Lucky Country II

What Happened To Them?

So the big news this week is that Murdoch Media outlets are going to start pushing for zero emissions.  

The owner of some of the nation’s most-read newspapers, including the Herald Sun, The Daily Telegraph, The Australian and 24-hour news channel Sky News Australia will from mid-October begin a company-wide campaign promoting the benefits of a carbon-neutral economy as world leaders prepare for a critical climate summit in Glasgow later this year. 

Rupert Murdoch’s global media empire has faced growing international condemnation and pressure from advertisers over its editorial stance on climate change, which has long cast doubt over the science behind global warming and has since 2007 attacked various federal government efforts to reduce emissions. 

The unrelenting negative publicity peaked in global outlets such as The New York Times and Financial Times during Australia’s deadly bushfires almost two years ago, which triggered a comment from Murdoch’s youngest son, James Murdoch, who publicly denounced the outlets’ “ongoing denial” of climate change. Mr Murdoch quit the News Corp board last August, citing concerns about its editorial stance.

I don't know how that is going to work in practical terms. It's a global organisation that's dedicated itself to denying the simple reality of Global Warming, applying as much pressure as it can on conservatives and progressives alike so as not to enact any policies for mitigating the effects of Global Warming. By the time they were behind Tony Abbott calling the Emissions Trading Scheme a 'tax on carbon' you knew they weren't even market rationalists. They were just deranged. It's almost as if they wanted Global Warming to have its full impact so they would never run out of headlines about natural disasters. But now they're changing their tune, they say. 

As the contemporary internet meme-parlance like to spell it, "wut?"

I imagine it's a bit like the Pope pushing for birth control and priests having to toe that line or US police force unions donating money to BLM from now on and promising to pay to raise the orphans created by their police brutality or something. It's a bit like a wild fox promising not to stalk the henhouse and will now bring the chooks their daily feed - they are Fox News after all. Yeah right. I guess we're going to have to see it to believe it.

The switch in editorial position will likely attract global attention, particularly in America, where Murdoch’s media outlets, such as Fox News, have also been accused by Republican politicians of undermining global efforts on climate change. Mr Murdoch, now 90, also remains an influential figure in British politics, mainly through his newspapers, The Sun and The Times. But his eldest son, Lachlan Murdoch, who is the co-executive chairman of News Corp, is more involved in the newspaper business than his father.

The article goes on to claim the shift is because of the big powwow wherein Australia is pretty much going to have its arm twisted by other OECD nations and as such it would hurt the Coalition brand if it ended up being attacked by News Corp as well as the ALP as they go headlong into the next election. Frankly, it's not like News Corp don't know on which side the bread is buttered. If they hamstring the Coalition so much that they cannot enact any policies on emissions, there might come a day when the Coalition might be un-electable (Dare I say they ought to be considered un-electable today but heck they've won the last 3 Federal elections on no climate policy so who am I to judge?).   

It might sound a bit cynical even to suggest this - not that News Corp is anything but cynical themselves - but the likely tone they will take on all this is that we should mitigate our response to the climate threat. Which is to say they will likely weasel-word their way into a position that says "yes, Global Warming is here but maybe we don't have to do the hysterical maximum to combat its effect. What we need to do is the reasonable minimum so we don't harm the economy." Which would still very much be a denial stance - just one that seems to barely accomodate the reality of Global Warming. A bit like acknowledging a dancing drunk elephant in a tiny room. 

Eesh. That's going to be just as spew-worthy as what they're doing today and of no help whatsoever. Let's just say unlike a leopard, a fox can't change its spots because it never had spots to begin with. 

Come Join The Fun!

No News on Facebook (For Australia)

"No News For You Australia!"

Nobody thought it would happen, they said - but it did. On Thursday morning, Facebook pulled all the news feeds from its services in Australia. A lot of other services were taken out in the big purge, but most importantly, Facebook thumbed its nose at the Federal Government with its gun-to-the-head legislation. 

Since then there has been much scuttlebutt about what this means, and some of it is just hilarious. 

The move was made in response to the government’s media bargaining code, which is designed to force it and Google to pay publishers for news content.

Facebook executives - in consultation with founder Mark Zuckerberg, vice- president of global partnerships, business and corporate development Marne Levine and head of global news partnerships Campbell Brown - were weighing up what to do for weeks.

The tech platform made its intentions to remove news content from its main platform clear last September, after a draft form of the media bargaining code was made public.

Even Simon Milner, Facebook’s director of policy for the Asia-Pacific region, wasn’t sure if Facebook would follow through with the threat when he fronted up at a parliamentary inquiry in late January. In fact nobody was certain until the eleventh hour, when the Facebook’s most senior executives saw the final bill to be debated in parliament and decided to pull the trigger.

Under the direction of Zuckerberg, the company’s founder, major shareholder and most powerful figure, the company pushed through tweaks to its algorithm to restrict news content for Australians.

What's sidesplittingly funny is that the government thought this was a shock move. Since then we've heard admonitions from Josh Frydenberg that somehow this would reflect badly on Facebook, and Greg Hunt telling us that without the news Facebook will be filled with fake news and misinformation. 

The joke is the government was going to rely on Facebook to get its word out about the COVID-19 vaccination programme - starting next Monday - and suddenly that channel had disappeared. You can't make this stuff up. And so they took to the airwaves on old media to wag their index fingers, telling Facebook its reputation would suffer, the news needed to go back on, and Facebook had to go negotiate these contracts with Seven West and Nine-Fairfax and the Truly-Evil-News-Corporation. 

I mean, I'm no fan of Zuckerberg but come on - a five year old can figure out if he doesn't want to do something, he can just say no. And if he had to give up 4% of his Australian business, so be it. 

Ryan Stokes of Seven West Media wants Facebook to put the new back on, and pay Seven West like Google acquiesced. 

“Their decision to ban legitimate news and information … makes them seem more like a publisher than than just a digital platform,” he told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

“I think the government’s commitment to pushing the code through and legislation through is a really important position and being resolute in that and not responding to these types of interim steps and decisions, I think is really important. And then I think it’s going to be up to Facebook. And frankly, I think it’s in their interest to get the information back on their platform, because that’s what their users want.”

You gotta laugh. Ryan Stokes sounds like he just missed out on a multi-million dollar deal with Facebook who simply declined and walked away. What a loser. 

Let's face it, the laws were written to target Facebook sharing news. If Facebook does not share the news, it's not breaking the planned law. The government looks stupid for passing a law against something that is not happening. It can't then demand Facebook break the law so it can un-break the law by signing a deal it doesn't want to sign. It's easier not to infringe the law and not pay the fine.  Everybody understands Facebook was put in the situation by the Australian government. Nobody thinks worse of Facebook than they already do by any of this. 

It's just too funny. 

Why Are You On Facebook Anyway?

It's worth pondering for a moment. There was a time when the news wasn't on Facebook and dare I say it was better then. The intrusion of news made the Facebook experience a lot more convoluted. It's not like Facebook is without its faults. The rise of trump and Trumpism, the proliferation of Flat-Earth-Anti-Vaxx-Committed Stupid can be squarely put upon Facebook. Yet a lot of that came about because Facebook allowed itself to be a conduit of all news and views.  

The reason I am these is because my friends who live in distant places are there. I guess I could call them on the phone instead, but there is something useful about quickly conveying a thought through Facebook. And that's it. If I never get to see an article from Politico or Rolling Stone or the Sydney Morning Herald or ABC..net.au through Facebook, I couldn't really care less. 

Does Facebook have a responsibility to carry the news? Surely not. 

Does Facebook need to carry the news, from the user's point of view? No. 

Is Facebook worse as an experience without the news? Not at all. 

So I think most people will stay on, The commentary saying this would drive people away fro Facebook and that some other platform will take over, are premature. Surely they have not seen what has happened with Parker in the wake of the US elections, the Capitol Insurrection, the banning of Trump and the avowed move to Parler made by many Trumpty-Dumb-pties. It's hard to find an alternative to Facebook that everybody can agree.

About Fires and Emergencies Services Getting Blocked

By the way, the panel on Q&A looked really stupid. 

It's a bit rich that the government that presided over the worst bush fires in the history of modern Australia can complain that people can't access news regarding Fires and Emergencies through Facebook. The government came out swinging like Little-leaguers on red cordial saying Facebook shouldn't switch off emergency services but when you think about it, it's not Facebook's internet. Facebook didn't switch off the internet for those services. They just decided not to carry that social responsibility ion it makes them liable to the proposed laws. The Communication Minister arguing like Facebook made those services inaccessible makes him look like a moron. 

The sites complaining that Facebook doesn't carry them any more are right to complain but at no point did the government make it official that Facebook should be the place where messages like that should be pushed out. It was the free and unfettered market that decided that. The government should take responsibility that it has intervened in the market and there were unforeseen outcomes because of that intervention.  

In some weird way I'd like to see talks break down so much that Google and Facebook both leave Australia and we all get to see what the hell the landscape looks like then. I'd imagine it would be pretty fun and wild. 

Who Do You Hate More?

What all this comes down to for the consumer is no just who do they hold responsible, but also who do they blame for the perceived disruption. I already don't like Zuck, I don't like Facebook even though I'm there. I don't like Scomo and his moron-minion Josh-boi, I don't like the Coalition, but I live here in Australia. People say I can't remove Zuck from FB and that's an issue, but I can't seem to vote out Scomo any more than I can vote out Zuck. 

So it really comes down to who do you hate more? I've realised I hate Scomo and Josh just a little bit more than I hate Zuck-the Fuck. I think we all learned something through this experience, and that is what I have learned. I hate odious idiots far more than I hate odious smart-alecs.

The politicians are trying to posture that they have the high ground. There is no high ground at the bottom of a hole you dug. It's entirely laughable. 

Should We Be Concerned?

The Junior Murdoch Speaks Up

I always find it unlikely when a Murdoch stands up for freedoms, what with the generally casual fascist tone their editorials in their miserable newspapers take. Of course, one shouldn't be surprised that they do it when it suits them directly to do so, for maximum effect. And so it is with Lachlan Murdoch who is invoking his grandfather's reporting of the Gallipoli campaign.

Mr Murdoch said Australia's press freedom was under threat and had already fallen dramatically by world standards. 

"It might surprise you that today Australia ranks 33rd, just behind Belize, on the Freedom house index. 20 years ago we ranked 9th," Mr Murdoch said during the Keith Murdoch Oration at the State Library in Melbourne on Thursday night. 

Mr Murdoch said the government was frequently asking Australians to trust them 'we're from the government', when attempting to censor the media. 

"But trust is something that should not be a consideration when restricting our fundamental freedoms. Our freedom of speech and freedom of the press are not things we should blindly entrust anyone." 

Mr Murdoch singled out the government's national security laws that could jail journalists for up to 10 years for revealing "special intelligence operations".

Mighty fine sentiments on a night for orations. I have to say, it's still a bit rich coming from the scion of Rupert Murdoch, hardly an egalitarian or democrat. If Mao said justice comes from the barrel of a gun, the Senior Murdoch certainly has behaved like governments are born from the printing press. The senior Murdoch set about killing Whitlam's government back when he was junior's age.

The US National Archives has just declassified a secret diplomatic telegram dated January 20, 1975 that sheds new light on Murdoch's involvement in the tumultuous events of Australia's 1975 constitutional crisis.

Illustration: Ron Tandberg 

Entitled "Australian publisher privately turns on Prime Minister," the telegram from US Consul-General in Melbourne, Robert Brand, reported to the State Department that "Rupert Murdoch has issued [a] confidential instruction to editors of newspapers he controls to 'Kill Whitlam' ". 

Describing Mr Murdoch as "the l'enfant terrible of Australian journalism," Mr Brand noted that Mr Murdoch had been "the principal publisher supporting the Whitlam election effort in 1972 Labor victory". 

With a publishing empire that included The Australian as well as daily or Sunday newspapers in every Australian capital, Mr Murdoch's new editorial direction was seen as a critical political development. 

"If Murdoch attack directed against Whitlam personally this could presage hard times for Prime Minister; but if against Labor government would be dire news for party," Mr Brand telegraphed.

And so it was in 1975 that Rupert bent his considerable powers of the press to undermine and ultimately destroy the democratically elected Whitlam Government. It's pretty much in line with what Chris Boyce (the Falcon in 'the Falcon and the Snowman') told us all those years ago. The CIA took a great interest in undermining Whitlam's Labor Government. Rupert for his part obliged by unleashing his dogs - just as he did with Beazley, Crean, Latham, and ultimately Rudd and Gillard. It's almost the rule that the ALP should find every legislative means of limiting Murdoch's power because it is the largest opinion-maker as well as being totally anti-democratic and anti-social. He likes us to think of him as a contrarian codger. He's not. He's full-blown Citizen-Kane-type, trying to turn our democracy into his plaything.

In that light, it's really difficult to imagine that the son is any less meddlesome as the father. And by extension, he's not really standing up for journalists, he's standing up for his right to publish and report a scoop in the press without facing gaol time. I mean, yeah, that's really bold of you Latch. 

How Can They Call Their Rag 'News'?

While I'm on this topic, Pleiades sent in an article from Crikey that lays out where the News Corp mouthpieces sit in the wake of Whitlam passing away. Here's the juicy bit:

The first person who might consider checking “the facts” is Sheridan. He asserts rather confidently that under Whitlam, “inflation got above 20% at one stage”. His confidence is misplaced. During Whitlam’s government, inflation as measured by the consumer price index peaked at 17.7% in the first quarter of 1975. Since the beginning of Australian Bureau of Statistics records, inflation has only exceeded 20% in three quarters, and in all three of them, it was Robert Menzies’ pyjamas that were tucked under the doona in the Lodge. (Perhaps Sheridan could let us know if “ruinous” is the right adjective with which to garland our longest-serving prime minister.) 

Things don’t get much better when Sheridan turns to the international scene, where he is apparently more of an expert. Here we discover (and though Sheridan generously allows that there was a tiny little oil shock to contend with) that on the question of inflation, “the outcome in Australia was much worse than in comparable countries”. This might have come as a surprise to Aldo Moro, the then-prime minister of Italy, where inflation reached 24%, or to Harold Wilson, who presided over a British inflation rate of 26.6%. 

Other commentators trying their hand at sacrilege fared no better. Thanks to Gough, Miranda Devine lamented, “half the ­nation is now on welfare”. In 2012, the last year for which the Department of Social Services has released data, only around a quarter of the population over 15 was receiving some kind of income support payment. A bit under half of these are old age pensioners. Presumably, sans Gough, we would have adopted work-for-the-pension schemes or simply euthanised the elderly to spare them the moral decay of Devine’s “culture of entitlement”. 

Meanwhile, Andrew Bolt, making the daring argument that Kevin Rudd was merely Whitlam digested and reconstituted, credited the former with “the same debt blowouts” as the latter. When Whitlam left office, Australia had negative net debt. But did not Whitlam “lose control” of the purse, as Alan Mitchell wrote? Of the three budgets prepared by Whitlam’s government, two resulted in surplus; deficits accounting therefore for a third of his budgets. That fiscally continent duo Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, on the other hand, recorded 10 deficits from 13 budgets (about three-quarters in the red).
For all of the ruin occasioned by Whitlam’s supposedly disastrous programs, government spending has, as a proportion of economic output, never retreated to the levels seen before 1972. 

Whatever else the electorate might have thought or now thinks of the government he led, they have never really shown much interest in reversing the increase in the size of government he oversaw. In this sense, budgetary history since 1975 has been a remarkable vindication of Whitlam rather than an repudiation.

In other words, the Murdoch journalists are still banging on about the Whitlam Government, believing in their own crappy press which was all made up in the first place, for the sole purpose of destroying the standing of the Whitlam Government. Stuff most people would call mischaracterisations. It is mischaracterisation right now, as it was back then. So it's really just too rich hearing from Lachlan telling us how journalism should work. 

Murdoch-Watching

Eminently Despicable

The first time I had to consider what it might be like to work for Rupert Murdoch was when I was in high school. My parents made friends with somebody who worked in newspapers for years and he was so kind as to invite our family over for lunch and regaled some interesting stories about the time he was a strapping young journalist and a young Rupert Murdoch turned up as the owner of the paper. According to the old journalist, Rupert was certain there was only the three 'esses' that could sell newspapers and they were Sex, Scandal and Sensation. When you think about it, one leads to the other and it's exactly the kind of bundle that Rupert Murdoch's muck-raking rags have long made an institution thereof. It seemed like a very cut-and-dry proposition, even for a kid like me - if a little vulgar. But you could see that that could be a style that worked with a vulgar public of which we could all count upon.

The second time I seriously had to consider Rupert Murdoch's style in the mid-90s when I popped over to Hong Kong for a short contract working for Star TV Japan. That too was an interesting business because once you're inside the Murdoch machine, you really do feel the cut-throat corporate culture of Murdoch's companies, right up against your nose. At the time it was a little contentious because I might have stayed on had they offered the contract with the terms I wanted, but at that point in history they were making a point of not handing out ex-pat deals, and so our negotiations hit the rocks pretty quickly. I was told they would play hardball, and I figured there was no point being polite about it, so in the end I flew back.

The third time I came across the Murdoch corporate culture was when I was working on a music project with an elaborate proposal and a business plan which ended up being presented to people in Lachlan Murdoch's orbit. It went nowhere as more and people attempted to pee in the same pot. Again, we came up against some hard-ball style negotiations and this time I sat back and watched as my colleagues wilted under the withering pressure. And I recognised the style from when I dealt with Star TV Japan.

All this is to say that even if you're just drifting along in the world, you can run into a lot of Murdoch enterprises and they're invariably crass, vulgar and promote a kind of idiotic dualism which makes you wonder if they are twisted Manicheans. What's really amazing is that nobody seems to tell Rupert how stupid this is and how he and his press organs are contributing the significant dumbing down of the public. But even if you could mention it, it would appear he would hardly listen, after all why should a man as powerful like Rupert Murdoch suffer such contrary opinions? What's infuriating is that because his papers spread fear and ignorance like black rats bringing the Bubonic plague, it finds converts everywhere, writing in ill-informed  comments on newspaper sites, arguing arcane right-wing paranoia shit.

Anyway, here's something in 'The Economist' which is interesting in the light of the recent developments.

One of the distinguishing features of News Corporation is aggression. The firm combines the heft of a big company with the scrappiness of a start-up. Even more than at other media firms, executives sometimes seem inspired by Machiavelli—or Richard III. Competitors are to be crushed. Executives in other companies that take an opposite view on strategic questions are idiots. In 2009 the usually cerebral James Murdoch launched a scathing attack on the BBC, whose size and zeal for expansion into new areas he described as “chilling”.

This take-no-prisoners approach makes the company extremely bold. It was News Corporation that broached the possibility of releasing films early on pay-television—a move that still enrages cinema owners. Together with the Financial Times (part-owner of this newspaper) it has led the charge to demand money for newspapers on the web. In America the firm drives a particularly hard bargain over payments from cable and satellite carriers for its broadcast network. BSkyB is a similarly brutal negotiator.

Unfortunately, this attitude earns the company enemies as well as revenues. Over the years News Corporation has offended governments and regulators. Its aggression and sheer size terrify rival media firms. In October 2010 the BBC and the owners of the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mirror and the Guardian newspapers signed a letter opposing its bid to take complete control of BSkyB, in which it now has a 39% stake. Part of the reason News Corporation has handled the phone-hacking crisis so badly is that it tends to view hostile reporting as motivated by rivalry.

As the company braces for further embarrassment and disruption, it will also have to work out a future without BSkyB. Public and political opinion have become so hostile that the government may refuse to sign off on any attempt to renew the bid, even at the risk of a judicial review. This makes the transition News Corporation wants to make to a new, eventually post-Rupert world a lot harder.

You'd hate to be a News Corporation shareholder right now. The other part of the business, the newspapers themselves might be in for some stick too.

Frankly, Murdoch's political leverage has been spent. The era of media moguls bullying politicians is finished. It went down the plughole from the moment the Milly Dowler story broke and it has diminished further with each passing day. News Corp's leverage will be completely shot in the US if it is discovered its employees or agents have hacked the phones of the families of September 11 victims. The Justice Department has been asked by members of Congress to investigate that issue.

If the capacity to hold politicians to ransom is critically injured, what is the point of continuing to own newspapers that do not return a profit? That is the question which in the days and weeks ahead will open up some deep divisions in the upper reaches of the News Corp estate.

There are other possible violations to be weighed. If a subsidiary in London made illegal payments to police officers, that is a breach of US law.

This story is unravelling so fast that it's impossible to predict all the ramifications. Nick Davies, the Guardian journalist who has done so much to crack open this scandal, says Murdoch has lost control of the outcome. It now has a life of its own and to a very large extent markets, not oligarchs, will determine what happens.

What has risen so quickly to the surface is the deep dislike and resentment of Murdoch on the part of the political establishment. For years they had to fawn all over him, now they're pleased as Punch to be kicking him all the way down.

We can well imagine there would be much joy amongst the ranks of politicians. Somebody was describing somewhere - I can't find it now - that the British Parliament resembled a populace freed from tyranny once they realised they all hated the tyrant.

Paul Keating Says...

This one came in from Pleiades. It's a transcript of an interview with Paul Keating from Lateline on the 14th. It has several interesting portions on it covering Julia Gillard and the Carbon Pricing reforms, but while we're on the topic of Murdoch, he had this to say:

PAUL KEATING: Well there's one thing that's clear for sure comes out of this and that is self-regulation by the media is a joke. A joke. You know, I notice tonight John Hartigan talking about the Press Council of Australia. I mean, people shouldn't have a right to appeal about invasions of their privacy to some body funded by newspapers; they should have a right at law.

What we need, what we seriously need, which has been now recommended by the Commonwealth Law Reform Commission, the Victorian Law Reform Commission and the New South Wales Law Reform Commission is a separate right-of-action in privacy, a separate tort.

So in other words, you don't have a right of appeal to some body, you have a right to action, you have a right to the law. In the end, the only regulator of this bad behaviour is the law. And, this episode in Britain ...

TONY JONES: Well there's certainly no right to privacy in the law in Australia at this time. And in actual fact, at a broader level, it's sometimes said that privacy will be one of the great issues of our time, because of the internet, because of Facebook, Twitter, etc., etc. But it doesn't seem that there's any chance at the moment you're going to get a consensus on this. Could the Murdoch issue reflect into this debate in Australia?

PAUL KEATING: Well, I mean, Minister Conroy's now sitting on the Commonwealth Law Reform Commission report. Very reasonable recommendations. It basically says if you had a reasonable right to privacy and there are no public issues involved and they are infringed, you have a right of action at law.

For instance, those people in London who News International or the News of the World was asking the police to finger by their movements off their mobile telephone, those people had a reasonable right to believe that their free movement through London was their own affair, that they weren't to be tracked by the police via the telephone system for the benefit of a newspaper.

TONY JONES: But do you believe this sort of thing only happens in Britain? I mean, could it also have happened in Australia?

PAUL KEATING: It could have happened in Australia. In fact, your chief executive officer made the very same point in a speech a year or so ago. He - I brought the quotation in, which is a point.

He said that - Mark Scott, "With digital surveillance, location tracking and genetic tracing becoming commonplace, there's a very firm case for the law to allow people to protect their privacy." Correct. Correct.

TONY JONES: Let's talk about the politics of this with the time we've got left. Do you think Murdoch's News Limited is effectively at war with the Gillard Government?

PAUL KEATING: I think it's beyond doubt. I mean, when the Daily Telegraph yesterday is saying, "Let's have a national election," why do we need a national election? We have an operating - a clear operating majority in the House of Representatives, it's a stable majority, the business of the Government is reasonable business, that is the controversial matter is putting a price on carbon.

There is a consensus, it seems, in both Houses of Parliament for it. Why should there be an early election, other than the editors of that newspaper believing that were there to be an early election, the existing government would be defeated.

So this is why ministers are saying News Corporation is after - or News Limited is after regime change. You know, I think, you know, how can you read it any other way?

So there you have it. In a nutshell, our privacy could be law, but Stephen Conroy is just sitting on the report not doing anything. I'm sure Stephen Conroy's ears were stinging when he got a wind of that one. Anyway, it's also quaint to note that Paul Keating knows exactly what's going on over at News Corporation - they're after a 'regime change'. He always had a way with words.