Politics 2120

 

“The system that led us into our environmental, social and economic position, is not the system that can lead us out” - Anonymous

In whatever year you read this, there are just three possibilities of what your current political practice looks like. 1 - your political system is the same as it has always been. 2 - you maintain a better political system than the one I lived under in 2020. 3 - your political system is worse than mine.

To change yourself is hard enough, but to improve a political system means amending the way things have been done for hundreds of years. Only by changing the mindsets of people who are in a political system, can we change a political system. As the public is not allowed to help improve our political system, that is the greatest failing of the system we have.

Why does a political system in a stable country like Australia need to be changed? If what we have a system that favours only one section of society, which is the political ruling class, then to be fair and equal, it should be changed.

The political system that exists now, in 2020, is the same system that existed in 1920. In one hundred years, there has been so little progress that it is almost impossible to see any improvement.

Countless numbers of political parties and people have come and gone who wanted to change things. Some tried to improve our political system but were thwarted by those in power. Their efforts amounted to nothing. We still maintain the same types of politicians implementing the same kinds of policies as they did in 1920.

The reason we kept the same political system is that what our forefathers set up is constructed not to be changed. Almost no politician has had the will to create any real change. And that is because the system holds the same people with the same ideologies in power. Our system is governed by white middle-aged conservative males who have at their heart, vested interests in keeping white middle-aged conservative males in power. These people deny others who do not fit their way of thinking; their ideology. They keep change out by preventing people from joining political movements based on their race, sex and ideology.

Like a lot of countries, Australia has an almost equal number of males and females. Our current elected government is the Liberal Party (LP). There are 11 women in the LP, just one is Caucasian. The LP consists of 61 males, all but one is Caucasian. There is not one woman in the LP executive, and they are only Caucasian.

Our system prefers the same people who not only think the same, but they must look the same.

Today, there are about seven million people here who were not born in Australia. They have moved here and become citizens or permanent residents. The population of Australia sits at 25 million; so, 28% of Australians were not born here. However, in the LP team, there are two non-Australian born people out of 72 in total. So less than three per cent of people in the LP were not born here. And, only 11% of people in the LP are women. While in Australia, over 50% of the population are women. I offer you these figures to highlight how our political system works. Just in case you think I am giving you fake news; you can research my claim. The figures show that our political system supports by far just the one type of people. But, what’s more important, these people all think, vote and make policies that benefit their system and their ideology.

So what can you do to change the system?

Your voice is important. Being heard is important. However, by the time you step up to the microphone, it's too late. The system is set; the stage is set for another show that contains more of the same dialogue surrounded by the same worn-out ideology.

Nothing will change if you get up to the microphone to scream or cry out, because the system is still the same. You can't change the system after it is set in place. You can scream and cry if you want, but you will be screaming into a void where people cannot voice change, and no one is listening. As the rock band, The Who said in their song Won't Get Fooled Again, ‘meet the new boss, same as the old boss’. The new boss learnt everything he knows from the old boss.

You need to set up a new system if you want to affect change that gets rid of bosses running everything.

The old boss learned to master the game of politics many years ago. Now, the game can only be played within their rules. But, rules can be remade. The game can be redesigned.

The past democratic political systems have many attributes that are worthwhile including in a new system. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel; you just need to make sure it well lubricated with the right balance of fairness and equality. Injustice is the block in the road that holds back progression. To remove that blockage, the system needs to be changed.

When the major roadblocks in our political system are removed, the road to further change will become much easier to achieve. We can then start to see real progress and achieve equality for all.

Empathy Deficit Politics: Time for a Direct Democracy

Few people need to be taught what empathy is. But, after recent comments by our Prime Minister maybe he can use a few lessons.

Our Prime Minister Scott Morrison recently attacked Labor’s suggestion to increase unemployment benefits claiming it as “unfunded Newstart empathy”.[i] Then there is his government's uncaring, perhaps soon to be judged illegal, and dehumanising Robodebt scheme.[ii] The results of which have seen people actually taken their lives because of being hit by a computer-generated letter that tells them that they are in debt to the government and must pay it back now.

If anyone wanted a picture of what a lack of empathy looks like, they need look no further than the Robodebt scheme operating under this Liberal Government.

When it comes down to understanding each other and sorting out issues, a conservation is the best method to achieve this and not a letter of demand from an artificial intelligence system that has been poorly set up and poorly managed.

Companies that have policies that show an affinity, association, or a relationship to their customer's needs do much better than companies that have little empathy for customer requirements. “How this traditionally soft skill yields hard, bottom-line results for organizations big and small”.[iii]

Empathy is an innate, and a learned skill. However, for political expediency and trying to destroy the opposition because that is the way a government dominates political discourse, when a government shows no empathy, then they are failing the majority of the population and lacking a basic human quality.

Empathy killers are,

·        Jargon

·        Poor education

·        Intolerance

·        Haste

·        Looking the other way

·        Criticising others without putting yourself in other people’s shoes

·        Judging people 

Another strong reason for everyone to learn and show empathy is it is good for the health of our nation and for the health of our citizens. Just imagine having an unempathetic doctor or nurse? What if Scott Morrison went to a public doctor and not his private personnel doctor who is paid for by the public purse and the doctor said, sorry, you haven’t funded us properly, I can’t treat you. I wonder what he’d think about unfunded empathy then?

The decline in compassion and understanding shown by certain politicians in Australia, especially when it comes to Aboriginal people, refugees and the unemployed, all the people who have had their voices taken away, has had a serious effect on their health. In turn, the health of our nation in the eyes of the world is seen as poor and failing, which it is.

Empathy has limits on what it can achieve. And, that’s why we need more than empathy. The Australian people need to be able to vote directly on policies that affect the health of our nation in our eyes, and in the eyes of the world.

A direct democracy where people get to decide on policy initiatives would save us the time to teach politicians empathy, which they should have learned through their life but clearly have not. You and I getting to vote on primary legislation that directly affects us would mean that we get policies that are aligned to what we want and not what a select few in government want to maintain their ideology and power over us.

If we want to improve our political system, we have the power to insist on direct democracy by writing to your local member, or by forming a new party.

[i]ttps://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jul/29/unfunded-empathy-scott-morrison-pushes-back-on-growing-calls-to-lift-newstart-rate

[ii] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-18/hundreds-have-already-beaten-centrelinks-robodebt/11523278

 [iii] https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/322302

Learning about Journalism

Where do I begin?

One of my favourite things is to listen to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) news every morning.

I choose the ABC because I beleive that they have the most informative and balanced news reporting in Australia. In fact, a lot of what I know about the world comes from ABC programs. Plus, no ads. I also take in as much news as possible from many other sources.

The ABC has a greater range of investigative news, ideas, and programs than any other media outlet in Australia. It's the same for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in the UK, but I have to say, that the BBC does it better than the ABC. They have been doing it longer, but only by 10 years. ABC began in 1932, the BBC in 1922.

Below are the sites, papers, and magazines I read every day. I subscribe to The Guardian because, for me, it has the best-written content and a greater variety of coverage and stories outside the ABC and the BBC.

Non-subscription
ABC
Deutsche Welle
BBC
NPR
SBS
Google News
The Saturday Paper
The Monthly
Smart News app and Feedly for journalism stories

Subscriptions
The Guardian
Wired
Skeptic
Minerva
World Literature Today
The Philosophers Magazine
Philosophy Now
Australian Quarterly

Learning about journalism is similar to learning about music. Both can be done, to a point, by listening and reading. There is a large variety of journalistic sources to choose from on the internet, but not a lot locally. Most of the interesting and informative sites on journalism are international ones.

I go twice a week to my university library to find suggested reading for the course and also at the National Library of Australia to select books related to the study of Journalism. I hope that this course will offer me the hard facts about journalism.

Here is the course I am doing.  Bachelor of Communication and Media (Journalism) - ARB102

July 3, 2019.

Should a reader have to fact-check a story?

What's happened to journalism in the past five years?

When did the idea begin that a reader should have to fact check a story in a Newspaper? Editors and reporters are supposed to do that, not the public. Does this mean that every article in every newspaper has to be fact-checked by the reader to confirm if it is not fake news?

The News and Media Research Centre, which is part of the University of Canberra produced the Digital News Report: Australia 2019. Contained in the vast amount of information they state, "One of the biggest divisions between news consumers stems from differences in education and income. Consistently, those with lower education and income consume less news, are less interested, are less likely to pay, and are less likely to fact-check news."

I assume that their findings bare out this statement, but, I wonder how many people in the world fact-check the news? 

How does a reader fact-check an article? 

The independent American media organisation National Public Radio (NPR) offers some hints. Fake Or Real? How To Self-Check The News And Get The Facts

FactCheck.org, which checks stories mainly about the USA is another site to head to for fact-checking. 

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) have their Fact Check site.

The independent news website Crikey have their fact-check column. And there are others.

You can go to these sites and check on stories and, you can even ask them to run a fact-check for you. But who checks the checkers?

How do you know that these sites are not more fake news? The truth is, you don't. Unless you want to run your own check on the information on these sites. But who has time to do that? Do we just have to at some point say, OK, I believe this? But how can you trust them? 

The nature of fact-checking is a tricky business. Finding actual truths or hard facts are hard to uncover. 

Whatever method you use to check the truth of a story, it is clear that with the proliferation of fake news in the world, that you have to do something to check on what you are reading, hearing and seeing. It's a sad fact that we have to do this, but that is a fact. Maybe that is the only fact we can truly know. 

July 7, 2019.

What is Journalism?

Defining anything is hard, but can it be done?

What I've learnt so far is that today, and maybe since journalism was invented, journalism is meant to hold up and represent values that are similar to what religion and the police force are meant to represent, or is that do?

It's suggested that Julius Cesare invented journalism when in 59 BCE he had posted in public spaces his Acta Diurna (Daily Acts). In other words, news. It was not all the news that was fit to print, but it was a start.

Journalism didn't become a specialised and autonomous filed until the 19th century. But, professional news people existed as far back as the 17th century. The first privately published English newspaper was the Corante. Its first edition was printed in 1621.

The functions of journalism are said to be...

• To act as a mirror of society
• To help keep the people in power honest
• To act as an agent for good
• To protect, inform and promote democracy
• To tell the world what is happening
• To protect the public interest

These edited six points come from News as it Happens, 2nd Ed by Stephen Lamble.

This list sounds unrealistic to me. Because few people in the world operate by these rules, or morals if you like, so why should they choose to obey these rules just because they work for a newspaper? If you've read any newspaper, you will see that they don't, though several try hard.

Today, creating news without views seems impossible. Editorials I find a waste of time. How is it that an editor thinks that they have a right to tell the public what is right for them just because they edit a newspaper? Even if editorials are written, or edited by a group of skilled writers, no newspaper has the right to tell people what is the right way to think about a subject.

Once, some person came up with the idea that NEWS stood for North, East, West. South. In a way, this is a good description of what news is. Because it comes from all directions with all the usual inflections connected to this information. An editorial comes from one direction and it is meant to tell you what to think. Rarely does an editorial suggest. Have a read of any editorial and you will find the word "must". Editorials tell you what you must think. They tell you what others must do. 

You will notice in the six functions of journalism above that none mention you must listen to and act upon what an editor tells you. If I had a friend who told me what I must do every day, they would not be my friend for long.

Journalism is not about telling people what they must think or do. For me, journalism is about informing people about what is going on in the world. News should be news not views.

July 4, 2019.

The need for journalism

Do we need journalism?

James Madison Jr. was a Founding Father of the United States of America. He also served as the fourth president of the USA. Madison said, "A well-informed citizenry is necessary for a democracy."

I say that a well-informed public is the foundation of democracy.

The importance of news is measured by the public, not by journalists. After personal research among friends, I found that few cared about journalism and few trusted what journalists created. This shocked me. These same people glue themselves to the news every night in front of the TV. I wondered if it was because they wanted to be informed about what was happening in the world or they wanted to be entertained as they ate their dinner. I have not found the answer to that, but it seems it is more about entertainment than news.

Like most things in the world, people only care about a matter when it directly affects them. However, when it does affect them, the problem is out of their reach because they have let it slip by through not being concerned or informed. Then they scream at the TV, like me.

Journalism has changed so much since the internet that I am not sure what journalism is anymore. Is it hard news from an established and trusted source? Is it blogs, Twitter tweets, Facebook posts or is it simply an image on Instagram?

The need to define things like journalism, music styles and movie categories have basically gone since the year 2000. But journalist scream from the rafters that journalism is still important and necessary, even when no one can define what journalism is anymore. It seems that good journalism and bad journalism are both slopped into the same bucket today.

When someone shouts fake news when a journalist points out their mistakes, and this person is in power, people become blinkered and say, yeah, all news is fake unless the person that I follow tells me whether it is fake or not. So journalism loses. 

The trust that has been built up over hundreds of years in journalism is now gone because of people shouting fake news. How did we get to be so gullible and ignorant that we let a few people decide what is right and wrong for us? But this is the case. How do we combat this?

How can journalism make its point if it has been branded untrue even before stories are written? 

We have to take ownership of our education and not let anyone tell us what is right or wrong without the facts. And that's what good journalism is about. Facts are more important than views, editorials or opinions.

News people need to report only facts. There is no such thing as and there never will be a post-truth world. Truth is permanent and it cannot be altered unless you let it be. When you stop believing in yourself and start believing in others without the facts, because it's easier, you have let yourself and the world down.

Do we need journalism? If you want to be cheated of your rights, you don't need journalism. If you want views and not news, you don't need journalism. If it's alright that crime and corruption flourish underneath our society, we don't need journalism. If you want to be lied to and in the end wind up feeling like you've been robbed of your rights, dignity and your livelihood while others get rich by not paying you a fair wage, you don't need journalism.

July 5, 2019.

What's so good about Journalism?

Why Journalism?

Why would anyone in their right mind want to begin a journalism degree today when it looks like the news industry is falling apart? Why would someone who is almost 60 and was supposed to have their working career behind them start out on a new path?

Circumstances can lead you anywhere in life. But, there's one thing that has never changed for me over my life, and that's a love of the truth. That's not to say that I am always truthful and above reproach, far from it. However, as someone who as an inbuilt bullshit detector that is always on, becoming a journalist is something I should have done much earlier in life.

If there's one thing that life has taught me, it's that no one tells the truth all the time. Only liers say they tell the truth all the time.

And, that's OK. Every person who ever lived lied for all their lives. Most of the time, the lies are small, non-life threatening and are used for expediency. Why? Because no one believes the truth and it's the quickest way to get you out of trouble, so you and I think. Why is it that the truth almost never sounds real? Why do we think that even in the most minute of ways that telling the truth will make us out to sound and look like a lier?

Humans are unrealistic. We place all sorts of unrealistic expectation on ourselves and others. When we fail to meet these expectations, we lie. A lie is seen as the easiest and quickest solution to explaining why we didn't do what we said we were going to do or what we were asked to do.

Over the years of this journalism degree, I aim to turn my bullshit detector on myself and write without editing, except spelling, without pictures, unless absolutely necessary, and to never include links to articles supporting my view. I will not include comments from anyone. I don't want my writing swayed by others or taken in directions that I didn't start out heading towards.

Journalism has always been the best medium for telling and exposing the truth. Regardless of where it is today that fact has not changed. That's what is good about journalism and that's why I am doing this degree and writing this blog.

I hope this will be enlightening, informative and entertaining - now, onto the journey.

July 2, 2019.

How scary is AI generated text?

Image by Gordon Johnson from PixabaY

As part of my journalism degree, I get to learn a lot about fake news.

OpenAI and other groups have developed artificial intelligence programs that can create automated text on any subject, even strictly academic content.

In February, OpenAI unveiled a language model called GPT-2 that generates coherent paragraphs of text one word at a time. So, I tested it out. While for me, the article it generated, was complete gobbledegook, I wonder how real it would come across to other people, I mean other voters.

Here is what it produced with only minor editing on this heading "The Australian Labor Party will win the 2022 election and here's why".

The Australian Labor Party will win the 2022 election and here's why with exclusive election forecasts.

Labor's odds to win the 2022 election are looking good.

With Liberal Party polling lead falling in the wake of the May budget, this is a time for rethinking the balance between the ALP and crossbench.

Liberal Party polling lead could drop as much as 40 points in the coming six weeks as opinion trends have already turned.

Even more alarmingly for Morrison, the ALP's poll numbers have shifted sharply since October 2019.

The Coalition's election fortunes are mixed at best. Even with the Morrison government's unpopularity and the Labor Party's current political weakness, Morrison’s own numbers are still trailing Albanese by a long way.

If Albanese makes little progress on reforms to pension reforms – which Labor still claims are necessary to "ensure we live better for longer" – the Coalition will still fall a long way short of governing.

This polling is from a slightly wider sample so more precise numbers are needed, but Morrison’s party, with 37 per cent support, would still need about 60 seats at least to have absolute control.

The Job of Journalism

When did journalism go wrong?

From my research of the Canberra Times, my local paper, which began in 1926, editorial opinions starting entering their paper around the 1970s. So editorial opinions have been with us for around 50 years. How this changed people's views and ideas back then we can't know. But today opinions, views, and commentary in newspapers have a major effect on the views of the people who read them.

Opinion columns are one of the most popular parts of a newspaper today. As I have said, I fail to understand the popularity of opinion columns, but it is most likely that their popularity is due to the content of these opinions reinforcing people’s views.

Regardless of whether these views are right, wrong, inaccurate or are just outright lies pushed by editors who want to drive an issue, in my opinion, they have no right being in a newspaper. Opinions are not news. Opinions are cheap, facts are hard but rewarding.

I attended the 2019 Kenneth Myer Lecture on Thursday 15.08.2019 at the National Library of Australia. The speaker was the well-known UNESCO Chair in Journalism & Communication at the University of Queensland, author, and journalist, Peter Greste. 

Peter Greste

He spoke about Press Freedom in Australia: And why it is in Crisis. He also talked about the need for a 'Press Freedom Act' and making sure it contained an appropriate mix of rights for security agencies and the press.

I managed to get to ask him a question after his speech. My question was "With the amount of comment, opinions, and views in newspapers today, do you feel that this has pushed governments towards eroding press freedoms?"

His answer was yes. "This has indisputably helped to erode press freedom around the world.", Greste said.

It does not look like that media outlets are looking at or even thinking about curbing the commentary in their newspapers. So they can probably only expect their press freedoms to be further eroded the more vocal and one-sided they become. 

It's clear that some editorials are balanced and probably do produce positive outcomes. It's also clear that the rubbish that is purported to be editorials and commentary by some is doing nothing but harm and further disrupting a disjointed world.

I hope to one day get a job in a paper where I am allowed to report on security, political and civil matters without hindrance from our government and its agencies. But if newspapers continue to push out so much commentary, there might be no journalists jobs available because governments might restrict their activities to a point where no reporting of issues is possible.

Let's hope that media outlets find a balance and work with governments and vice versa to maintain the continued reporting of the news, which we all know is vital for a democracy.

Can Digital Journalism be Trusted?

If everything is digital today is it reliable?

Today's media environment seems to be complicating matters. We know that almost everything we touch in the digital world, that someone somewhere can see our fingerprints on what we have accessed.

Some media groups are so worried about being spied on that they document their investigations on computers that are not connected to the internet, or in fact, some create their content on typewriters. Certain media outlets tell people to only submit stories and tip-offs through snail-mail and will not speak to informers or whistle-blowers over any sort of phone. 

Are they paranoid? Not in the least. If you've seen the stories from Australia and around the world of governments, criminal and business agencies tracking, finding and harassing, charging and killing journalists, you'll know they are not paranoid.

With the click of a mouse button, anyone can put anything out across the world today. That doesn't mean that people are going to see it or can find it, but the more outrageous it is, the better chance it has of being found.

Where does all this lead to for the consumer? In fact, is the idea of the traditional audience/consumer for media information obsolete now?

Society is dramatically different today than it was 20 years ago. Many traditional businesses and social models have been disrupted, broken and some have even disappeared. Everyone is talking at everyone else, and who is to be trusted? 

The way that technology has advanced and the public's consumption of media has changed, some are even predicting that written content will disappear in the future; when that is, no one is game enough to state. 

In one of my journalism classes, the question was asked, who has a traditional TV in their house? Everyone in the class put their hand up; there were more than 50 students. But then, the teacher asked, who does not watch that TV? About 30% of the students put their hands up. They were getting their news and entertainment on their computers, tablets, and phones.

Our digital news is vastly different from what happens on TV, radio and in print. Is digital news reliable? No, it is not. It cannot be trusted. Someone with an axe to grind, a group with an untested view and even traditional media outlets are pushing out fake, incorrect and unreliable news. It's no wonder people are predicting the death of the written word and traditional media when for the sake of getting the most hits, people are publishing crap.

Digital media is measured and created on how many people are clicking stories. They are not measuring audience engagement, interaction or reactions to stories other than where and how many times stories are shared. 

But, there are groups who are fighting against all the noise of misinformation and outright lies. It looks like that almost nothing you read or see online can be trusted, and I'm of the opinion that today, that is the only thing that can be trusted. Don't trust anything you read, hear or see online. Because the chances are, someone has manipulated it to gain some benefit for themselves.

Unless you fact-check and cross-check everything I have just written, you cannot know what I'm saying is true.