes, exposing major and minor media transgressions every week, rushed online to say that of course we didn’t want regulation, oh my goodness etc, but if the Murdoch Press could find it in its heart to indulge in just a little bit of possible self-regulation we could all sleep soundly in our beds again.

The editor of The Guardian, the paper that broke the stories about phone hacking and the impenetrable Murdoch defences, chimed in to talk about some regulation but only to do with privacy and defamation.

But there were some who recognised that there was more rotten in the state of media than the occasional bit of privacy intrusion however unpalatable that might be. Glenn Greenwald, for example noted that “the media’s reaction to the “Occupy Wall Street” movement highlighted how mainstream media journalists had become part of the elite class … journalists had traditionally been people outside of power who acted as watchdogs to aid the powerless, but that mainstream journalists now identified with the powerful.”

But with all due respect to Scourge of the Right Greenwald, the situation seems to me much worse than that. Journalist have become not just servants, but collaborators with power. Indeed further they no longer carry out their role of reporting and illuminating the programs and policies of others, but are players in the political and social game themselves, pushing their own ideology and agenda. That has thrown our political system into imbalance, because the media are not only players but own the means of dissemination of information, control what they will permit other players to say to the public. The only comparable situation was the medieval christian church.

I am sure if you have paid any attention at all in the last few years you can identify many media policies. They are designed either to directly benefit their corporate friends or to create a culture in which those corporations can thrive. Here are just a few off the top of my head:

Media agendas -
Reduce taxes to a point at which you can drown govt in bath tub
Keep all criminals in jail forever
Hunt pedophiles constantly
Kill all sharks after privatising the protection
Dispute all judges decisions
Public schools are rubbish
Public hospitals are rubbish
Religion is good
All opinion polls favour conservative parties, one way or another
Dump speed cameras
Monarchy is good, royals are special
Miracles happen
Psychics are real, so are ghosts
Aust police never do anything wrong. Except occasional rotten apple
Demonstrations from the Right represent voice of the people.
Demonstrations by Left – scum, obstructing traffic, lock them up
No taxes, ever
Unionists are evil and should be sent to convict colony
All strikes are bad and should be banned
Billionaires are great people – hard work got them there.
Poker machines are good, alcohol too.
Refugees are really bad. Except very rich ones who come on private jets.
Left of centre parties must never be allowed to be elected.
If Left of centre party is elected in spite of media set out to destroy them quickly
The poor are scum
The Greens are scum
No conservation measure for environment is ever justified
Zoos are good
Spare the rod spoil the child
The last public servant should be strangled with entrails of last unionist
Police never use enough force on demonstrators
There can never be too many police. Or soldiers.
No measure of performance of a society is relevant except the stock market
Farmers know best.
Every group in society except corporations acts out of self-interest. Especially scientists
Feminists are such funny little girls. Feminism is so twentieth century.
If violence, humiliation and misery attract viewers let’s have more of it.
If it’s legal we advertise it.
Australia only fights Just Wars. Especially alongside America.
Anything that might reduce their advertising profits results in a Nanny State
Climate change certainly isn’t happening and here’s a shock jock to prove it
Balance? Of course we are balanced – on the Right. Left wing views so Twentieth Century

Feel free to add as many others as you like.

This agenda is the reason we need to try to return the media to its original role in society.

Heaven knows this won’t be easy. May be impossible. Normally I would call for regulation, strong regulation, and it may come to that. But like the rest of you I don’t want to see governments of any political colour controlling the press in their own interest, we know where that leads (well, no, not North Korea, but cover-ups of bad behaviour by governments). Nor do I want to see bureaucrats with no knowledge of media trying to direct activities of people who do. On the other hand wishy-washy “self-regulation” of the kind we have now allows the most egregious examples of bad media behaviour to thrive.

I think there needs to be an independent, truly independent (perhaps with a board nominated/elected by the major political parties and the major media outlets), “Press Council” style body but with the power (transparently) to make determinations, impose fines, publicise bad behaviour, demand redress or change, prevent concentration of ownership.

Fundamentally you need (1) an ownership diversity mechanism (2) a “fairness” and balance doctrine in some form, (3) a return to a clear distinction between news and “opinion”, (4) some measure of truth in reporting (and advertising), (5) clear labelling of vested interests and institutional homes of commentators, (6) some protection for privacy and against libel, and (7) a complaints mechanism with teeth. Then see how it goes and review at regular intervals.

Someone noted the other day that one of the commercial TV “current affairs” programs had become a cancerous growth on the media. I reckon the media as a whole has become a cancerous growth on our democracy, and some kind of therapy is needed to reduce its malignancy. Not pleasant, cancer therapy, but it will do them, and us, a lot of good.

Miracle climate cure!

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by Climate Change, Media • Tags: , , , , , , ,

A comparison between public perception (and I use the term loosely) of climate science and other sciences has been made in various ways from time to time, but is worth making again.

You are sitting in on a case management conference in the oncology area of a hospital, with all the specialists, nurses, medical technicians present. They are discussing your case, going through the various cycles of chemotherapy and the results of tests. Just then a janitor wanders in, listens for a moment, then says to you “you don’t want to listen to all that crap, these people don’t know what they are talking about, my granny swore by deadly nightshade, rubbed on the legs. Did it all her life and never developed lymphoma.” Do you say (a) “that sounds really interesting, do you have some, I will give it a try”, or (b) “go away you idiot, what the hell would you, or your granny, know about it”?

Or say you have wandered in to a lecture by Australia’s latest Nobel Prize winner. You listen to him talk about galaxies, and the size and age of the universe, and dark matter, and red shift, and expansion and when he asks if there are any questions you put up your hand. “This is rubbish Professor Schmidt” you say “I was listening to Ray Jones on the radio the other day and he said the universe is much smaller than you say, and is contracting not expanding. Said it was common sense because it looked just the same as it did when he was a boy. Said you scientists got paid more money, got prizes and stuff, if you made the universe seem bigger than it is. That true Professor?”

Or perhaps you visit a farmer friend. She explains how she has been developing her pasture. Careful analyses of soil and grasses for trace elements; analysis of soil structure, organic content, invertebrate species; study of which plant varieties will do best; reintroduction of native plant species; provision of structures to encourage birds; computer models developed for efficient grazing regimes. When she has finished you say (a) that sounds great I assume you are working with the CSIRO and the local pasture people or (b) you shouldn’t bother with any of that rubbish, I read somewhere all you have to do is fill an old cow horn with manure and bury it on a full moon and your pastures will be fine?

Well, I don’t need to go on do I. Anyone who has read any blog or newspaper article related to climate change will recognise the analogies in some of the responses above. Indeed just the other night leading Australian denialist Alan Jones used number 2. I make the analogy here not just to point out the idiocy of climate change denier – that is like shooting fish in a barrel – but to make a more general point.

The examples given are not chosen to be crazy things that people would never say in contexts other than climate science, although there is certainly some truth in that. People seem happy to live in a modern world created by science, accept that scientific experts know far more than they do. Except in the areas of climate science and evolution (this is not a coincidence – areas where those implacable things called facts come up against ideologies held in an iron grip).

Rather I have chosen examples where people can and do make such remarks in other areas of science. The nutters with “cancer cures” are well known (and have caused many deaths when they fool people). The nutters who believe the world is 6 thousand years old because the bible says so (it doesn’t of course, but even if it did …). The people who bury cow’s horns or dowse for water. All well known.

But unlike the nutters in the climate change blogs and letters and demonstrating outside parliament or the bureau of meteorology, the nutters in other fields of scientific endeavour are recognised to be nutters and are treated as such by the media. They are generally scorned, laughed at, treated as little humorous fillers in between cute babies and piano-playing cats, although every so often a tv network will pick up on a “miracle cancer cure” story when ratings are flagging.

But the media, and the public in general distinguish between the body of scientific knowledge which has propelled us out of the Dark Ages and into the Knowledge Ages of the 21st century, and the occasional wing nut with delusions of grandeur, and, well, delusions in general. No one, least of all the media, thinks that any of this rubbish, as entertaining as it might be, actually overturns any of the individual scientific disciplines, let alone the whole glorious superstructure of science that these disciplines combine to form (strengthening each other in the process).

Except when it comes to climate science. Then every shock jock, retired engineer, Joe the truckdriver, old surfer, who “thinks it a scam” or says “it’s the Sun” or observes that “plants use CO2″, or says the sea looks the same to him, is given the status of a second coming of Galileo. Any piece of mindless opinion based on the self-interested meme of the day from oil company fronts is treated as overturning the results of the measurement and analysis by tens of thousands of scientists in virtually every scientific discipline (climate science is a multi-disciplinary effort). Not just overturning some particular piece of analysis, but overturning physics, chemistry, palaeontology, astronomy, ecology, oceanography, and the rest. Overturning in fact, Science itself.

Day after day Frank the shock jock and Joe the truckdriver manage to negate 500 years of scientific research with unfounded opinions. According to the media.

Now why would that be, do you think?

Politics by shockjockery

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by Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

The horrible lot (Bachmann, Perry, Cain and the rest) seeking the Republican nomination in the states, and the equally horrible lot trying to overthrow the government by bombast in Australia, have more in common with radio shock jocks than with the politicians of the past like Eisenhower and Kennedy, Menzies and Whitlam. It is politics by empty slogans, meaningless stunts, abuse of dissenters, invented “facts”, ideology. It is appeals to nationalism, religion, exceptionalism, xenophobia, class warfare, misogyny, racism, anti-environmentalism, and delusions of future riches.

It is a personal style characterised by aggression, refusal (and inability) to discuss issues, nastiness, lack of knowledge, bullying, stubborn repetition of a “fact” disproved, take no prisoners rhetoric, and a supreme confidence in one’s own self-worth.

Both shock jocks and these politicians of the new age are there to get people angry every morning and stay angry all day, and to consequently build audience share/voter numbers. If/when they are successful in doing this their competitors/political rivals will be obliged to push their own shockjockery to even lower levels, down down where the voters/listeners occur in numbers.

They could be called on their behaviour by other media outlets, more civilised politicians, intelligent members of the community, but they rarely are, perhaps because people are aware of the following they are generating, and scared that the wrath of those followers will be turned on them (for example climate scientists most recently).

There will be tears before bedtime I’m afraid. We have a number of examples of countries that have followed this spiral to the bottom. Takes a long time to recover.

That’s Entertainment

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by Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Long long ago, as the oldest of my Watermelon friends may just remember, there used to be talent competitions in community and media. At Eisteddfords performers performed, judges judged, winners grinned, losers were praised and encouraged, audiences applauded loudly in appreciation.

Then the geniuses who produce tv programs decided this was all wrong. In the same way as they changed motor sport broadcasts from reporting winners to reporting crashes, they changed talent shows from having the winners being the entertainment to having the losers providing it.

In order to do this the losers would be increasingly humiliated, disparaged, brought into public contempt, driven to despair, driven, if at all possible, to tears, a human car crash. As long as every possible human emotion could be wrung from the losers, the actual “winners” of a competition were essentially irrelevant.

As time has gone by networks have competed against each other to make the humiliation of losers more extreme and more protracted in each successive show. The public demand for such spectacles is, it seems, as strong now as when the Roman public were given opportunity, thumbs up or down, to decide on life and death in the arena. Not so much circuses that marked entertainment, and decline, of the Roman Empire, but loser shows.

And so it is with us, as ritual psychological disembowelling becomes the standard tv entertainment in all “reality” and “talent” shows that fill broadcast hours on all networks.

But that left all the political stuff that the networks had some kind of public obligation to report. People would, after all, probably want to know who was going to govern them after an election. But it was all so boring, like an old-fashioned Eisteddford. Grinning winners about to form government, losers with stiff upper lips ready to form a “loyal opposition”. “Loyal Opposition” indeed, what sort of television did that make?

Hard to stump tv executives for long. If politics wouldn’t come to reality tv, then reality tv would have to come to politics, or, more exactly be brought into politics. And so it began.

Began with the destabilisation of an existing leader. Unflattering photos, odd pieces of film, some past “scandal” uncovered, carefully edited bits of an interview played again and again. Then we might find a disgruntled and very junior member of the party to make a criticism, anonymously of course, and describe this as “voices”. A former leader may be called on to prove they are still relevant by voicing an opinion, pretending to inside knowledge they no longer have. Opposing politicians may be asked for their objective views on the leadership of the other party.

Then in stage two we go into full scale rumour creation, where two people having coffee are photographed through a long range lens in sinister fashion; where an innocent glance is scrutinised by “body language experts”; where some policy debate (a good thing, right?) is turned into a signal of raging dissent and rebellion. Phoney opinion polls are sought and presented in the most damaging light possible. “Numbers” are said to be counted. Soon all this has an effect. The party decides the instability created by the media has to stop (believing that firm action will end it, ha ha) and there is a change of leadership. The media will milk this for all it is worth, close up images of tears on faces (family gathered around, hopefully also with tears), interviews where questions are asked not for answers but for emotional response, families of defeated leaders followed to school or shops hoping for angry reactions.

And then suddenly all that good television is over. Time to start again, and the whole cycle is repeated with new leader, the political party discovering, belatedly, that changing leader doesn’t stop instability (a media creation in fact), the instability having nothing to do with who the actual leader is, but merely being the signal for the media to begin a new round of destabilisation. Sometimes, and this is a bonus, the media may decide to bring a former expelled contestant (sorry, leader) back into the Big Brother (sorry, Parliament) House, and the twist will be that they may be able to gain full reinstatement, deposing the one who deposed them. Human emotion in spades. Hours, days, weeks of good television.

Neither the contestants (sorry politicians) themselves, nor the viewing audience (sorry, voters) have any more control over this process than the contestants and viewers of Survivor or Greatest Race or Beauty and the Geek or the X Factor. All are puppets, manipulated at the whims of directors and producers.

A lot of contestants and politicians, will be damaged mentally and professionally in the process, and democracy itself is the Biggest Loser. But Hey.

That’s Entertainment.

The loaded hot dog

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by Economics, Media • Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Did you see where Denmark has placed an extra tax on fatty foods to try to begin reducing obesity problems in their society? Don’t know why the Scandinavians are so much better at this kind of thing than we are. Yes I do. The other day an expert suggested raising the tax on soft drinks, noting that these had no nutritional value at all to even partly compensate for the masses of pure sugar they contained. Immediate outrage from the food and grocery council, and you could sense a media campaign coming on, politicians being lobbied, small children weeping in tv interviews, legal cases underway. A similar pattern in response to attempts to increase tax on alcopops, prevent fast food companies marketing to children, introduce plain packaging for cigarettes, reduce pub opening hours.

We are an odd people. One class of chemicals – cocaine, cannabis, heroin, ecstasy – we say are bad for our children, bad for health, bad for society, and we throw enormous resources at trying to stop their distribution and sale to anyone. Another chemical, found in tobacco, we recognise is extremely harmful but we don’t ban it, just stop it being directly advertised, and try to warn people of its ill effects. And we are unsurprised when the tobacco industry fight every step of the way and manages to delay meaningful actions for years and decades.

Another chemical, alcohol, is also very damaging to individuals, families, society. We impose some restrictions on its advertising and sale to juveniles while simultaneously promoting it in the media, allowing sale of products aimed at juveniles, increasing its general retail availability, and allowing places that sell it to stay open all night. We deal with the resulting mess by increasing the number of police and their powers to clean up afterwards. Any attempt to reduce opening hours to those of a few years ago is met with a massive political campaign.

Finally a group of chemicals – fat and sugar – which we know is doing great harm to our health, are freely added to foods, promoted with massive advertising campaigns, freely sold to anyone young and old. Any attempts to suggest that we should even try the softly softly approaches of reducing consumption by increasing tax on such products and reducing their advertising reach is met with instant outrage and political capitulation. All continues as before.

There are huge profits to be made from all these products, which is why on the one hand the drug smugglers and pedlars continue to risk long jail sentences or even death from their competitors, and why on the other hand powerful political lobbies work very hard to prevent any action that would further decrease tobacco use or significantly decrease alcohol and junk food consumption.

There must come a time, surely, when we recognise the inconsistency and tell the various lobbyists to shut up?

You may say I’m a dreamer

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by Climate Change, Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Imagine how different the last four years would have been if the mainstream media had enthusiastically supported the idea of providing a massive increase in school infrastructure, and a big boost to insulating homes to reduce energy costs? If they had got behind the programs, explained their purposes, published anecdotes about happy customers. Imagine if they had explained the seriousness of the GFC in simple terms and the reasons for providing a stimulus. Imagine if they had ignored the phony “protests” of the mining billionaires and explained to the public the reasons for the mining tax and its benefits.

Imagine how different the last year would have been if the mainstream media had got behind the idea of putting a price on carbon. Explained to the public in a series of documentaries, morning shows, talkback radio, the reality of global warming, the measures beginning around the world, the urgency, the need for us to play a part, the benefits of doing so. Imagine if they had promoted the health benefits of plain packaging of cigarettes and the tax on alcopops. Imagine if they had gone into bat against the self-interest of the clubs, and explained the damage of problem gambling and examined the situation in WA. Imagine if they had seriously hammered the cattle industry on animal cruelty and the need to halt exports until resolved.

Imagine if they had been positive about the great breakthrough that having a female prime minister represented. Imagine if they had written positive stories about her rise from humble beginnings and her intelligence, hard work, charm, warmth. Her ability to work with colleagues and independents, the enormous raft of legislation that has been passed in spite of the opposition tactics against a minority government.

Imagine if they had been positive about how well the Labor-Green coalition was working, and compared it to Liberal-National coalitions of the past. Imagine if they had run positive stories about the independents Windsor and Oakeshott and Wilkie, praised their strength of character and independence of mind under great pressure.

Imagine if they had ignored most or all of the foolish publicity stunts by Tony Abbott. If they had seriously examined the policies being pushed by the opposition. Imagine if they had paid attention to the unprecedented damage that opposition tactics were doing to our parliamentary democracy. Imagine if they had turned the spotlight on Tony Abbott Action Man and found out what kind of a person he really is. And the rest of his front bench.

Wonder why they didn’t do any of those things.

Wonder why they did precisely the opposite.

Odds on

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by Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

There is a curious political narrative (I could write a book on curious political narratives) beloved not just of journalists but of political commentators, supposedly a much more serious breed of political observer. A discussion will be under way about, say, leadership questions, or the date of next election, or the winner of a bye-election, or the winner of a general election. Opinion polls will be perused, entrails of goats examined, ghosts of former prime ministers interviewed, oracles appealed to, pundits given the chance to endlessly punditify, with hindsight, on past political events.

At the end of all that, baffled and frustrated by the inability of commentators to do even such a simple thing as foretell the future, the compere/presenter/personality will speak in the tones of Socrates settling an argument among his students on the meaning of life. “What do the bookies say? They always know. What are the bookmaker’s odds on a [xxxx] win?”

Around the table, or on the comfortable lounge chairs, the faces of the assembled pundits will light up. “Ah yes” one will remark, with the air of someone discovering a great truth for the first time in history, “the bookies always know because they are responding to people putting real money on the outcome”. The others will nod wisely, one or two repeating the words “real money” with satisfaction.

It is always at this point that I am faced with a choice between running screaming from the room, hands over my ears to avoid hearing any more of this nonsense, or throwing a convenient house brick right through the tv screen. Which occasions another thought – if psychics and evangelists and faith healers and all the other charlatans can cure people through the tv by speaking into a microphone and looking at a camera 1000km from the target audience, then presumably I can have an effect on them by either cursing at or kicking the television set in my front room? Must try it – would be nice to see them cowering back on stage, or running around clutching their goolies in pain. Politicians and pundits too.

But I digress. The reason this “Let’s ask the bookies, real money” narrative is bullshit is that the people who are betting the “real money” are people who would bet on two flies crawling up a wall to use an old observation. The gamblers have no information you and I (or indeed the pundits) don’t have. They are making their bets on the stuff they read (perhaps) or watch on tv. They (and the bookies) have no special insights, no skills, no ability to predict the future, they are just betting money. Gambling. In the sense that their bets are equivalent to a poll, it is a very inaccurate poll, being an uncontrolled sample of a particular segment of the population.

But, I hear you say, bookies don’t go broke, so the odds that they post must represent something accurate. No. They make their money from racing and (more recently) football, cricket and other sporting events. They set the odds there initially on a record – number of previous wins, at a particular speed, on these tracks, against this opposition and so on. The gamblers (the smart ones anyway) are laying their bets on the same information. Favourites generally win, so do bookies.

No such information is available on political contests. So opinion polls represent a much more accurate assessment of likely outcomes, and political commentators a much more accurate assessment than bookies. Opinion polls because they are (or should be, it ain’t necessarily so) based on carefully taken and analysed samples. But political commentators? Well, you should always listen to them because, unlike your average punter, there is real money involved. The pundits, either directly or indirectly, and the media outlets and think tanks they represent, all have a big financial stake in ensuring that right wing governments are elected over and over again to infinity. That if, by some fluke of history, an even nominally left of centre government does happen to get elected they will be destroyed within one term or less. Big money involved for interested parties in lower taxes, access to markets, unions smashed, infrastructure availability, no regulation, business subsidies, no gambling or packaging restrictions, financial policies, under the right government (the Right government). So when the pundits speak they are indulging in self-fulfilling prophecy. By predicting a particular result they will help make it happen. A bit like a crooked bookmaker really, nobbling the favourite, or knowing people who do.

An honest bookmaker may or may not have the odds right on the next election. The pundits know that the fix is in. Listen to them. If you have backed a different horse might as well tear up your tickets now. Or fight back.

You give me fever

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by Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

When you have a fever your perception of the world gets distorted, your brain cells manipulated by virus and high temperature to see all kinds of things that are not there.

Chemotherapy is similar. After you have it you are left not knowing what changes to your body are the result of the illness, which are the result of the treatment, which are just ordinary everyday ailments that you normally would have ignored.

The media is having the effect of fever or vencristin on the body politic. Reading, seeing, hearing the news now I have no idea whether the events being described are real or fake, meaningful or meaningless, deserving of outrage or approbation. Video and photographic images may (or may not) be faked; descriptions of events true or false; reporters may (or more likely may not) be anywhere near the scene they are apparently describing; both witnesses and reporters may (or may not) have a vested interest (or an ideological purpose) in presenting a story in a certain way; politicians and soldiers and economists may be telling the truth or lying.

Bodies may or may not have been buried, shots may or may not have been fired, money may or may not have been stolen, people may or may not be terrorists or freedom fighters, heroes or villains. Conversely the Earth is warming, the poor are getting poorer, religion is damaging society, taxes are too low, science is essential to society, in spite of narratives that pretend these things are debatable.

The media were once meant to fling open the curtains of the sick room, let the light in, diagnose the symptoms of society, treat ills. Now they bring new and virulent diseases, raise temperatures, manipulate our brains, create illusions, prevent us perceiving the real world.

How do we cure that?