Mr Murdoch

What really drove the so-called leadership crisis in the Federal Government, which has gone on for about three years? Tonight, as Julia Gillard steps down, who really benefits, and how?

Tonight many of us have been watching, with some horror, the latest awful changes in the Federal Government.

So, what was the policy agenda that supposedly drove Rudd's challenge to Gillard? In fact, no policies were mentioned, as many media commentators have just acknowledged.

There may, however, have been a barely iterated agenda - that of the mainstream press - to have an earlier election.

How would that advantage the power elites? Well, in these days where real debate is possible on the internet, a long election lead-up might just have led to some real democracy - obviously the last thing that the corporate press, which also leads the ABC, want.

Julia Gillard just showed herself to be as capable a leader as any male politician I have seen in over a decade of federal politics.

The problem with Mr Murdoch's newspaper empire is not just unethical behaviour by his journalists. It goes much deeper. With the alarming concentration of media ownership in Australia and the advent of PR driven journalism, for the sake of democracy, the public must support independent media. David Donovan of Independent Australia comments.

Australian mass media is concentrated into the hands of a very small number of proprietors. For example, 11 of the 12 major newspapers in Australia are owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation or John Fairfax Holdings. In fact, Murdoch bestrides the Australian media landscape like a colossus—NewsCorp owns 8 of that 12, and also dominate the regional and suburban newspaper publishing industry, as well as owning a major slice of Foxtel.

(Image: Rupert Murdoch, courtesy Rex Interstock) Sign this online petition advocating a comprehensive Inquiry into the Australian media industry. #AusPol http://fb.me/18xDXIEuv 1 day ago

The Australian people have less different voices to use upon which to make their decisions than almost any other place in the free world. And Rupert Murdoch is happy to wield his overwhelming power.

In 1979, as Murdoch looked to acquire Channel 10 in Melbourne, the Australian Journalists Association in a submission to the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal alleged that Murdoch was an autocratic and unprincipled proprietor who demanded that his lackeys publish distorted accounts of the news when it suited him. There is an abundance of evidence to support this view. Whether this is true or not, where one proprietor owns such a large swathe of the Australian media industry, the danger of interference in our democracy is present and clear.

Despite Australian media ownership being amongst the most concentrated in the world, at the behest of powerful proprietors, successive Australian Governments have gradually further relaxed media ownership rules. The most recent round was put in place in April 2007 under the Howard Government, where the new ‘two out of three’ rule meant that companies are now allowed to own up to two media outlets – television, radio and newspaper – in a single area.

The reason given for the change by the then Communications Minister, Helen Coonan, was that convergence in the media industry as a result of news technologies, particularly the internet, meant that the old regime was ineffective. Newspaper proprietors were now able to transmit video and audio material on their websites, and broadcasters were able to transmit text in the same way. Coonan also said that the advent of “new players” as a result of the internet – the so-called “independent media” meant that there was a new diversity voices in the media landscape, making cross ownership laws largely needless.

“Traditional media services are being challenged by new digital technologies and this is resulting in the emergence of new players, new content and new platforms,” Senator Coonan said in 2006.

Despite digital technologies, mass media still overwhelmingly influential

Unfortunately, the idea that mass media diversity doesn’t matter, and that new players are threatening traditional sources is largely mythical.

Influential political blogger with US website The Nation, John Nicholls, said in Australia last year that, despite the new “players”, “content” and “platforms”, people have never received less information and less of it from alternative sources.

Nicholls offered some troubling facts about journalism in the US, where there is far more diversity of mass media ownership than we have in Australia. He said that rather than offering a diversity of voices, individual journalists were typically obliged to produce content on a range of platforms—video, audio and print. With owners having radio, TV and newspaper interests, this meant less journalists were required—a clear cost-benefit for proprietors. According to Nicholls, there are less journalists now there was in the time of President Franklin D Roosevelt and there were more journalists covering Reagan’s inauguration than Obama’s.

Rather than the new platforms leading to a diversity of voices, voices are in fact being snuffed out. Nicholls called this decline in journalism a “crisis of democracy”.

But, you might ask, as we hear less voices from the main players, isn’t independent media filling the gap?

The answer, says Nicholls, is generally no.

In January 2010, the Pew Centre of Journalism’s published a report detailing a study in which had analysed the way people get their information in the US city of Baltimore. The results were conclusive—people still get most of their information from “traditional” media sources. An analysis of independent media – or “blogs” as they are sometimes known – showed that 96 per cent of stories simply came from recycling stories found in the mainstream press. However, the study also showed that the mainstream press was producing 73 per cent less information than 10 years ago.

In other words, despite us getting almost all our information from traditional sources, these sources are producing less new stories than ever before.

And where are most these stories coming from? With the extra demands placed on the dwindling number of main-stream journalists, they are increasingly reaching for stage managed events and press releases to create their stories. Pew reported that a staggering 86 per cent of stories were produced by power, with only 14% of stories resulting from actual journalism—research, investigation, interviewing sources, digging, et al.

We get most of our news from PR companies. Whilst journalism has declined, career opportunities within the public relations industry have boomed. In 1970, the ratio of PR officers to journalists was 1:1. In 1980, it stretched to 1.2 PR people to every journalist. Now, we see an eye-watering 4:1 disparity. It has reached the point where we now see PR companies producing fully edited news stories that are shown on commercial media networks in their entirety, without any notification to viewers or listeners that this is pure spin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Nichols_%28journalist%29

Democracy is at stake, but the people in power aren’t listening because they are very happy with the way they can easily dominate the news cycle. Pew’s research showed that 63 per cent of stories came directly from Government officials.

Nicholls says “democracy is at stake” and this seems no exaggeration.

Why don’t new media produce more new stories?

It all comes down to money. Good journalism takes time, effort and money—something that is in short supply in the world of Independent media. Here at Independent Australia, we are determined to buck this trend and produce new stories—stories you won’t have seen elsewhere.

In the past week, brilliant IA journalist Tess Lawrence, broke a story on Interpol and the Julian Assange red notice that has been published all around the world. However, despite been personally sent by IA to every mass media organisation in Australia, giving them full permission to publish, with the exception of a single brave broadcaster, Murray Peters from 2ST, none have seen fit to cover the story. We understand why—they would like to ignore us and stifle our voice. The last thing the mass media want in this country is competition after they have fought so hard, over so long, to so successfully eliminate it.

ATTRIBUTIONS AND NOTES

Source of this article: Independent Australia
Originally posted On Monday, 14 Mar 2011

The article has been republished, with permission.

In its initial context at Independent Australia the article concluded,

"But, though we are small, we are growing very quickly. This website is doubling in new readers about every two months. With our new revamped website format, our commitment to breaking stories you won’t have seen anywhere else, and with your support, we will keep on growing.

But we do need your support. As we said, good journalism is takes time and is expensive. If you would like to help us create quality Australian journalism, please donate generously to our website. And if you can’t afford to do that, just make sure you keep on reading us and giving is your feedback.

Help us keep democracy alive in this great country."

The Editor at candobetter.net inserted the following heading: "Despite digital technologies, mass media still overwhelmingly influential"

(Illustration: For more on Colonel Blimp see "Notes" [1])

Original title was: "Mr Salt and Mr Murdoch team up again to can Australians". See also: "Bernard Salt and Murdoch press cook up recipe for invasion" of 2 May 09.

Into the Salty abyss

According to yet another article in Mr Murdoch's Australian newspaper by self-styled demographer, Bernard Salt,

Australia "quivered when a passing Japanese submarine lobbed shells into the eastern suburbs of Sydney in May 1942: property prices plummeted."

You can find the article, "Invasion victory ensured by complacency" in the business and property section in The Australian. A sort of where to buy and invade section, I guess. Here Salt advertises Australia as an easy target for any enemies. Pretending that he is writing for a mythical Peoples' Army in Bernardistan, he plots entry via the Kimberleys.

Why Salt's antics here are not seen as treacherous and inciting invasion would be a mystery to anyone seriously subscribing to the Axis of Evil myth. More sophisticated readers may wonder, however, if the property development industry is so worried by the Australian public's louder and louder calls for population stabilisation, that they must have decided to ask Mr Murdoch and Mr Salt to try provoke a full-on invasion.

Mr Salt probably realises that conducting a military invasion of Australia (rather than the economic immigration one) is not as easy as his imaginary character pretends. What may still be possible, however, is to misinform elderly Australians (members of the property lobby and readers of The Australian, for instance) via one of our only two national newspapers, and panic them into calling for a bigger population. Either strategy could work and, without an invasion - of immigrants or armed forces - the Colonel Blimps (and Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swann) of the Property and Development Lobby are doomed. A welcome extinction, in the view of many ecologists, which would prevent so many sad ones.

Australia Overloaded author, Mark O'Connor wrote recently in response to Bernard's attitude which seems to be that Australians are complacent cowards and the country needs more of them:

"If the Australians of our fathers' or grandfathers' generation had been as faint hearted as Mr Salt, back when our population was only a third of what it is today, Australia might now be a province of Japan."

(O'Connor was responding to an article, "Australia told to grow or risk invasion", in the Canberra Times, 31/3/2010, p. 6 which was reporting on what seem like Bernard Salt's attempts to commercialise fear and ignorance in yet another forum.)

James Sinnamon commented on the facts:

In fact, Australia achieved self-reliance in 1942 and stood a very good chance of being able to defeat a Japanese invasion. That is why the Japanese Army in March 1942 vetoed the Japanese Navy's plan to invade.

The reason why the Japanese Army vetoed the Navy's invasion plans is explained in detail by Andrew T Ross in Armed and Ready - The Industrial Development and Defence of Australia 1900-1945 Turton & Armstrong, Sydney, 1995, on pages 408-418:

By June 1942, the earliest date an invasion force could have been assembled, Australia would have 8 fully equipped divisions in the field as well as an air force capable of denying the Japanese total air supremacy. To win, they would have had to capture a deep water harbour in order to enforce a blockade to prevent Australia being able the resupply itself with some of the very few materials with which we were not self-sufficient (including petroleum). The northernmost deep water harbour was Newcastle.

Mr Sinnamon, who obviously has no serious investments in housing or infrastructure or bank shares, continued:

During the Second World War Australia was one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world, a technological edge we have largely lost since then thanks to Australia having allowed its manufacturing sector to be destroyed as mandated by free market orthodoxy.

Of Australia's contribution to the Second World War, US President Truman said to the US Congress in a report on Lend Lease (including on Australia's reverse Lend Lease to the US during much of the Pacific War) on 27 December 1946:

"On balance, the contribution made by Australia, a country having 7 millions, approximately equalled that of United States." (Andrew T. Ross, Armed and Ready: the industrial development and defence of Australia, 1900-1945, Turton & Armstrong, Sydney, 1995, p 427)

Sinnamon asks,

Why would Bernard Salt wish to deny this, as well as this country's impressive military achievements, by focusing on only two episodes in the war?

In the case of the bombing of Darwin, the attacking Japanese force exceeded that which attacked Pearl Harbour, so I would think that the panicked response by some Australians was understandable.

(See also "The myth of the Howard Government's Defence Competence" of 21 November 2007 at http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6665)

Commercialising treachery

Well, I guess it doesn't matter to Mr Salt's objectives whether his statements are accurate or fair. The aim of the article seems to be to generate enough fear to overcome Australians' democratic desire for a small and stable population. This means we can expect many more articles like this one, sigh.

And the battle to invade and subdue Australia is half-won anyway. As Bernard Salt knows and Greg Woods writes, we are already well on the way to being a nation of disorganised captives to propaganda and consumerism.

So why would having a lot more of that kind of Australian serve to defend us against the tens of millions in some Bernardistan?

What The Australian wouldn't print

As Greg Wood writes:

Pray tell Mr. Salt, how would even tenfold more Australians, wedged into the alienating fringe of suburbia and the high-rise catacombs of your ambitions, and beguiled into apathy by myriad imported electronic eclectica, be of any practical assistance against this massed force from your imagination? As an audience to watch the news-feeds and up the ratings of the conflict perhaps?

Your narrow and convenient account of WW2 Australian response to Japanese attack is simply bad history. In fact the response was broadly self-sacrificing and heroic. That earlier time exhibited remarkable social identity and spirit, which acted as the glue that draws together the resistance your argument so disingenuously questions. That character is now largely lost as recent decades have seen genuine neighbourhoods sacrificed as commodities for trade in the game of property speculation and growth-for-profit that you advocate.

And the futility of your proposition sucks one’s breath out. Why bother to invade Australia when it is already for sale world-wide on the internet to the highest bidder with the strongest exchange rate? N.B. 80% of Australians (and growing) need not apply – insufficient funds!

Well, that's right, Greg. And the Property marketers of the Growth Lobby want more customers with ready cash. For some reason they think that the Peoples Army might have the ready. (After all, armies are where a lot of foreign aid ends up and big spending goes on.) So Bernard is getting the message to them, via Mr Murdoch's Australian that it would be a doddle to invade Australia. While they're perusing our topology on GoogleEarth, they can also have a look at property on Mr Murdoch's www.realestate.com.au

But Greg continues, referring to the treacherous conduct of The Australian as a 'community sell-out' in printing an article that purports to give fail-safe directions to invade your country:

Harking back to WW2 and what it truly does take to secure freedom, a community sell-out of this magnitude would have earned a bullet in the back of the head from the French Resistance. Or does your curious brand of history see them as an extremist terrorist group?

However, if you peruse the emailed responses to Salt's article, it really isn't so easy to invade Australia. Perhaps, in fact, Mr Salt was just using the Peoples' Army as a kind of code for the elderly tax-payer army that supplements the Growth Lobby's continued purchase of power in this country.

At any rate, here are some of the best of the responses in The Australian:

ID Langford Posted at 6:13 AM Today

Bernard, you are entirely out to lunch... Consider the SE Asian archipelago that you navigated down to get here...you don't think we will see you coming? Consider the vast interior of the Australian landmass that you will need to penetrate in order to project military force into our decisive areas...does it remind you of the German attempt to conquer the Soviet Union in WW2? Or Napoleon's attempt a century earlier?? Consider the logistics involved in forcing entry onto Australia and then sustaining it...consider the wet season which prohibits movement in northern Australia for much of the year...go read some the Defence of Australia foundational documents that are out there. Most of us are complacent about history; some of us however, are students of history and understand the efforts required to lodge and deny access to an area the size of the Kimberley would be a truly monumental task. It took over 205 German Divisions to invade the Soviet Union and even this massive war machine failed. Have a real think about it...who can even closely imitate this force structure today??

Jason Ransome of Basel, Switzerland Posted at 7:29 AM Today

Fantastic article! But did you take into account our anzus treaty with America. Let's not forget Australia is a huge country, you can start from the west and move east but our army will come from behind and cut your supply routes every time, so you better bring enough personal to protect those supply routes. If it was so simple to invade Australia then it would of been tried by more than just the Japanese Good luck with your invasion, your going to need it

I like this one - short and to the point:

Mr Squiggle of Melbourne Posted at 9:58 AM Today

What an odious little article this is. China's population is 1.3bn. Indonesia's is 231m. Even if we increased our population size four-fold tomorrow, we would still be strategically outnumbered. Just let it go Bernard, we'll never create national security by ramping up our population. The starting gap is too large.

neil of melb Posted at 11:05 AM Today

The problem with invading Australia is purely logistical, How may countries have the capability of transporting 150,000 soldiers, equipment and ongoing supplies over 1000's of km of ocean? The only countries that could conceivably do it are the USA because of their military power and Indonesia because of their proximity. But Indonesia does not have the capability to destroy our air force or stop it being reinforced from allies. They don't have the capacity to land 10's of thousands of paratroopers. We would have control of the skies and the resulting carnage inflicted on a marine invasion would catastrophic. Military strategists run simulations on these scenarios constantly, this is why we are spending billions on long distance radar, aircraft and submarines rather than a huge army. A war would be fought in the Pacific or Indian oceans or Timor sea, not on Australian soil.

Rhetorical Question to the Elites who make money out of the rest of us through war and housing games

Is The Australian in fact un-Australian? Didn't the diggers die to preserve free speech? How come only Mr Salt and his doyen get to say whatever they like?

NOTES

[1] Colonel Blimp was a cartoon character created by Sir David Low (1891-1963), a New Zealand political cartoonist and caricaturist who lived and worked in the United Kingdom for many years. Low was a self-taught cartoonist. Born in New Zealand, he worked in his native country before migrating to Sydney, Australia in 1911, and ultimately to London (1919), where he made his career and earned fame for his Colonel Blimp depictions and his merciless satirising the personalities and policies of German dictator Adolf Hitler, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, and other leaders of his times. Source, Wikipedia

See also: "Bernard Salt and Murdoch press cook up recipe for invasion" of 2 May 09, "Madang landowners fight ecologically devastating Chinese mining invasion" of 1 Apr 10.