Media Manipulation?

[Alan Wanwierd]

A story broke in Australias media last week and it shocked me to the core. Not because of the story - but the way it was presented!

Let me give a little background summary:

Just before xmas there was a flare up on a few Sydney beaches where groups of local muslim lebanese youth were involved in a disturbance which then resulted in a "White Australian" backlash... The scenes were as ugly as these things get with gangs of white guys chasing and beating anyone with vaguely dark skin whilst waving an Australian flag and chanting neo-fascist like rhetoric.

Some of the non-white communities around the area responded with riots and property damage and the situation got out of control for a little while before calming down over xmas. The situation seems to have stabilised.

This week the headlines were "Flag burner jailed for 3 months". With details revealing that a young man of middle eastern background had been jailed for 3 months following and incident where he burned an Australian flag. It was not alledged that he was involved in any of the riots or violence in any way.

At first reading this story made no sense. Obviously ALL the commercial TV networks and the regular Murdoc and Fairfax press jumped on the story with tales of how Australia was claiming back civilised society and how such disrespect by immigrants was finaly not being tollerated.. It was presented as a victory for common sense - a thug put back in his place.. it offended me!

To me it seemed that I had NO IDEA what this guy had done to justify punishment! Surely burning a flag cant be illegal? Its just a piece of cloth?!

On closer inspection and with a bit of digging it turns out that the man in question had been issued a "Good Behaviour Bond" just one week before the incident (I'm not sure exactly what that means - but its *very* formal warning to stay out of trouble!). The flag he had burnt was stolen and at the time Sydney residents were subject to a TOTAL fire-ban (the threat of bush-fires is taken very seriously). So as it turns out the fact that this guy burnt a flag is largely irrelevant to the story! He could have just as easily stolen and set fire to a surfboard and got a 3 months sentence!

Legally this was not the Australian establishment probing new boundaries and asserting itself against racial statements - it was a simple criminal matter.

Of course, a simple criminal matter of theft and arson is not an exciting news story and adding the 'racial hatred' angle to the story makes it more interesting - but to what extent is this false reporting? Are the media guilty of trying to provoke further racial incidents by over-emphasising this angle and attempting to enrage immigrant populations? Perhaps, since riots, terrorism etc are all extremely news worthy (and any further outbreak of such things would be good for business) the corporates are happy to 'fuel the fire' of social dysfunction?

Am I paranoid? Are the media reasonable doing this or should they have some social responsibility?

(Can we discuss this without getting the thread deleted? - Note to moderators - PLEASE dont just delete this thread without telling me whats wrong first - I want top hear other peoples opinions! [Can you lock without deleting perhaps, *if* it goes bad])

[David O'Meara]

I always remind myself that the first priority of newspapers is to sell newspapers. It often manifests in the way you pointed out, as slanting the story (or the headline) in a way to get the most reaction.

While this in itself is nothing new, I've been noticing it getting worse over the years in Oz. In particular there were several papers in Sydney I stopped reading due to their habit of associating vaguely related pictures with an article just to grab the eye and make it appear more interesting.

Such as reporting a bush fire, and attaching a photo of a shell of a burnt out house with the caption "Scenes like this would have been common if not for...". In the west we only have a choice of two local rags, I can't bring myself to open the weekend offering, the weekly paper is slightly better, in that it reports news rather than rumour, but it one that has been declining in quality.

[Aj Mathia]

These recent incidents are shocking. Whats Aussieland coming too.
The laid-back atmosphere of Australia was the main reason I decided to migrate to Australia some years back. I had many arguments with my friends from Sydney whenever they mentioned about racism here, I for one never faced any form of it till I visited Sydney a year back. One bloke yelled �F@#Kin Ni@@ers� at a decent looking Asian-origin couple who were hanging around the NorthSydney train station. I was pretty shocked but I did not even see a look of surprise among the bystanders.
Is this just Sydney or do you guys notice such behaviour in QLD and (David where are you from?)
I can safely claim that Canberra is safely away from such nonsense. None of my friends have faced anything like that here till now.
By the way do you feel that the crime rate / population is quite high in Australia and worsening.
I don�t want my Australia to be like another..

[Dave Lenton]

Originally posted by Adrian Wallace:
Are the media guilty of trying to provoke further racial incidents by over-emphasising this angle and attempting to enrage immigrant populations? Perhaps, since riots, terrorism etc are all extremely news worthy (and any further outbreak of such things would be good for business) the corporates are happy to 'fuel the fire' of social dysfunction?

As said before, the media is primarily concerned with making a profit, and will do whatever they can get away with in order to do so. This means that its in their interests to portray incidents and emotionally simple and easy to understand issues. If people think too much about the news then they'll start looking for other more reliable news sources. If they are conned into a black and white simplistic view of the world then they will be more likely to believe news stories which support this view.

Its a big problem here in the UK as well. The most popular newspaper in the country is notorious for simplifying issues and putting a biased spin on things, yet people still buy it because it tells them what they want to hear. I suspect that there is a similar problem with certain TV channels in the US.

Are the media reasonable doing this or should they have some social responsibility?

From the view point of their shareholders/owners they are perfectly reasonable in doing this - profit is the name of the game after all. From the view point of society its not so good though. Encouraging people to take a simplistic and therefore incorrect view on things has got to be dangerous. Lets not forget the role of the media in promoting fundamentalist politics throughout history.

What can be done about it though? Probably nothing much. The media are so politically influential that politicians are very unlikely to attempt to restrain them. The only way in which they can be forced to change is by hurting them financially; by refusing to buy their products. This will only have limited success though, as people are continuously brainwashed into the media's simplistic view of the world.

Hopefully the Internet, with its ability to allow a huge number of people to look into and shout loudly about media mistakes and bad practices, will help to encourage media responsibility..... but I wouldn't hold my breath.
[ January 16, 2006: Message edited by: Dave Lenton ]

[Alan Wanwierd]

Originally posted by Ajay Mathew:
...Is this just Sydney or do you guys notice such behaviour in QLD...

From what I can see Brisbane and Sydney both have a large and diverse immigrant populations. However, the difference (I think), seems to be that whilst Sydney is multicultural in the sense that it has a Vietnamese area, a Lebanese area, a Philippino area, an Italian area and so on, Brisbane has a much more homogenous population with no subset of population having a destinct defined region!

This seems to highlight the 2 different approaches to migration - in Brisbane immigrants have tended to assimiliate, watering down their original cultural identity to fit in with society. In Sydney there has been less assimilation and more cultural clustering. This leads to Brisbane being criticised for not being tolerant of different cultures (we are all essentially forced to take on the same behaviour), but Sydney being criticised for not allowing society to 'gel' together and encouraging 'ghetto-isation' (ok I made that word up!)...

In either case the media portrayal of events in Sydney can only be harmful.

[marc weber]

Well, I would just caution against taking a "black and white simplistic view" of "the media" (whatever that means). :roll:

[David O'Meara]

Cronulla was mentioned on ACA again tonight, but the less said there the better. Can we add 'Investigative Journalism' to the list of media sins? Again, something which has served a purpose over time, but in general it degenerates to dirt digging and flimsy exagerated story lines. Or a reguritation of the latest Choice magazine

[Dave Lenton]

Originally posted by David O'Meara:
Can we add 'Investigative Journalism' to the list of media sins? Again, something which has served a purpose over time, but in general it degenerates to dirt digging and flimsy exagerated story lines.

I good example of this happened this week in the UK. The coach of the national football team, Sven Goran Eriksson was tricked by a reporter into discussing the possibility of him leaving his job to manage another team. The reporter was pretending to be a rich investor in this other team. As part of the discussion, Sven also made several comments about players which they would find upsetting (he said one was lazy, for example).

The details of this conversation where then revealed in lurid details by one of the less reputable rags

While Sven was extremely naive to have this conversation, the paper certainly seems to have taken their own interests over those of the country in general. This year is a World Cup year, and in a few months the England team will need to be at its best. By releasing the story now, in the build up to the competition, the paper will have severely disrupted the team spirit and upset the coach.

They could have released the story after the world cup, but then they would have run the risk of it not working if England had have done well and Sven become a hero. Instead they released it beforehand and don't seem to care about the disruption they've caused. Fortunately there's been a bit of a backlash against the paper among football fans.
[ January 18, 2006: Message edited by: Dave Lenton ]