Spin, anger, ethics: Your say

G’Day. It’s been spin, anger, the ABC and media ethics this week, and you’ve swamped me with so many emails I haven’t dealt with them all. So if I’ve missed a ripper please resend.

To end the week, your say on the big topics. I’ll start with a brilliant essay on the Howard/ABC power struggle from media professional Daniel Wright on Webdiary debut and yet another conservative masterpiece byDaniel Moye, this time on WMDs.

Daniel Wright, on debut

Disclosure: I am an Australian citizen currently a senior operational member of staff at a regional television station in New Zealand.

When I was in year seven at school I remember distinctly one day our teacher telling us how important it was to develop an interest in the news. He said the world was ours, in potential, and that one day it really would be ours. He told us that when that time came it was important for us to know where it had come from, so that we could know where we wanted it to go. He said that an interest in the news was vital to that knowledge, that it was important to understand what was happening in the world and what effects these events had. He then set a task for us to watch the news each night and read at least one newspaper each day and to note a minimum of three stories that mattered to us.

I hadn’t really thought of it before, but a lot of who I am today has probably come out of that assignment.

When I got to university I had to repeat very similar assignments for a couple of different classes. And so I entered the world of information choice. I could select which sources of information appealed to me and restrict my diet to those. I could devour everything and hope to make some sense of it. I could look to certain organisations and trust them to tell me the uncomfortable truths that I didn’t really want to know but needed to know about nonetheless.

For me trust is central to the issue. The more I limit my sources of information the more I am displaying trust in the information that they supply.

Of course as I grow older I realise how little there really is that can be trusted. This, in turn, means that I need to be able to secure information on the same events/topics from as many sources as possible in order that I need not trust any of them very much. Unfortunately, in the modern media world it is increasingly difficult to distinguish the number of “brands” from the number of “sources”.

And this is where independence becomes critical.

For many years the Democrats played a vital role in Australian politics. From the “Keep The Bastards Honest” days through to recent times, they exploited and campaigned on their independence from the major political parties and the opportunity this afforded to influence how far any government could go.

In a similar fashion, a genuine independent media source is vital to the Australian media at large. An independent media source can go about the business of journalism directly, without fear of business relationships or agendas getting in the way.

An independent media source is able to be the voice of the cynic in all of us, and to ask the questions we’d all like to have answered. Best of all, an independent media source is able to push for the answers to those questions without fear and without threat. An independent media source is essential to maintaining our lack of trust in general media and in the establishment.

Trust, as we all know, is a two sided coin, so here are the sides as I see them:

1) Mr Howard DOES NOT trust the ABC to give him unchecked support. Mr Howard DOES NOT trust the ABC to avoid the tough issues and questions. Mr Howard DOES NOT trust the ABC to knuckle down, make nice and leave him alone. Therefore Mr Howard chooses to do his best to cripple an organisation that he DOES NOT trust.

Mr Howard DOES trust big business to take care of him. Mr Howard DOES trust non-independent media to “fairly and without bias” present exclusively his view of the issues.

Mr Howard DOES trust free market economics to ensure that those he needs help from benefit from him being in office. Therefore Mr Howard does his best to make life easy for himself and his allies.

2) I DO NOT TRUST A MAN WHO DOES NOT TRUST ME TO KNOW THE TRUTH!

I would dearly love to see a revamped and re-funded ABC with the slogan “Keeping ALL The Bastards Honest!”.

Of course, the as yet unmentioned part of the issue is that of laziness. That’s right, laziness. See there are only two reasons that a person could not be up in arms over this issue; either they trust Mr Howard to resolve it for them, or they’re too lazy to do anything about it.

The biggest failing in representative democracy over the last ten years or so has possibly not been a failing of government, but rather a failing of the governed. You see, representative democracy only works if we’re represented and representation doesn’t take place on election day.

Representation is what happens on every other day. Election day is just the day that you pick the person you want to badger for the duration of the term of office.

The truth is that it makes no difference if you voted for your elected representative or not – They are still your representative. Make them represent you. Until we accept responsibility for our part in the day to day running of a democratic society, we’ll reap the rewards of misplaced trust and sheer bloody minded laziness.

If you’d like to have a shot at discerning some truth on a regular basis, I’d strongly recommend that you do your bit and make sure your elected representative knows that their job is on the line.

Margo: I love this one liner from Daniel Gardiner: “When will Alston complain about the pro-American bias shown by News Ltd?”Frederick Prins writes:

Something smells badly when we have a Prime Minister who took us to “war” (read illegal invasion) on the basis of false claims about weapons of mass destruction then has the gall to suggest that the ABC’s AM program reported it in an unbalanced way. We as a nation are “unbalanced” if we entertain this sort of crap, but looking back at our recent history we seem to enjoy the deceit this Government dishes out. The ABC belongs to us the taxpayers John, so call off your bully boy tactics and let them do their job! At least they tell the truth – something you and your Government wouldn’t know the meaning of.

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Daniel Moye in Roseville, Sydney – official Webdiary conservative commentator

Given the ongoing debate about the intelligence presented to justify the War on Iraq, I thought I would provide a perspective that supports the War whilst at the same time supports inquiries into the pre-war rhetoric. I can relate to the furious attacks on the credibility of Bush, Blair and Howard and I am angry and disappointed too but for very different reasons.

The attempts by the Coalition of the Willing to bolster its case for War has done significant damage to the credibility of the case for an active confrontation and control of terrorist regimes and networks. By presenting faulty intelligence to justify their position it quite rightly begs questions about the whole approach to the War on Terror.

It is my opinion that by focusing on a very poll conscious strategy to convince a doubtful public, the Coalition of the Willing has created more hurdles for itself in what will be long-term struggle against oppressive regimes and terrorist networks. Conservative policy-makers throughout America, Australia and Britain ( and doubtlessly other democratic countries)

were quite rightly “woken up” by the September 11 attacks. The ideological challenge presented to pluralist democracies could know longer be ignored as the threat of an escalation of continued domestic attacks was starkly highlighted by those terrible planes and prompted questions like “if they can do that, can they do much worse?”

Leading Republican Congressman Christopher Shays, in an interview on BBC World program HardTalk ( a program I highly recommend), argued that the intelligence presented by Colin Powell at the UN and George W. Bush in his State of the Union Address were not the key reasons for his voting for going to War in Iraq.

What then are the reasons that shaped (and will continue to shape) conservative policy-makers in Washington, London and Canberra in going to War In Iraq?

Before going into the specifics, I will first present the broad challenge that shapes their thinking. The long-term national security of Western democracies is clearly in jeopardy if a confluence of events occur in the non-democratic world. If either failed states or totalitarian regimes hostile to the West either gain WMDs or proliferate them to terrorist networks then the risk of a far more devastating warfare will unfold.

They argue that containment policies that characterised much of the approach by the West in the Cold War are ineffective against this asymmetric challenge. It is ineffective because the battleground is literally everywhere and so unlike the Cold War where War game strategising against the Soviet Union or proxy warfare in third party countries is not an appropriate response.

As such, Conservative policy-makers have taken the view that rather than letting either oppressive regimes or terrorist networks choose the battleground that they will go after them whereever they are. The criteria they appear to be using is that any nation that either actively sponsors, gives shelter to or ‘turns a blind eye’ to terrorist activities effectively surrenders its sovereign rights. Obviously, they have prioritised where the threats are most dangerous – totalitarian countries that have access to or are actively seeking WMD or who are actively sponsoring terrorist activities.

After Afghanistan, why Iraq? If viewed through a post 9/11 prism what was previously a tolerable containment of Iraq had become intolerable. The Iraqi regime that invaded Quwait less than two years after a long war with Iran, that had already used WMDs and that had sought to launch a nuclear program was clearly a threat.

It is true that an on/off UN Inspection program coupled with active No-Fly zones over Southern and Northern Iraq had been moderately successful. It is also true that the link between AL-Qaeda and Iraq was unsubstantiated, but it is also true that Iraq was a prominent sponsor of Palestinian suicide bombers and their organisations.

Christopher Shays argued that the ‘old’ intelligence on Iraq was in fact the reason why he voted for war in Iraq.

This is very different to the emphasis placed by the leaders in the run up to war. By giving prominence to the intelligence highlighting the immediacy of the threat, Blair, Bush and Howard were arguing that the situation had changed. They should have argued that their standards had changed because of September 11. Clearly this argument is a far more complex argument to make and perhaps less politically saleable than the argument they presented.

I support the war and see the ongoing challenges facing the West, yet I also support a vigorous inquiry into the misleading intelligence presented to justify the War. Furthermore, the leaders should be accountable for their actions, and if their governments fall so be it – even though it might cause irreparable damage to the cause of fighting terrorism. And that is what makes me angry.

I appreciate the high standards that the Australian media (in particular Fairfax and the ABC) have demanded of our leaders. Furthermore, I believe that the cheerleading of the Murdoch press in fact helps reduce the merits of the conservative policy-makers and paradoxically helps the anti- war arguments by reducing the debates to a passionate brawl.

In further contributions I would like to provide some historical perspective on U.S. foreign policy and ask whether what Bush is doing is really new and radical. I’d also like to discuss the domestic challenges the War on Terror has for Australians.

PS: I have some thoughts about helping the poor old Labor party find some winning strategies but am still deciding if I really want to help them. I hope the negativity expressed in your articles does not pervade the rest of your life.

Margo: The rest of my life is great at the moment – touch wood – so much so that I did a tongue in cheeker on the latest Howard ABC outrage. See Good one John, but why stop at the ABC?

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SPIN

Recommendations

Shaun Cronin recommends US anti-spin site spincity. He writes:

“It’s time for an Australian version – it would need to be bi-partisan as politicians all over the spectrum are prone to telling lies. I’ve had a gutful of how passively most seem to accept being mislead by our leaders. My qualifications for a collaboration are simply a desire to see some accountability brought back into the political process.”

A reader recommends US site PRwatch. The blurb: “PR Watch offers investigative reporting on the public relations industry. We help the public recognize manipulative and misleading PR practices by exposing the activities of secretive, little known propaganda-for-hire firms that work to control political debates and public opinion.” The blokes who started this site, Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, wrote the book Weapons of mass deception, available in Australian bookstores now.

He also recommends Medialens, which “looks at the so-called liberal press in the UK – Guardian, Independent, BBC et al, and how they may not be as unbiased/free of spin as they think”.

My secret cross media news hound recommends Media Giants Get Slapped, an analysis of the US House of Representatives’ great big NO (400 votes to 21!) to Bush’s plans to deliver more media power to Rupert Murdoch. An extract:

While the Bush White House continues to promote the big-media agenda as part of an overall strategy of reworking regulations to favor large corporate campaign givers — raising the prospect that the president might veto Congressional moves to prevent the FCC from implementing this rule change — veteran Capitol Hill observers say public opposition to the FCC rule changes has grown so powerful that even the president could change his tune. “If the White House is threatening a veto on this, they offer that at their own peril,” explained Andy Davis, an aide to US Sen. Ernest Hollings, the powerful South Carolina Democrat who is a key player behind the Senate effort to reverse the FCC’s June 2 decision to raise the television ownership cap from 35 percent to 45 percent. “This is an issue that has enormously broad bipartisan support. People are very passionate about this issue.

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Harry Heidelberg – he’s back!

Last weekend I was in Berlin. On Saturday night I was riding the U-bahn (underground) approaching Postdamer Platz when my friend pointed to a video screen in the train and said, “That’s Rupert Murdoch, he’s also an Aussie”.

Technically he isn’t an Aussie but it did remind me that whereever you go Rupert Murdoch goes with you, even deep beneath the streets of Berlin. The birth of Murdoch’s sixth child was important enough to be flashed around the Berlin subway system. It’s quite extraordinary if you think about it all.

Loud groaning noises. We all know that from time immemorial the Murdoch press has been an agenda kind of outfit. They take a line and push it to the max. We know that Murdoch was in favour of the war in Iraq and we know the approach he has adopted to it. The macro picture is clear.

I’d like to know how all this works at the micro level. Not so much on Iraq but more generally when Murdoch strongly supports this policy or that. Surely it is more than nudges and winks. In parts of the world do public officials meet and actually have discussions with his people? Not only obviously on media policy but on other stuff. I’m not suggesting outright corruption but I’d be interested to know how it works at the micro level.

Margo: Any ex-Murdoch journos or deep-throat current employees want to have a go at that one? Confidentiality guaranteed.

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Grant Long

Dizzy with spin was enlightening. It reminded me of an article by Jamie Peck I read whilst studying Tax/Welfare law, called “Workfare: a geopolitical etymology” (Environment and Planning; Society and Space, 1998, Vol 16 pp 133-161.)

Peck includes a document credited to Newt Gingrich called Language: A Key Mechanism of Control. Note the lack of subtlety in that title! Gingrich circulated it to state candidates, and it includes the following gems:

As you know, one of the key points in the GOPAC (a Republican Party political training arm) tapes is that ‘language matters’… As the tapes have been used in training sessions across the country and mailed to candidates we have heard the plaintive plea: “I wish I could speak like Newt”. That takes years of practice, but we believe that you could have a significant impact on your campaign and the way you communicate if we help a little. That is why we have created this list of words and phrases…

Read them. Memorize as many as possible. . .

Optimistic Positive Governing Words – these words can help give extra power to your message

opportunity, workfare, moral, dream, courage, freedom, crusade, pioneer, family, building, compete, pro-(issue), active, empower, duty, strength, care, hard work, tough, incentive, vision, passionate

Contrasting Words – apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals and their party

decay, welfare, failure, ideological, collapse, anti-(issue), patronage, stagnation, destroy, greed, sick, corrupt, liberal, status quo, bureaucracy, taxes, unionized, spend, devour, permissive, attitude, waste, red tape

As noted by Peck, the benefit if hindsight reveals the Gingrich was anticipating both the tenor and the terrain of political debate in the 1990s. I would only add that the notion of political debate in the current institutionalised democracy is laughable.

When have we ever seen two or more political opponents truly debate any issue? Any of our senior politicians would run a mile from any such forum as, spin spin spin, it is then out of their CONTROL and like John Safran’s altercation with Ray Martin, in the heat of battle they may reveal a persona to the public that is not likeable.

I am personally disgusted by the spin, but we need only look to this Gingrich to understand its popularity with our politicians.

Western democracy is at a nasty point at the moment. It is now the politics of winning,. Of holding the trophy high whilst your opponents lie in ruins all around. It is the politics of destruction not construction. Of division not vision.

It is this latter point that cuts more than any other. Where does this country want to be in 5, 10 or 50 years? I honestly believe that few politicians at present would care about such a question. To them it is a game. A win or lose game and every day that they win is a good day.

A uni lecturer (read – threatened species) once commented that conservative politics is characterised by intolerance. They are intolerant of dole bludgers (read – people who were retrenched last week as a result of macroeconomic reform), immigrants (read – queue jumpers), Indigenous people (read ungrateful alcoholics and petrol sniffers who can’t see the benefits bestowed upon them by our great culture), greenies (read – dole bludgers preventing Australia’s economic growth). We could now add to this list losers (read – any group, despite their size, that gets in the way of the dominant party’s ability to retain control).

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Don Wigan

Ethics and integrity go to the heart of the matter of tackling the spin doctors and their slippery political bosses, but there is another issue – thoroughness. Sometimes just a little more research may take an issue that much further.

Recently Nine’s A Current Affair ran an excellent series on the failures of the public dentistry system in recent years. For low-income people and pensioners the average wait for dental surgery is three years. In my area (Warrnambool) the delay time average is 52 months (my wife’s still not near the top of the list after 3 years).

ACA finally got federal Minister of Health Kay Patterson on the program. Although they threw a lot of evidence at her about the problems and suffering and pointed out the uncaring government attitude, they allowed her to get away with obfuscating about it being ‘a matter for the States’. A bit more research could have put her over the barrel.

FACT: It was Commonwealth-funded until 1996. The Howard Government withdrew funding using the rationalisation that such cuts were needed to help cover the so-called ‘Beazley Black Hole’.

FACT: Ever since then Howard and Costello have boasted about how well they’ve managed the budget and the economy.

QUESTION: If both of these assertions are true, why cannot the Commonwealth commitment to public dental health be restored?

I’m not experienced in these TV interviews, but I’d have thought that this follow-up wouldn’t have allowed Patterson any escape and might have kept interest in the issue simmering to the point where maybe the shock jocks could have taken it up.

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Margot Humphreys in Ontario, Canada

I read the Sydney Morning Herald online almost every work day (on coffee break!) and thanks to your explanation of ethics in Webdiary’s ethics now understand why I can read information on your site that never sees the light of day in North American media.

I live in Canada, which at least has public radio – CBC’s As It Happens workday program from 6:30 to 8:00 pm gets right to the issue by interviewing real people on site. The print media is another matter.

Most newspapers are now owned by Big Media, which tend to put the “proper” slant on news. The Ottawa Citizen lost its editor due to his refusal to submit to senior management’s take on news. I have passed on your newspaper’s online address to many, many people who wish to see a wider perspective on world events.

I read a quote from a major US media conglomerate executive yesterday that “The line between news and entertainment is blurring”.

Not in my world. And, I hope, not in yours or that of the Sydney Morning Herald.

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Colin James in Wellington, New Zealand

Webdiary’s ethics echoes in one respect the value I have found since I persuaded the New Zealand Herald to run my email address at the bottom of my weekly political column. With very few exceptions, I have had reasoned emails and they have been valuable in opening perspectives I had not thought about or not thought adequately about, challenging my conclusions and introducing factual material I was unaware of.

I always reply and in formulating the replies I have to think again about, develop or defend my original analysis. All of that takes time but the time is worth the effort. This, of course, is not weblog – just an add-on to print, the equivalent of letters or faxes, though easier.

I always also take people seriously, though I do suggest to the few intemperate and angry emailers that I could respond more usefully if they couched their comments less aggressively. In all those cases so far I have had a surprised and moderate response to my response. I think that underlines the disconnect you write of between insiders like myself with ready access on first-name terms to all the top politicians, bureaucrats and chief executives and mistrustful citizens.

It will be interesting to see how the internet changes that disconnect. What I have found, which seems to come through in your work, is that there are a lot of intelligent people in the most unlikely of places with useful ideas that, because of the disconnect, have been no more than ideas.

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REACTION TO Anger as an energy

Mike Lyvers

Luke Stegemann wrote: “It’s time to stop believing in the bullshit, whether it be political spin or the notion that harmony must be preserved at all costs.”

Okay, what about multicultural harmony? Must we preserve that at all costs too, or do we have the right to call bullshit on, say, cultural practices such as clitoridectomy, forced marriages, stonings of women who engage in premarital sex, execution of homosexuals, honor killings and the like? I say we certainly do have that right, but does Luke? I suspect he would reflexively label any such criticism as “racism.”

“It’s time to get angry, and use that anger as an energy. If the left (Howard’s opponents) are to be designated as feral why are we not deploying language in the same way, publicly designating the right (the Howard government and its supporters) as blood-sucking, voracious, criminal, myopic and irredeemably racist?”

Luke, your fellow travellers have been calling them those things for years now. Such ridiculous hyperbole only leads to a loss of credibility, and Howard wins again.

Margo: Luke clarifies: “I hope people will understand that I’m not advocating physical violence of any kind, but simply that the crude violence of language used against us be turned back upon those who use language to lie to us, belittle us, treat us with contempt. Language is a powerful weapon, and as Jack suggested, it can and should be thrown back in the faces of those who exploit it to entrench their power, their privilege, or to cover up their own evil.”

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James Greaves in Eagle Vale, NSW

You introduced the responses from Luke Stegemann and Jack Robertson with the following preamble which I quote in part:

” I disagree with their calls to be angry, partly because when I get angry I lose effectiveness and tend to self-immolate…”

The two contributors were concerned more with the wider socio-political implications of public anger or the absence thereof. The anger you describe (which I can identify with) describes UNCONTROLLED anger: anger that you have temporarily allowed to take control of your being.

Such anger is indeed self-immobilising – especially if you bottle it up unexpressed and allow it to accumulate. However, there is another way to experience anger. You feel the sensation and give vent to it – but in a manner that is positively constructive – this is to say in a way calculated to bring about change.

It is called righteous indignation – the sort of anger you feel and express when someone tramples over your rights and sensitivities. Without it nobody would acknowledge your dignity as a person or that of people generally. Anger is “God’s fire for change”.

The difference between the two types of anger is that in the case of the latter you remain in control at all times. You choose how to express it and are empowered both by the expression and the consequences.

You also stated: “I prefer the energy of optimism, of working with other people, and of dispassionate strategising.” Nice work if you can get it, Margo. The trouble is that not all individuals (or groups) are open to gentle persuasion: not all situations amenable to resolution conflict by way of compromise.

There are times when it pays you to do your block. There are situations when to compromise means only to sacrifice the principles you hold dear, becoming nothing but a moral lump of quivering jelly and suffering the low self-esteem that invariably follows.

I agree with Luke. The wider socio-political implications of the apparent public passivity is an absence of widespread indignation against the lies and trespasses of government that only encourages such behaviour among members of our political elite.

Anger? Let us have more of it!

Margo: Webdiarist Sean Richardson recommends tompaine for an interview with Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity – it refers to St Thomas and the idea that it’s a sin not to be angry when you should be.

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Roselyne Tight

Like you I don’t like getting angry, but it felt good reading Jack Robertson and Luke Stegemann’s angry statements. It felt good knowing others feel the same outrage and deep sense of resentment against this government. Perhaps writing about it, all of us, putting it down on paper or in print or on the internet and to send the lot to Canberra might help us release our anger and let them know how we feel.

I do write already about the refugees – specific cases to specific ministers – but to write a complete rejection and letting go like Jack Robertson’s shooting straight from the hip or mouth or pen would be a blessing!!!

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