Friday 17 April 2015

A Prudent Restraint: The Fate Of Liberal Media In Conservative Societies.

Police Riot, Chicago, 28 August 1968: Leading members of the liberal media establishment telegrammed Chicago Mayor, Richard Daley, condemning the way his Police Department repeatedly singled out and deliberately beat newsmen, allegedly to "prevent reporting of an important confrontation between police and demonstrators which the American public as a whole has a right to know." The American public backed Dick Daley and his cops.

FOR THE LIBERAL US NEWS MEDIA,  28 August 1968 was “the day the music died”. That was the day Chicago’s finest unleashed what a later inquiry would describe as a “Police Riot”. In full view of the TV networks’ cameras, the Chicago Police Department fired canister after canister of tear gas, sprayed gallons of mace into people’s faces at point-blank range, and rained down torrents of billy-club blows on unarmed anti-war protesters, delegates to the Democratic Party’s National Convention, and – horror of horrors – working journalists. CBS News’s Dan Rather was roughed up as the cameras rolled, prompting his colleague, Walter Cronkite, to declare live, on nationwide television: “I think we’ve got a bunch of thugs here, Dan.”
 
It was shocking stuff, and the newspaper publishers, their editors, and the network bosses weren’t afraid to say so. Confident that they spoke for the overwhelming majority of decent, civic-minded American citizens, the owners of America’s largest and most liberal media institutions roundly rebuked the behaviour of the Chicago Police Department and their brutal boss, Mayor Richard Daley.
 
Imagine, then, the liberal establishment’s profound shock and dismay when the overwhelming majority of decent, civic-minded Americans backed Mayor Daley and his rioting policemen. In the fortnight following the riot, the Chicago Mayor’s Office received 74,000 letters supporting his response to the anti-war protests. Fewer than 8,000 were critical of the way the Mayor and his Police Department had handled the situation. The nation’s pollsters confirmed these correspondents’ sentiments. Political pundits would later say that Richard Nixon did not win the 1968 presidential election on 2 November; he won it on 28 August.
 
The American public’s response to the Chicago Police Riot had a noticeably chastening effect on the liberal US media. Writing just a week after the event, the widely syndicated US columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner, Joseph Kraft, drew attention to the deep class divisions that liberal journalism at once reflected and exacerbated:
 
“On the one hand there are highly educated upper-income whites sure of themselves and brimming with ideas for doing things differently. On the other hand, there is Middle America, the large majority of low income whites, traditional in their values and on the defensive against innovators.”
 
“In the circumstances,” Kraft concluded, “it seems to me that those of us in the media need to make a special effort to understand Middle America. Equally it seems wise to exercise a certain caution, a prudent restraint, in pressing a claim for a plenary indulgence to be in all places at all times the agent of the sovereign public.”
 
Thirteen years later, and 13,000 kilometres south-west of Chicago, the “sovereign public’s” view of the news media was strikingly similar. In 1981: The Tour, his history of the 1981 Springbok Tour, Geoff Chapple describes an encounter between a crowd of Hamilton rugby patrons denied their match with the South African team, and a 25-year-old Radio New Zealand reporter from Auckland:
 
“He was slung around with radio-telephone gear, and he was a target too. The rugby crowd shouted at him: ‘You caused all this to happen, you bastards!’”
 
If one listens carefully, amidst all the clamour of protest at the possible cancellation of TV3’s liberal news and current affairs programme, Campbell Live, there is an unmistakeable echo of the same outrage that gripped the champions of a free press in Chicago and Hamilton. It is also a pretty safe bet that most of it is coming from “highly educated upper-income whites sure of themselves and brimming with ideas for doing things differently”.
 
In his famous post-Chicago column, Kraft invoked the medieval Catholic Church’s concept of “plenary indulgence” (the wholesale forgiveness of sins) to convey some sense of the invincible moral confidence that afflicts so many liberal journalists. That the judgements flowing from such confidence might be construed (by those required to live in circumstances of considerably less moral clarity) as a species of reproof never enters their heads.
 
Also absent from their calculations is the uncomfortable fact that, in a robust secular democracy, truth and falsehood, right and wrong, are what the majority say they are. Nothing makes the majority madder than being preached at by those who came second.
 
If as many New Zealanders voted for Campbell Live with their remotes as currently watch Seven Sharp, its future would be assured.
 
This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 17 April 2015.

19 comments:

Guerilla Surgeon said...

As everything in the media becomes privatised, more and more does it reflect the values of the 1% and their hangers on. So of COURSE if people vote for Campbell live rather than whatever the fuck else is available in the world of stoopid they will keep it on. Because their sole purpose is to make money rather than to inform the public.
And I don't think that just because self-assured educated people are the ones protesting about this, that these protests aren't a good thing. Sorry but only in bizarro world does the truth depend on how many people believe it. Call me an idealist if you like, but it seems to me that we are owed something in the way of new services a little bit better than Fox, which according to some, makes you less informed than someone who doesn't watch news at all. It used to be that TV and radio stations had the obligation to provide a decent service. Perhaps we should go back to regulation. And remember, as the Americans say "facts have a liberal bias." :-)
Sorry – angry so losing my thread a bit :-).

Victor said...

GS

Despite the network's characteristic neo-liberal rhetoric, simple unalloyed consumer choice no longer fully dictates what you see on your TV screen. So tuning into Campbell isn't necessarily going to keep him on air.

Advertisers are obviously still interested in ratings. But only if viewers are from their target socio-economic/age band.

As to the networks, they'd rather have advertisers tied into a programme sponsorship deal. This is why , despite more and more New Zealanders eating nothing but takeaways, we're nevertheless convulsed with an eternity of cooking shows.

Also, the networks don't like shows that detract from their chosen branding, even if they're sure-fire winners. And branding has all the constancy of the weather in Auckland this last week. I write with feeling as I have the lergie!

One thing that is constant, though, is the right-of-centre bias of most TV journalism. Now why isn't that surprising?

BTW I've had the curious experience of sitting in on a couple of meetings at which ad agencies tried pitching TV slots to clients.

It was all done with an amazing display of apparently scientific rigour. But I had a distinct feeling that the blind were leading the blind.

If we want decent TV and decent news/current affairs coverage, we need a well-funded public broadcasting service governed by an independent board. And that's a necessary but far from a sufficient condition for achieving those goals.

jh said...


“On the one hand there are highly educated upper-income whites sure of themselves and brimming with ideas for doing things differently.

.....
Frank Salter says we won the Cold War but lost the culture wars due to a radical take over beginning in the ivy league institutions and lead by Franz Boas. Consequently environmental theories of behavior crowded out genetic theories. The universities train the journalists.
EG
"Our biology is essentially irrellevant. It is like having a computor, you wouldn't blame a computor for the programs that are in it would you? The fear doesn't come from our biological heritage it comes absolutelly one hundred percent from our cultural conditioning.”
Jeff Sluka Massey University

http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/faceoffear

jh said...

This Frank Salter

http://www.redicecreations.com/radio/2014/06/RIR-140604.php

Guerilla Surgeon said...

I suspect that one of the reasons were inundated with "reality" shows is that they are cheap :-). Sorry about your lurgy :-). God I remember the program that coined the phrase. Dates me I know. Totally agree with your last sentence though. We used to have something like that until it was privatised in all but name.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Yes, Frank Salter. Who whether he likes it or not (and I have no clue as to that), has become one of the heroes of websites like 'Stormfront'. Perhaps you should read some of the critiques of his work JH – a rather forlorn hope I know, but his beliefs do have major weaknesses. Particularly his ignorance of history :-).

jh said...


Yes, Frank Salter. Who whether he likes it or not (and I have no clue as to that), has become one of the heroes of websites like 'Stormfront'.
....
Are you making some sort of point?

Perhaps you should read some of the critiques of his work JH
.....
Quoting a negative review:
Two giants in the development of
evolutionary analyses of behavior—E. O. Wilson and Irenäus Eibl‐Eibesfeldt—are quoted there in praise of this book. How sad.
How disillusioning.

http://media.anthro.univie.ac.at/ishe/index.php/bulletin/bulletin-contents/doc_view/44-bulletin-2005-volume-20-issue-2

Guerilla Surgeon guilty of moralistic fallacy. I bet you didn't even risk listening to Frank Salter?

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Some sort of point – yes how did you guess. The fact that their work is used to promote racism. And the fact that their work has been criticised for going outside their area of expertise.
You did not read the second of those reviews did you :-)?
As the man says, what we might do to advance ourselves genetically is not necessarily "good". Because evolution is simply adaptation. Not morals.
So I might say that if anyone is guilty of the moralistic fallacy, it is your friend Salter, who calls genetic interest a public "good". I guess you don't actually understand the moralistic fallacy at all.
The deeper you go into this shit, the more you need a wash. You end up with absolute not job right wing racist publications such as the Occidental quarterly. A pseudo-academic journal promoting racism and anti-Semitism. You really should follow some more of the links – though you may well agree with them for all I know.
This last is put out by a parfessor as well.

http://toqonline.com/archives/v3n1/TOQv3n1editorial.pdf

Happy anti-Semitic reading JH.

Anonymous said...

Well said Chris, Cambell is like the Farrier of the distant past and like the post man of the current era, while I enjoy his hard aggressive style they guy simply doesn't pull the numbers needed to sell the 10 minutes of advertising revenue so vital in that golden 2 hour peak of television viewing. Motor cars and email have done for the farrier and postman and 7 sharp has done for cambell live, he could take up flipping burgers or collecting alluminium cans like societies other economic burnouts - Im guessing that wont happen though.

jh said...

"Odakyu-sen (1,289 comments) says:
April 20th, 2015 at 11:25 am
One of the things I love about living in Auckland is the sense of “affluence”.

Let me qualify that.

I remember translating a White Paper for one of the ministries in Tokyo back in the 1980s in which the writer discussed the notion of “affluence.” They made the point that although residents of Tokyo had achieved “material affluence,” they were deprived in terms of “spatial affluence” (meaning: living in rabbit hutches, commuting 1.5 hours each way each day in packed trains) and in “temporal affluence” (meaning: working 5-6 days a week no vacations longer than 5 consecutive days per year).

I remember visiting Auckland in 1990 and being amazed by the old cars, but the huge sections. I was impressed by Aucklanders’ spatial and temporal affluence. They were so “wealthy” in my mind.

Now, 25 years later, I see Aucklanders are becoming more like Tokyo residents of the last economic bubble: All the toys, but far less time and an itty-bitty living space.

What have you New Zealanders thrown away?"
http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2015/04/general_debate_20_april_2015.html#comments
.
The power to speak has gone elsewhere (otherwise you never know what might happen - eh, Guerrilla Sturgeon!?)

"PAUL – Well, Auckland – there’s an agglomeration effect, so the bigger Auckland becomes, there more attractive it becomes. It becomes more attractive economically, but it also becomes more attractive as a place to live. And so we’re seeing the sort of perimeters of New Zealand, the regions, beginning to flat-line, so they’re not growing, and we’re now beginning to see the first of regions beginning to decline."
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1207/S00280/qa-jessica-mutch-interviews-paul-spoonley.htm

jh said...

Guerilla Surgeon said...

The deeper you go into this shit, the more you need a wash. You end up with absolute not job right wing racist publications such as the Occidental quarterly.
.......
Is Auckland becoming increasingly racially segregated?
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/20171050/is-auckland-becoming-increasingly-racially-segregated

Discrimination and "lower level (white) racism" are to blame.

Of course.

jh said...

National Geographic:
Oxytocin: Still Not a Moral Molecule

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/04/01/oxytocin-still-not-a-moral-molecule/

National Radio
The importance of oxytocin as the brain's "moral molecule"

http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/20159038/the-importance-of-oxytocin-as-the-brain%27s-moral-molecule

Guerilla Surgeon said...


"The power to speak has gone elsewhere (otherwise you never know what might happen - eh, Guerrilla Sturgeon!?"

YOU are making some sort of point?

jh said...


"The power to speak has gone elsewhere (otherwise you never know what might happen - eh, Guerrilla Sturgeon!?"

YOU are making some sort of point?
......
Yes I'm saying the liberal media is decidedly one-sided (And deluded).

Guerilla Surgeon said...

FFS jh. I had a look at some of your links. One of them was just a mishmash of comments about some topic and I had no idea what it was, or seemingly any way of finding out.
And your comments are to say the least enigmatic.
By the way, if you think we have much in the way of liberal media in this country I've got a bridge I want to sell you. As far as I can see there are only three possible candidates. Some regard Watts's face on TV three is liberal. Some regard National radio's left-wing :-). And I guess there's scoop. But their website really needs a proper redesign. You have to really work hard to get anything out of it. So I doubt if it attracts many more than the already committed. To counterbalance this you've got every rabidly right wing stupid bloody for-profit radio station in the country, and people like Paul Henry and that other fellow whose name I can't remember and I really can't be arsed looking it up.
I suppose you could count 7days on TV three is liberal in a weird sort of way. But it's not much in the way of media.

Chris Trotter said...

To: dgare

It's easier to contact me at my Facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/chris.trotter.180

Send me a message.

jh said...

The deeper you go into this shit, the more you need a wash. You end up with absolute not job right wing racist publications such as the Occidental quarterly. A pseudo-academic journal promoting racism and anti-Semitism. You really should follow some more of the links – though you may well agree with them for all I know.
.....
The problem with needing a wash is that the truth is as smelly/dirty as the false dirt.
Kevin McDonald has a theory about Jewish genetic interests and it's involvement in politics (eg lobbying for third world immigration into the US). The correct response to such a theory is objective open minded analysis. I don't know one way or the other (it seems circumstantial) however smelling racism and running for cover isn't the answer. Recall Dr Greg Clydesdale ("NZ's most racist economist") has history proved him wrong or right?:history has proved him buried under a pile of earth.
The downside of not seeing bad truths is looking at the world through rose coloured spectacles. EG it is the progressive left which calls for a larger population and open borders putting themselves on the same side as neoliberals (migration isn't responsible for house prices etc). On yesterdays news a father of 24 is killed in Iraq: FFS I am appalled as my clan has long understood that we will fight over land if we have large families.

Guerilla Surgeon said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Guerilla Surgeon said...

Clydesdale? As I remember, his actual paper hadn't been peer-reviewed. Might be wrong on that. But other economists who have reviewed it say it's crap i.e. "poor use of data and failed to back up claims that Pacific Islanders are creating an underclass. " so time has proven him wrong :-).
As to the Macdonald thing, and you can't spell his name by the way. All I could get was a brief review of his paper which simply seem to be about Jewish genetics rather than politics.
Anyway, if someone was using my research to promote anti-Semitism, racism in general, or simply "white power" as many of your links show, particularly stuff like the Occidental observer – (simply a white supremacist rag). I would be vociferous in distancing myself from them. I haven't noticed Macdonald or Salter actually doing this. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.