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April 17, 2004
After listening to this story on blogging on Radio National yesterday, I came across this media manifesto this morning. That was after I had flicked through the pro-war pages of the Weekend Australian. It was filled with the rhetoric of 'we fearless warriors gotta fight the terrorists to the death, and we have to take out all those who dare resist US power.'
Like Rebecca Blood I am 'disappointed by press coverage of current events. Too often, journalists unskeptically accept whatever "facts" are given to them by authorities without verifying that they are true.' My disappointment is more than just that. Despite the many examples of excellent journalism, many journalists often do not understand the issues they write about, and most fail to deconstruct the political rhetoric of the day.
The Alternet manifesto says that we live in a media-driven, commercial culture, where it's hard to escape the ever-increasing waves of advertising, infotainment and spin. A lot of this, it says, can be attributed to the privatization and deregulation of the public airwaves. It has lead to media moguls like Rupert Murdoch of News Corporation. News Corp has turned journalists into attack dogs for a partisan (right-wing) political cause, defines the liberal media as an enemy and sees televison as a form of entertainment that has no need for ethics.
Consequently, the media has become a battlefield for those who hold that a healthy, participatory democracy requires noncommercial access to the tools of communication. This requires battling the free marketers who want to end all restrictions on media ownership and to privatise public broadcasting. The other strategy is to create spaces for independent media (eg., online media) to produce good quality civic or public journalism and for the deliberation about public policy by citizens.
Despite some bloggers seeing themselves as proto-journalists, many of us are writing against the established journalists in the corporate media. As Jay Rosen, from the New York University Department of Journalism says we bloggers are writers in the public forum who are using a democratic media tool to participate in the formation of public opinion and shape the public conversation on public issues.
We are critical readers of the media and we do not see ourselves as working within the institutional conventional standards of professional journalism. We are more like democratic citizens deliberating on public issues, engaging in public debates and decoding the political rhetoric of the day.
Blogging is not conventional journalism, says Jay Rosen and Rebecca Blood. Yet there is a lot of mix and match going on between these different kinds of writing, as JD points out over at New Media Musings. And a lot of journalism has little to do with the conventional understanding of journalism.
What is of concern to bloggers as active citizens is the quality of political debate in Australia. As Christopher Seith, writing over at Margo Kingston's Webdiary, points out:
"Debates which appear ultimately to bog down in finger pointing do little to achieve a better world. There is a tendency to characterise political arguments as some kind of Manichean struggle, “good guy” versus “bad guy”. We seek to prove how disconnected our opponents are from us and from reality, rather than seeking to understand the points of connection. We have turned both our political and intellectual processes into adversarial forums where both sides arm themselves with their own self righteousness. We are more intent on “I told you so” than analysis. Little wonder that our “analysis” leaves us feeling more scared and alienated."
Changing that political culture in Australia is a big ask.
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Having run an Australian political forum, I have to agree with Margo Kingston's Webdiary.
I don't see any great new hope for democracy in forums, blogs and email lists.
Blogs tend to attract like-minded individuals preaching to the already-converted. A prime example is the Tim Blair blog.
Forums tend to reach people on either end of the spectrum and they tend to just yell at each other. As Margo says, 'adversarial forums where both sides arm themselves with their own self righteousness'.
Forums also attract their share of nutters who convinced there is a conspiracy in everything.
Email lists have had their day with the growth of forums and blogs.
I think the people who should be reading the blogs and participating in the forums, those who would benefit the most, are out watering their gardens or playing sport. These are the people who probably see a computer as a necessary evil, an adjunct to their jobs, not as the perceived new tool of democracy.
I doubt politicians take much notice of Internet political traffic. They seem still to be at a point where they see more weight in a snail mail letter than a well-argued email.
Perhaps things will change but I have a bleak view of the democratic process at the moment in Australia, the US and the UK: politicians no longer seem accountable to their constituencies.