Tag Archives: television

Since sliced bread

32
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.

Fiddling while Rome burns

2
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

21
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.

Where the pine-clad ridges raise

9
by Environment, Media • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

This morning (15 January 2012) I experienced an unpleasant sense of deja vu as Australia’s tv channel 7 ran a propaganda piece for the so-called “mountain cattlemen” who are battling the federal government to once again allow their cattle to smash up the national parks of the high country. The new conservative Vic state government saw it as a high priority to give approval, and now only the Australian govt stood in the way.

The program was almost identical to one made in similar (though with the opposite politics in state and federal levels) political circumstances, and by the same reporter, then working for the main rival commercial tv network. The only differences were that on this occasion most filming was done at a country show, and was done before the political protest rather than during.

I was so outraged by the latest version that I put in a formal protest:

“Reporter Nic MacCallum presented a report on cattle  in high country. The report purely presented, in the most emotive and political terms, the views of “mountain cattlemen” with the obligatory film clip from “Man from Snowy River”. Ecological claims, political statements, were made absolutely unexamined, no contrary view of any kind presented. MacCallum ended with the cattlemen making threats of political action against “Canberra”. They then came back to the studio where presenters made statements about the ecology and how harmless cattle were, and how bad it was Canberra didn’t understand the real world, how it was “red tape” stopping this perfectly rational action of putting cattle back into national parks.

Not a single dissenting view was presented during this propaganda piece. Not a single ecologist was interviewed , the federal minister was uninterviewed, no historical background was presented, the issue was completely unexamined other than as pushing the cattlemen’s position.

This is the worst piece of unbalanced tv I think I have ever seen.”

The question, or a question, is why did both tv networks present this story in the same way? Are they idiots? Exercising power – doing it because they could? Did they think the bulk of their audience, primed by years of such reporting would approve the message. Were they ingratiating themselves with conservative politicians and bushies? Were they looking forward to the excellent televisuals of a protest? Were they showing a left wing minister who really has the power? Were they flattered to be seen as onside with these rugged sons of the earth? Are they idiots? I report, you decide.

To show how  little had changed from 2005-2012, here is the email I sent following the coverage of the ‘cattle in the high country’ political battle between Victorian and Federal governments in 2005 by Channel 9′s Today Show. It is as relevant now as it was then. Over and over again the commercial media, and now also the ABC, choose the first narrative model when it comes to environmental stories, and they are helping kill the planet. I received no reply from Channel Nine. 

From: David Horton
Subject: to Jebby Phillips
Date: 9 June 2005 10:52:52 AM
To: todayshow@nine.com.au

To follow up on my earlier email complaining about the Man from Snowy River segment. I am currently working on my new book. Here is the part I have written about the Today story this morning. You will see why I am angry. I am a little puzzled as to why you never allow, or require, Nic McCallum to do the second story. I have my own guess as to why you don’t (and I can’t believe it is because you think you don’t have an audience for the second story) but I would be interested in your explanation. You are not alone of course, all the media outlets follow the first script. 

“It is a story that has been repeated often over recent years, and the narrative is clear. The ‘Man from Snowy River’ is an icon. He is an icon because he was the subject of a poem which every schoolchild learns and then of a film and a television series based on the poem. So he is a fictional construct, unlike say Ned Kelly, Phar Lap, Don Bradman or Simpson and his donkey. Even though he is a fictional character though, the existence of a movie with a star means that the actor can become the icon made flesh, and indeed in the recent protests the star of the film was the star of the protest, and in turn of the breakfast television segment. 

The segment, as always, was pure propaganda of a Leni Riefenstahl kind. This is an Australian icon here, so there are images of campfires roaring in the mountain, riders on horses, magnificent cattle, whip cracking displays. Interspersed are images from the film with notes that some of the real cattlemen took part in the film, and music from the film soundtrack. Images and the media and reality blur. No need to say anything really, powerful images conspire to stimulate powerful emotions, and here we are aiming to stir the emotions both of the commuter and office worker with dreams of open spaces, and of ‘trail bike riders. hunters, four wheel drive owners, farmers’ all of whom were also taking part in the protest. We have our desired audience of red blooded men and wannabe redblooded men onside with barely a need for any script. 

But a final touch is needed and the narrative allows for it. ‘What was your reaction when you heard the news that cattle were to be excluded from the National Park’ asks the reporter of the protest organiser, as rugged a redblooded cattleman as you could ask for in the casting department. ‘I cried’ says this tough man and the propaganda is complete. 

Nothing can defeat the rugged Australian cattleman icon of course. Bushfires, drought, steep terrain, wild horses, fierce cattle. Only one thing can do it, the unfeeling bureaucrats in the city. The effeminate city men and their co-conspirators the whacky greenies. This brutal combination may bring our icon down, and he knows that at last the odds are stacked against him and he cries. For him to cry means that the cause must be just, the odds immense, and his tears, not wasted, appeal to the camera for help and through the camera to the real men of Australia who will come to the rescue, shoulder to shoulder. 

We see the enemy briefly, very briefly, in this segment. In a brief nod to ‘balance’ we see the minister concerned, typical city man in his grey suit hiding his grey soul. He is seen at a press conference explaining the reason for the decision, but the narrative doesn’t allow for more than a fragment of that, the minister commenting that cattle cause damage, and the reporter sneering that ‘they say it will mean more wildflowers’. Wildflowers! Namby pamby stuff when there is an Australian icon at stake here and a tough man has been reduced to tears by these flower loving whackos. 

Back to the icon, asked to comment on the damage ‘claim’, ‘no, no, we have been managing this country for 170 years’ says the icon. In an earlier interview the film star pseudo icon is asked the same question about damage and is allowed to say that ‘opinion is evenly divided’ on that. There is no follow up question as to what he means, but it is clear from the context. Cattlemen don’t think, or don’t care, that the cattle cause damage, or don’t think that it is damage (wildflowers indeed). On the other hand all scientists in Australia know that there has been extensive damage which is continuing and is now exacerbated by the after effects of fire and drought. Whether or not ‘opinion’ is divided between cattlemen and scientists, there is no division between scientists on the facts. 

The story could have been presented from the totally opposite point of view. The reporter could have found an iconic and photogenic ecologist who has worked in the high country. The ecologist could have introduced the reporter to the masses of scientific study showing the conservation problems in the high country, how little wilderness is left and the implications of that, and specific studies on the effects of cattle on this fragile ecosystem. The animals and plants under threat or near extinction could be listed and their importance in maintaining ecological balance in this country, particularly as global warming gathers pace. 

Then the ecologist, together with a number of other ecologists expert in different aspects of the high country – vegetation, marsupials, birds, frogs, insects say – could have taken the reporter for a trip. The camera could have lovingly lingered over areas where cattle have been excluded, with soothing music and the occasional sunset, while rugged and down to earth ecologists in moleskins and jumpers, ruddy faced from years or decades of being out in the bush studying ecology, could have explained what the camera was seeing, how complex it was, how long it had taken to evolve, why it was important, and why they are so passionate about trying to save it at the eleventh hour. This high country is unique to Australia, they could explain to the camera, an Australian icon that has taken millions of years to evolve, and it is close to being lost forever. 

Then they could take the cameras to see the damage that cattle have caused to grasslands, trees, shrubs, the impact of their hooves on ponds and swamps and riverbanks. There will be tears shed here by these tough ecologists, but the reporter may want to keep those for later. Tears are rarely shed by tough pragmatic ecologists, trying to do a hard job for Australia’s future. Difficult to defeat them because of their hard work and dedication. The only thing that can beat them is the powerful media coming in on the side of the cattlemen and forcing a government backdown. The final scene could be a roaring campfire in the mountains, the reporter sitting around it with these dedicated people. ‘What did you think when you heard that the federal government might intervene to keep cattle in the National Park?’ he could ask. ‘I cried’ would say the leading ecologist. Fade away to a sunset with perhaps the Pastoral Symphony in the background.

School of the Air

7
by politics • Tags: , , , , , ,

Had a book as a child called something like “The School of the Air” in which the classroom was an aeroplane which flew all over the world so the children could experience directly what life was like in each of the countries, instead of just reading about it in books. Sounded great to me.

The other day the President of the USA, surrounded by several thousand bodyguards, minders, and journalists, rolled into town past the intersection where I was sitting in my car waiting. He was whisked here, whisked there, and finally whisked right back out again and sent on his way to Darwin where some more whisking went on.

Good that he could drop in. He seems once of the nicer, and certainly one of the smarter, American presidents of the last 100 years or so. He certainly will have known that it was Australia not Austria he was visiting, and he added us to the list of other countries he had visited all of which were America’s very best friends forever. He needs to know something about a country where American troops were stationed in World War 2, visited in big numbers during Vietnam, and, for reasons that escape me, are about to be stationed again. Also good for him to know about a country that has sent soldiers off (again, often for reasons that escape me) to fight alongside Americans. And a country that still catches the flu when Wall Street catches a bad cold, and one that is in various trade arrangements with his own.

But given all that, the whisking was counter-productive.

When I said “rolled into town” above you all know I meant Canberra. But he saw Canberra almost entirely through tinted windows, and almost entirely of the airport-parliament roadsides, the only exception being the War Memorial and Campbell High school a short distance away. What if he had rolled into Yass, quietly, in a beat up old station wagon, dressed in old farm gear with stained akubra pulled down over forehead, and gone for a bit of a walk? Called into shops and talked to owners, said g’day to passers by, bought a beer at pub and sat in corner with it, dropped in at Council, sat in park with icecream?

He might I think, just might, have learnt more about Australia and Australians than he learnt in driving to and from the airport, and giving and listening to speeches from politicians. Applies actually to all the political leaders from around the world.

Perhaps we could put them all in a school of the air, learn about each other. As long as the experience included an icecream in Yass.

Might reduce the number of wars, make trade fairer, make aid quicker. There are 7 billion of us now, and you can’t learn much about them from the back seat of a limousine.

Fit to print

6
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.

That’s Entertainment

8
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

3
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?

Odds on

7
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

5
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?