Tag Archives: media

All of the people, some of the time

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

“Mission Accomplished” read the sign, supposedly put there, so the story was told, by grateful and admiring sailors (rather in the way Roman people would celebrate a triumph for the Emperor) to praise the wisdom and Commander in Chiefness of their great leader. And yes, there he was, stepping from a navy jet, as if he had just personally flown the last mission in Iraq. He wore the armour of a great warrior, the uniform of a fighter pilot, walking, though, it must be said, a little awkwardly as if the trousers didn’t quite fit (or as if he hadn’t quite shed his Texas cowboy persona). Never mind, there he was, walking forward to receive the cheers of the worshipping sailors.

It was an ideal war ending, could almost have been made in Hollywood, starring Ronald Reagan [In fact it was, as it turned out, scripted, stage managed, directed, as if it was a Hollywood movie and the sailors mere extras]. But there we were, a lighting fast war, the leader of the Free World triumphant after a few short weeks, just as the neocon war chorus had promised. Boo sucks to those wishy washy liberals who had protested about the war. We showed those limp-wristed lady men French cheese-eating surrender monkeys etc. When America decides to conquer a country by god they conquer it, no messing around. And if our glorious leader, Emperor George, decides to conquer some more, well then, you feeling lucky, punks?

It was all dutifully filmed and reported by an unquestioning Press, flown out to the carrier for the purpose of recording George Bush’s date with destiny. It was a fake from start to finish, but no one thought to question the spectacle or the sentiments. Nor indeed to question whether the war was indeed “over”. It would be ten more years of mayhem before American troops began going home. And hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis were there to make a mockery of “mission accomplished” had anyone been counting.

But it was a while before people began to question the reality behind the illusion.

It turned out later, if I remember correctly, the aircraft carrier was anchored not far from California, not offshore from the Gulf. The sign had been made by the Bush PR team, not the sailors. And so on. The whole thing had been, a fiction movie. If Ronald Reagan thought that a movie he had once been in was real life, then so now did George.

But it worked for a while, this stunt. Worked well enough and long enough to form a model for conservative politicians everywhere I think. As long as it looks good and sounds vaguely plausible, the media will report the spectacle and message exactly as you want them to. And if anyone wants to ask questions later? Well, yesterday’s news, who cares?

It marked something of a rise in these kind of political stunts. Oh politicians of all persuasions had long kissed babies, launched ships, turned up at sporting events and the like. But the Mission Accomplished moment gave new impetus and ideas. There were a number of lessons to be learnt, and conservative politicians learnt them very quickly. First lesson was to actually take the trouble to make the event like, well, like a movie. Get the setting right, the props right, the clothing right, the extras right, the words right. The media will only need to set up the cameras in the spot marked x and the event will unfold before their lenses. Second, make the story simple, one event, one message, and make it fit the narrative the media are already familiar with, indeed have already been promoting. And third, if you do those things, the media will not investigate the reality behind the event. The illusion you have presented them, like a stage magician, will be presented as reality. In effect you will have turned the whole of the mainstream media into the promotion arm of your political party. And promotion you would once have paid a lot of money for now reaches the audience free of charge.

In the last couple of years in Australia the Liberal Party, under Tony Abbott, Australia’s GW Bush, have developed this process into the kind of mass production previously used only for consumer goods. Almost daily, as if in a continuous election campaign, Abbott’s spin doctors arrange a photo opportunity. He has decided that, having created the narrative, with the help of the MSM, involving a scare campaign over the looming price on carbon (or as he calls it, the great big unimaginably huge toxic carbon tax which will ruin us all and end Australian civilisation as we know it), the photo ops would be used to keep hammering away at this. So there we are, day after day – here a factory will close, there a cake shop, a fish shop, a mine, a whole city (about to be wiped off the map) – and there is Tony, wearing, as awkwardly as Bush in flight gear, a mining helmet, a white coat, goggles. There he is driving a truck (license specially obtained), eating a cake, gutting a fish. And then, as the cameras continue to roll on this made for tv movie, comes the speech when a sometimes sorrowful, sometimes angry, Mr Abbott will denounce the prospect of doing anything whatsoever about climate change, and fore-shadowing (sometimes, in a strange time warp, describing things that have apparently already happened under a carbon price yet to come into effect) the doom of the enterprise and the salt of the earth workers who work there, not to mention their Liberal-supporter boss standing at his side who may say a few additional words before filing for bankruptcy or leaping from a skyscraper.

And sure enough, night after night, grateful reporters, their work done for them, and grateful news bulletin producers, ditto, run this footage unchanged, unchecked, unchallenged on the nightly news and the following day’s breakfast shows.

Running in parallel, and from the same premise, has been a similar technique by lobby groups on the Right. This is the “petition” or press release from “expert group” approach. The notorious “Oregon Petition” by climate deniers seems to have been the first major example of this. Set up a phony “Institute” (this has also been a path frequently followed), set up a “petition” denying climate change is happening, and establish an apparently real “qualification” for those signing it. Publicise it in places where likely deniers will see it. In this case the signers were supposed to be “scientists”, which enabled the Oregon people to later say that thousands of “scientists” didn’t believe in global warming. The media, always out for controversy, and unable or unwilling to check such things, then simply provided an amplifier for the claims of the “petition”, and this established the proposition that the science of climate change was “unsettled” the “debate” still proceeding, “two sides” to the question.

If the media had done the most elementary checking they would have found that the “Institute” was a bit like the fake shopfronts in a western movie. And that the signatories were anyone who had done anything remotely like science at some kind of university level at some time. Even so, given the huge number of science graduates in America, this motley crew represented only a very tiny percentage of them. And in addition, few of them had done any kind of science related to climate, and none were active climate scientists. The whole petition was like a fake town in a cowboy movie. Yet on and on it went, demolished online by many people but not the MSM, and still quoted from time to time. And so a successful model for others.

One aspect of it has indeed been even more widely used – the shielding of the real identity, affiliation, ideology, and therefore motivation, of the people making the claim (eg in this case the headline “Libertarian, neoconservative, right wing Republican group opposes action on climate change” has less impact by far than the claim “Scientists oppose science of climate change”). Religious groups in particular have found that while the public will discount what they say if it is obviously religiously motivated, have become adept at not mentioning religion but of claiming some other identity such as “social researcher” when commenting on topics such as same sex marriage, stem cell research, or abortion. The media have been absolutely happy to accept such wolf in sheep’s clothing commenters.

Last week in Australia, both the political stunt and the false flag approaches to pushing politics further to the Right were in full view. But both for a change failed, not because the MSM saw through the fakery, but because the internet did and quickly reacted.

First the petition approach. Bursting on to the media was the announcement that “doctors” opposed same sex marriage because it would inevitably greatly damage any children being raised by a same sex couple and because of the enormous health risks in such a relationship. Wow, eh, DOCTORS are saying this. With evidence, obviously, must be. Not just the usual arguments by gay people, politicians, religious groups, this is DOCTORS. And so the media ran with the story, as usual, unchecked. Except that twitter started asking questions. Who were these doctors? And pretty quickly the thing unravelled. In the first place there were only 150 names, of some 70,000 GPs in Australia. Funny, very small number. Then it turned out the leader and organisers were based in a fundamentalist, evangelical church, and their “evidence” was quotes from evangelicals in America. And which had the usual anti-gay agenda of such groups. Next came the AMA, issuing a statement on behalf of the 70,000 GPs that this little group didn’t speak for anyone. So the whole facade crumbled, although our national broadcaster, ever eager to please, was still running it on a ticker the next day.

You’d think the media would check, wouldn’t you. But “Doctors oppose same sex marriage” has a more newsworthy sound than “Small group of religious fundamentalists, some of whom are doctors, oppose same sex marriage” does it not?

And shortly after came the second failure. Two of Abbott’s senior politicians, Eric Abetz (Libs leader in the Senate, a major party figure) and Kelly O’Dwyer decided to emulate their glorious leader. Couldn’t believe their luck I bet when a stunt fell ready made into their laps. Didn’t have to do anything, there it was, grass roots participation. See a shopkeeper in O’Dwyer’s electorate apparently told her that he was being forced to close his shop, was being ruined by this great big new tax from Julia Gillard, just as Abbott had said he would be. So the pair of pollies advised the media, and then turned up for the photo op. And even better, the poor shopkeeper, more in sorrow than in anger of course, had written on the shop window something like “Thanks a lot, Julia, closing down”. Time for the cameras, so the shopkeeper stood in front of his poor forlorn shop, flanked by the two pollies, guarding the bridge, shoulder to shoulder, against the red peril coming their way. MSM dutifully reported, unchecked, as they had reported all the other stunts.

But then a funny thing happened. People began asking (as Abetz and O’Dwyer should have done, but in their ideologically befuddled state did not), hang on Carbon Price hasn’t begun yet, and even when it does, how could it possibly affect an antiques dealer? Then someone who lived near the shop and knew it thought the story was a bit odd, and someone else checked out the web site of the business. It all unravelled, and this shopfront was revealed as yet another fake in a cowboy movie.

The real story went something like this. The Antiques dealer had two shops, close together. His main business was just down the road and was going strong. This shop had just been rented temporarily by him, and had been used to have a sale of excess stock from the business. That sale had been so successful that the shop was now empty and he no longer needed to rent it. The gig being up he then made a statement to the effect that yes indeed, that was the true situation, and he had set up this stunt just for a bit of a laugh, just for fun, nothing serious, can take a joke can’t you Julia? Etc.

Abetz and O’Dwyer were very quiet in the afternoon, and the story vanished. But without the internet and twitter the MSM would have simply taken this at face value, and left the public, yet again, with the vague feeling that the “carbon tax” was ruining people. Saw it, in the news, must be true, poor fellow.

Look, they were caught out on these occasions, the doctors and the politicians. But that won’t be the end of these stunts, and tricks, and, well, lies. They work too well, in the absence of real journalism, and indeed in the presence of a media that is happy to run with neo-conservative narratives.

So be aware, as you walk down the street, seeing the latest political stunt, or reading the latest press release, that you are walking down a street in a wild west movie, and nothing you are seeing is real. Stay alert.

Since sliced bread

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by Uncategorized • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Was doing some cleaning up, sorting out, the Steptoesque room that is my Study, when the question arose as to whether to keep some old atlases. The answer was sort of yes, but only on the basis that I can’t bear to throw out books like that, and that I have always loved maps. But got me thinking about recent changes in the way we live now. If I want to check on something about a country, look at a map, I use the internet, not a big printed atlas. So what else has changed? Well, here is a list I put together quickly of things that no longer apply or happen that we once used to take for granted:

Wearing a wrist watch
Using lined paper
Using liquid ink
Using actual money
Using reference books
Having a newspaper delivered
Cutting unsliced bread
Postcards
Telegrams
Going to movies
Having phone plugged into wall
Shorthand
Having written address and birthday books
Following a sporting team that isn’t an “investment”
Being totally surprised by weather change
Use logarithms or slide rules
Having a piece of film developed
Speaking on phone to real person in a company
Lowering a stylus on to a music record
Visiting a bank in person

When climate change really starts to kick in, there are going to be a lot more things we can’t do that we once took for granted. But what else can you think of that we used to commonly do but do no longer? Come on, thinking caps on, elephant stamp for the mostest and bestest.

To be hanged with the bible

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by Atheism, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

When the bible was written humans* didn’t know:
About bacteria and viruses and parasites
Blood circulation
Earth going around sun
More than 5 planets
About galaxies
There was a southern hemisphere
Earth round
What lightning is
That whales aren’t fish
What mental illness involves
About genes and inheritance
About Chinese, Aztecs, Zulus, Aborigines, Navaho, Japanese, Papuans, Bushmen, Mayans, Eskimo, Indonesians, West Africans, Britons
Composition of matter
Any history
Composition of moon
About fossils
There was a western hemisphere
The age of the Earth
About the great apes
About continental drift
About kangaroos, lemurs, opossums, emus, iguanas, alpacas, platypus, kiwi, gila lizards, sloths, tree frogs, humming birds, horseshoe crabs, peripatus, tasmanian tigers, rhinoceros

When bible written humans had never:
Flown
Travelled faster than a horse can run
Communicated except by speaking directly
Elected a government
Swum under the ocean
Read books
Looked through a telescope
Looked through a microscope
Warmed themselves by anything except wood fires
Been cured by antibiotics
Had a surgical operation
Seen a hospital, school or factory
Seen a town of more than few thousand people

When bible written humans were happy about:
Slavery
Women as chattels
Divine kings
Child marriage
War
Destruction of environment
Gods living on mountains
Child labour
Torture
Human sacrifice
Ghosts
Magic

And yet there are people in 2012 who believe everything written in the bible. There are people who use it to determine who to vote for, where to send their children to school, how they feel about burning environmental and social and economic and cultural issues. And if that wasn’t bad enough, incredible enough, we can’t just smile wisely and say “there there, one day you will grow up” as we might to a child who tries to live their life by, say, the Harry Potter books, because there are people who want to insist that the rest of the world obey these silly old books as well. There are people making all kinds of pronouncements about the environment, about bringing up children, about justice, about science, about art and literature, based not on some independent and rational analysis of an issue, but on what they think is said in the bible about it. And in turn appearing in the media, influencing politicians about it, indeed running for political office themselves. Some countries, notably Iran, Saudi Arabia, and America, are now theocracies run by people who know nothing except what someone has told them an old book says.

Angry? You betcha. The modern world is difficult enough, will become more difficult in the future, without the drag on political life from people living in the past. Can’t laugh at these people any more, this is serious.

*By “humans” in what follows I sometimes mean “the whole human race” and sometimes “the humans who wrote the bits and pieces of old manuscript that got collected together and called ‘the bible’”, which is which will be obvious and not of much importance anyway.

Fiddling while Rome burns

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by Media, politics • Tags: , , ,

It’s one of those “what-ifs” of history. You know – what if the Japanese in World War 2 had modern fighter planes, what if the Romans had tanks, what if the Spanish Armada was composed of steamships. But another version involves communications. What if the internet, mobile phones, twitter and email, digital still and video cameras, had been available at different times in history?

I’m thinking it wouldn’t have been so important for the battles between more or less equal armies, but for the invasions and occupations of countries by superior forces. For two reasons, so that those being invaded could tell each other what the hell was going on instead of being overwhelmed unawares, and so they could tell rest of the world what was happening and arouse sympathy and help.

Picture the Romans entering Britain, Spaniards into Central America, British into Australia and India, Greeks into Middle East. Imagine what the French resistance could have done as the Germans occupied, what the people of south east Asia could have reported about the Japanese. Imagine indeed what the Jewish people, and the German resistance, could have revealed about conditions in Germany in the 1930s and in the war. The British in China, the Japanese in China, the Portugese and Dutch in Africa, the Russians in eastern Europe, the Vikings in Britain, the Turks in Austria, Genghis Khan everywhere. If all the countries invaded could have quickly communicated with each other (The Eora and Dharug for example letting others know outside Sydney Cove what these Redcoats and convicts were up to; letting the world know they were being invaded, shot, land taken, dying of smallpox) invasions would have been harder, occupations perhaps shorter and less brutal.

And the world’s tyrants would have had a more difficult time – Caligula and Bloody Mary, Hitler and Stalin, Egyptian and Aztec rulers, Chinese emperors, South American generals. All would have had problems keeping brutality going, maintaining their power, faced with a flood of information to the world via the internet.

And yet. We have those tools today. Brave people getting stories, photos, film out from Syria most recently. And every report is prefaced by disclaimers from mainstream media – this may not be true, can’t verify, it is said that, purports to show, apparently results from. Every piece of footage, photo, recording, secret interview, is prefaced by disclaimers so as to make it impossible to know the truth. So that viewers, listeners, treat all this material as rumours of no more credibility than any other rumours. And we have to be very careful about terminology like “invasion” “occupation” “freedom fighter” “rebel” “terrorist”, have to be careful not to offend dictators who are on our side or are good trading partners. Have to present news about such events as “he said-she said”.

Internet technology make a difference in the past? I doubt it. Video footage of Nero with box of matches setting fire to Rome? Couldn’t be verified.

Ignorance is strength

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

How can every human being on the planet not spend their days being puzzled about pretty much everything?

Every day I ask myself questions like: How does that work? Why did that happen? Who was responsible for that? What was the purpose of that? Where did that come from? Constantly, one or more of the interrogatives – Who? What? Why? Where? When? – applied to the natural, political, built, mechanical, social worlds.

Can never remember a time when I wasn’t curious, puzzled, interested about the world around me. All children are I thought. But it seems many adults lose the curiosity. Seem to settle for a quiet intellectual life in which people they believe are authority figures tell them how things are, the way they are going to be, and they accept the propositions as given.

How else can you explain the willingness of the 99% to vote, in spite of conservative failures over 50 years or more, against their interests and elect neoconservative governments? How else can you explain the lack of action on climate change? How else explain the successful campaigns by rich miners (originally a typo almost had them as rich moners), by alcohol sellers, poker machine makers and clubs, developers, fishermen.

How else too can you explain the following of fundamentalist religions, of fake medical “cures” like homeopathy and naturopathy, of faith healers and “psychics”, of get rich quick schemes, of populist politicians.

And how else explain why we, the people, accept incuriously what the mainstream media tells us, asking no questions so told all lies. No one it seems is puzzled when they are told one thing one day, the opposite thing the next day; or when told about two identical actions by two political leaders, one of which is great the other abhorrent.

No one is puzzled when the ‘reasons’ given for starting a war turn out to be completely spurious; when behaviour said to be perfectly safe turns out disastrous; no one is puzzled that “We’ve always been at war with Eastasia”; no one thinks it odd that “The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation”.

Oh yes, quoting Orwell is so 1980s isn’t it? But it seems increasingly that not only are political parties and whole countries using it as a manual for controlling and manipulating the public, but so are the media. Think of just three aspects. Winston Smith’s job involves dealing with “unpersons”, people now deemed politically embarrassing, so he alters records, changes photographs, to ensure that the person has not just disappeared from modern awareness, but from history as well. Then, to fill a gap where the unperson once appeared he invents “Comrade Ogilvy, a fictional party member, who displayed great heroism by leaping into the sea from a helicopter so that the dispatches he was carrying would not fall into enemy hands”.

Finally of course the idea of our tv screens watching us hasn’t happened (although …), but the tabloid press tapping phones, going through rubbish bins, and governments using spy satellites and getting internet records means the sense of privacy, lost in “1984″, is rapidly being lost here.

Inner Party member O’Brien says that in the future “There will be no curiosity”. And he is right. The public it seems now have no curiosity. And therefore the media can create a fictional narrative, an alternative to reality, that people will simply accept as truth. And in that reality they will also accept what conservative political leaders tell them.

So, I hear you ask, what is the answer?

Well, you don’t need me to tell you, the answer is “education” of course, teach kids to question, not rote learn, to be curious … oh, sorry, no, can’t keep that up.

Do you think the Inner Party doesn’t know that? Why else have preschools been privatised, religious and other private schools been massively funded, public schools and teachers constantly attacked, demands always made for more “3 Rs” (plus trade courses) to be taught and none of this “contentious” stuff about climate change or politics, ethics classes attacked and religious ones (with “chaplains”) encouraged, all attempts to encourage thinking slammed as being brain washing by the Left? Why the call for kids to leave school early and get jobs? Why the determined defunding of universities, the encouragement to teach more business courses and less “Arts”, the push for private paying students, the defunding of student unions, the constant attacks on any political involvement by students, the constant attacks on university lecturers for being Left Wing?

The 1960s and 70s gave the Inner Party a big shock. This is what happens when children are taught to think in school and university and they were having no more of that. So they have thrashed the curiosity out of education (with the willing acquiescence of the Labor Party, also not keen to see too much curiosity about its own policies and behaviour).

So no, I don’t have an answer. Anyone for a job in the Ministry of Truth? Plenty available.

Extraordinary

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

When I put in a complaint the other day regarding an extraordinarily biased tv report about cattle in national parks a twitter follower asked if I would have complained if the bias had been the other way. Made me consider the question for a moment.

The answer of course is “no”, but why? Remember Carl Sagan’s comment that “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs”? Which is why there was such interest in the “faster than light neutrinos” the other day. That claim illustrated the Sagan idea – it has to be checked and rechecked, duplicated and reduplicated (and hasn’t yet been, so it is not an extraordinary proof and is probably wrong).

Which brings me back to the question of “balance” in a story in the media. An “ordinary” claim doesn’t require balance. Earth is round, species evolve, there is no imaginary friend, the planet is warming as a result of human activity, Elvis Presley is dead, chocolate and red wine are good for you? Go for it, make your program, I’ll watch it, no problems.

But if your schtick is that vaccination is bad for you, cigarettes good for you, the moon landings were fake, a picture of Jesus has appeared on a piece of toast, there is no global warming, cattle are good for the alpine environment, etc, etc, etc, then you had damn well better present the other side of the argument or at least indicate its existence, or I’ll be down on you before you can say “Media Watch”.

To paraphrase Sagan, extraordinary claims require a balanced tv program. Which brings me to the second part of a modern recipe for accurate television – we need to be told the affiliations of the person making the program, or speaking during a segment, or writing a newspaper column, or a blog.

Affiliations that have no bearing on an argument in hand are irrelevant. Someone who is a member of a football club, and who comments on, say, environmental issues, has no obligation to reveal that they are a Collingwood supporter. Nor would someone who went to a particular church, had a hobby involving antique furniture, or whose place of work was a hospital.

On the other hand if the topic being addressed was poker machines or liquor licences then football club membership would almost certainly be relevant. As would the other interests be if the topics were private school subsidy, import duties, or health funding.

We live in times where people go to great lengths to hide affiliations that are relevant. Hence the rise and rise of right wing think tanks with bland titles and hidden funding sources. Hence the rise of “astro turf” protest groups, apparent movements arising spontaneously as a result of public anger or concern, in reality carefully created by billionaires, or conservative politicians, or media shock jocks. Hence the rise of commentators with, like the think tanks, bland meaningless names like “social commentator”. Hence the rise of political parties with apparently meaningful names “People for the Forest” say, or “Responsible Climate Change Action” which will turn out to be parties started by forestry and coal companies respectively, with a policy of cutting down trees and burning coal.

So I am very careful to look at the affiliations of people I am seeing and hearing these days, want to know if their background is ordinary or extraordinary in some way. But does it matter, won’t their arguments, if valid, stand alone, fail if not? Well, yes, it does.

Physics has to be time and geography independent. That is, whenever and wherever you perform an experiment the results should be potentially the same. This is also true of other sciences, with obvious variations in biological science. What should also be true is that science is ideology independent. That is, if you read, or hear, a paper by a scientist, whatever their background, it will be the results that count (while recognising that interpretations can vary in all kinds of ways).

But outside of science it matters greatly. If I read something by, for the sake of argument, George Pell, I am reading something by someone who is not merely a Catholic but who has so much absorbed and accepted Catholic teachings as to be Cardinal and head of church in Australia. When he pontificates then, on issues such as gay marriage, contraception, abortion, church school funding, religion in the classroom, I don’t read his words as being the result of independent research and analysis to reach a carefully considered position, but as simply a statement of church dogma.

Similarly if I read, hear, material on the economy from a libertarian free market think tank funded by big business, I am quite sure I won’t be reading any Keynesian economics, or support for socialism, or for action on environmental issues. In addition, on more particular issues, where the tank has funding from, say, energy companies or tobacco companies, I know I won’t be reading research supporting climate change action or reduction in cigarette promotion.

I really don’t want to know what clubs think about problem gamblers, foresters about tree felling, pubs about alcohol, evangelicals about evolution, psychics about the supernatural, irrigators about water, nuclear spokespeople about nuclear safety, billionaires about taxation, shooters about gun safety, libertarians about public service, warmongers about war. So when people appear, right there on my tv, making statements about such things, I really do want to know where they are coming from. If someone with no axe to grind has done independent research which shows that more forest can be cut down, fine, I’ll listen to your arguments, examine your data. But if you are an employee of a pulp mill forget it.

A scientist approaches a question in the spirit of the old legal oath – “The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” – following the data to see where it leads, what the answer to the question is, however it might conflict with, contradict, the hypothesis the scientist began with. An ideologue (of whatever kind), or someone paid by ideologues or interest groups, does the opposite of this, they start with the answer, the truth as revealed by, say, Hayek or Benedict, and they set about investigating the data in order to obtain that answer. What else could it do, it is the truth, the whole truth, and there is nothing else but that truth? Whether they know it or not, people who start with an answer instead of a question are driven by their ideology.

Look this is not to say there are not scientists with ideology that warps their science. Most notoriously in evolution and climate change. It is usually easy to recognise because of their strong links with religious groups or libertarian think tanks (climate change being the biggest challenge ever posed to the mad-brained libertarian ideology). In some it can be more subtle though, representing political mind-sets more inclined to accept one analysis than another (an example in my own field of research being the role of fire in Australian ecosystems). With so much money around these days for those willing to argue against climate change, or gambling reform, or plain packaging of cigarettes, it is not surprising that a scientist of a certain ideological tendency can be tempted to turn a blind eye to some results, or present other results in the way most favourable to his or her employers. Or even without money, argue strongly for something which forms a fundamental part of their political or religious world view.

Obviously we all approach issues with predispositions influenced in some way by our family background, schooling, personal circumstances and so on. We are all ideological creatures to some extent. Me no less than others. In the ordinary scheme of things this doesn’t matter. I may want some research outcome to match my own belief about, say education strategies, but if it doesn’t I would shrug and say well, isn’t that interesting. My “ideology”, such as it is, doesn’t tell you much about what I write except in a negative sense – I am an atheist, I am vaguely left of political centre with an interest in the environment, I belong to no political party, I am not employed by any think tank, I have no financial vested interest in political outcomes. Judge what I say, the logic of my arguments, the quality of my data. I guess my outlook is coloured by my background, but good luck working out how. And that would be true of a very big proportion of ordinary people writing, blogging, appearing on tv, voting in elections.

But where it is not true I bloody well want to know before I invite you into my living room or on to my computer screen. Okay? That’s not so extraordinary is it?

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.

Depends on the unreasonable

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

It is becoming increasingly clear, as time goes by, that, just as is the case for Obama in America, Julia Gillard is facing a media determined to force Labor out of office, backed by a ruthless Opposition, supported by an army of Tea Party-style astro-turf groups backed by billionaires. These groups are determined that no progressive legislation will be passed in the next year or two, and that both Obama and Gillard will be one term leaders.

In both cases the response from the Left has largely been to try to avoid progressive legislation, criticise progressive groups who are natural allies, introduce conservative social and environmental policies, and make economic moves aimed at meeting all the demands of the super rich.

These sacrifices thrown to the mob haven’t appeased them but made them even hungrier to achieve the total annihilation of any progressive policy of the last 50 years, and the smashing of the nominally left wing parties and their allies.

OK, so you tried. I wouldn’t have done it that way but I understand, sort of, the thinking. But it didn’t work. Your enemies are more emboldened, your friends are dispirited and won’t support you. What the hell, why don’t you go for it in the time you have left Julia? Roll out a mass of progressive legislation. Force it through.

Roll out:
*support for carers
*gay marriage
*end forest clearing
*water into Murray-Darling
*mental illness support
*pokie legislation
*mining tax
*onshore processing of refugees
*homeless program
*stop csg
*cut funding to fundamentalist and private schools, funnel money directly to public schools
*introduce financial transactions tax
*introduce media ownership and fairness rules
*switch drug laws to harm minimisation
*increase funding to universities, phase out hex fees
*remove political appointees, put people with relevant expertise on boards of statutory authorities
*ban uranium mining
*establish strong goals for GHG reduction
*support SKA telescope
*improve science training
*greatly increase training places for nurses and doctors
*support arts initiatives
*stop live animal export
*start major program for assisting farmers develop new enterprises in response to climate change
*do serious battle with Japan, and good old Norway, to end whaling
*get troops out of Afghanistan, increase aid instead
*significant old age and disability pension increase
*nationalise Qantas and Commonwealth Bank
*reintroduce strict quarantine on agricultural products
*end Aboriginal intervention
*end school chaplain program
*properly fund local Aboriginal-initiated education, cultural and economic projects
*use castiron legislation to guarantee independence of ABC and CSIRO
That’s just a start, I bet you all have other suggestions.

Crash through or Crash? Certainly. A kind of political blitzkrieg that will have your opponents running in all directions wondering what to say no to next as you march firmly towards the light on the hill. But I bet you will find that your natural friends will come out with trumpets blaring, flags flying. And you will attract many people who have been voting conservative out of desperation, wondering whether there was any difference at all (and preferring real conservatives to pretend conservatives). Your popularity will improve. You will save the seats of your most threatened backbenchers. You will save the seats of your loyal independents. You will win the election.

You will feel better about yourself.

And Australia will be a much better place.

Am I being unreasonable?

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?