9/11 my thoughts

[slo crostic]

As the anniversary of what has become known worldwide as "S11" or "911" approaches I become more and more disgusted every day with how the world has become.
I am not referring to the "war on terror" or "weapons of mass destruction" nor Muslims or the leaders of the Middle East, what I am talking about is the relentless pursuit by the media to 'cash in' on an unfortunate situation, and to influence people’s thoughts and feelings on certain matters.
For the past week in Australia every newspaper has been filled with articles about the 911 anniversary, stories of tragedy and hope, and, of course, all the propaganda surrounding America's willingness to blow Saddam Hussein to kingdom come, and it’s only the 8th of September.
I, for one, am frankly sick of it. In all reality if this atrocity had have occurred in any country other than the United States it would have been in the newspapers for a week at most and nobody, other than the people of that country, would even know it was the anniversary, as a matter of fact most people wouldn't even remember what date it happened. This irrational sensationalising by the media is what causes hatred among fellow human beings and produces idiotic thought processes like “let’s blow the whole middle east to hell!”
Honestly, if the events of 9/11/01 had have happened in Australia do you really think the U.S. would be calling for an anniversary memorial where everybody is expected to turn their car headlights on at 8.47am on the day? I think not. Would there be an endless amount of TV shows dedicated to the memory of the day? No. So why do we in Australia have to put up with this rubbish being fed to us 24 hours a day?
In my opinion, the media giants have become way too powerful in their ability to influence people and as a result this power is too often used as a tool for political gain and to inspire people to perform acts of hatred against others, or even worse jump on the warmonger bandwagon.

don't get me wrong, I don't agree with what happened, and I feel sorry for anybody who lost loved ones in the disaster, but I'm just sick to death of hearing about it.

 

[James]

Kate on "The Panel" pointed out we don't have a day to remember the 12,000 people that died at Bhopal, for example. I think what annoys me most are two things :

1) Everyone refers to it as "the day America changed" or some variation thereof, but I can't actually see much evidence of constructive change. Last week's Economist had a rather harrowing article on the erosion of personal freedoms around the world, this Saturday's SMH had some interesting articles ion the subject (http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/09/06/1031115939069.html and some more articles linked from http://www.smh.com.au/specials/sept11/index.html).

2) The fact that the programming is obviously American (it all refers to "9/11") and there has been no attempt to make it relevant to Australian viewers.

 

[jtr1962]

I didn't realize the media in Australia was as bad as in America. It's true that the media attention lavished on 9/11 can be a bit much at times, but it's also true that the same event probably would have received just as much coverage regardless of where it happened just by virtue of the fact that it is a big story, and the media loves big stories. Big in this context isn't necessarily correlated with the number of deaths, but rather the manner in which those deaths occurred, which is why the tragedy at Bhopal(mentioned by James) never seemed to generate much media coverage. People dropping in the street from asphyxiation evidently isn't as spectacular as dying in the collapse of 110-story building. If there's one thing consistent about the news media, it is that they harp incessantly on the story of the moment, and generally give the rest of the news in a series of 30-second sound bites instead of having more balanced coverage. As to why they do this, I tend to think that those who run the media are a bunch of morons who can't focus on more than one thing at a time, so they assume their viewers are the same way. Whatever the reasons, the fact is that the media(especially the television news) has had this extremely annoying tendency of always having their "story of the moment". Whether it was the OJ Simpson trial, Enron, Pamela Anderson's breast implants, or Mariah Carey's nervous breakdown(the big news immediately before 9/11), there is always one story that gets a ridiculous amount of coverage, and more often than not that story is some form of celebrity gossip. Small wonder then that I had given up watching TV news entirely prior to 9/11, and nearly given up reading the newspapers. It was just the same garbage over and over again, only different names. There was rarely anything of any consequence to my personal life, or even anything interesting. The general way the media assumes everyone watching is an idiot also annoys me. Have you ever heard one of those so-called science reporters covering something technical? They treat the viewer as if they are in grade school.

I would have to say that although 9/11 didn't change anything with the media, at least it was a big enough story to warrant first page coverage on it's own merits. Of course, this was during the first months afterward. Now that the cleanup is nearly complete, the war in Afghanistan winding to a close, and things assuming a relative normalcy, it seems the media is returning to it's usual daily diet of celebrity stupidity, and I am once again not watching or reading. Although the constant coverage of 9/11 may seem an annoyance to you, for me at least it was a welcome relief from the usual news topics. I do consider some coverage of the anniversary of the attacks appropriate, but I fear the media will do their usual sensationalism and fail to give the event the justice it deserves. We certainly don't need to see hours of pictures of people crying, or of the attacks shown from 59 different angles. It would be nice to have more analysis of the events-why they occurred, exactly why the buildings collapsed, how to prevent such attacks from happening again, what will be built on the site, etc. Of course, for most of the mainstream media this is asking too much although some of the cable channels have had that sort of coverage. Rather, the mainstream media will continue to deal with the emotional rather than the factual, just as they have for a long time. Apparently, most of the general public is either stupid enough to watch this garbage, or just doesn't know any better. I would venture to say in closing that the media has the same problems it did pre-9/11, and nobody is doing anything about it.

 

[Sol]

Here in Ballarat our local newspaper had only one article on 911 over the weekend and that centered arround how much of a media circus it would be...
The media purport to be about letting people know whats going on... Well what's thier excuse this time... I think everybody knows...

 

[Mercutio]

I'm glad I don't have a TV. I don't even want to think what coverage of the anniversary is like.

One thing that does piss me off to no end is that suddenly our president is eloquent and bold (http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/08/ar911.changed.presidency/index.html) where before he was nothing but a laughingstock. Now, he's still a laughingstock, but those cracking wise at his expense are "unamerican".

Next topic: Has anyone given any thought to the reason the Bush administration feels the need to attack Iraq without provokation? The fact that Jr. and Cheney both have serious nterests in the oil industry greatly disturbs me.

2:1, Iraq gets invaded on 9/11/2002. Either that or around the primary season for the 2004 presidential elections.

 

[jtr1962]

I'm already disturbed about one thing I just read regarding the 9/11 memeorial ceremonies. They are planning to have the names of the victims read by celebrities. Nothing wrong with reading the names, but I feel it would have been more appropriately done by either the families of the victims(on a strictly voluntary basis of course) or rescue workers. In other words, those closest to the tragedy. Why do these *#@)!<+~! celebrities always feel the need to see and hear themselves on television. It annoyed me enough that these jerks were able to view the disaster site up close while the general public had to be content with seeing it from three blocks away. After all, they weren't decision makers of any sort, just media icons afforded a special privilege for no logical reason. I know it may sound mean spirited, but it's a pity the towers weren't full of celebrities, media, and politicians when they fell. On a day as solemn as the anniversary of the attacks, I don't think it's too much to ask to see only those directly involved. That still leaves another 364 days for the celebrities to massage their egos.

 

[slo crostic]

James; exactly the point I was getting at. If thousands of innocent people are murdered/maimed etc... anywhere else in the world it almost seems to not matter. It appears that one American life is worth 10 third world lives.
The only thing I can see that has changed about America is the rest of the world's opinion of them. People have either turned into American haters or Muslim haters and it's all due to the media's bias-dness (??? is that a word ??? if not it should be). About your second point, isn't that just the way Australian television, and other media, has become? There is no more local content and it seems it's more important for us to hear about some movie star or rapper or something than to be informed of local events.

jtr1962; Surely it is only a small percentage of people that are sucked in by this sensationalising by the media. Most people I know are fed up with the commercial networks and choose not to pay any attention to the 6 o'clock news headlines. I think more and more are turning to stations like the ABC and SBS for their news because they want to see the facts without all the hype. What will it take for the mainstream media to wake up and realise what the people want. btw, ABC and SBS are the only two government funded television/radio stations in oz.
The other point I would like to raise is the fact that no one seems to have really looked into why this attack happened in the first place. Surely it wasn't done by someone who woke up one morning and thought "I might go bomb America today". Whoever done it must have had a damn good reason and I haven't seen too many reporters tackle this topic. Is this because the Australian and American media have formed such close ties?


Sol; I think I might move to Ballarat! It sounds like heaven.

That's a good point merc. America's interests in crude oil have long been known, and I have often been suspicious of their ulterior motives.
btw, if you'd like to know what the telly is like....... Here in Australia channel 7 is going 24 hours with replays from every camera angle and live footage from ground zero. Is it just me or does this all seem a little sadistic?

 

[Handruin]

I for one am sick of what the media does to people. I feel if we had no media, the 9/11 incident may not of even happened. Sure my thoughts are not realistic and very opinionated. If we didn't have all these media people, then Bin laden wouldn't have a way to sensationalize the attack.

Slo, I've turned into a media hater, not a Muslim hater. I wish the US would stay out of other people's business sometimes. I feel like anytime there is a problem elsewhere that the US finds interesting, we go attack them. The US was not appointed the world’s keeper of peace.

 

[Dozer]

I'm as patriotic as any American around. I take great pride in our nation, and I felt the mixture of sorrow, anger, and disbelief that everyone else felt. I feel badly for the families and victims, but there comes a point in time where you have to look forward and heal, and I simply don't think that reliving the agony and destruction of 9/11 is in our best interest. How can you heal if every time you look around you see planes crashing into buildings, and the over-dramatized media coverage that we are bombarded with every day.

Tragedy happens around the globe. We need to be sympathetic to these things, we need to pray for the victims and lend a hand wherever possible. Imagine the positive impact we might have if we put as much effort into helping as we do in reporting these events.

 

[flagreen]

Well the smart ass in me is tempted to ask if they don't have remote controls in Australia. Changing the channel is certainly one solution.

Realistically, 9-11 is what sells right now. If no one was interested in watching programs about it there would not be any. It's as simple as that. People want to see them so we have them. Ratings are king in television even for news programs unfortunately.

People from 80 nations died on 9-11. Bhopal was tragic and a nightmare all of it's own. And it was at the time reported on very widely. But there were not the 24hr news channels such as we have now back then. And the story itself was not as "sensational" as the WTC attack which had live video of the event taking place. Were we able to have video of those poor folks convulsing and bleeding from the nose and mouth as they died in Bhopal you can bet it would be every bit as "sensational" as watching those people leaping to their deaths from atop the WTC. Thank God we don't have video of Bhopal as it happened.

Another case of "Cultural Imperialism"? Well we in the US can't sell you what you don't want, don't need, and won't buy. It's called capitalism. Come up with something better if you can, no one else has been able to. US imports far exceed exports every year. Many economies around the globe depend on the US market place to move their goods. If the US were to become the isolationist nation it once was, the world will suffer far worse then we will.

 

[Mercutio]

Hell, *I* remember the Bhopal/Union Carbide thing and I was under 10 years old when it happened. It was HUGE. Front page news, 10 minutes of the 30-minute national news broadcasts for about a week (that was huge - plane crashes would get maybe five minutes), TWO stories on the then-top-rated news program "Sixty Minutes" after the disaster and one on the cleanup, two years or so later.

For the time and culture, it was a gigantic news story.

Speaking of union carbide, Warren Anderson remains a fugitive from justice. He was just found guilty of criminal negligence in India last week, and will most likely serve a sentence of something less than two years in an Indian prison, should he ever be caught. Personally, if I had some responsibility for 3,000 deaths and untold injuries and cases of chromosome damage, I'd be really happy to *only* get two years, if it had to be served in an Indian prison.

 

[Tannin]

The worst part of it is the willed blindness to exploitation, the quite extraordinary ability of the average American to pretend that not only was this an isolated and unique event that just arrived unbidden on the entire world, rather than merely a particularly spectacular, tragic and and gruesome but ultimately routine happening, an event that differed only in scale from a thousand others like it and which pales into insignificance by comparison with the more subtle and less news-worthy but far, far more destructive events which America and its lackeys inflict upon the Third World, but to pretend also that it was quite unconnected with the massive exploitation that we rich, white nations regard as routine and just and proper, and then, in the fullness of that absurd pretence, to actually claim the very exploitation that was its ultimate cause is a virtue.

I had ignored this thread, not so much as glanced at it till now, but it was refreshing to see that it contains a great deal of sense and very little of the mindless, ill-informed bombast that tends to dominate this topic in other fora. Well posted gentlemen.

 

[flagreen]

Where did you get the idea that Americans thought this was isolated and unique event when compared to what happens frequently throughout the rest of the world?

When it is compared to what happens in America, it is an isolated and unique event. But I've not heard anyone say here it was any more tragic than Bhopal or other similar incidents. In America the attack was taken in a very personal way by Americans for very obvious reasons one would think.

Whatever your media in Australia does we cannot answer for. If they have blown it out of proportion with the rest of the worlds tragedies then your problem is with the Australian Media and not the American media or the American people.

Tannin, you are ever the idealist. And your post is well thought out and written. We depend on the idealists in this world to set markers for the rest of us and are fortunate to have folks such as yourself to do just that. It is sad fact though that we live in a very pragmatic world.

 

[flagreen]

PS - How do you like the new avitar?

 

[Will Rickards WT]

I often go between periods of "TV sucks!" and "I love this show". I was thinking the other day that media as we know it sucks so bad because it is only a broadcast system. How much it would change if it were an interactive two-way consumer choice based system. Instead what we have is devices that attempt to simulate some of that in the TIVO and similar PVR devices. Or even worse by giving you 450 channels and still there is nothing worth watching.

I guess today is one of those days I think the world would be better if we all threw our tv's out the window.

 

[Will Rickards WT]

PS - How do you like the new avatar?

It's cool... cool tux...

 

[Tea]

PS - How do you like the new avitar?

Cool!

 

[Tannin]

Ghostwheeel over at SR linked to this. That pretty much puts it in a nutshell. Just imagine for one moment that this event had happened in Sydney. Would we be any different? Less crass? Less mawkish and exploitative? Alas, no. Hell, if I ever turned the TV on, I'd probably discover that, 10.000 miles and another country away or not, we already are. But then, when the Hollywood studios already own us in large part, and the sad remnants of our long-cherished and once-wonderful national institutions like the ABC are more and more indistinguishable from the tasteless, homogenised, sensationalist Uncle Sam variety in any case, where is the surprise? You are what you eat, and our minds are, in the main part, no better than what we feed them. It is no wonder that we too suffer from chronic mental constipation when our overseas-inflicted diet is the same adulterated, colourised, artificially flavoured, over-sweet, high-fat McDonaldised psudo-food that Hollywood and the networks inflict on everyone.

 

[slo crostic]

Well the smart ass in me is tempted to ask if they don't have remote controls in Australia. Changing the channel is certainly one solution.

Aaah but what to do when 4 out of our 5 channels are showing 911 replays and docos and the other is screening lawn bowls?

I guess today is one of those days I think the world would be better if we all threw our tv's out the window.

You sum it up beautifully Will.

 

[flagreen]

Frankly most of that article is far more disgusting than anything planned for 9-11 so far.

 

[Tannin]

Thankyou for that kind and thoughtful post, Bill. I know that you and I shall never agree on these matters but, as so often, your restraint and your ability to see sense in views that are quite resolutely opposed to your own does you credit.

Whatever your media in Australia does we cannot answer for. If they have blown it out of proportion with the rest of the worlds tragedies then your problem is with the Australian Media and not the American media or the American people.

This is just the rub: our media is not Australian. It's not Australian owned, it's not Australian controlled, it is entirely in thrall to the media empires of the world - which are overwhelmingly American. When I was a child, we had laws to protect our intellectual soverignty. They were lax and weak and mostly honoured in the breech, but they nevertheless had some substantial effect. But bit by bit they have been whittled away to the point now where one might as well abandon the pretence altogether. And it is utterly impossible to change them back. No government, no matter how popular, can stand against the overwhelming power of the press-barons. Indeed, our two main parties make fools of themselves in their eagerness to find yet another concession to give away in their never-ending battle for the imprimateur of the press barons.

I understand that this applies in most of the developed world, by the way, with only France and perhaps Scandinavia holding firm against the deluge of mindless, yanke-twanging mediocrity. And, if I am any guess, it applies in the US too. Do you still have regional identies? Regional accents and habits of speech? Or is your culture, too, fast dissapearing, your own children becoming just one more batch of ill-educated carbon copies of the McDonaldised Hollywood consumer?

 

[Buck]

All the more reason to keep television viewing to a minimum. Television and film studios have the inclination to sensitize our minds to what is truly dreadful, and then play our minds like a puppeteer for their own interest.

The events that occurred on September 11th of last year are alarming and distressing. Nevertheless, previous attacks against peace have occurred far too often before this event (especially in the 20th century), and on a much grander scale. The press only reports these events as long as a profit can be made. Once the sensation of the moment passes, something else is covered and previous atrocities are shelved like outdated parts for future abuse (e.g. live televised police chases). Media coverage around the globe varies, but they all seem to have their own faults.

As far as war goes, it is interesting how countries that have suffered massive losses and appalling consequences from previous wars, are less interested in pursuing another war – unlike the United States.

 

[flagreen]

I understand that this applies in most of the developed world, by the way, with only France and perhaps Scandinavia holding firm against the deluge of mindless, yanke-twanging mediocrity. And, if I am any guess, it applies in the US too. Do you still have regional identies? Regional accents and habits of speech? Or is your culture, too, fast dissapearing, your own children becoming just one more batch of ill-educated carbon copies of the McDonaldised Hollywood consumer?

We still have regional identities. What distinguishes one from the other has changed perhaps but they still remain. One benefit of having 50 different state governments who still have a fair amount of power, despite the effort to expand the federal government here in the last 40 years, is that we still retain a degree of identity according to what state we live in or hail from. On the other hand you can go into any sizable municipality in this nation today and you will find a Kmart, a Walmart, a McDonalds, etc. and that was not the case 30 years ago. Politics, and not agriculture, has become the means by which metropolitan areas and rural are separated today. You need only look at the 2000 general election results to see that very clearly. We still have a variety of dialects as well.

It's hard to know how much what we see on TV is the problem vs. the very fact that we have such a far reaching means of communication is to blame. Communications has changed so dramatically in the last 50 years that it could be what you see happening in Australia and elsewhere would happen no matter what the content of that which is broadcast might be.

Technology is not going to regress and so there is only more of the same to come in the future I'm afraid. Perhaps all we can do is look for the good it which we sometimes seem to overlook as we morn that which has been lost.

 

[flagreen]

As far as war goes, it is interesting how countries that have suffered massive losses and appalling consequences from previous wars, are less interested in pursuing another war – unlike the United States.

I've got to disagree with your premise that nations who have suffered greater losses than the U.S. are less inclined to go to war. Europe over the centuries has had staggering losses due to war and yet the "War to end all Wars" a.k.a. "The Great War" was superseded by one that it pales in comparison to regarding the loss of human life. Each of these wars fought in Europe within the last 100 years. And those were fought following the 19th century in which similarly devastating wars were also fought on the same continent by the same parties. Europe's current reservations about going to war is more likely a result of the fact that they have nothing to gain by it and little else. Certainly Britain had no reservations about fighting the Falklands war. Nor did the USSR have such reservations about fighting a ten year war in Afghanistan.

 

[Buck]

As far as war goes, it is interesting how countries that have suffered massive losses and appalling consequences from previous wars, are less interested in pursuing another war – unlike the United States.

I've got to disagree with your premise that nations who have suffered greater losses than the U.S. are less inclined to go to war. Europe over the centuries has had staggering losses due to war and yet the "War to end all Wars" a.k.a. "The Great War" was superseded by one that it pales in comparison to regarding the loss of human life. Each of these wars fought in Europe within the last 100 years. And those were fought following the 19th century in which similarly devastating wars were also fought on the same continent by the same parties. Europe's current reservations about going to war is more likely a result of the fact that they have nothing to gain by it and little else. Certainly Britain had no reservations about fighting the Falklands war. Nor did the USSR have such reservations about fighting a ten year war in Afghanistan.

The premise is not just based on greater loss, but also the location of the battles. If the United States had its country torn to shreds on numerous occassions by wars they started, or did not start, their impressions of another war would be different.

 

[slo crostic]

On the other hand you can go into any sizable municipality in this nation today and you will find a Kmart, a Walmart, a McDonalds, etc. and that was not the case 30 years ago.

It's exactly the same here in Australia, except it was only 20 years ago, not 30, and I think Australia was a much better place before all that. I remember going for family sunday drives as a child and stopping in at a fish and chip shop for a real hamburger, the sizzle of the meat (real meat that is) on the hot plate, a bit of a conversation with the owner of the place, a feeling of community spirit. Now everything is so sterile and plasticised, even the person asking "would you like fries with that?" seems to come out of the same mould as the Mc Nuggets. And what ever happened to that local clothing shop? Oh yeah, they bulldozed it to build a friggin' Kmart.
The Australian way of life is dying fast, if not already dead. Just 20 years ago I remember everyone my age getting together for a game of footy or cricket in the park wearing their "Bonds" singlets and footy shorts, going home for a "four'n'twenty pie" for lunch. Nowadays, because the kids have given in to the intense American marketing forced upon them, and all they do is "hang out" at the local "7eleven" saying "yo homey" with their "Nike" and "Adidas" gear on and a can of "Coke" in one hand and a "Big Mac" in the other.

WTF has happened to the Australian way of life? It has disappeared because foreign companies, not just American, have been allowed to push their products/way of life on an unsuspecting culture. And it's happening all over the world. I would even go so far as to say this is probably half the reason for the problems in the middle east at the moment. If the Muslim culture was never exposed to the "freedom" of the US, they would still be happily living the same way they have for thousands of years.

 

[James]

Slo,

I'm afraid I see that as being a very anti-globalisation (dare I say, John Howard-esque :wink: ) view of the world.

20 years ago if you went out for a meal in Australia, to use your example, your choice was basically bad UK-inspired food (meat and 3 veg, all overcooked), or the early stages of fast food such as you describe. Nowadays you have a wide choice of wonderful food from across the world, and Australian cuisine itself has benefited enormously as well. Kmart and shops like it have brought a huge choice of products out to where people live and offered them at prices more and more people can afford. Shops have evolved into what they are today because they more closely match the way that most people want to shop.

Many American companies have been tremendously successful since WWII. This could never have happened unless people around the world wanted to buy their product, or image, or whatever. Whether you agree with it or not, the buying public out there is voting with their wallets. 20 years from now the influences on popular culture will be completely different again - perhaps it will be China, Japan, Russia, Europe, who knows. It's inevitable.

Children are influenced by the popular culture that surrounds them as they grow up. This hasn't changed. The fact that today you don't like the culture they are growing up in - well, your parents probably didn't like the culture you grew up in either. Globalisation and technology move everything forward at a tremendous (and accelerating) rate - you can no more change this than stop the sun rising each morning. You can't turn back the clock to 50 or 100 years ago when the rate of change was much slower either, the genie is well and truly out of the bottle. The point I'm trying to make is that it all brings positives and negatives, and to my way of thinking the positives far outweigh the negatives.

 

[time]

20 years ago if you went out for a meal in Australia, to use your example, your choice was basically bad UK-inspired food (meat and 3 veg, all overcooked), or the early stages of fast food such as you describe.

Eh?

Kmart and shops like it have brought a huge choice of products out to where people live and offered them at prices more and more people can afford.

*choke* .......... WTF?

The point I'm trying to make is that it all brings positives and negatives, and to my way of thinking the positives far outweigh the negatives.

James, I had no idea cane toads had penetrated so far south. You really should be more discreet. :bigeek: :eek4:

 

[flagreen]

Speaking of cane toads, do folks actually use them to get high?

 

[time]

Yes. They smoke the dried skins. Which of course was my inference ...

 

[time]

Ummm, did anyone read the musical review I posted? It was relevant to this thread.

 

[flagreen]

Yes I read it. What isn't clear is who wrote it.

 

[cas]

This is just the rub: our media is not Australian. It's not Australian owned, it's not Australian controlled, it is entirely in thrall to the media empires of the world - which are overwhelmingly American.

Hmm....
That's ironic. The greatest media baron in America, is from Melbourne.

 

[cas]

WTF has happened to the Australian way of life? It has disappeared because foreign companies, not just American, have been allowed to push their products/way of life on an unsuspecting culture. ... I would even go so far as to say this is probably half the reason for the problems in the middle east at the moment.

I was enjoying an innocent upbringing, when Hey Dad (take a bath Nudge!) was "unsuspectingly" "pushed" on me.
Somehow I managed to stand against Australian cultural imperialism in its various forms. Even Kyle Minogue wasn't enough to get me to fly a plane in to the Sydney Opera House.

 

[Tea]

You mean Rupert Murdoch, Cas. A very interesting man.

As I recall, the Murdoch family originally came from South Australia, though doubtless he lived in Melbourne for a time. Sir Keith Murdoch was the main man, Rupert is his son. Rupert would be about 65 now, I guess. Sir Keith was a media baron in the old style. He had daily papers in several states, and when television began in 1956, soon arranged to have a metropolitan TV station in a number of states too. (As I recall, it was the Sir Frank Packer who got the first commercial TV stations, the Nine Network, then Fairfax got the Seven Network, and Murdoch had to wait till ... er 1962 I think it was ... for the third and last of the commercial TV licences, which was the Ten Network. Murdoch was still relatively small beer then. Small by comparison with the Packers, at any rate.)

The system was quite well-defined. The major capital cities all had two daily newspapers, which were owned by different companies. Only the smaller capitals had a single company control all their news: Brisbane (Packer), Adelaide (Murdoch), and Perth (Murdoch). You were, by law, allowed to own a major daily newspaper or a TV network in any particular state, but not both at the same time. And you were not allowed to own TV stations in more than two of the three major cities. (Or something like that. I forget the particulars.)

Sir Keith Murdoch died or retired sometime in the Sixties. And this was when everything changed. At that time we had Frank Packer's Consolidated Press, which was well to the political right and owned two of the three Melbourne papers, plus one of the two Sydney ones, the Fairfax group who were a little right of centre-right and owned one of the two quality papers in Australia (the Sydney Morning Herald) plus a TV network and various other papers around the country, David Syme & Co., who owned the best paper in Australia, the Melbourbe Age, which was centre-right, and Murdoch, who owned Adelaide. Perth, some TV, and a few other things, and was well to the right - even further so than the Packer papers.

Murdoch went to Gough Whitlam, the up and coming leader of the Labour Party, who were poised to make their first serious bid for government in 30-odd years. They did a deal: the Murdoch press would use their influence to help Gough get elected in 1972, and the Whitlam Government would relax some of the cross-media ownership rules. This, of course, increased the power of the press barons still further, and changed the balance of power in this country forever: once the pendulum had swung this far, it could never swing back.

The rest was history, and downhill all the way. Every few years there is an election, and the press barons hold a little auction: who will strip away the most of the very few remaining restrictions on them? That's who they support, and they never back a loser. It's pretty much open slather now. David Syme and Co are gone, merged into the Fairfax Group, Packer owns something like 75% of the glossy magazines, plus the papers, plus the TV network, and anyone can own a TV station, just so long as his name is Packer, Murdoch or Fairfax and he is an Australian citizen, and there is absolutely nothing to prevent you owning 100% of the news in any particular city and one of the three TV stations. (Or two TV stations, if you grease the right palms.)

The really interesting part, though, is that Rupert Murdoch hasn't lived in Australia since we was about 20. He spent years overseas, building up his empire, and eventually bought the London Times, amongst other things - and this required that he renounce his Australian citizenship, for it would not do at all to have the Times owned by a foreigner. So he became an Englishman so far as the English were concerned, but remained an Australian so far as his right to own Australia's media went. And then he bought into the American media. He is now three different nationalities: English, Australian, or American, depending on which particular legislature he is lying to today in order to extend his ownership of the gutter press.

But be he English, American or Australian, there is no doubt that Murdoch's empire is one of the most powerful, greedy, and unpredictable organisations in the whole world.

 

[timwhit]

It's exactly the same here in Australia, except it was only 20 years ago, not 30, and I think Australia was a much better place before all that. I remember going for family sunday drives as a child and stopping in at a fish and chip shop for a real hamburger, the sizzle of the meat (real meat that is) on the hot plate, a bit of a conversation with the owner of the place, a feeling of community spirit. Now everything is so sterile and plasticised, even the person asking "would you like fries with that?" seems to come out of the same mould as the Mc Nuggets. And what ever happened to that local clothing shop? Oh yeah, they bulldozed it to build a friggin' Kmart.
The Australian way of life is dying fast, if not already dead. Just 20 years ago I remember everyone my age getting together for a game of footy or cricket in the park wearing their "Bonds" singlets and footy shorts, going home for a "four'n'twenty pie" for lunch. Nowadays, because the kids have given in to the intense American marketing forced upon them, and all they do is "hang out" at the local "7eleven" saying "yo homey" with their "Nike" and "Adidas" gear on and a can of "Coke" in one hand and a "Big Mac" in the other.

WTF has happened to the Australian way of life? It has disappeared because foreign companies, not just American, have been allowed to push their products/way of life on an unsuspecting culture. And it's happening all over the world. I would even go so far as to say this is probably half the reason for the problems in the middle east at the moment. If the Muslim culture was never exposed to the "freedom" of the US, they would still be happily living the same way they have for thousands of years.

This is OT, but I want to say it anyways. It seems people are always complaining about the American culture being forced down the throats of people all over the world. This may be the case, but how many of the people whose culture was squashed for the American culture would go back to the way that things were before?

I read something awhile back about the people of Nepal. The Sherpas had a very strong cultural heritage but when high altitude mountain climbing became popular the American and other Western cultures started to be brought to the region. People thought of this as a bad thing that these people were being robbed of their heritage and now there were eating Doritos (tm) and watching TV instead of whatever they used to do. But, the people wouldn't want to go back to the old existance, they want their junk food and their TV.

I think I pulled this from a book called Into Thin Air it was a NYTimes bestseller for awhile, a good read.

 

[time]

Yeah, drug addicts don't want to stop either. I don't know that that means a country is better off.

I was enjoying an innocent upbringing, when Hey Dad (take a bath Nudge!) was "unsuspectingly" "pushed" on me.
Somehow I managed to stand against Australian cultural imperialism in its various forms. Even Kyle Minogue wasn't enough to get me to fly a plane in to the Sydney Opera House.

:rofl: Yes, an excellent point and well made.

 

[Tea]

That's the thing with culture, Tim. You can't go back.

As Tannin might note, that Would you like fries with that order? story of his is utterly ridiculous, not because it doesn't, in its own peculiar and light-hearted way, deal with a very serious issue, but because only a genuine Australian (I don't like the term "patriot" but you may use it if you wish) would respond with an appropriate surge of feeling to it - and there are very few genuine Australian patriots left, nearly all of them over 40. Because we handed the keys to our national decision-making process along with the keys to our culture over to a handful of very rich men and the multi-national corporate systems they head, we lost the ability to chart our own course.

Our children are no longer Australians. Most have never heard of Blinky Bill or Albert the Magic Pudding, they speak in American jargon, wear baseball caps, give one-another high fives, they don't even know that anything is different!

They can't "go back" because they have never known anything different. They grew up watching the same damn telivision that you did. God help us, we even get American network news now - right down to the bloody weather forcast!. They are an orphan generation, at home in neither place: they are not Australian children, they are American children who had the misfortune to be born in the wrong state.

Ekaf-Ami, with his constant misunderstanding of which states are countries and which states are one of the United States ("Ontario? Is not Ontario being one of United States all same as California, Texas, and New Zealand?") is not the fool that he appears.

What is "culture"? It is a system of ideas and beliefs and common values and shared experiences, which are passed on from one generation to another. By owning and controlling the mechanism through which these shared ideas and experiences are communicated, the international media companies (which are overwhelmingly American, of course) have the ability to shape, change, and disrupt the cultures of all the nations that they control, and they use this ability constantly.

 

[Tea]

What is "Hey Dad?"

We don't watch TV here in the Tannin household, so I guess that it's an Australian-produced TV show, yes? Is it Australian? Or is it just more disposable, Americanised Hollywood pap that just happens to be set in Sydney instead of Boston?

 

[jtr1962]

What is "culture"? It is a system of ideas and beliefs and common values and shared experiences, which are passed on from one generation to another. By owning and controlling the mechanism through which these shared ideas and experiences are communicated, the international media companies (which are overwhelmingly American, of course) have the ability to shape, change, and disrupt the cultures of all the nations that they control, and they use this ability constantly.

Believe it or not, there is a similar invasion of American pop culture right here in America, so I know exactly where you're coming from.

As strange as this may sound to you, one of the negative parts of the decline in crime in my city in recent years has been the influx of many of these American institutions like Disney into NYC that weren't here before. For some reason, although it's always been technically part of America, NYC is really a huge collection of small, ethnic neighborhoods, totally different than middle America. Though I'm second(or third) generation American, I've never really felt comfortable with mainstream American culture or identified with it. Rather, I've always thought of myself as a citizen of the world, probably because I've had the world at my doorstep in both a figurative and literal sense. I can only hope that the large corporations don't turn this city into another typical, bland 100% American city, although there is some evidence that the process has already started. That being said, I tend to think that even in America, the cities do tend to maintain their own unique identities. It is only the sterile, bland suburbs that are really, truly stereotypical vulgar, materialistic American culture, and I'll do anything in my power to keep the cities, especially my own, from becoming the same.