the interpretOr

Misinformation is the enemy of our society. Phone tapping and computer hacking is not the main problem with Australian media. The lack of objectivity, fairness and depth is.  In a recent trip to Indonesia, one of the most surprising and outstanding cultural differences I found was in the honesty of their major newspapers. My poor knowledge of Indonesian culture and media had been informed by news stories in our own press. I had expected a tame media cowed by the military and government. However the opposite was true as the newspapers vigorously pursued corrupt and incompetent members of parliament and had no fear of analysing the weakness of the President. All this was done without alarmist rhetoric or a partisan start-point.

Even more impressive is the way important issues are presented for discussion and the depth of information being provided to readers. Reading the Jakarta Post and the inserted China Daily has been a fascinating educational experience. A good example is a recent article by Economics Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz on the structural weakness imposed on the US budget by policies of the Tea Party faction of the Republican Party, and how the adoption of similar policies is exacerbating the economic chaos of struggling members of the European Community. The article cuts through the neo- conservative mumbo jumbo economics that is holding back progress here and abroad. The China Daily contained a comprehensive, highly informative, interesting and well researched feature on the economic impact of ageing on the countries of the region.

In stark contrast, there is shallowness and partisan viewpoint in Australian news-media that is both disappointing and alarming. Most time and space is given to trivia while important issues are rarely discussed in-depth by try-hard media figures for whom celebrity is more important than substance. Even the Australian Broadcasting Commission is moving down this path.

Rather than increasing understanding and adding meaning to our lives, our media sets out to distort the truth. Instead of analysis and reasoning we are given marketing propaganda backed up by shallow opinions. Invariably these opinions are laced with derisive and inaccurate school bully clichés like “Carbon Cate” to attack and label those who dare to express an alternative view. These clichés are chanted across publications and the broadcast networks like a deafening morning chorus of moronic cicadas, shocked that sun is coming up but having no understanding why it is once again appearing on the horizon.

The revered elder statesmen and women of the press paddle safely in the shallows of mediocrity. They appear on our weekend newspapers and television screens pontificating on issues after being spoon fed their lines by political spin doctors with whom they are far too close for our comfort. To further indoctrinate readers and viewers, we are harangued by sainted business leaders winging against some perceived threat to his short-term wealth. Any new ideas or concepts that challenge the current orthodoxy are treated with suspicion and usually ridicule. Criticism of these new concepts does not come from a basis of careful analysis, but instead it arises from ignorance and the fear of being moved out of an intellectual comfort zone.

Serious life threatening issues like climate change are not covered by journalists with some expertise or knowledge in the field, but by business and economics writers and by journalist members of the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), which is actually a lobby group for private industry posing as a scientific think tank.  However when these double agent journalists are confronted by an indestructible wall of scientific evidence there is a denial of the mainstream scientific view and a parade of views from cash for comment shock jocks, crackpot “experts” and bleating billionaires protecting their money piles and their right to pollute. While these same people laud Australian sporting heroes for being ahead of the pack, when it comes to business and the environment, being in front of the world is a sacrilege

It is clear that the intent of most publications and broadcasts is primarily to promote consumerism, push business interests, and to campaign against anything that threatens either of these. Any long-term sustainable proposal is put in the too hard basket by an industry lacking in principles and that has forgotten its true purpose.

Hacking is not damaging Australia; partisan, mean-spirited inane spin that is pumped out as information is.

John Whittingdale, the Conservative chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport select committee of the House of Commons (UK) is facebook friends with Elisabeth Murdoch, reveals The Independent. He’s also been a close pal of good ol’ Les Hinton, Murdoch’s right hand man of 40 years. Will they still be on first name terms tomorrow?

Christmas 2010, David Cameron had a festive lunch at the home of Rebekah Brooks,  also in attendance was her  then boss, James Murdoch…oh, and Elisabeth Murdoch and Matthew Freud too. Cosy…(see earlier interpretOr posts mid 2011)

June 2012 and Old Etonian, ex Carlton Communications PR man, David Cameron PM is before the Leveson inquiry.

Just how was that lunch, David Cameron?

In addition to Brooks’s arrest, Guardian and also Sunday Telegraph (London) are reporting that Scotland Yard investigating James Murdoch. UK PM, David Cameron, has had frequent and repeated meetings with them and other senior News figures, including Rupert Murdoch, and Andy Coulson (after the latter’s resignation as Cameron’s Director of Communications – whoopsee). There is also growing evidence cited by Reuters, CNN and other media, that the Chair of Tuesday’s Common’s Select Committee is a pal of Coulson’s…watch this space…

“She (Brooks) was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications, contrary to Section1(1) Criminal Law Act 1977 and on suspicion of corruption allegations contrary to Section 1 of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1906.” Metropolitan Police, 17 July 2011

Daily Telegraph (London) is reporting that David Cameron turning back in the air from South Africa to UK – there is growing speculation that he is very, very exposed…

(Oh, and why not Google ‘David Cameron, Matthew Freud and Elisabeth Murdoch’…where were they on Christmas Day 2010?)

“Early in 1982, ten months after he had taken over The Times and The Sunday Times, Rupert Murdoch went to see the Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher. They shared a problem: it was me. I was editor of The Times and Murdoch’s difficulty was how to dispose of me.”

Fast forward 30 years…it might be Rupert’s turn.

Harold Evans was a brave and conscientious editor of The Sunday Times when it was a great, compelling and fearless Fleet Street newspaper. Among his achievements are the creation and dynamic development of their investigative team, Insight. Using energy and talent on behalf of children stricken by latent effects of the toxic Thalidomide drug – a sleeping pill that pregnant mothers had used before the children were born, resulting in limbless babies and many hundreds with chronic deformities – the Insight Team exposed and challenged the pitiful compensation that families involved had received. It also sought to inform readers of the objective, evidence based realities of how the pharmaceutical company that manufactured and distributed the Thalidomide drug reacted to the terrible and delayed reaction of their monstrous and widely used pill. Within the scope of their investigation was intense examination and analysis of the legal machinations on this intergenerational disaster – the position of the Courts and the paucity of the advocacy on behalf of the prescribed poison’s victims. Evans and his staff were driven by the magnitude of their sense of professionalism and responsibility to society. They were acting solely in the public good and in the unadulterated pursuit of justice and recompense for suffering children and parents.

Fast forward 30 years and we’re at another turning point. The demise of The News of The World and the circumstances of its destruction are a continuation of the process that Murdoch set in motion back in ’82 with his acquisition of the Times broadsheets and subsequent dismissal of Harold Evans. That such towering newspapers succumbed to substantially diminished credibility, authenticity and authority was an incremental, and at times subtle, process. Murdoch had an agenda of intense engagement and promotion of both Thatcher in the UK and ‘showbiz Ron’ in the US, and Evans did not fit this mould, this new realpolitik. Would Evans have allowed the Insight Team to become cheerleaders for Milton Friedman and run away, unchecked corporate power? I think not.

Would Harold Evans have allowed The Sunday Times to obfuscate and mislead over Iran Contra and ignore the systematic destruction of the Roosevelt and Beveridge initiated social reforms in public health and education – defining elements of the social contract of the post WW2 era? Well, ask the victims of Thalidomide.

At one end of the chronology is analysis, context and enquiry; at the other…propaganda, churnalism and the stench of sleaze. Hope versus fear. We deserve the former.