A bizarre year in journalism ends with our dominant media company’s flagship newspaper, an outlet that long ago gave up any pretence of objectivity, declaring war on the press gallery, the blogosphere, the twitterverse and just about anyone that wasn’t a Murdoch lackey sitting in front of a terminal in Holt Street.
The Australian is becoming a case-study in wagon-circling institutional paranoia, knee-jerk hyper-sensitivity, stupefying arrogance and an unending Orwellian capacity for declaring that black is white. Christopher Joye puts its increasingly unhinged behaviour down to insecurity, noting that the paper spends “more time defending its own actions in pushing specific agendas and ideological narratives than any other serious media forum on earth”.
This was a newspaper that dedicated almost an entire supplement last weekend to defending its brand of journalism, accusing the press gallery of missing the implosion of the Rudd prime ministership and of failing to hold the government to account. Given that the Murdoch empire controls 70 percent of Australia’s metropolitan newspaper market, half of the national news agency AAP, 80 percent of the Sunday newspaper market, 62 per cent of suburban newspapers, and chunks of Sky News and dominant pay TV provider Foxtel, it seems this alleged failure of journalism must be remarkably quarantined.
Of course, The Australian loves being in a bunker of its making – fighting the good fight for vigilant journalism and greater suburbia against the tertiary educated out-of-touch-with-real-people leftish inner city elites that now infest the profession. Once again, this is strange – firstly because every journalist this blogger is acquainted with at The Australian is as tertiary-educated, inner-city living, latte-drinking small ‘l’ liberal as their counterparts at Fairfax and the ABC. And a few of them are privately embarrassed by the deranged and quixotic behaviour of their editorial overlords.
The other irony in News Ltd’s claims to being the torch carrier for the interests of the common folk is that this particular newspaper is THE voice of the uber-capitalist establishment – the miners, the bankers and the blinkered neo-libertarian ideologues who would still have it that the GFC was a consequence of over-regulation and who bullied Rudd into backdowns on the ETS and a rational attempt to avoid Australia succumbing to the Dutch Disease.
The Australian would have it that “most” of the media (ie: the other 30 percent) failed to pursue the Rudd government over its mismanagement. The reality, of course, is that Rudd was destroyed because he listened to people who spout the same line as The Australian’s editorial writers – that the ‘ordinary’ people weren’t interested in action on climate change, weren’t interested in ‘productivity’ gains that merely lined the pockets of bankers and mining conglomerates, and weren’t keen on ‘reform’ that was a euphemism for stripping away whatever rights they had left. So Labor lost its nerve. And it then compounded it by doing an atrocious job in communicating its achievements in getting the economy through the GFC.
That Gillard is now faltering as well is not because she is failing to pursue the “reform” agenda of The Australian’s microscopic and septugenarian cheer squad but because she is still hostage to the Sussex Street gang who spend their lives trying to appease a mythical outer suburban belt – the very same unsophisticated battlers The Australian claims to be alone in championing.
Positively Orwellian.
6 Comments
jane · December 21, 2010 at 1:53 AM
Congratulations Mr Denmore, a devastating rebuttal of the clap trap being pedalled by the Australian in defence of its indefensible gutter “journalism”.
Should we infer from the sneering abuse of tertiary educated journalists, that there are no qualified journalists at the Australian? This would indeed explain a lot.
Andrew Elder · December 21, 2010 at 11:26 AM
These people are caught in a perfect storm.
First, Julia Gillard is the first PM since McMahon who doesn't need the media, as I've said earlier. Second, the peasants (readers) are revolting, turning on the citadel with force or – worse perhaps – ignoring them.
Third, and perhaps saddest of all, their shelter from the storm is the last of the old-school media proprietors. He's not a young man, and he has his old rich man follies that tend not to survive said man (Frank Packer had his America's Cup yachts, Kerry had the Bulletin and a couple of mistresses, Rupert Murdoch has the Melbourne Storm and The Australian).
The smart ones will get out and learn some survival strategies. The dumb ones will express their outrage at the brutish masses who presume to haul them into the Place de la Concorde, bleating about journalistic standards as the blade crunches home.
Mr D · December 21, 2010 at 12:17 PM
Andrew, I don't think I've ever seen a media outlet destroy its credibility so totally. The irony is there ARE some excellent journalists at The Australian – and when the paper wants to, it can generate great public interest scoops – like the Gold Walkley-winning investigation into the Haneef stich-up nearly four years ago.
But it just seems obsessed now with picking fights with people – like a brain-damaged drunk at the pub throwing wild windmill punches at no-one in particular.
Everyone else is looking away with a mixture of embarrassment, abhorrence and dismay, hoping security arrives soon to put the madman in handcuffs – perhaps when Rupert shuffles off his mortal coil.
desipis · December 22, 2010 at 4:52 AM
Speaking of wars and Murdoch, it's interesting what happens to politicians who try to stand in his way to media monopoly.
Stop Murdoch · December 30, 2010 at 2:14 AM
You've touched a nerve with that 'Haneef' reference. As I've said before, it's the same as the old “Goat Fu*ker” joke.
Let's remember two things:
1. That 'Scoop' was spoon fed to Hedley by Stephen Keim, Haneef's barrister, at a time when News had already disgraced itself and was beginning to accept that Howard was going to lose the election anyway;
2. News was the organisation that had done so much to demonise Haneef in the first place, their lowest blow was the fabricated front page photoshop job hinting that Haneef was going to bomb the Gold Coast's Q1 tower. And we never did discover how they got photos of the inside of his apartment at a time we were supposed to believe he could be a devious mastermind (and therefore the unit should have been strictly off limits to all but the experts – imagine if there was eventually a prosecution that fell in a heap because News had tainted the 'scene').
It seems we disagree about that fundamental point, you keep wanting to see good at News Ltd, but I refuse to accept that there is any (apart from the occasional lapse).
Sorry, but if you fu*ck just ONE goat…
Mr D · December 30, 2010 at 7:25 AM
Mr Stop Murdoch, you seem to have a greater recall of the Haneef coverage than me, so I bow to your expertise.
BTW, I'm not wanting to see good at News Ltd. It's just that I know personally some of the journos there and they don't automatically become cloven-hoofed, horned beasts just for working there. Some came from the AFR and remain good journalists (despite the organisation they work for now).