Convergence Review Interim Report – The Conversation

Republished from The Conversation

The Federal Government’s Convergence Review has released its interim report, recommending the scrapping of existing cross-media ownership rules and that commercial operators be given “certainty” around the activities of the ABC and SBS.

The report, which says new digital media operators should face the same regulatory framework as traditional media outlets, suggests introducing a new “super-regulator”, local content quotas, and the use of a “public interest test” for media company takeovers.

Deakin University Associate Professor in Journalism Martin Hirst examines what the recommendations could mean for Australia’s rapidly changing media industry.

[published as Q&A due to my hand issues]

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Do you think the report adequately responds to the challenges arising from media convergence?

I think it’s quite empty of content, to be perfectly honest. The headline in it for me is that it’s an attempt to come to terms with what I call the “techno-legal time gap” – the dissonance between what technology can do and how it is regulated.

It’s an effort to bring the regulatory regime up to speed with the technological advances in the media industry.

This is why the report emphasises platform neutrality, which is the idea that we should treat all communications technology pretty much the same way. There is no real argument anymore for maintaining any difference in the way that we regulate print and broadcast.

Convergence means the overlap between different types of media is huge, particularly online. We now see television and radio networks producing blogs and other forms of written copy. You can go to the ABC News website and read transcripts of stories from ABC radio current affairs program AM, and you can go onto a newspaper’s website and watch video content that they have made.

This is one of the key things the review was set up to look at.

Some of the proposals, such as setting up a new regulator, will take a lot of work. Is the political climate right for these changes?

The devil is really in the detail, and it’s difficult to tell just from this interim report where exactly the entire review will head.

One of the most crucial issues seems to be the time frame. We are now probably 18 months out from the next federal election, and it’s going to take much longer to get that sorted out. So it looks like the review has created a political football to be kicked around until the election comes.

The issue of setting up a replacement for the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is quite complicated. Where does this leave the proposal put forward by head of the federal media inquiry, Ray Finkelstein QC to give more powers and money to the Press Council?

If you have one super-regulator that is at arm’s length from the government and deals with consumer complaints, then you don’t need a Press Council to deal specifically with print.

ACMA has done a good job in the past few years, particularly in reining in the worst excesses of the shock jocks. But the report is putting forward a light-touch approach to regulation here, and that is definitely what the industry wants.

The report talks about clarifying the charters of the ABC and SBS around their digital expansion. What are the implications of this?

There is a very important line in the report which is going to come back to haunt the ABC and SBS, but it is something that the Murdoch camp has been pushing for globally for some time. It says that the government must “give commercial operators certainty about the boundaries of public broadcaster activities”.

Over the past three or four years that have been various people in News Corporation, including Col Allan, John Hartigan, James Murdoch and Rupert Murdoch, attacking the ABC and BBC, saying that they’re getting in the way of commercial networks expanding.

If there is a move to put strong boundaries around the ABC and SBS, that will certainly work in favour of the commercial operators.

The review calls for a “public interest test” for media takeovers and mergers. Would this work in practice?

This relies on a flawed idea of how the market operates. If you look at the public interest test as it currently exists in the ACMA legislation, the Broadcast Services Act and at the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission, it is all about the invisible hand of the market.

What this does is set up people as consumers rather than citizens. It says that as long as we are satisfied as consumers – rather than as citizens – the public interest is being met.

The report acknowledges the concept of public interest is not very well defined.

Could the loosening of ownership rules lead to a wave of consolidation, or change the make-up of the media industry?

The elephant in the room here is what is happening to the Nine Network. No amount of tinkering with the diversity and ownership rules is going to deal with the fact that Nine is on its last legs.

In the next two to three months, it will fall into the hands of the banks or the receivers. That is the biggest problem with this review – it cannot address issues of market failure.

Five years ago Nine was competing with the ABC to be known as Australia’s national broadcaster. Now it’s a basketcase.

The reason why Nine is in such mess is partly due to previous deregulation. The only thing that could be done to keep Nine going would be to nationalise it, and that’s not going to happen.

When all its debt comes due in February, I’d be surprised if it has anything in place to keep it afloat. The banks don’t want it – it’s toxic debt.

The beginning of the end for the Press Council?

Some interesting news this week of a new organisation set up to represent newspaper publishers.

THE country’s four major newspaper publishers have formed a new venture, the Newspaper Works, to give the industry a united voice on a range of issues from environmental sustainability to collecting readership data.

Under the new banner, the publishers at Fairfax Media, News Ltd, Seven West Media and APN News & Media have the scope to discuss, comment and set collective policies to make the sector more efficient for advertisers and readers.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/publishers-join-forces-for-a-united-lobby-voice-20111209-1onir.html#ixzz1g5F5asMR

I can’t help but wonder if this is not a precursor to something else – the break-up, or perhaps the assassination – of the Australian Press Council.

In the past few weeks the Finkelstein inquiry has been getting an ear-bashing from old-school newspaper types objecting to the kite-flying proposal to give the Press Council more teeth and some government funding.
All along Ray Finkelstein has been raising this possibility as a solution to the vexed question of how to enforce greater accountability for errors and egregious attacks while maintaining the cloak of respectability (invisibility?) that comes with the pretence of full ‘independence’.

In Perth a few days ago, this hefty swing from West Australian Newspapers group editor-in-chief Bob Cronin smashed the government support delivery out of the ground:

“My concern is that in recent times, rather than dealing harshly with egregious errors, the council has become a cudgel with which zealots, bigots, academics and despotic politicians are able to beat newspapers which dare to depart from their view of the world.”

[Media inquiry born of a desire to 'control news']

My colleague Professor Mark Pearson of Bond University and one of Australia’s leading media law academics also poured cold water on the Finkelstein idea. It seems, at least from this report, that they had a fairly terse exchange of views.

ANY attempt to force a newspaper to publish a judgment from a government-funded body would send a message that the Australian government does not believe in freedom of the press, a leading media law researcher has warned. Mark Pearson, professor of journalism at Bond University and the Australian correspondent for Reporters Sans Frontieres, was speaking at the final day of public hearings for the government’s media inquiry.

Chairman and former Federal Court judge Ray Finkelstein QC asked Professor Pearson what he thought of the notion of a levy-funded regulatory body with the power to order newspapers to publish Press Council-style judgments.

“Two out of three of the major members of the Press Council have told me they will refuse to provide any more funding,” Mr Finkelstein said. “So what do I do?”

But in a robust exchange of views Professor Pearson argued that any such body would be

viewed as an instrument of government regulation and would be at odds with any editor’s view of their role. “The notion of the fourth estate is a residual idea, it is much more than a commercial ethic. It is part of an editor’s sense of fierce independence from a government-funded body.”

Mr Finkelstein argued with Professor Pearson that a levy-funded body could be different.

“It is still a government institution,” Professor Pearson replied and said no editor or publisher would support it.

“Without freedom of expression embodied in a constitution or bill of rights, it would send a message to the international community that the Australian government wants to force its will on media organisations.”

Professor Pearson said he questioned any need for a new regulatory body when the Press Council did its job “reasonably well” and that all it lacked was community education of its process.

He also questioned the cost of the inquiry, estimating it as more than $1 million.

“So what, so what?” Mr Finkelstein said, glaring at him.

“I don’t object to government funding, but I do object to the regulatory regime,” Professor Pearson said.

Earlier, Mr Finkelstein had remarked that he was starting to understand the way editors thought: “Judges don’t like being told what to do and I have the feeling editors are like judges.”

The inquiry was also told publishers could benefit from the advice of an “integrity”authority.

[Nick Leys - The  Australian - 9 December]

I don’t agree with all of Pearson’s remarks, but in general he’s right – publishers have given a strong signal that they don’t like the idea of government ‘interference’ in their self-regulation (mutual stroking) regime.

But Mark is mistaken in his view about the links between ‘freedom of expression’ in a bill of rights type instrument and the freedom of the press being threatened by government ‘forcing its will’ on media organisations.

This idea is based on a flawed – but widely held view – that individual humans and giant media corporations are the same thing in the eyes of the law and that they have the same ‘rights’. I say this is bullshit.

Giant media corporations are legal entities (firms or companies) established for the benefit of shareholders. Their whole reason for being is to make money – profits – and to distribute this to shareholders.

Why should something – the media company in this case – which is founded on the principle of private profit be extended what is fundamentally a human right – the right of free expression.

What the legal fiction of equality before the law does in this instance is give licence to the private ownership of this right to speech.

The ‘right’ to freedom of expression should not reside with the media company; it actually belongs to the people and, as our political representatives – working to the public interest – governments technically and morally have a right to intercede on our behalf to ensure that corporations act in the public interest.

This is not going to happen, the force of the (broken) market will ensure that capital is free to exploit and expropriate and also to continue speaking with forked tongue on freedom of speech.

I am working on a major research piece that will elucidate my arguments more clearly. That will be available early in the new year.

Season’s greetings

This is my last post for 2011. I am having yet another round of hand surgery on Tuesday next – the dreaded ‘Viking disease‘ – and will be in a cast for three weeks.

I hope you have a safe and fun silly season where ever you are in the world. As a level 7 aetheist I offer a secular greeting – “cheers”.

Focus on complaints misses real point of media inquiry

An edited version of this post was published on The Conversation earlier today.

After five days of public hearings and well over 50 submissions the government’s independent media inquiry has retired to deliberate. After absorbing the tenor of some witnesses, I do not envy the judge and the professor the task ahead of them.

It seems that despite their sometimes bitter commercial rivalry the Fairfax and News Limited empires agree on one thing: the Finkelstein inquiry has been a giant waste of time and money.

Both have produced more than one editorial slamming the inquiry unnecessary and asking what is its purpose.

Outgoing News Limited CEO John Hartigan and current Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood sang the same jingle during their appearances at the inquiry this week in Sydney.

The news coverage in the papers of both media companies has been overwhelmingly negative and critical. So what is going to happen next?

My reading of the situation is that there is likely to be a recommendation, or series of recommendations that deal with the issue of the Australian Press Council. At the moment the APC is quasi-independent, but because it is entirely funded by the two major newspaper companies and some smaller publishers, this claim of independence must be questioned.

Two issues arising from the inquiry’s terms of reference have dominated the inquiry and both are to do with the APC’s relationship with its constituent members and the possibility of it taking some over-arching role in complaints handling, with additional funding from government coffers.

It is likely then, given the signals sent by Ray Finkelstein during the public hearings, that some form of ‘super’ APC will emerge; perhaps in spite of complaints from the key media companies. At the end of the day they may well agree to wear such an outcome knowing it won’t really change much in their day-to-day operations.

What we could end up with is something that looks like, smells like and barks like the British Press Complaints Commission. The PCC does not receive any government funding, but the size of the British market perhaps suggests it doesn’t need to. What is clear from the APC’s own submissions to the inquiry and Finkelstein’s generally positive commentary, is that some subsidy from the public purse could be offered.

This point has generated the most heat in the discussion so far. John Hartigan dismissed it outright, even conceding that News Limited and the other council members might have to up their own contributions to keep government ‘interference’ at bay. The argument is that a government subsidy would mean government meddling, because it would require some statutory backing from parliament.

Giving the APC some legislated authority would create something of a hybrid: a cross between the self-regulatory functions of the Press Council (or Complaints Commission) and the statutory regulation of broadcasters provided by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). Such a body would be a break with traditition; most Western liberal democracies have historically kept self-regulation of the print media at arms length from government while heavily regulating broadcasters using the argument of ‘spectrum scarcity’.

This argument – scarce bandwidth requires tough controls – is now out-of-date and has been for sometime. The IEEE has described the new situation as a ‘spectrum bonanza‘. What it should mean is that heavy regulation of broadcast media should be lifted, not attempting to drag the print media into the fold.

The media inquiry was tasked with examining the issue of compliance, codes of practice and regulation in the context of digital convergence; but not much was heard about that in the public sessions. In the logic displayed so far by Ray Finkelstein it makes sense to combine complaints handling in one body that is platform neutral. The question raised again and again though, is: How do you get bloggers and so-called citizen-journalists to register and be included in such a regulatory system?

No doubt these are questions that will be ‘hhhmmmmed and hhhaaaed’ over in the next few months. The judge and the professor will have plenty of reading and some interesting conversations to get them through the looming silly season. Their report and recommendations are due to be put to the convergence review in February next year.

However, I would argue that this focus on regulation and complaint management misses the point somewhat.

The existence of the PCC did not prevent the UK’s biggest media scandal in a generation, the now notorious News of the World serial phone-hacking debacle. Streamlining the complaints procedures will not improve the quality of news or journalism.

There are two issues relating to questions of quality that were, at various times, mentioned at the inquiry, but which have been effectively sidelined in the coverage.

The first is the issue of market failure and Australia’s impenetrable duopoly in print news media. While the exact figures are disputed, depending on the measure you use, it is clear that News Limited has a dominant position in metropolitan print markets, closely followed by Fairfax. The situation is not much different in radio, television or magazines.

In this environment how do we ensure a diverse range of media and opinion is available? It is difficult for new players to enter either print or broadcast markets because the cost of plant, equipment and human resources to match the two dominant entities is well into the hundreds of millions. This is despite the write-down of value in the major companies over the past few years, mainly due to the influence of the GFC.

Where public interest players are in the market – in community radio and television – the terms of their licenses are so restrictive that they exist tenuously without adequate funding or commercial income streams.

The smug response from the big two is that anyone is free to launch an online competitor and that the ‘invisible hand‘ of the marketplace will decide the outcome. What this free market myth fails to take into account is that the market is a) not a level playing field because of high entry costs and the advantage of size and first mover, and b) the market itself has failed; it does not deliver the promised outcomes and, in fact, the failure of the market has contributed to the current crisis in both business models and in lack of public trust.

At the heart of this market failure is a contradiction so intense that it is almost insurmountable and unresolvable in the market’s own terms.

The market dictates that competition produces profits for some and losses for others. It is a valorisation of monetary value and the interests of property and shareholders over the value of public interest.

Within the framework of capitalist market relations the private interests of shareholders acting in their self-interest in the marketplace cannot be reconciled with the collective social interest that effective working of the public sphere demands.

In short, I would argue, the marketplace of ideas does not guarantee an effective outcome in the public interest.

This, I feel, also undercuts the argument from News Limited and Fairfax that the media inquiry is an attack on the news media’s right to free speech. In the marketplace of ideas, speech is not free. Speech takes on a commercial and commodified form in the market and the right to freedom of the press claimed by editorialists and CEOs, is effectively a property right.

As such, it is not available to everyone. Unfortunately, apart from my own modest contribution on the first morning of the inquiry in Melbourne last week, these ideas have not been canvassed. Perhaps Stuart Littlemore came closest yesterday when he talked about the festering culture inside some newsrooms to explain how some reporters and editors appear to take perverse delight in venal attacks on and vendettas against certain targets.

Despite the comfortable deniers on mahogany row, there is evidence that the current model is broken and, as senior Fairfax news executive Peter Fray said in his Sydney University lecture earlier this week, journalism has failed us, journalists are guilty of group-think and are seduced by public relations.

The question that was not asked, let alone answered, amid all the bluster and talk of reform of the media inquiry is: What to do about the crisis in news and journalism?

Peter Fray offered one solid suggestion in his First Decade Fellow lecture, which was, unfortunately not repeated during his media inquiry appearance as sidekick to Greg Hywood a day later.

“What I am saying is that we need to become more sophisticated and radical about the way we talk about journalism and its roles.”

I couldn’t agree more, but when sophisticated and radical ideas were raised in front of the professor and the judge last week, they were howled down by a chorus of acrid smoke and noise from those who are charged with living up to the ideals that their bosses espouse.

Who’s got a short memory? Like limitednews, I forget

I’ve finally been named in a newspaper editorial. I think this is a first for me; others may remember some obscure late 1970s rant against rioting students that noted my presence at an occupation somewhere or other.

A privilege or a punch?

On Friday I was named in infamous company by The Australian in yet another editorial lambasting all and sundry who think an inquiry into the Australian news media has got any merit at all.

The Communications Minister and Greens leader apparently have short memories, as do academics Robert Manne, Martin Hirst and Margaret Simons, who have also complained about what they perceive to be “campaigns” or “vendettas” in News Limited papers. Dr Hirst said he was “blown away” by the papers’ anti-government bias.

Yes, I did say that and the context (missing from limitednews coverage) is explained here.

The fact of our short memories is then ‘proven’ in the editorial by reference to moments when News Limited papers have attacked political parties other than the ALP.

And, no Virginia, kicking Bob Brown on an hourly basis does not count. The Australian means serious criticism of serious parties.

Several incidents from the Howard years are mentioned; all of which do meet the criteria for giving government the rough end of the media pineapple.

The inquiry has heard nothing, for instance, about the blowtorch this newspaper applied to the Howard government for buying votes with middle-class welfare, the Australian Wheat Board scandal, during which we exposed kickback payments to Saddam Hussein’s regime, and our expose of the “children overboard affair”, in which senior Liberals, including John Howard, wrongly claimed that asylum-seekers had thrown their children into the sea.

I do actually remember these incidents as being significant at the time and if they were so germaine to the media inquiry, then surely John Hartigan and other News Limited folk could bring them up again and again and discuss their relevance.

Rattling off a list like this and suggesting that no-one but News Limited remembers them misses the point. It’s not about individual campaigns or moments in time, it’s about an attitude over time.

I remember too, but have not found it on a Google search, a recent comment from John Howard from his biography, Lazarus Rising, about being grateful for the support he got from News Limited papers during his time as Prime Minister.

[If anyone can find this quote, or definitively show me it wasn't made, I will be grateful]

I have read the News Limited submission and apart from the opening gambit – there is no problem with News Limited titles – the issue of an even-handed approach is not discussed. The only mention of political coverage is to point out that in last year’s election some News Limited titles backed Gillard and some backed Abbott. If an election was held tomorrow, I’m sure that would not be the case.

In any case, I remember it more like this:

DURING John Howard’s lengthy prime ministership, his conservative Praetorian Guard in the media coined a pejorative term for critics of his government. They were branded ”Howard haters”. The ”Howard haters”, the argument went, occupied the commanding heights of Australia’s cultural institutions (especially the universities), and the Coalition, notwithstanding many other achievements in office, had been unable to dislodge this rag-tag band of liberal-left windbags.

[Politics of hate takes aim at PM]

I also remember, as do many others, News Limited unflinching support for Howard during the second Gulf war against Saddam Hussein, even after the point at which everyone stopped believing in WMD.

Finally, I would just point out to the good folk at News Limited that I am still waiting for my right of reply to the untrue allegations made about me in The Australian, The Herald-Sun and The Daily Telegraph.

Is it the case that their editorial policy is honoured in the breach?

As reflected in 1.3 of the News Code, it is standard journalistic practice that person or persons who are “attacked” would be given the opportunity to provide their views or version of events as part of the original story. The right of reply would form part of the story.

[News Limited submission to Media Inquiry]

In fact, at limitednews and, I’m sure, at Fairfax and others, it is the editorial right that takes precedence. If your views are assessed as being unworthy, then you don’t get to express them.

It is appropriate that a newspaper has the editorial discretion to assess the strength or credit of views and decide the weight to give some views and not others.

As has often been said: freedom of the press belongs to those who own one (or more)

However, there is one point in the News Limited discussion document that I do agree with – though for reasons totally opposite to those expressed here:

Requiring journalists to adopt the MEAA code would make coming under the MEAA umbrella mandatory.

This is tantamount to compulsory unionism.

Of course the collective expression, by a union, of the universal right of its members to assembly and political speech cannot be tolerated in the free market of ideas. Speech in that environment is reserved for the bosses and their toadying representatives in mahogany row.

A closed shop and high density of union membership would put paid to newsroom shenanigans and could very well have saved The News of the World. Have you considered that?

But, before we leave, I would like you to ponder these excerpts taken from the News Limited submission to the media inquiry:

It is incorrect to refer to rights for journalists. …It is the antithesis of free speech that a person wishing to be involved in public debate through a traditional media company or other form of media has to agree to a set of standards.

…It is our strong view there is no alternative model of regulation of the standards of journalists which would guarantee the freedom of the press.

…If print and online media companies were to be subject to government oversight of whether or not their content is accurate and balanced, then equally so should Richard Flanagan or Christopher Hitchins giving a public lecture on women’s rights or climate change and so should a tax‐payer arguing against climate change policy on the ABC’s Drum blog website.

…We strongly contend that the case for continuing regulation to ensure media diversity has not been made out.

…Newspapers are not limited by scarcity or high barriers to entry.

…News Limited submits, the need for cross‐media regulation to achieve diversity no longer applies. The market has delivered diversity.

Does that puzzle and worry you? More on this and other thoughts of [ex]Chairman John later.

What are news? Watermelon_man helps us out

Since engaging with #mediainquiry on Twitter and in the meatworld I have stumbled across some really nice people (at least they seem nice, I’ve only seen their avatars).

Their tweets make sense and they are using their real names. This is always a plus with me because I think free speech comes with accountability.

Anyone can use anonymity to fart into the wind and spew abuse over everyone and everything. But it takes courage to stand up for what you believe in and to take responsibility for your words and actions.

At times it can be tough. Saying things that are unpopular, or that inflame the prejudices of the dribblejaws is like painting a target on your back or pinning a ‘kick me’ sign to your arse.

Anyway, two of the good guys have recently been added to my blogroll:

Watermelon_man

Happy Antipodean.

This morning a brief post. I just want to share some entries from Watermelon_man’s dictionary; they are apt in the discussion of journalism and the news that occurs frequently on EM

Advertising: Sophisticated and highly profitable activity designed to turn informed consumers into ignorant ones.

Anecdote: Story by untrained amateur of poorly observed, half-remembered event, used by media to overturn work of world scientific community

Apostrophe: most misused punctuation mark. When in doubt best not to use one and be thought idiot than use one and confirm it.

Journalism: process of analysing, explaining, making clear, issues for public (archaic); process of obscuring reality (modern)

Journalist: A reporter of facts, an impartial observer (archaic); A writer of fiction, a political player (modern)

Media scrum: a pack of journalists, behaving like animals, from every media outlet except your own. See also: paparazzi, tabloid

Opinion Poll: Phone calls to a small number of conservative people who are asked to confirm that conservative politics is best

Political news: trivial information carefully gathered from press releases, publicity stunts, malignant gossip, by “reporters”

TV Documentary: Form of teaching about a subject where the viewer gains information in spite of director’s best efforts, not because of them.

Sorry, Mr Hywood – you missed the point: It’s not about quality it’s about money

Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood delivered the A.N. Smith lecture at Melbourne University’s Centre for Advanced Journalism last night (Tuesday 15 November).

I’ve never quite understood what ‘advanced’ journalism is supposed to be. Maybe I’ll look it up one day.

According to the mission statement, the CAJ is attempting to improve the quality of journalism through ‘knowledge transfer’

The Centre for Advanced Journalism will contribute to the University’s goal of knowledge transfer through interaction with the public and with journalists and media companies.

The four key questions posed for research at the CAJ are also admirable, if a little unremarkable:

• How will new media technologies impact on the future of journalism?
• What is the role of public interest journalism in a liberal democracy?
• What is the nature of the relationship between government and the media and how does this relationship serve the public interest?
• Is “the public interest” a concept that is understood by the media and the general public?

I have no problem with that at all and I wish the centre’s new director Margaret Simons all the best. Improving journalism is something that I’m passionate about too; so in that spirit, let’s engage with Greg Hywood’s comments.

I’m not sure of the title Greg gave to his talk, on the National Times site the headline is ‘Rumours of our demise exagerated’ and on the AFR site (behind a Fairfax paywall) the headline is ‘Internet the reason journalism’s future is bright’. So, presumably that’s what the talk was about.

I’ve read the edited transcript of Mr Hywood’s speech on the National Times website and I’d just like to address a few issues.

Strong and trusted journalism has never been more important.

Yes, that’s absolutely right, but it always has been. In any day and age there needs to be a robust public debate informed by accurate and honest information. In a mass society when we can’t all gather in the forum for the daily senate meeting the public sphere is highly mediated. We get our information – on which we base our opinions – from the mass media. A reliable and trustworthy news service is absolutely essential to that process.

I believe the future of journalism has never looked stronger.

This statement needs to be addressed in several ways because Hywood’s qualification is important:

And this is because of the internet, not despite it.

We’ll come to that in a minute, but first a question to Mr Hywood: How can the future of journalism look ‘stronger’ to you when your own company Fairfax Media is busy cutting jobs and the number of working journalists in major news titles is falling around the globe?

This was the situation at Fairfax mastheads in May this year:

The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald are preparing for a wave of industrial action after new Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood wielded the axe this morning, sacking over 100 production staff to achieve annual cost savings of $15 million under the cover of an announcement spruiking “quality journalism”.

[Fairfax slashes: 'quality journalism' with fewer staff]

Perhaps Mr Hywood had this in mind when he said in his speech last night:

What has changed is the workload. Forget filing once a day. In this crowded, chaotic environment you have to provide the best, independent news and analysis all the time.

Yeah, that’s right: the old bosses’ mantra of “doing more with less.” Simple physics and quantum mechanics tell us that it it almost impossible to do more with less.

Communist journalists in Australia: meet Rex Chiplin

After my claim to having been the only Trotskyist to have worked as a journalist in the Canberra Press Gallery was recently  doubted by Gerard Henderson of the Sydney Institute, I thought I might see if it is possible to compile a list of potential competitors.

I know of only one Trotskyist (who could, by now, be an ex-Trot) who worked as a sub-editor on The Herald Sun in the 1980s. I don’t know if he’s still there or working elsewhere in the industry. I am not going to name him just in case.

This post is a work in progress and I would appreciate any help you can give me in that regard.

One contemporary who I know was, at some point, a member of the Communist Party of Australia and who has worked as a journalist for the Sydney Morning Herald and on the ABC’s Four Corners (howls of outrage from the dribblejaws) is David McKnight. However, what I am reasonably certain that David was NOT still in the CPA when he was working for Fairfax. He wrote several pieces for the Herald in 2005 and 2006, so perhaps he was no longer a communist by then.

First dog on the moon sums up the media inquiry hearings in six panels

I hope First dog on the moon and Crikey don’t mind.

If they object I will remove this, but it is so very, very funny.

A new broom for News Limited and an interesting couple of days

The substantive text in this piece was published on 10 November 2011 on The Conversation. It was my first commission from them and I appreciate their creative commons approach to republishing. Eager readers will also know that I was involved in the Australian government’s media inquiry this week.

A transcript of my comments is apparently going to be made available, I will post it to EM when I can. I read through it yesterday to proof-read it. I think I did OK; but others will judge that. Speaking of which…

I have been attacked by the Daily Telegraph  twice and The Australian (several times) for being a Trotskyist, which they “revealed” (ha ha)and some how managed to make sound like I am deranged. How come they never attack libertarians for their views…and they are deranged!

I also made my cherry-busting appearance on Andrew Bolt’s blog. I did seek a right-of-reply by posting comments online to both places; but as of 6.18pm today, they have not been taken out of moderation. Unlike the 50-odd comments calling for me to be burned as a witch or sacked from my job.This is an interesting observation about the free speech fundamentalists. They bleat and moan and scream and shout about their own “rights” and then vilify those who dare critique them. But they will not extend common courtesy to their opponents.

In fact, there is no right of reply at News Limited as this lovely little ‘thank you notice’ makes very clear.

Contrast this with the pumelling I received on an anonymous blog, Bunyipitude written by someone who I only know as ‘the professor’ – it’s what he calls her/himself – after coming after me with both barrels he/she at least had the decency to post my response. The comment stream hasn’t been very complimentary, but I can take it. My only concern is that most posters there hide behind anonymity. It makes the whole experience surreal. They know who I am and can comb the interwebs for what they see as damning evidence of my perfidity, but I don’t know who they are. Then they get up set when I suggest they might be trolls.

On the other side of the ledger, I am grateful to News with nipples for a spirited defence of sanity. I note too that the author, Kim Powell is happy to identify herself. In fact she seems quite nice and I’d like to meet her. She is doing a PhD on online newsrooms so we’d have stuff to talk about.

Anyway, all I can say to my haters and detractors is: “The Devil made me do it.”

Free speech, vilification and the Herald Sun editorial

The Herald Sun editorial defending Andrew Bolt against Federal Court ruling that he breached provisions of the Racial Discrimination Act argues that the offending columns were justified.

In the second paragraph the editorial “maintains” the view that:

What Bolt wrote in this newspaper and online was not based on race, but on the way race was used by those who took such offence. (‘Free speech vital to society’  12011)

This is a semantic point that twists the argument to suggest that the actions of those who claimed to be offended, insulted, intimidated and humiliated by Bolt’s comments are themselves racist.

In the fifth par the editorial insists the paper was right to publish Bolt’s comments:

We say [publication] was [justifiable] and if it is the interpretation of he law that comes into question, then it is the law that should be changed. ‘

This is a key turning point in the argument, which sets up the HWT defence that the unfettered principle of free speech must trump a law, which attempts to curtail it.

The following paragraph makes a stab at defining free speech in this context:

A key measure of a mature society is the ability to publicly discuss unpopular views without fear, no matter how distasteful they are to some of us, and to follow this discussion with vigorous public debate.

But this case was not about tasteful or distasteful comments. It was about the deliberate denigration and traducing of nine individuals based only on their ethnic identity.  The HWT justification on this point seems to imply that anything goes in the freedom of speech stakes. This takes no account of the public benefit and public interest in having a legal means to curtail hateful, hurtful and inflammatory propaganda. Any society that wants to call itself democratic and civilized will have legislative and legal provisions preventing racist speech. There is no right to freedom of speech that involves racial or other defamation based on stereotyping, misconceptions, deliberately deceptive arguments. There is no right to free speech if the aim of that speech is to encourage others to action – even if that action (at this point) is merely an invitation to share such views.

On this point the Herald Sun editorial spins itself a very tight web, but unfortunately it appears caught in the clever strands of its own faulty logic:

This has very much been a trial of freedom of speech [sic]. Those who complained had he opportunity to put forward their own views. They were offered equal space on these pages, but sought to silence Bolt on the subject of the social consequences of their choice to identify as Aboriginal. (‘Free speech vital to society’  12011)

I cannot, at this point, offer an opinion on whether or not the complainants were offered and refused a chance to respond in the paper. However, I can observe that this would not necessarily have been in the plaintiff’s best interests. The only possible outcome I could see would be to add fuel to the fire Bolt was attempting to ignite with an explosion of feigned moral outrage. If I had been advising the nine my recommendation would have been not to engage with Bolt in the pages of his own newspaper. Bolt has previous form in these matters and he would know that anything the accused put forward in their defence would be used to further inflame the mob rule atmosphere that demagogues thrive in.

But on the last line “the social consequences of their choice to identify as Aboriginal” I can surmise that the irony of this comment is lost on the editorialist. One of the social consequences the plaintiffs had to endure was the vilification and opprobrium heaped on them by Andrew Bolt in his offending columns and by his legion of ill-informed fans who lap up his diatribes.

 

, ‘Free speech vital to society’ 12011, Herald Sun, 29 September, Editorial.