This instalment of the New Politics six-part review of the year in politics looks at the diminishing state of the mainstream media and the failures in its duty to hold power to account.
I now read very little Australian news. Indeed I read about Bondi through reports in New York Times and Washington Post.
When young I read two papers a day.
I think print media had a different balance of summary of what happened to analysis and heavily weighted alarmist campaigning stories.
No illusion that presenting what happened is not a selective task. That I think is point of news reporting. I can work out what I think based on it.
I have never regarded journalists as great analysists or cared for their opinions.
The Australian les the way downwards. For a long time it had more information than others tied to its right wing spin (from about 1974) Then it became almost all spin.
Others followed. Eg The Guardian is a progressive (but not left) version of The Australian.
The Melbourne Age went tabloid in size and followed in spirit. All small minded gotcha focus.
If we are going to move forward, we need to abandon the defunct premise that the mainstream media sees its role as holding the powerful to account. This is a highly mythologised narrative upheld by a smattering of creaky old tropes.
The ‘traditional’ media, like other corporations has one single-minded purpose and that is to maximise profits for their shareholders. Even where corporate media is heavily invested in prosecuting the ideological worldview of powerful proprietors such as Murdoch & Stokes the end game of exerting such influence is always the same. As Murdoch himself said in relation to the Dominion scandal, “It’s not about Red or Blue, it’s about the Green.”
It’s just late-stage hyper-capitalism. The media proprietors lining up to kiss the arse of Trump are no different to the tech company CEO’s and the like. They simply desire to maximise corporate profits and executive bonuses.
By placing people with the right opinions into key management roles most media is now influenced by the shareholders. Just like Murdoch they don’t have to be told they know what he wants. So how come that has also infected publicly owned media like the ABC and SBS. appointing a senior executive from news corp to chair the ABC for instance.
I now read very little Australian news. Indeed I read about Bondi through reports in New York Times and Washington Post.
When young I read two papers a day.
I think print media had a different balance of summary of what happened to analysis and heavily weighted alarmist campaigning stories.
No illusion that presenting what happened is not a selective task. That I think is point of news reporting. I can work out what I think based on it.
I have never regarded journalists as great analysists or cared for their opinions.
The Australian les the way downwards. For a long time it had more information than others tied to its right wing spin (from about 1974) Then it became almost all spin.
Others followed. Eg The Guardian is a progressive (but not left) version of The Australian.
The Melbourne Age went tabloid in size and followed in spirit. All small minded gotcha focus.
If we are going to move forward, we need to abandon the defunct premise that the mainstream media sees its role as holding the powerful to account. This is a highly mythologised narrative upheld by a smattering of creaky old tropes.
The ‘traditional’ media, like other corporations has one single-minded purpose and that is to maximise profits for their shareholders. Even where corporate media is heavily invested in prosecuting the ideological worldview of powerful proprietors such as Murdoch & Stokes the end game of exerting such influence is always the same. As Murdoch himself said in relation to the Dominion scandal, “It’s not about Red or Blue, it’s about the Green.”
It’s just late-stage hyper-capitalism. The media proprietors lining up to kiss the arse of Trump are no different to the tech company CEO’s and the like. They simply desire to maximise corporate profits and executive bonuses.
Great piece of work.
By placing people with the right opinions into key management roles most media is now influenced by the shareholders. Just like Murdoch they don’t have to be told they know what he wants. So how come that has also infected publicly owned media like the ABC and SBS. appointing a senior executive from news corp to chair the ABC for instance.
They've all been bought. Buying by the people with the money.
Politicians MSM bought by BIG BUSINESS !
That's all.