Mood: chatty
Topic: independent media
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Curious revelations in the last day or so suggesting gems of information come in threes.
Deborah Cameron - a fencing sportswoman at university? You can just imagine the dangerous conceptual tools in her radio work today as a metaphor for the epee dueling sword of her youth.
Leigh Sales reveals on the Glover arvo show that her father is a Vietnam War Veteran. The implications for her editorial approach to the David Hicks Case just go on and on and on.
Tracey Holmes reports on the political story of the Canberra torch relay on 702 morning show earlier today even though she is mainly a sports reporter. A specialist Olympic sports reporter with history in Hong Kong. In the last week her dogmatic support for Big Sport was quite blatant. She presents like a talented knowledgeable broadcaster but she definitely had her own angle. Not much Free Tibet or human rights considerations likely to arise in her coverage.
Veolia are the company driving a nasty pipeline through Kurnell and Botany Bay, to be paid for with exorbitant water bills. Here is some of the backlash which the above adverts are presumably designed to counter act:
Angry Kurnell homeowners halt de-sal plant tunnelling | The Daily ...
All in the name of a desalination plant contract to Veolia while we experience the rainiest (wettest?) April on record .
The Veolia full page adverts are in SMH, The Australian and Australian Financial Review today apparently. Today it's a butterfly motif. Previously a tree and probably others we forget.
These guys are so very calculating with their very expensive PR literally as people are placed in motels because their houses are shaking from the construction.
Veolia which bought out Collex or was Collex previously also runs the dubious Woodlawn landfill near Goulburn NSW delivering major disruptions at Clyde for a mega transfer station. You might say Veolia's speciality is disruption of the public amenity.
Here are 2 images off the tv showing Channel 7's reporter Mark Baretta, with a remote microphone we quickly learn, giving gushing coverage (or really PR) given 7 is an official sponsor. Taken about 9.50 am today April 24 2008 today off the television coverage.
The infamous blue and white tracksuited China's People's Police (CPP)which also enforces with extreme force the Beijing Govt dictatorship in satellite 'provinces' like Tibet and Uygur areas, are doing their best to get into the camera frame with every runner in the torch relay.
That is the so called Chinese security that the Australian PM, ACT Chief Minister and local Australian Federal/ACT Police have said won't have any role in the torch relay. But putting the lie to that - China Inc are right there in the front of the coverage.
One presumes it's blatant PR choreography for the consumption of the Chinese masses. And very sly compared with the official PR at a press conference yesterday.
At 10.30 am we took these 2 images off the free to air tv vision
Here is the Chinese para military meddling on 7 tv vision at 11.25 am replay by them today 24 April 08
Got that Mark Beretta. Whatever you do don't deviate from the alloted path according to the Chinese People's Police, thankyou very much. Sebastian Coe, we get the picture! Very careful control and choreography is the name of the game. Those poor Tibetans and Uygurs, North Koreans, Burmese, Darfurians, Zimbabweans etc.
And that's not saying anything good about the terrible record of the USA or Soviet Union either with their famous record of abuse of power and human rights.
This advert is shown below 75% of original size. It ran on page 17 in the Canberra Times on 19th April 2008 presumably in the weekend features pages. It cost something like $9,000 raised grassroots style in short time by Harriet Swift and others as part of South East Region Conservation Alliance. How good are they? Damn good, and honest too.
A PDF version is here
http://www.chipstop.forests.org.au/CT%20ad%20full%20size%20higher%20res.pdf
We can't help wondering if these kind of concerns partly explain the world class scientists excluded from the blessed 1,000 Rudd fest, and also why PM Rudd glaringly failed to attend the funeral of former Senator John Button who called the native forest woodchipping industry "a bastard of an industry" in 1992.
It is blatantly obvious this was a discreet recruitment/duchessing exercise to seek to annex the non aligned centre of the public through respected opinion leaders. This we think is the more realistic view of PM Rudd's so called reforming of the centre ... yeah, into his own Party, or at the very least promote the ALP to the worthies. The covert selection process, the illogical exclusion of eminent people, the domination of PR in the event by govt ministers and their clique of party loyalists Carr, Gallup, Rann etc etc
There has been some cutting reportage of failures of the 2020 Summit regarding the sustainability group but also more broadly. This is important to get a sensible perspective on the blanket coverage no doubt influenced by co-opted big media owners/editors like Hartigan (News Ltd), Jaspan/Kirk (Fairfax), Scott (ABC). These compare with veterans like Beecher (Crikey) and Ramsey and Mungo McCallum.
And we don't mean ham fisted crude directives. Being a wage slave is pressure enough for staff. Everyone knows, clear more from the silence than the telling. After all who wants to admit either publicly or to themselves they are a moral or professional coward?
Here is the sharp coverage we have seen since the Summit last weekend:
Bright ideas fade under controversy | The AustralianNo Such Thing as a Bad Idea? Anna Rose
Garrett deflects coal hijack claim | The Australian
www.smh.com.au - Fossil fuel industry dominates
Invitees depart feeling hijacked | The Australian
Too little time for talk at talkfest | The Australian
Call to embark on a carbon revolution | The Australian
This one is quite sharp on the summit but somehow re orients to praise the ALP anyway. Go figure:
Climate change at the helm of Labor's next big idea - Environment ...
Here is some dead give away recent coverage of dinosaur infrastructure and fossil fuel industry agendas, business as usual:
Faster approvals will benefit all | The Australian
Everything's coming up roses | smh.com.au
Greens split over 'wicked witch' coal | The Australian
Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh | The Australian
Hopeful prospects in expanded seabed territory | The Australian
Coal isn't cool but our growth depends on it | The Australian
Meanwhile the reality of a hopelessly unsustainable global future are being underlined here:
For future peace, step forward for the great agricultural challenge
ABC are copping the (in)famous (melo)dramatic blowtorch today [pic of front page Sydney Daily Telegraph, and Melbourne's Herald Sun in due course).
We wrote of the tabloid agenda setting gambit last week:
Wednesday, 16 April 2008Civil rights lawyer Evers gets the News Ltd blowtorch but is it a beat up?
Mood: quizzical
Topic: legal
Then this follow up:
Thursday, 17 April 2008Sydney Daily Telegraph lead story frozen out by tv big media peers as dodgy?
Mood: a-ok
Topic: big media
In that dynamic it was a fraught factual and legal situation about under age sex possibly consensual, possibly criminal abuse all to still be determined.
(In fact the big media power rivalry involved spun off in two curious directions with News Ltd into other gender/sexual harrassment litigant story involving a Young Lib flying off to New York - as per crikey.com.au gossip, and tit for tat criticisms of news standards between Sydney Morning Herald and Daily Telegraph - we have a sheaf of clips about it but that's another story).
We wrote last week that ABC TV news in effect 'humiliated' both senior journo Janet Fife-Yeomans and editorial decision of the David Penberthy both at the Telegraph by not only freezing out the attack on the barrister/legal system as potentially flawed (we think so as NSW govt looked to be egg beating against the respected defence barrister) but also adding salt by running another embarrassing legal story about Family Court lack of resourcing and safety as no.1 lead story. That's a sincere repudiation really.
Now Kim Dalton is arguing today for the ABC TV just now on AM that today's tabloid is effectively a beat up (our words, not his) - more about deciding who to keep faith with - live feed of Sydney and Melbourne marchers - more mundane perhaps than the live cross to Gallipoli but not to the families of the actual marchers one presumes. According to Dalton on AM just now it's a tv editorial divergence where either way someone authentically involved in the ANZAC memorials - marchers in Sydney/Melbourne (in other words home soil that was being defended), or dawn service in Turkey (where so many died) - are going to miss out on live broadcast. Seems like a reasonable choice here, survival or death, as the dominant theme (?).
Why indeed should the live feed on the battleground be favoured over the ceremonies on home soil? That's a value judgement people might be expected to have valid differing views on, perhaps related to who is desperate for the ratings and advert sales?
Since when did 30 minutes delay really matter?
Looks like the egg beater is out again with some added spice gettting square with ABC rivals. This kind of divisive Big Media is pretty exploitative of sensitive feelings of veterans and their families, let alone logistical headaches of different time zones. In the world of politics this is a well worn and cynical strategy of emotional manipulation, with no actually sincere compassion for the vets or relatives. It's about point scoring, and power rivalry of the Big Media.
Frankly News Ltd should be ashamed for being so divisive. They could make their point alot more moderately and respectfully. Are they really suffering so much relevance deprivation syndrome to stoop to such tactics? Where is the editorial judgement to get the facts clear on their big lead stories? Have they underpaid and under resourced their staff so much that they can't keep the content fuel up to the front page furnace?
Or did they really get it right. The truth will probably come out in about 12 hours time by the tv nightly news one presumes. A bushfire or a damp squib? Professional reputations on the line again. What a blood sport the big media really are.
20 April 2008
Picture: The World Corp's CEO in his lair in movie Rollerball, like PM Rudd inviting the Big Media into his interview room at the Summit, surrounded by his powerful machine in parliament house rather than the usual press conference format.
It will be up to the 5th estate to lead the dynamic critique of the 2020 Summit. The Big Media are mostly co opted, as pretty much agreed on Insiders show yesterday. This is not healthy democracy.
For those excluded from the grand weekend Summit then there is always great movie fodder Rollerball made in 1975 directed by Norman Jewison who also made Fiddler on the Roof. Quite a moral giant is Mr Jewison - he made Rollerball in the 70ies in Germany of all places, in a dis-used 1936 Olympic venue.
(How's that for a sharp inhalation moment as the profound implications of that sinks in, not least sequel to Munich 1972 tragedy. Quite ironic with the Jewish Passover 19th April 2008 as we watched it, with religious Jewry absent from the big 2020 Summit in Canberra. We swear we had no idea about all this background before the weekend viewing of the DVD special features from our local.)
The underlying theme is all about monolithic corporations (Rudd's ALP Inc?) taking over all liberty and free thinking. In exchange for comfort and good health, free of war the world's people devolve their individuality and politics and values to a monolithic single corporation. Indeed this is what China Inc really is modelled on today. Just sublimate your own personal authentic insights for official acceptance and rewards.
It's a terryifyingly manipulative model.
The echo with the co-option of diverse interests at the Rudd showcase 2020 Summit last weekend are scary. In the movie it's all about a violent circus game to entertain the masses under the strict control of the World Corporation.
At the 2020 Summit it was all about violence to one's individual political will power, stripping people of their alliances making them political virgins again as it were, and embracing them within the Rudd ALP Inc fold. All the sub and sub-sub groups were like a Moroccan carpet salesman dividing all into smaller and smaller groups until they succumb to the love of Big Rudd.
Picture: Rollerball screenshot of a brain dead player victim, Moonpie. Quite a metaphor for the fate of Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson swamped by the ALP choreography and too desensitised to the political pain to extract himself before it was all too late.
The Moroccans carpet sellers really do winnow people like that to make their sale, as experienced on our travels in 2002. It's about separating people from their moral support.
The Rudd/ALP machine are excellent at co-option. All those 1000 brains were prostituted to this tv news presentation (below) last night on 10, 7, 9, SBS, ABC. Notice it was not a press conference but an intimite personalised chat one to one leveraging the PM's office at it's most powerful surrounded by 1,000 groupies, and so much harder to ask brutal questions about manipulation:
Picture: PM Kevin Rudd is never so happy as when he is on stage. As here on every tv news channel last night in one on one interviews different questioner but same background location.
Our last word this morning before checking the gush in the major press: Who would ever present a final report in book form these days to be buried for discovery in 12 years? What about a CD? Are the proceedings entered on the 2020 website for everyone to look at, or are they secretive like the faulty selection process excluding eminent scientists who don't toe the Rudd Govt line?
This image above is taken from the final scenes of the ripping Cannonball Run movie of the 70ies starring David Carradine more recently in the Tarrantino schlock movies. It just seems appropriate of the battered integrity of the Summit process: Narrow secretive selection process, ALP stodge patronage, grotesque co-option by the ALP of the Big Media and terrifying manipulation of the whole presentation. We include a link to barely reported letter of world leading scientist Dr Jim Hansen to PM Rudd on the urgency of climate change. The deliberate exclusion of the Green Party leaders and swathe of top quality scientists on issues of real ecological reforms for sustainability speak volumes. It's a stock standard ALP stitch up, whether these idealistic 'best and brightest' know it or not (probably not).
The Rudd distinctive rubbing of forehead. The 1000 yard stare shown below that. Not as bad as Noel Pearson literally asleep in all the footage yesterday but still pretty jaded.
PM Rudd drops into the Health Group and looks like actor Tiriel Mora (think the suburban solicitor in The Castle) in the classic Qantas advert campaign stuck in a seminar ordering a flight home asap. We can't find that latest commercial satire but this gives earlier one gives you the flavour - very world weary:
But wait. Rudd perks up. Perhaps because he's got the microphone now, listening was never his thing?. And ABC2 loyally cross back to broadcast the PM giving nothing more than a "core" business stump speech?