One of the joys of the silly season is that the media focus switches from being bored to death by Duelling Press Releases in Canberra to the relative excitement of watching cricket tests on television.
Like a blowfly loose in the kitchen, you only notice the enervating influence of the drone from the nation’s capital when the Raid starts working. The resulting quiet allows you the space to make New Year’s resolutions about your media consumption.
Most of the suggestions below broadly come under the heading of Turning Off the Noise. In our always-on, wireless and networked modern world, preserving one’s sanity is often best achieved by just un-hooking oneself for a while (or not allowing oneself to get hooked in the first place.)
So in the interest of sponsoring more calm reflection and less needless flying off the handle, here is my 12-step program for junk media junkies in 2012:

  1. Don’t watch Q&A. Going to sleep is a challenge at the best of times. Achieving it after an hour of having one’s blood pressure raised by the likes of Sophie Mirabella and Jim Wallace is virtually impossible
  2. If You Must Watch Q&A, Don’t Tweet It: This is like trying to meditate to 2GB. After 40 minutes, you want to strangle the Buddha.
  3. No more Drum solos. While Jonathan Green does a marvellous and thankless job editing the ABC’s opinion site, there are only so many IPA rants about the Nanny State that one can accommodate without taking an axe to the Nursery.
  4. Shun the Sun King. Rupert, enemy of “elites” everywhere, is omnipresent. He’s even on Twitter now. So don’t follow him. And don’t read his papers. If you want his empire to die, you have to stop talking about it, linking to it and giving it any oxygen whatsoever. If they want to reach you, they’ve got your number.
  5. Keep the Insiders Outside. Spending a sunny Sunday morning watching jaded journos call the winners of the weekly horse race out of Canberra is like looking at your teenage kids squeezing their blackheads. Not one’s idea of a good time.
  6. Polls are for Trolls. It should be evident by now to the sane among us that media companies use opinion polls purely as content generators. It’s manufactured news. Keep an eye on Possum. If a trend is emerging, he’ll tell you.
  7. Wallow in your insignificance. Most of what we fret about in Australia barely rates anywhere else. Change your bookmarks from the SMH and The Oz to The New York Times, The Guardian & Germany’s Spiegel Online. Be a citizen of the world (and of your local community).
  8. Network in the Pub. Digital relationships are all very well, but we’d make a lot more sense to each other if we spent less time tweeting and more time tippling.
  9. Delay consumption. If you must track news closely, read the papers a week after publication. You’ll be amazed how little of any lasting significance there is. Oh, and refrain from reading the 2012 forecasts till December.
  10. Make amends to those you have wronged. Apologise to all the trolls on Twitter for swearing at them over their insistence that the science isn’t in on climate change. Then block them and report them for spam.
  11. Facebook is for fun. Your Aunty Mary is not interested in the theoretical analysis of digitally mediated social movements. She just wants to see pictures of your new puppy.
  12. Recognise a higher power. No, not Rupert.  It’s your Lost Life calling. 

Did I mention Andrew Bolt? I didn’t? Good.

Categories: Blogging

14 Comments

Tracey H · January 4, 2012 at 9:13 AM

This is crazy talk – what am I supposed to do with the extra 15 hours I'd get in my life each week if I followed your program? Humph!

Tracey H · January 4, 2012 at 9:13 AM

This is crazy talk – what am I supposed to do with the extra 15 hours I'd get in my life each week if I followed your program? Humph!

Dave C · January 4, 2012 at 12:14 PM

An excellent set of rules! I already follow 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 & 12.

As far as the rest well:

8. I would never bother with Australian pubs, I've still never found a decent one (lived in Britain for 18 years & the average village over there had more decent pubs than the whole of Melbourne I suspect!)

9. I occasionally have a look at the Age website for local news but never buy papers at all now.

10. I've never even looked at Twitter yet alone posted to it.

11. As for 10 but substitute “Facebook” for “Twitter.”

Anonymous · January 4, 2012 at 2:40 PM

No 9 is a favourite … i don't tweet (I have no friends) and I already have the Guardian on my favs list along with the Daily Telegraph (London) not for their awful Tory politics but their brilliant obituaries and sportswriting

Roger Wegener · January 4, 2012 at 9:53 PM

Lurve your work Mr D.

Sue · January 4, 2012 at 11:42 PM

Thanks for the laugh on No. 10 and the link to Siegel Online 🙂 Reading other good news content definitely helps to inoculate against the Australian media's banal fearmongering.

I read this article the other day about The Joy of Quiet which was quite lufferly and sane-inducing: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/opinion/sunday/the-joy-of-quiet.html?ref=todayspaper

Ramon Insertnamehere · January 4, 2012 at 11:47 PM

I'd avoid Fran Kelly on Radio National, as well.

Anonymous · January 5, 2012 at 2:52 AM

To preserve sanity, I'd avoid Australian talk radio altogether. Public and commercial, festive season or otherwise. With the exception of a syllable of dissent here and there it is a universal lockstep propaganda machine for the right-wing political agenda.

For the alternative talk radio experience that many must crave, one's got to use foreign sources. Thank goodness for the internet and smart phones. This link takes you to progressive talk content from the US.

And if you want something to make you really sit up and take notice, subscribe to the Mike Malloy podcast. There's not a radio talker on Planet Earth who can match him.

Cuppa

smokestack · January 5, 2012 at 4:37 AM

Brilliant list!

See if you can find audio of Bill Hicks talking about CNN. 'Where is all this Sh#t happening?'

r.e no.7: Time to think REALLY locally perhaps as much as globally?

ewe2 · January 5, 2012 at 8:58 PM

I've managed to independently implement many of your listed changes, but I'm still having trouble weaning myself off ABC news24, because I have schadenfreude issues.

Anonymous · January 6, 2012 at 1:44 AM

A few years ago I spent the entire 2-week silly season in a bush shack 3 hours away from Sydney. No TV, no phones, no mobile reception, no wireless internet, no papers (no shop!). The only contact with The Rest of It was a battery powered transistor radio that only got turned on once – on day 12 – we listened to news of death, destruction, war, and the illiberal opinions of people we'd never met and didn't care about for 10 minutes. Then we turned it off and never turned it on again.

Sue · January 7, 2012 at 1:16 AM

I love your story, Anonymous.

My partner and I disappeared a week before Christmas last year and avoided the entire silly season. Same as you, in the middle of the bush with no technology, accompanied by a locust outbreak and the whirring of hundreds of wings locust outbreak

It is an experience I return to in my mind to centre myself.

Phil Picone · January 9, 2012 at 12:47 AM

Mr D,

I started doing what you wrote a number of years ago, nowadays I just browse a bit. Keep up the great posts

Phil

David Irving (no relation) · January 11, 2012 at 4:57 AM

Agree about Fran Kelly, Ramon. The last couple of weeks, with Waleed Ali, have been an improvement. They should move her on, and put him on permanently.

Leave a Reply

Avatar placeholder

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *