There are still 4 odd hours left in Monday August 13, 2012 and it will not close without a critique of another article published today in The Australian newspaper. For a critique on a front page article see post below.
Now to the two articles in today's Australian on last weeks announcement of changes to the NBN budget. The first one in the news reporting section, on page 3, starts with the headline, "Change to NBN rollout a $1.5bn hit". Again, why is it a "hit"? The change is $1.5bn in extra capital costs to extend connections to all houses rather than just those who have opted for a connection. This is a business decision and is expected to lead to an increase in sign-ups and returns.
Articles on the NBN are under a running sub-heading called "NBN Watch, how your billions are being spent". "Watch" is a loaded term, and is known more in situations like "Cult Watch", and "Neighbourhood Watch" and suggests that what is being watched is bad. Why do all of these suspect associations put me in mind of the phrase, subliminal message? An objective report would read more like, "NBN Observed, the pros and cons of the largest infrastructure project in Australian history".
To write, "How your billions are being spent" is loaded. "How your money is being spent" would be more balanced. "Billions" is small minded, obvious and biased. You know as well as I know that the hidden meaning is, "Billions are being wasted", when in fact it matters not how large the budget is, what matters is, is it a fair and reasonable amount to build an NBN, and, how high is the return. But News Limited is biased and only wants to focus on cost, to put the NBN in a negative light. It is not an objective observer, it is not fulfilling its role as a member of the forth estate, but is partisan on a global basis, from Fox News in the US, to Phone taping in the UK. We are supposed to automatically accept that billions must mean waste, and feel like a dill if we say that it might just be a large national infrastructure project that costs a lot, like the railways or the electricity network or the water system or the sewage or the roads (all the recent tunnels alone cost about $40bn), or the schools or the hospitals or the mining projects or skyscrapers (the Crown Casino on its own cost $2bn to build).
Note these two consecutive sentence paragraphs: "...Mr Quigley (NBN Co chief) said the cost of that change was not 'billions, but it's not a few hundred million either'". Then this: "But speaking...yesterday, the NBN chief...confirmed that the change could cost as much as $1.5bn". Am I missing something here? $1.5bn sits quite happily between "Not billions but...not a few hundred million...". So why the "But" and the "confirmed", and the "as much as"? The piece leaves the impression that somehow he has been caught out miss-quoting the amount. This is subtle, spurious, confected and wrong. It leaves you feeling petty to point out such small irregularities, but The Australian publishes many articles that consist of a series of skewed impressions that add up to outright bias, that's how they are getting away with it, so these small irregularities have to be pointed out, one after the other.
In this and in another article in the past couple of days The Australian has used the terminology, "opt out" to describe the new NBN policy. It has given the impression that a householder is somehow being pushed into signing up, that they have to take action to stop the connection. There is no opting out. The new "drop build" policy is simply that all houses will be connected to the NBN. Like electricity a householder would have to choose to connect and contacts the company to do so. The only difference is that now, if a householder does choose to connect, the process will be faster and simpler as the fibre optics are already running to the house. They do not have to "opt out" of anything and for The Australian to say that they do is dishonest.
Another thing The Australian does is obfuscates the good news. It is very good at this. Whether positioning it at the end of the article because they know that a lot of the readers do not get to the end of the article, or wedging it in between bad news, or diluting it in a complex sentence. For example, in this article we get this in paragraph number eight: "While NBN Co expects the new build method to increase the number of people who connect to the NBN, the more expensive practice has been cited as one of the key reasons for a $1.4bn increase in the capital costs of the 10-year infrastructure project, to $37.4bn".
What we have in that sentencing is the swamping of the good news with verbiage, a change in terminology, and a long and a hard to understand sentence. The only time that the positive in this story is stated is in this sentence, that the NBN expects that by changing the build method a lot more customers will sign up, thereby increasing the return on investment to taxpayers. But that message is dissolved in this confusing sentence, and is immediately followed by more of the bad, the cost. And the terminology changes: all of a sudden we have the "build drop" becoming "more expensive practice". How is it now a "practice". This seems strange, and is confusing.
The second article on this issue occurs in the commentary section of the paper, on page 12, and is written by Henry Ergas. This is where The Australian, who cannot be decent in the news section, goes all out and just becomes the opposition. The headline is, "PM IN ANOTHER FINE GOLD-PLATED MESS", and the subtitle is, "Senator Conroy and his leader are tangled up in cable, poles and wires". The article then begins by comparing them to Laurel and Hardy. This guy cannot restrain himself. Seriously, three negative, clichéd analogies before he has even got started, and a large unflattering cartoon of the Prime Minister and the Senator accompanying the article to illustrate the Laurel and Hardy theme. The rest of the article purports to be a rebuff to the Senator saying that if Malcolm Turnbull were to have built the Sydney harbour Bridge it would only have two lanes. But he goes on a long discourse into the history of the planning and construction of the bridge and does not rebuff anything. He then just ends the article by stating that the NBN is expensive. Again, just mentioning the costs seems to be all that it takes to call it a contribution to the debate.
I have not done any research on it and I don't know if anyone could predict it but what will the benefits be of an NBN? I reckon, off the top of my head that it would be like building a national railway network. You know that it is going to assist several industries a lot, and many a bit, and some not at all. You know that by having much of the population using high speed internet it will affect the high-tech culture of the country. You know that there will be many interlinked effects and economic multiplier effects, but nobody can really estimate with certainty the full effects of the National System. It may be a very good national investment. $40bn may actually be a reasonable spend. The Australian does not know any better, so why the constant denigrating of the proposal?
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Monday, August 13, 2012
Sunday, August 12, 2012
The "Australian" 13-8-12
It's really quite disappointing to pick up our only national newspaper and see that it is not something to be proud of. Where you would hope for a great newspaper with professional journalism, you get pathetic bias.
This morning is no exception. There are two issues delt with today, both where the paper is acting like the media department of the coalition. A front cover article has a headline, "Gillard's army of spin costs $150m". It is tiresome to have to parse this but here goes. The "army" are the communications staff of federal agencies such as the ATO. How these have suddernly become "Gillard's" employees, let alone "army", I fail to see. Unless they were all employed at the instigation of the prime minister or her government and represent a number significantly higher than normal practice, then the story is falsely slanted. The article fails to comment on this. Any professional story would have discussed the number of communications and media staff that there were under the Howard government, and indeed under several governments, for comparison. And whether decisions about staff are made by anyone other than the departments themselves. And whether communications employees are essential to run a department successfully in this the information age.
The headline calls all these employees "spin doctors", so all media, communications, marketing and public affairs employees are belittled in one fell swoop. This is how The Australian works. Of course to defend communications and media employees makes you sound naive. But seriously, the article does not talk about the need to communicate important policy changes to the public, imagine what the Australian would do to them if they got it wrong?
Scoop! It is probably the The Australian and the media generally that has caused the rise in the number of employees in the communications area. The media, and the Murdock press in particular, is so aggressive and unrelenting in its attacks on this Labor government that they have no option but to ensure that there are no mistakes in the delivery of information to the public. They push governments into making the Perfect the enemy of the Good, to spend up big on communications staff, to ensure that there are no mistakes that will inevitably be pilloried by the Murdock press. The 1600 may as well be "Murdock's army of Spin". (I have just watched the release of the report by Angus Huston into asylum seekers and witnessed the aggressive and simplistic associations that some of the journalists make. It is quite obvious that anyone dealing with the media needs media advice and training to withstand the onslaught and to quickly put out the fires that the more tabloid journalists are trying to light, by sophistry and half truths).
This attack article continues on page two with a much larger headline: "PM's $150m spin doctor brigade". Every piece of information in this trumped up article is skewed against the Prime Minister and the government. The first paragraph is loaded to the max: "TAXPAYERS [that's you and me] are spending about $150 million a year on an army of spin doctors to sell the Gillard government's policies to voters [that's you and me]".
This sentence could quite reasonably have read: "Australian governments and their federal departments spend about $150m a year on media and communication staff to publicise policy changes".
There is a story here, but the story is about whether, in the context of the Australian economy, $150m is a lot to spend on media. It may not be out of proportion to the size of the economy and the federal budget. We wouldn't know, the article doesn't discuss it. Also, if one government spends 30% more than a previous government, then that would also be a story, but again, no data no facts, no analysis.
The article does not analyse this at all. It does not compare and contrast...except in one suspect way. The article cherry picks some comparison data in a tabloid fashion. For example, "The total number of public affairs staff in government is more than five times the estimated 300 journalists...in the Canberra press gallery".
This is meaningless outside of a full discussion of the detail. Off the top of my head: are there another 600 journalists operating elsewhere? What about virtually? Are there numerous journalists operating in the local electorates of federal members? Are there thousands of online journalists and dedicated bloggers covering federal politics? Are there thousands of staff in think tanks and in lobby firms and in universities analysing and covering federal politics? Also, hasn't the 1600 communications and media staff got a big job to do considering that number are representing 20 massive federal departments. Consider the the size of the ATO?
The positioning of paragraphs in this article is also suspect. After this wow statistic about the numbers of journalist we get this: "Opposition Senate leader Eric Abetz seized on the figures [gee, he "seized" on them!] to accuse Labor of focusing on spin over substance and vowed to cut the numbers if in government".
This is interesting. While our mind is wowed by the meaningless, selective and tabloid comparison data, we are told that Abetz has "seized" on figures. These figures or the original figures? Yes, logically you can make a case that it is the original figures, the subject of the article, that he is seizing on...but your mind has the shock tabloid comparison present when you are told that Abetz is active in stopping this travesty. The word "seized" suggests a dynamic discovery of something bad. Abetz rides in and seizes; he then "vows" to cut the media numbers. But didn't the Howard government spend a record amount on advertising? This journalist knows that but doesn't mention it. She allows only Abetz to "vow" to cut back this scourge of media expenditure.
Further comparisons are tabloid and unanalysed, but interspersed with further Abetz spin:
1. The ATO has 271 media staff but only 100 staff involved in tax responses to organized crime. (er, wouldn't that be because the key role in busting organised crime is elsewhere, in the law enforcement departments? 100 maybe a perfectly reasonable number to liaise with those departments. We wouldn't know, it hasn't been analysed).
2. At Defence they have hundreds of media staff but only 79 troops in Western Australia's far north west. (no facts about this, just the tabloid idea that we are undefended near "strategic gas and iron ore operations". So let's see, Gillard is responsible for our golden egg mining being undefended because of her "army" of spin doctors? No facts, no analysis.)
Now four combinations in a row of comments and quotes from Abetz. Including this: "Most Australians [speculative] would agree [speculative] that spin doctors [derogatory] are not necessarily [conditional] a core business [weasel words] of a lot of these departments [indeterminate]". This guy really puts the doctor in the spin! I guess that means that spin doctors are necessarily a core business of some of these departments? But would most Australian's agree Eric? And how can spin doctors not be necessarily a core business? If they are not necessarily a core business then they are not a core business. Unless you want them to be one when you get into power? How can so much of this crap go unanswered? The answer is that Abetz knows that The Australian is going to play the role of his echo chamber.
Then another free kick to Abetz to slander the government with crimes that his own side of politics has committed en masse. But no comment by the "journalist" about this.
3. The AFP employs 40 media staff nationally but only 28 AFP officers in Tasi. (I'm not going to bother with this one. I'll let you ask the obvious questions that the "journalist" doesn't).
This front page article and its headlines are no mistake. It would take a dedicated effort to generate such a warped story and to construct it this way. This paper is corrupt. But what can be done about it?
This morning is no exception. There are two issues delt with today, both where the paper is acting like the media department of the coalition. A front cover article has a headline, "Gillard's army of spin costs $150m". It is tiresome to have to parse this but here goes. The "army" are the communications staff of federal agencies such as the ATO. How these have suddernly become "Gillard's" employees, let alone "army", I fail to see. Unless they were all employed at the instigation of the prime minister or her government and represent a number significantly higher than normal practice, then the story is falsely slanted. The article fails to comment on this. Any professional story would have discussed the number of communications and media staff that there were under the Howard government, and indeed under several governments, for comparison. And whether decisions about staff are made by anyone other than the departments themselves. And whether communications employees are essential to run a department successfully in this the information age.
The headline calls all these employees "spin doctors", so all media, communications, marketing and public affairs employees are belittled in one fell swoop. This is how The Australian works. Of course to defend communications and media employees makes you sound naive. But seriously, the article does not talk about the need to communicate important policy changes to the public, imagine what the Australian would do to them if they got it wrong?
Scoop! It is probably the The Australian and the media generally that has caused the rise in the number of employees in the communications area. The media, and the Murdock press in particular, is so aggressive and unrelenting in its attacks on this Labor government that they have no option but to ensure that there are no mistakes in the delivery of information to the public. They push governments into making the Perfect the enemy of the Good, to spend up big on communications staff, to ensure that there are no mistakes that will inevitably be pilloried by the Murdock press. The 1600 may as well be "Murdock's army of Spin". (I have just watched the release of the report by Angus Huston into asylum seekers and witnessed the aggressive and simplistic associations that some of the journalists make. It is quite obvious that anyone dealing with the media needs media advice and training to withstand the onslaught and to quickly put out the fires that the more tabloid journalists are trying to light, by sophistry and half truths).
This attack article continues on page two with a much larger headline: "PM's $150m spin doctor brigade". Every piece of information in this trumped up article is skewed against the Prime Minister and the government. The first paragraph is loaded to the max: "TAXPAYERS [that's you and me] are spending about $150 million a year on an army of spin doctors to sell the Gillard government's policies to voters [that's you and me]".
This sentence could quite reasonably have read: "Australian governments and their federal departments spend about $150m a year on media and communication staff to publicise policy changes".
There is a story here, but the story is about whether, in the context of the Australian economy, $150m is a lot to spend on media. It may not be out of proportion to the size of the economy and the federal budget. We wouldn't know, the article doesn't discuss it. Also, if one government spends 30% more than a previous government, then that would also be a story, but again, no data no facts, no analysis.
The article does not analyse this at all. It does not compare and contrast...except in one suspect way. The article cherry picks some comparison data in a tabloid fashion. For example, "The total number of public affairs staff in government is more than five times the estimated 300 journalists...in the Canberra press gallery".
This is meaningless outside of a full discussion of the detail. Off the top of my head: are there another 600 journalists operating elsewhere? What about virtually? Are there numerous journalists operating in the local electorates of federal members? Are there thousands of online journalists and dedicated bloggers covering federal politics? Are there thousands of staff in think tanks and in lobby firms and in universities analysing and covering federal politics? Also, hasn't the 1600 communications and media staff got a big job to do considering that number are representing 20 massive federal departments. Consider the the size of the ATO?
The positioning of paragraphs in this article is also suspect. After this wow statistic about the numbers of journalist we get this: "Opposition Senate leader Eric Abetz seized on the figures [gee, he "seized" on them!] to accuse Labor of focusing on spin over substance and vowed to cut the numbers if in government".
This is interesting. While our mind is wowed by the meaningless, selective and tabloid comparison data, we are told that Abetz has "seized" on figures. These figures or the original figures? Yes, logically you can make a case that it is the original figures, the subject of the article, that he is seizing on...but your mind has the shock tabloid comparison present when you are told that Abetz is active in stopping this travesty. The word "seized" suggests a dynamic discovery of something bad. Abetz rides in and seizes; he then "vows" to cut the media numbers. But didn't the Howard government spend a record amount on advertising? This journalist knows that but doesn't mention it. She allows only Abetz to "vow" to cut back this scourge of media expenditure.
Further comparisons are tabloid and unanalysed, but interspersed with further Abetz spin:
1. The ATO has 271 media staff but only 100 staff involved in tax responses to organized crime. (er, wouldn't that be because the key role in busting organised crime is elsewhere, in the law enforcement departments? 100 maybe a perfectly reasonable number to liaise with those departments. We wouldn't know, it hasn't been analysed).
2. At Defence they have hundreds of media staff but only 79 troops in Western Australia's far north west. (no facts about this, just the tabloid idea that we are undefended near "strategic gas and iron ore operations". So let's see, Gillard is responsible for our golden egg mining being undefended because of her "army" of spin doctors? No facts, no analysis.)
Now four combinations in a row of comments and quotes from Abetz. Including this: "Most Australians [speculative] would agree [speculative] that spin doctors [derogatory] are not necessarily [conditional] a core business [weasel words] of a lot of these departments [indeterminate]". This guy really puts the doctor in the spin! I guess that means that spin doctors are necessarily a core business of some of these departments? But would most Australian's agree Eric? And how can spin doctors not be necessarily a core business? If they are not necessarily a core business then they are not a core business. Unless you want them to be one when you get into power? How can so much of this crap go unanswered? The answer is that Abetz knows that The Australian is going to play the role of his echo chamber.
Then another free kick to Abetz to slander the government with crimes that his own side of politics has committed en masse. But no comment by the "journalist" about this.
3. The AFP employs 40 media staff nationally but only 28 AFP officers in Tasi. (I'm not going to bother with this one. I'll let you ask the obvious questions that the "journalist" doesn't).
This front page article and its headlines are no mistake. It would take a dedicated effort to generate such a warped story and to construct it this way. This paper is corrupt. But what can be done about it?