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| Image by Andrew Martin from Pixabay |
To say that Australia is a democracy is not
a lie, it’s not the truth either.
Has democracy failed us? No, it can’t have.
We built our democracy; it did not build us. If we think that our democracy has
failed, we could look to the media for blame. We could look to ourselves with our
fascination for loud political leaders. Nowhere more have we seen this
fascination come to an ugly head but in the rise of populism and through its
banner carriers. Populists claim to speak for ordinary
people. But we’ve seen the results of these types and the damage they have done
to the people they say they represent. However, the media, with its opinion
columns, its hard-right/hard-left commentators, its ideologically driven
viewpoints, its financial backing and its column inch support for political
parties, the media would seem the likely culprits. President John Kennedy (no relation) once
said that “The press is a valuable arm of the presidency”. In Henry Porter’s
1984 book, Lies, Damned Lies and Some Exclusives, he said, “In pursuit
of an easy life journalists have progressively relegated themselves to the
status of mere instruments of government propaganda”. That is not true of all
journalists, but it is true of the popular media. The kind that most people
read, watch and listen to. Do you think that today’s press is an
information provider or an opinion creator? Why are there conservative
broadcasters, green presses, right and left-wing publications? Are they all
just in it for the money? Are there political journalists that you read and
others never? Why is there a twenty-four-seven news cycle? In my old university library, there is a
whole bookshelf dedicated to one man, Rupert Murdoch. Not one of these books
praises Murdoch for doing good. Not one offers a view that his publications are
fair and balanced. He alone has raised up and brought down more governments
than any other individual in history. Ownership matters. Competition matters too. This Guardian article tells you the sorry one-sided story of media ownership in Australia. Australia's newspaper ownership is among the most concentrated in the world. If political stories are told from one
angle, with an agenda or ideology behind them, and most people consume and
believe these articles, democracy dies. But who is to blame? The compliant
media or the government? If governments redact and hide their
actions and their motivations, democracy dies. Your right to know is not
greater than the governments' laws that say they have a right to conceal; and
there’s nothing you can do about it. But most people are not interested in
doing anything about press freedom. Because you can’t read about the things
that are hidden, so you are not aware of them. Just as a large part of the press does
not report on government actions. They hide their deals from scrutiny; so, you
lose, and democracy dies. Governments can bully and intimidate
anyone. Any journalist and any publication that tries to expose their
corruption will find themselves in a secret trial. Look at the Bernard Collaery
case. When governments stoke the fires of
division, democracy dies. When governments spin every story, democracy dies.
When governments turn their back on people, democracy dies. When we have a Labor opposition that does not react, condemn or stand up against the removal of rights and constant lies, democracy dies. We have let all these things happen to our
democracy. How can you not say that democracy is dead? |
