At 13:27 15/05/98 +1100, Bill Rosenberg <w.rosenberg at cantva.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote (among other interesting things):
> ... (snip)..
>As far as the general economic position goes, I think there is also
>growing disquiet, but it is stifled for two reasons.
>
>Firstly, a muffled news media. Approximately 90% of newspaper
>circulation is controlled by Murdoch or Tony O'Reilly. All but two of
>the major city dailies are Murdoch controlled. The O'Reilly owned NZ
>Herald allows some variety of opinion in its columns, but the Murdoch
>ones very little. The state-owned TV channels have acolytes of the
>economic reforms in charge, and current affairs content has
>deteriorated markedly.....
>......Radio presents a similar picture -
>heavily controlled also by O'Reilly - although public radio is a
>notable exception, which politicians detest. Hence there are few mass
>media channels for public opposition to be expressed.
To which Rob Schaap <rws at comserver.canberra.edu.au> replied:
>...(snip)...
>As I see it, NZ deregulates broadcasting and Oz has to follow.
>....
While in NZ, we discovered with increasing depression that *all* TV channels were commercial. And news and current affairs had attained the corresponding character: Americanized predictable establishment blah blah with "distinguished" male anchorperson and ditto female "representative" business-suited partner. And commercial breaks. And even more commercial breaks. In what once was a public broadcasting channel. Coming back to Australia, the difference really struck us, between a wholly commercialised broadcasting system, and a system where at least one big and one lesser channel (ABC and SBS) do some credit to what TV journalism ought to be.
If media are through and through dominated by advertising interests, this is IMO a situation whose gravity and importance is generally underestimated on the left. Society is a big organism, and media is its nervous system. And media constitute a major part of the brain of the societal organism. Total dominance by commercialized media means that society's nervous system and brain is on a constant dope high, and the organism is thus not able to take properly care of itself, i.e. solve important problems that threaten its health.
Leaving the organism metaphor, one could say that people can only get informed and converse with each other on a national scale, and hopefully agree on solutions and choices, through the media. When information is false, distorted or simply left out, and crucial opinions and options are denied airing, we are in a hopeless situation. Therefore I am fairly pessimistic as long as today's radicals do no not concentrate more on reforms of media systems, and on political work among media personnel, especially journalists.
But of course this is to a large degree a Catch-22 situation. To raise these issues, you have to have some media access - in commercial media....you Kiwis have an uphill battle! And Norwegians and Australians - fight like hell to defend public broadcasting!
Anyway, to round off on a positive note: Just back from a packed Town Hall meeting here in Sydney with John Pilger, who gave a an excellent talk in connection with the launching of his new media-critical book "Hidden Agendas". A vitamin injection!
Trond Andresen
PS (Commercial break ;-) ) More on this topic on: http://www.itk.ntnu.no/ansatte/Andresen_Trond/articles/media-dynamics.html