“the revolution will not be televised” sung the late, great Gil Scott-Heron.

It will be on your iPhone, though.

© jfreos

Gaddafi just doesn’t get it. Disconnected literally and metaphorically. The paucity of his awareness of this momentous shift in communications will be his undoing. His reasoning is “they’re all crazy”. But where are your clothes, emperor? All too recently rehabilitated and propped up again by the bastardly B’s – Bliar and Berlusconi, with their spooky and suspect Libyan shenanigans. Carnage in the present moment, meted out by Gaddafi’s interior troops and mercenaries; victims of Lockerbie lurking in the shadows of our consciousness.

The blindspot for Gaddafi today – the rapidly diminishing effectiveness of dictatorial social power dynamics in the face of increasingly ubiquitous digital media. Just before Christmas, a BBC correspondent reported from a busy Kabul street , describing the smart phone as “The Swiss Army Knife of the 21st C”. Only months later, change sweeping North Africa and the Middle East makes this pocket knife seem more like a sophisticated, nuanced battering ram – an animate object.

An antidote to tyranny.

more info: http://en.rsf.org/

Viktor Frankl was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist as well as aHolocaust survivor. What tended to do people in, both metaphorically and… tragically quite literally as well, was:

“Mental agony caused by injustice, hurt people the most”.

This was the considered conclusion of Frankl. His antidote to tyranny, and the message that resonates still, is that regardless of our immediate concerns or despair, we must try and discover, connect with and experience meaning.

Frankl’s survival, endurance and insights have left the world a legacy of hope.

(My meaning right now, is in typing these words.)

If any of our readers wish to share their meanings, we encourage you to do so. the interpretOr is free and open and just one way of sharing meaning. It would be particularly significant if Aboriginal brothers and sisters could share their meanings with us. 

More meaning expressed will lead to more social justice and be just one small, but perhaps important, response or antidote to “mental agony” that so concerned the very wise and humanistic Dr Frankl.

Senator Steven Conroy enjoyed a recent skiing jaunt in the US with Kerry Stoke, early 2010 – documented even in The Australian and Sunday Times (Perth). How cosy…ohhh, we’re also correct in reporting that this occured just weeks before a $250 MILLLION cash fall awarded by gvt. to free to air networks, including C7…all a bit off piste!

We’re a bit piste off, also…

the interpretOr: media inquiry…if not nOw, then when?

The interpretOr has covered issues of the public interest since our inception a few months ago. We would ask our visitors and readers to consider whether the following perspectives that we’ve examined were offered by News Ltd, Seven Media Group and other mainstream Australian media over this same period? To cite a few interpretOr pieces thus far…

• a series of articles on press freedom from a variety of perspectives (Obama, Reporters Without Borders…)
• the selling of Blair’s dodgy dossier that led countries to war and the invasion of Iraq (an odious dictatorship, yet sovereign state)
• the plight of refugees as described by those unfortunate enough to have actually fled their homeland and the carnage of the Taliban
• the soft sell of detention centre contractor, Serco, across ‘community’ newspapers
• the massive profits of Serco and the Ferrari fetish of its UK based CEO
• the objective evidence sourced from Nobel Laureate economists, Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz on the causes and characteristics of economic crises and cycles
• the exposure of the falsehood of the “Big government BAD…small government GOOD” gobbledegook….errrr, there’s no correlation
• the evidence based conflict of interest of the ‘ratings agencies’ and US Senate 2011 conclusions and response
• the impact of Murdoch’s incursion into the UK Times and Sunday Times
• the connection between successive PMs in the UK, and now Australia, and Murdoch and his acolytes
• the connection between the Gammell family, Tony Blair, George W Bush and Seven West Media
• a satirical series deconstructing and exploring the absurdity of the status quo and appalling behaviour of Dumsfeld et al
• to borrow a term from Chomsky…uncovery of significant evidence of “THE MANUFACTURE of CONSENT”

If most or all of the above were absent from your regular media diet, then perhaps it’s time for us, the public, to stand up and demand an inquiry into media ownership here in Australia. As stated in our ‘about’ statement….objectivity cannot serve two masters. Market based media and the public interest are not congruent.

21st Century Media: New Frontiers, New Barriers:

It is well recognized that the growth of the Internet has greatly expanded the ability of individuals, groups, and others to enhance their freedom of expression and their rights to seek, receive and impart information as recognized by international human rights standards. Specifically, new media platforms have made it possible for almost any citizen to communicate to a large audience; for example, bloggers around the world are challenging authorities, exposing corruption, and expressing their opinions via the Internet. These new frontiers of media have enriched news and information resources and reshaped what has been traditionally the realm of print press, broadcasters, and news agencies.

However, even as new frontiers are being forged by these 21st century media, new barriers and new attempts to block, filter, and censor information are being created. At the same time, the proliferation of the Internet, social networks, and new-generation mobile telephony raises new concerns related to privacy and security of the users.

UNESCO, as the UN Agency with the mandate to promote freedom of expression, recognizes that freedom of expression is central to building strong democracies, contributing to good governance, promoting civic participation and the rule of law, and encouraging human development and security. The right to freedom of expression applies as much to the Internet as to the more traditional forms of media—press, radio, and television. The challenge is to fully optimize the potential of the Internet and digital media while not compromising civil liberties including the right to freedom of expression and privacy.

United Nations Educational and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) 2011

the interpretOr is based on the foundations of open media, deconstructing spin and sharing perspectives. Press freedom is curtailed by many influences and forces: overt, covert, obvious, subtle. Partisan agendas presented as news; PR driven ‘news’ stories that obfuscate and omit; the invisible restrictions of the editorial nods, winks and frowns.

When media organisations are answerable to share holders and the markets, the public interest is necessarily compromised. Objectivity cannot serve two masters. When media organisations collude and offer a seeming consensus of content and treatment, there is tremendous power in their ability to shape perceptions of actual and restrict perspectives of possible.

the interpretOr has thus far been able to provide coverage across a range of significant issues without the constraints of commercial considerations. We chose to use the WordPress platform as it is free, open source and relatively user-friendly.

Many of our ‘friends & links’ around the world are using non commercial platforms too. We encourage our readers to visit these sites – perhaps the real potential of digital Renaissance lies within non commercial realms, as opposed to Facebook – its narcissism and new partnership with the odious Goldman Sachs.

Well, that’s for you to decide…

From Reporters Without Borders report re Australia (http://en.rsf.org/):

“The (Australian) government has not abandoned its dangerous plan to filter online traffic, even though this will be hard to get parliamentary approval. A harsh filtering system After a year of tests in cooperation with Australian Internet service providers, telecommunications minister Stephen Conroy said in December 2009 the government would seek parliamentary approval for mandatory filtering of “inappropriate” websites. Blocking access to a website would BE authorised not by a court but by a government agency, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). The ACMA is already empowered to issue “take down” notices to Internet Service Providers under the Broadcasting Services Act of 1992.

“It maintains a “blacklist” of banned sites without transparent processes or criteria for the bans. The filtering would target websites with “refused classification” (RC) content, a category already applied to mainstream media, and would therefore apply to content unrelated to government efforts to combat child pornography, defamation or copyright, so creating a risk of overblocking.

Topics such as aborigines, abortion, anorexia, or laws about the sale of marijuana might all be filtered, along with media reports or related medical information. The government says filtering would be 100% effective – a claim disputed by experts – but Wikileaks has revealed that the blacklist includes harmless sites such as YouTube links, poker games, gay networks, Wikipedia pages and Christian sites.

Several examples of censorship have appeared. Pages of Wikileaks content on the SBS (Special Broadcasting Service) news site were reportedly blocked, leading to a demonstration in Sydney by supporters of the Pirate Party. All the country’s main ISPs (Telstra, Optus and Primus) are thought to have formally agreed to instal voluntary filters from July 2011.

The government still hopes to introduce mandatory filtering, with the support of independent and Green members of parliament, but it does not yet have such backing. An unpopular bill Journalist Ben Grubb, of The Age newspaper, said in July 2010 the government censored 90% of an official account of a meeting about censorship with ISPs and business figures in March that year before releasing it to the media. Australian law allows full access to all government documents. Claudia Hernandez, of the attorney-general’s office, said releasing an uncensored version could have set off “premature unnecessary debate.” Deputy senate opposition leader George Brandis said the episode showed how “truly Orwellian” the government had become.

Minister Conroy has made debate very difficult by calling his critics child pornography advocates. A Fairfax Media poll of 20,000 Australians in December 2009 showed 96% strongly opposed to the bill. Internet firms, including Google and Yahoo, are against the measure and the U.S. government said in March 2010 it was concerned about the proposal, noting the importance of freedom of expression. Hundreds of Australian websites protested against the bill in a national “Internet Blackout” day in January 2010.”

(Reporters Without Borders: http://en.rsf.org/)

“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.”

 ‘Good Times, Bad Times’, Harold Evans (Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd, 1983)

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 ’81 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.

ps. the interpretOr encourages visitors to this site to share their perspectives on this timely and crucial subject. Please feel free to comment away…

we also wish to advise that we have a mobile compatible app that can be accessed through Android and also iPhone by simply selecting mobile site from our home page view options – no separate app download required…phew)

the interpretOr wishes to share perspectives on press freedom and to get the ball rolling, here’s Barack Obama on World Press Freedom Day…

“In every corner of the globe, there are journalists in jail or being actively harassed: from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe, Burma to Uzbekistan, Cuba to Eritrea…I lend my voice of support and admiration to all those men and women of the press who labour to expose truth and enhance accountability around the world.

In so doing, I recall the words of Thomas Jefferson:

“The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right: and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

(Barack Obama, May 2009)

the interpretOr would like to add that Obama should remember these remarks before embarking upon any extradition of Julian Assange – surely Wikileaks was motivated by a desire to “expose truth and enhance accountability around the world” too.

the interpretOr encourages visitors to this site to share their perspectives on this timely and crucial subject. 

Please feel free to comment away…we also wish to advise that we have a mobile compatible app that can be accessed through Android and also iPhone.

“All the corruption exposed in England – payoffs, dirty cops, hush-money settlements – is also happening here” (Rolling Stone, Aug 2011)

   http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/rupert-murdochs-american-scandals-20110803

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.