The other day Mungo McCallum remarked in passing that ‘the influence of the media on public opinion has always been greatly overrated’. I beg to differ, along with quite a few other commenters on his article. Here is a longer case for profound media influence.
It seems journalists in the mainstream political bubble tend to share the disconnection of the politicians from the rest of us, which is understandable if their perception of the world is mostly the bubble. And if your measure of the problem is the distance between the mainstream media and ‘public opinion’ you might miss something important. After all, the perceptions of most punters include the highly selected pap the media choose to serve up to them, so there’s not usually going to be a big difference.
But what would a well-informed polity, or just a polity sketchily informed with a rough balance, think? What would ‘public opinion’ be then?
So I wondered if I could come up with a few examples that might suggest the disconnection is real, and very large.
In the last Federal election, the media spent very little attention on the record of the incumbents: the multiple policy train wrecks, borne of rank incompetence or grossly misguided ideology, the overt corruption, the systemic corruption of policies favouring big donors and mates, and the stagnating economy (before Covid) are just a few examples. Instead we got daggy dad and they’ll steal your weekend utes. Any one of those disasters would have doomed Labor, but the spivs got back in. How did they manage that?
The commercial media keep re-running the line that the Coalition is the better economic manager. The record is otherwise.
Where ever Murdoch operates, democracy is in crisis. Most other democracies are not so stricken.
The whole privatisation, market-fundamentalist regime instigated by Hawke and Keating has never been popular. Yet over almost four decades our public service has been gutted, we keep having enquiries into why privatised services don’t seem to have worked, we had the (until recently) worst recession since the Great Depression, the price of housing has gone stratospheric, unemployment rarely goes below 5%, unions are crushed, wages are stagnant, job security is a diminishing memory, the rich are obviously getting richer, and so on.
You think the average punter doesn’t know things are not going well, and does not connect them with policies they have never much liked? Most voters, evidently, have felt there was no real alternative to voting for TweedleLib or TweedleLab, but there is much discussion of the alienation of citizens from politics, and the primary vote of the old parties keeps falling. How do the political mainstream keep getting away with corrupt, unpopular garbage, if it is not the saturation messaging that pours out incessantly from the mainstream media?
Forty years ago Australian society was far from perfect, but there was a sense of it getting better over the years. That was reversed, and we are now more divided, acrimonious, fearful and alienated than we used to be. The sad thing is a whole generation, or more, is probably unaware we were not always like this.
The central reason for the unravelling of our relatively easy-going society has been a relentless message that we must be selfish competitors. That is against how Aussies thought of ourselves, and against well-established and abundant knowledge that human beings are highly cooperative. How was that message conveyed?
It is heartening to see we have not lost all of the social cohesion we used to have, in our easy-going way. We rallied through the Black Summer and we have been, mostly, willing to pull together to get the virus under control. That is more like the society I remember. It is also in stark contrast to society in the US, which our masters want us to be like.
Politically we are very far to the right of where we were back in the day of Menzies and Calwell. Labor is well to the right of Menzies and the Coalition is moving through extremism to simply being captured by its sponsors, as Michael West and associates have been documenting. Menzies would not abide much of what passes as normal now. How did this happen? Did we all read Hayek and decide the market should rule? I don’t think so.
Why does Pearls & Irritations exist, along with several other little internet discussion sites? Because important news and important points of view are not presented in the mainstream media. Would Australia be different if the informed comment available here were widely available? Would it be different if the news you can pick up if you go looking were widely available?
There are none so blind as those who will not see, so I don’t expect Mr. McCallum’s views to shift, but the claim that the media don’t have much influence is just one of the distortions they put about, when convenient, to further their ambitions.
Dr. Geoff Davies is the author of Desperately Seeking the Fair Go and The Little Green Economics Book; http://betternaturebooks.net.au.
Dr. Geoff Davies is an author, commentator and scientist. He is the author of A New Australia: Discarding Delusions and Organising for the Wellbeing of All (2023, https://betternaturebooks.net/my-books/regenoz/). He blogs at Thrival Economics https://thrivaleconomics.blog/.
Comments
7 responses to “Do the mainstream media have much influence?”
Mainstream media in Australia is nobbled or compromised by various factors including: monocultural, only int’l focus is upon mostly US/UK content, omission of key issues from news e.g. climate science, inclusion of corporate and political PR, shallow verbal discourse, sound bites replacing explanations/analysis (changing how people think), need for entertaining content and not innovating with digital; while legacy media caters to over median age demographic of less educated, monocultural and conservative voters (compared to the lower age median).
In the past decades we have seen a rise in promotion of libertarian socio-economics (via Koch linked think tanks; plus obsession with lower taxes, property and shopping) and white nationalism (via US immigration restriction ‘think tanks’ promoting restrictive immigration policies for the ‘environment’; dog whistling non European immigrants, supposed high population growth, ‘values’, refugees etc.).
Basically creating the space for and reinforcement of 19thC capitalism e.g. master-serf work relationships, small govt etc., pecking order of WASP eugenics and asking for more ‘quiet Australians’; all to maintain the status quo and worse, allows the ‘great replacement theory’ to flourish.
Herman and Chomsky revealed the power of the so-called ‘free press’ in their 1988 book – Manufacturing Consent. The subjugation of the Australian media is demonstrated so clearly by the once, relatively independent, ABC. Successive LNP government’s have flaunted convention by appointing a Board made up of reactionary ministerial nominees, the near-octogenarian Chair, Ita Buttrose, has a background in the right-wing media, the MD has been with the ABC for more than 30 years (like many of his colleagues where a job with the ABC is for life) and a director of news and current affairs, Gaven Morris, that oversees ALL of the ABC’s radio, tv and digital news and current affairs programs and broadcasts giving them his tunnel vision view of all and everything!
The corrupt money interests that form a system of control-loops with the mainstream media and the public, spend only as much on the control of voting behaviour as they think they need to. Every now and again the scrooges are too mean and Labor accidentally gets up.
The relentless promotion of individualism by special interests playing the public off against one another has largely neutered Labor’s cooperative spirit, as well as neutering the ability of the public service to serve the public interest. The result is a two-party system like two bottles with different labels, but both empty; and a public service that might as well be privatised.
Mungo assesses the publics ability to be influenced by the media, by his own abilities and media experience.
If the public were not totally influenced by the media, The ABC would not exist.
And *editors couldn’t please themselves.
In edit: *Editors or algorithms.
This is an interesting post that hits the single most important issue of our times — the acceptance of the F.A. Hayek/Milton Friedman view. The general public never liked privatisation of public services. This theft of public property was designed to hamstring governments and make the rich richer. The privateers moved quickly and ruthlessly. The media and universities had a lot to do with their success but it was such an overwhelming victory that I can’ help thinking there was another influence kept out of sight in Switzerland..
Despite his rebel rags..Mungo still is of the alumni.
And he can adapt and move about in the fourth estate like a chameleon if he so chooses..
The media does not simply influence the mind of the public and individuals…The media IS the mind of the public.
The mind goes to sleep at the end of the day with the media as its mind …
It wakes next day in a daze and it turns on the media …
It regains what the media has told it, is its mind.
The ABC ..rather than be funded, should have all its board and talking heads; bundled in faggots and burned.
Leaving only the plastic Commercial media to play its hurdy gurdys.
The evolving mind could deal with such bagatelles.
Dealing with a totally contrived security propaganda agency of an establishment older than Caesar and couched in authenticity… is a degenerate involution.
My take on the influence of the MSM. It’s high on what people aren’t involved in (how much notice do you take of the MSM in relation to your hobbies or areas of special interest? Which brings us back to the professionalisation of politics (most people not being involved), meaning the media does have some influence. The cure for which is people getting engaged – in my view, best done through citizen juries and such.
Second thing, the MSM tends to reinforce existing prejudices. If you’ve tried to get a hearing for even a slightly different perspective, you will know how entrenched this is.