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Elites go to war to capture public hearts and minds

By Richard Stanton - posted Tuesday, 29 November 2011


Two diametrically opposed sides are fighting for the rights of the public in the news media war.

Neither side seems to really care much though about who or what the public is.

On one side is the elite left-of-centre academic/government-funded activist team.

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On the other the right-of-centre commercial corporate media team.

Both teams want the public but the public seems to not want them.

The average person thinks the same thing about leftist activist groups as they do about commercial media - bunch of wankers.

Citizens who make up the public and are the focus of this very serious media war must be busy doing other things because they are not attending the 'public' sessions of the inquiry.

The three days of the inquiry in Sydney produced not a single spectator beyond the two sides arguing for the rights to defend and control 'the public'.

When News Limited bosses John Hartigan and Cambell Reid were giving evidence in front of retired judge Roy Finkelstein and his sidekicks, the room was occupied by left and right - Miranda Devine, Jonathan Holmes, Sally Jackson - all very serious, very angry working media folk with a vested interest in the proceedings. (Errol Simper wasn't angry, just irritated that he couldn't hear the conversation.)

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And cameras. There were plenty of cameras. I overheard one stills photographer remark "how weird is it to be taking pix of the boss?" to his mates as they stood around outside the building after Mr Hartigan had gone.

In fact, both the Melbourne and Sydney sessions have been held in almost unfindable tiny rooms in universities – public spaces usually reserved for another elite group - university students.

Maybe there is not enough blood, not enough outrage, not enough serial killer raped a great-grandmother to make it interesting for the public as a spectator event.

In fact there was a mild sense of entertainment. Mr Finkelstein, at one point in the delivery of Mr Hartigan's statements looked like he was going to morph into Mark Bouris in the celebrity apprentice boardroom.

You could see he wanted to say it, as if he were eyeballing Max Markson – "Harto, You're Fired!"

Maybe the public are consuming the online submissions and that's enough to keep them occupied. I don't think so.

So why are these teams lining up against each other in the name of the 'public good'?

Well, one side wants to keep selling newspapers to them and to continue to provide what they believe they want - blood, outrage, serial killers.

After all, the catchcry – if it bleeds, it leads - wasn't invented by The Christian Science Monitor.

The other side as was made clear by academics Margaret Simons and Martin Hirst wants powerful editors to be 'reined in' and corporate media owners to be force-regulated by government.

By this they mean powerful editors who have large publics - large audiences - rather than smaller news media such as Crikey which have small audiences.

In the world of commercial media, size is everything.

During the inquiry Mr Finkelstein played along with the power angle. There was no ambiguity in his comments about power, who wielded it, or whether it should be restrained.

John Hartigan made a point that has been around for a long time but is nonetheless a good one.

He said the news reading public, if they did not like the product, would stop buying it.

This of course leaves the gate wide open for those on the left to drive through complex arguments about public opinion, influence, persuasion and, propaganda.

Whichever way the corporates jump, the activists have answers that can be directly linked to their ideological position - look after the public; don't let the poor unwary citizen be subjected to having to buy news that is not really news. At least not news as they see it.

The problem is, that if you invite the public to contribute they will most likely tell you what you don't want to hear.

So it's best to keep the debate at elite level where the average citizen is less likely to go poking around actually telling the inquiry's panelists and conveners what they think - which might be…you're fired.

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About the Author

Richard Stanton is a political communication writer and media critic. His most recent book is Do What They Like: The Media In The Australian Election Campaign 2010.

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All articles by Richard Stanton

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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