Qed

To beat terror, defeat its ideas | The Australian

Interesting…

How to you defeat an idea? Shall we put two ideas in a ring together and see which one is victorious after a number of rounds? The two ideas can slug it out for the amusement of punters and the financial benefit of the promoter.

But the metaphor is inadequate since a defeated idea can simply go away to lick its wounds and come back another day. No, defeating an idea is not that easy, if it was a lot of human history might never have happened.

Carl’s article is the war on terror Version 2. The enemy is now within, no one can be trusted. Who is thinking what ideas? Perhaps there is a terrorist in the minds of people already, maybe our teaching system is exposing children to the risk of an unwanted idea. And how shall we defeat these ideas? With money and public policy?

Part of the liberal western tradition is founded on plurality of free ideas as opposed to say a more doctrinarian approach. Supposedly the liberal approach to ideas creates a more flexible and more durable society which is evidenced by the dominance of the west so it is strange to see anyone in the west advocating a more tyrannical approach to what can be thought. Frankly it seems to indicate a faltering of the western liberal tradition to be discussing how to kill any idea.

In the contest of ideas it isn’t the worst ideas that are killed off, rather it is that better ideas prosper. The failure of the war on terror and what could become the war on ideas is they have not defeated bad ideas with better ones. The extreme questions the terrorist have posed to the west have not been answered with superior ideas and until they are, the idea of terrorism and its actions will continue to prosper. Spending money and devising policy might be a response but it’s never going to address the heart of the matter.

To beat terror, defeat its ideas | The Australian.

OMG what have they done? post #spill

A week ago the Libs looked like a rabble, then they spent the week proving it and now, after a bit of a break and a nice night’s sleep they wake up an elect TONY ABBOTT as their leader?

Barry Cassidy summed it up with Annabel Crabb on the rather extravagant ABC coverage of the #spill; the election of Abbott is going to give the media plenty to talk about and judging by the level of coverage afforded to the election of the man in red speedos, they could well be right.

Surely though, tomorrow, or the day after or sometime in the very near future the rest of the Liberal Party are going to look back at what happened today and in the last week and ask themselves the very obvious question, what have we done? It might be the moment when Tony Abbott answers yet another question on climate change, or it could be another day when Tony resurrects the ghost of Howard’s Work Choices, maybe it will be when the Mad Monk starts preaching about the rights of unborn children; really it must happen unless the entire rank and file of the Australian Liberal Party are stark raving mad.

And then what? Will they look back on today and wonder? Will they pull out the recording of Malcolm Turnbull where he displayed his political stature in the face of incredible adversity and compare that to the talking mechanical robot they chose instead and say to themselves “we were wrong”? Probably not, since honesty isn’t a particularly useful commodity in a politicians toolkit.

Bon voyage good ship Australian Liberal Party. Watch out for the icebergs.

The revolution might be twittered, but don’t count on it.

While Julie Posetti wants us to believe in the power of the twitterverse to achieve significance in the way news is reported, I think her comments overlook some aspects of how news is made and she asserts a significance for twitter which seems to gloss over some of the “noisy” aspects of that particular internet space. Although a claim that Twitter was the centre of the media universe during a week of political/media hyperbole seems extravagant it certainly is another avenue for media dissemination.

Mark Bahnisch at LP seems more circumspect in his comments. He describes the read/reflect approach to reporting news as

a normative pronouncement

compared to twitter,

a description of social reality

without advocating one as better than the other while still acknowledging the relative strengths of each. What Mark seems to be saying is that the social aspect of the new media landscape, its degree of interactivity that is perhaps illustrated by Twitter and blogs, represents another equally valid form of news reporting. Julie’s and Mark’s comments both reflect a shift in the reporting of some news but while tweets have become another instant message that can alert us to something and social interactivity can drive to a certain extent a political agenda, I think both points of view ignore the role of the professional gatekeepers and PR bots.

In a comparison between old media or MSM and the new media world, the role of the gatekeepers and key players play in disseminating news does not appear to be significantly different. Our sources of news are still filtered by privileged media professionals and media savvy players who can manipulate their particular media strength to reflect a particular agenda. The tools might have changed but so far there seems little evidence that the changed tools have actually produced a more participatory democratic system. Not that a rumoured 100,000 emails from the Bolta camp in support of Tony Abbott isn’t significant, but just how many emails and messages flow from the public on this issue is really hearsay and therefore cannot be confidently articulated.

The popular adoption of twitter as a conversational tool amongst media makers does seem to allow the public to see a broader picture of the news, one which seems to overlap generally with other internet media, if they so choose. The new media makers who engage with the web as their primary tool also tend to overlap in various new media platforms even if they are also active in traditional non-internet msm. For the new media makers, tools like twitter, blogs, websites, fb and so on differentiate the message and audiences to a certain extent, but that’s just the push-model side. The speed of adaption and change is much faster in the online space which is why I think some traditional msm media makers are perhaps not as keyed into things like twitter. Their interests are ultimately not particularly well served if they break their news on that medium since it has a very limited reach and if they do break news on twitter it is almost always as a pointer to a more significant source.

The news coming out of Parliament house is a strange beast in one way. Elsewhere, if something newsworthy happens in the public domain then members of the public have pretty much the same level of access as a professional media maker to the basics of the event, the when, where and who, for example a large public demonstration. On the other hand, Parliament House and the associated private media spaces that are the sources of this political story, and others like it, are largely off limits to the public. Sure the public can attend the chambers of parliament, but the business side of Parliament House is restricted. The Press Gallery occupy a privileged position courtesy of the political system and they are not likely to sabotage that.

Why is this relevant? Well it seems to me that the much vaunted democratisation of the news media via things like twitter fails to acknowledge that in some areas, the public is utterly dependent on professional media makers to tell them what’s going on. Sure we can tweet and blog about what we see or hear or read in the msm but that information is already filtered. I suspect the discretionary tweets from a few journalists out of Parliament House is more about building audiences (followers) than it is about dissemination of information to the wider public even if that is a by-product. Things like the Liberal Party leadership woes are significant stories only because the media says so, and we must rely on the media to provide almost all of our primary information. Social commentary while important is still dependent of the gatekeepers to break the news. If David Spears had not read out a sms live on air half the tweets on #spill would never have been written but if he did so and twitter didn’t exist then we can only speculate about how his peers in the rest of the MSM would have responded. In this scenario (a parallel universe where twitter doesn’t exist) it seems far-fetched to assume that other news sites who are most likely also watching Sky would not have reacted in a similar fashion to the newsworthiness of David’s impromptu news break.

Whether or not any of this new media or old media coverage of the subtleties and nuances of a political party’s internal machinations makes any real difference to what the public ends up thinking in a week’s time when the dust settles is doubtful. The headline news come monday or tuesday on the leadership is probably the only thing of real interest to anyone outside of the small coterie of political junkies that comment on blogs or tweet their hourly thoughts and especially when the story in question has little bearing on anything affecting the public’s daily reality. What the last week has demonstrated to this writer is that PR and media professionals are quickly adopting and adapting to the new forms of media without a substantial change in the fundamental relationship between politicians, the media and the public. The political bunfight is still an event publicised and produced by media professionals (would be or actual) for the distraction of the public. Compared with real issues such as climate change and keeping body and soul together, who said what to who and why during a week of political cloak and daggery in Canberra and Sydney is, a relatively small matter.

Quadrant Online goes to town

Nothing like a good stouch, complete with the usual character assassinations. Mervy Bendle must have gotten out of the wrong side of bed before he penned this little diatribe…complete with an attack on the lunatic left, represented in the red corner by none other than Guy Rundle of Crikey fame. Of course the wicked witch of the west makes her obligatory entry, is there anyone the right despise more than Julia Gillard? And of course Robert Manne gets a serve because he probably has the temerity to quote Chomsky to his students and word has gotten about that he’s a closet loony leftwinger who has a Naomi Klein pinup above his bed.

I feel very much indebted to Mervy who assures us all that

all the Left is about are simplistic ideas and slogans, jealousy, resentment, opportunism, and a lust for power and personal advancement.

Such intellectual refinement could only come from the sunshine state, where the light is ever increasing.

Quadrant Online – Left Forum: Green Left Weakly.

Annabel Crabb

Annabel writes about the latest disaster in NSW politics –

“That any of them think they have the time to plot and backstab, to feast and fornicate, to construct elaborate strategies whose aims and outcomes are entirely independent of the public good is a marvel.” I think a marvel a bit tame Annabel, its a fuckin miracle that any public good comes out of NSW politics right now. Zero public good. Its no wonder that people have lost faith in public institutions and it will only result in a renewed assault on those institutions when the government changes hands.

But I do like Annabel’s closing remark, it made me laugh “Think about it. What would O’Farrell have to do, exactly, to get a gallop in the media these days? Intimacy with a goat probably would not do it. Not on its own, anyway. The goat would have to be pregnant, and willing to talk.”

And the Tele! What a classy little rag that is, the apparently anonymous story from the mouth of the 26 year old woman who was sleeping with someone old enough to be her father splashed all over its front page. What if it had been a goat? Where’s the front page confession there? I guess Annabel’s right, Mr O’Farrell and a dumb goat probably wouldn’t be enough but imagine the potential of Mr O’Farrell and a ROBOT!

via Annabel Crabb.

Polluters win no matter who is in power | theage.com.au

Kenneth Davidson sums its up rather nicely…“policy is developed between key ministers and industry lobbyists representing mining, private heath insurance, religious and independent schools and employer groups….It is clear that the Rudd Government is not prepared to undertake reforms to reverse the Howard government’s policies, which created two-tier health and education systems where access is largely determined by income and reinforced by fiscal policy.”

via Polluters win no matter who is in power | theage.com.au.