Old Media Rages Against Twitter Raging Against The Election

'Why Are You Yelling At Me On Social Media When I'm Only Trying To Wind You Up And Make You React Angrily So I Can Report How Abusive You Are?'

By Darryl Mason

It was inevitable Australia's Old Media and social media, primarily Twitter, would reach end-game territory around a federal election.

That election appears to this one, Federal Election 2019.

It's been a bit grim seeing Old Media's entrenched political journalists lashing out at those they deem "trolls" and "abusers", along with huge sections of their own audiences, including paying customers/subscribers.

Not many from Old Media Press Gallery are coping well as mere people off the street with phones analyse, quote and post political news videos and commentary to bigger audiences on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram than Old Media can often muster, and faster.

But it's been satisfying to see at least a few of the standard cliches of Old Media political news coverage during a federal election have been deflated by social media, like over-reliance on polls and opinion, and so then quietly retreated by Old Media.

If Australians interested in political news have more social media options than ever to get the news that matters, including following and engaging with the politicians themselves, and the feast of fact-checking in comments that usually follows any politician's policy tweets, and there is no shortage of free opinion (all the best writers are on Twitter), then what exactly is left for the 270 member Australian Press Gallery to do to try and lure the political news away from their Twitter timelines? To find that new generation of paying customers?

What can the Old Media-controlled Press Gallery provide that former journalists and public servants and former politicians and senior ministers and all the others with long political experience on social media cannot supply, for free?

Exclusive access to politicians?

Big deal. Has that exclusive access delivered better policies and information to the Australian people? Or do politicians feel free to lie and deceive even more relentlessly now, during Exclusive Interviews, because they know The Interview Routine better than many journalists do?

Has the political industry itself gamed out most of the old political media's best efforts before they even get started?

How many politicians have been caught out in outrageous lies and had to Resign In Disgrace after interviews with Australia's Best Political Journalists, in the past 5 years? Or past decade? Any at all?

What is The Product we're being told is worth buying?

Press Gallery journalists have more duties and live crosses now than in any previous decade. The depth of their daily research is always limited. So they have less time than jobless ex-public servants on Twitter have to actually read through 400 page reports and supply timely analysis.

On social media, just in Australia, there are hundreds of now jobless former public servants who do this analysis work, daily, for free. They should be earning something, particularly when so much of their work acts as research for paid journalists, but they don't stop doing it because they're not paid.

21st century journalists have already realised social media is the greatest research tool journalism has ever had access to. You can ask for help and get it, on almost any subject, if the Google isn't helping. If you say on Twitter you are unsure about info, good people, people who know, will often try and help you. This is not something to be afraid of.

On social media, a journalist can search for people who specialise in a subject that they're writing about, contact them and get help, quicker than a phone call. That kind of fast access to people and good information and research is like a 1970s journalist's ultimate work-related fantasy.

Social media is information, a living breathing world library of info, facts and people who know things.

This New Reality will maybe, finally, sink through to those still bogged down in Old Media bubbles, but for now there's a lot of anger, vitriol and bitterness coming from many in Australian news media, mostly towards their news audiences, probably because it's elections time. But there's not a lot of attempts to understand the news audience the Press Gallery needs to exist is right there in front of them, interacting with them, trying to talk to them, to share information, leads, tips. So what if some are rude? That's what happened when journalists had to go knocking on doors. Some told you to Fack Off, other people gave you a cup of tea and talked for hours. That's What People Are Like.

And anyway, why would anyone working across the top of Australia's news media industry expect all who still bother to engage with them on news to be polite, concise and respectful? That's not exactly the history of the Australian news media industry itself, is it? Or the history of our news media towards the public. This relationship has been long hostile.

The ABC's Michael Rowland:

Twitter is a double-edged sword for political journalists.
It's an invaluable source of breaking news and allows us to keep track of campaign developments in real time.For good and bad, it's a forum for politicians to make unfiltered announcements or respond to criticism from the other side, all of which provides fodder for news stories and commentary. 

"Twitter is a peanut gallery of hyper-partisan tools," Chris Uhlmann laments.

Can't live with it, can't live without it, eh Chris? 

Social media doesn't demand quick action-packed interviews and breezy sound bites on policies. The news audience on social media demands all the data and background info relevant to the subject so proper fact-checking can be carried out. So the news that results, that people on Twitter are willing to put their names to in sharing, is more credible, closer to the truth, and richer with information. People who like sharing quality news aren't big fans of seeing what they shared easily debunked in comments below. Many on Twitter really do care about the quality of information that comes out of the Newsdesk bearing their name.

Now that may not be everyone on Twitter, but there's 1000s more Australians on Twitter  analysing politics and policies and checking for corruption than the entire Australian News Industry has engaged in such tasks.

Some of the political journalists entrenched in Old Media still pretend not much has changed, and that The People Who Really Matter are still spending 3 hours every morning reading through Opinion pages in The Australian and The Financial Review (when virtually no-one outside the media industry is doing anything like that now). They seem to dreamily hope people will soon get sick of this whole internet thing and return to Quality Print Media or something. A belief that remains even while that very print media industry has sacked most of their specialised journalists.

Here's former ABC now Nine-Fairfax political um correspondent Chris Uhlmann on how he deals with those smartypants people on Twitter who, perhaps, might know from their work history or life experiences more about a certain subject than he might:

'I'll post a tweet on federal politics, wait for the notifications of replies to build up on my phone home screen then bulk delete all of them without reading a single word. 

"If I spend even a minute bothered...they win. If I don't engage and they all day getting worked up about it, then I win."

This is an experienced journalist employed by a for-profit news media company explaining how he both ignores and baits his news audience, for his own amusement. He's bullshitting. He reads his own comments, every journalist checks. But Uhlmann clearly hates the debunking and fact-checks he finds.

Fark The Customers, apparently. It's a bizarre attitude, generally, for any employee of an industry losing both profits and audience in double digit percentage points almost every quarter to still hold.

Bizarre an attitude as this is that Chris Uhlmann can still harbour - blaming the news audience for caring about facts and paying attention - this clearly isn't going far enough for Murdoch Crime Family's star goon, Andrew Bolt. He can top it. But how? By hating democracy and the voters responsible for voting:

An American media company campaigning against democracy in Australia. Is that a new level?

'Don't Vote! It's Socialist!'

'Refuse Your Right To Vote!'

'Don't Be A Sheeple! Stop Voting!'

What a curious thing to see the Delaware-based News Corp company trying to guilt-trip Australians against voting in a federal election. A foreign govt, company or person interfering in politics and elections in Australia is supposed to be illegal.

Here's Michael Rowland again, reminding us how terrible it is people interested in News on social media try to engage with journalists who allegedly report News:

According to many veteran political journalists, this Twitter "feedback" is getting much more vicious.
The Courier-Mail's national affairs editor Dennis Atkins said Twitter users had certainly "amped up" over the last few weeks. 

"They are shoutier, they are more tribal. They have never been great ones for considering other points of view, but now they have lost any inclination to do that," he said.
"They are quick to attack the person rather than engage in the merits of an argument."

Dennis Atkins is a veteran Murdoch tabloids journalist listing the bad habits we likely picked up from reading or being exposed to tabloid Australian TV journalism and the Murdoch newspapers most of their lives. Atkins didn't seem aware he was describing the editorial room policies of the tabloids that employed him.

Guardian Australia's political editor Katharine Murphy notes there's often an increase in anxiety and frustration on social media in election campaigns.

She says that's consistent with the polls that tell us voters are deeply disaffected with politics and distrustful of institutions, including media organisations.

"So most of it is that, but I also think elections bring an increase in what I suspect is organised or loosely organised trolling directed against politicians and individual journalists," she said. 

"Some actors are intent on being disruptive on social platforms and picking fights as a means to that end."

Some political journalists are intent on being disruptive and picking fights. They get paid to do it. To inflame the public. Provocation-Reaction. When such journalists thoroughly stir up the public, and people snap, they are deemed "controversial" and "successful" like it's a war on the people they're winning.

Perhaps the news industry could set a better example than the audience they are reporting for? Australians have had 100 years now of vicious, abusive, cruel news media content, feasting off the miseries and tragedies of Australians lives. Isn't a century of anything long enough?

Michael Rowland:

While the hyper-partisans are alert to any perceived "bias", Uhlmann believes one side is way more offensive than the other. 

"While one of the memes of the early 21st century is the rise of the aggressive right, the emergence of what I would call the "post-Christian left" is much more of a worry," he said.

Uh huh. Uhlmann, paid to provide information to people for a living, makes up stupid new terminologies to further categorise and try and belittle his news audience, then announces his New Controversial View on TV and on social media, then wonders why people respond with "hostility" and call him a cliched boring old media hack.

But Uhlmann doesn't actually wonder anything like that. It's not a mystery to him. He knows why people respond that way. He's been trained to provoke his audience, and he clearly enjoys doing it. That's the way the Legends Of Australian Journalism did their work. The more furious the reaction from the News Target, the better the front page and headlines. When Uhlmann was a cub reporter, Serious Journalists, drunk by midday, were still picking fights with mourners at funerals for a "great photo."

Eventually, most of the remaining news audience won't bother responding to Provocation-Reaction journalists, like Uhlmann, at all. They'll tune out, and after a few weeks or months, these news customers will realise that such stock standard Old Media routines are intensely boring, and not missed at all. Not when there's so much excellent news media elsewhere in the world, and on social media, to inform and feed your head.

Maybe the better Old Media journalists will realise in time.

Freedom Of Fire Sparks Back Into Life

UPDATED and expanded early 2020:

27 years after the infamously unknown experimental Australian band Freedom Of Fire (FoF) publicly burned the master recordings of their debut album 'The Internet Is A Fad' and disappeared, the outfit is quietly releasing 'new' albums, remixes and EPs on YouTube, Facebook and Soundcloud. These releases have appeared and disappeared online during the past 6 or so years, often with little information about their year of creation, or the musicians involved, if any.

For example, 'Opening Title Theme For Abandoned 1980s Buddy Cop Sci-Fi TV Series' sounds like it comes from that decade, but it could have easily been thrown together from modern day sample packs that effectively capture that era's most familiar sounds, beats and synths:



Some others, like 1992's 'Never Say Everything You Know' do have a date, but it's not clear whether the cartoon-sampling piece was created in 1992, or is "remastered" from an earlier tape. While Freedom of Fire still only have an audience, globally, in the double digits, so it probably really doesn't matter:



THE INTERNET IS A FAD

As mentioned above, when Freedom Of Fire came to release their first attempt at an official album in 1995, the clearly obvious popularity of the internet, even in those early years, rendered the American TV-sample rich album pointless.

Most of FoF's 'The Internet Is A Fad' album from 1995 is released now and sounds enhanced/remixed/partially re-recorded from the original foggy copies that surfaced in 1996.



According to On The Street music press from the time, Freedom Of Fire had spent 3 years conceptualising 'The Internet Is A Fad' album in the early 1990s, and had to live in denial during the final mixing sessions in 1995 as marketing campaigns to connect Australians to the Internet began to appear everywhere.

"It was fucked," Freedom of Fire said in a statement to On The Street in late 1995. "We've got this album proclaiming The Internet Is A Fad... you know, it's nothing, nobody uses it, and we're using the Internet daily. We tell someone on a message board, 'oh, just finished an album' and they ask the title and you can't tell them. Maybe we can release the album again in 30 years and claim it was a joke."

Brisk sales of Freedom Of Fire's 'The Internet Is A Fad' t-shirts at Utopia Records apparently helped ease the pain and covered some of the losses.

THE REPLICANT'S LAMENT

An attempt to create a 'Bladerunner Soundtrack Sequel' in early 1996, telling the instrumental tale of the mind of a replicant as it died slowly, ended up sounding too much like a replicant dying slowly for mass or (personal) consumption, and nobody from Freedom Of Fire had bothered to seek the necessary permissions anyway, so it was never released.

Parts of the original mix of The Replicant's Lament were debuted on a Sydney community radio station at 2.45am on a Wednesday morning in late March 1996. The below is a more recent remix/recreation of The Replicant's Lament:



In late 1996, Freedom Of Fire relocated to London, then Somerset, England, Marin County, California, and then, briefly, New York City, and then disappeared for another decade.

BEGINNINGS

The experimental, sample-crazed Freedom Of Fire 1 formed in 1981 and released more than two dozen audio cassette tapes, of varying quality and listenability, in extremely limited numbers, through the 1980s and 1990s, without ever releasing an official album or single.

Various people, who may or may not have been contributors to Freedom of Fire, also released their own compilations of FoF music, noise-scapes and sound collages, sometimes under fictitious band names, sometimes adding their own noises and sounds over the top of the recordings. This was seen as funny at the time, and a bit of japery, but leaves attempts now to finally catalogue Freedom Of Fire's 1980s and early 1990s output a confusing venture.

Begun before the music industry started its widespread crackdown on sampling in the mid-1980s, Freedom Of Fire's early tapes were crammed with audio snatches, samples and soundgrabs from Australian movies, TV, radio ad jingles, interviews and vintage American rock, soul, metal and R n B. This made most of FoF's 1980s output unreleasable by any record label, if any were ever interested.

Having created dozens of hours of music, tape experiments and general noise that were a landmine field of copyright violations,
Freedom of Fire announced in the classified sections of Sydney music press in 1989 that FoF would be giving away their music - if you could find the tapes.

Freedom Of Fire's "self-bootlegs" (taped over the top of whatever the cheapest old audio cassettes were available at the time) were found on trains and buses and on car seats next to open windows and in the street-side discount bins of record stores and on window ledges and in doorways in Sydney's Western Suburbs, in Melbourne, Adelaide and Far North Queensland. Some were found tucked between books in libraries in Blacktown and Parramatta; hiding inside Col Joye and Kamahl cassette covers in Newcastle charity shops, while dozens of other tapes were just given away to anyone who bothered to ask for one.



Below is another FoF release from the past 3 years. 'There's Violence On Both Sides' saw Freedom Of Fire returning to the controversial arena of political-instrumentals:




4 years ago, Freedom Of Fire offered a new theme song to Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party, but it was rejected for lacking a 'clear message.'



In the always brimming "Incomplete Files", Freedom Of Fire's 2016-promised Trumpistan album remains unreleased. The only glimpse so far was the brief 'We Got Killers':



In 2020, Freedom of Fire are expected to release 'The 1980s Demos' (the gritty mostly unlabelled audio cassettes that mystified and often irritated those who accidentally came across them in that era), and hours of other first-decade music and sound collages.

21st Century audio technology finally means poorly recorded 30 and 40 year demo tape home recordings, captured on half-broken Phillips cassette recorders, can now be made more listenable.

MORE TO COME

Australian Music Is Rising Again

New Australian musician and singer, Rhyme. On the rise.

UPDATE, March, 2020: After a string of songs, DJing, remixes and experimental videos in the past few five years, catching attention but not big audiences, and getting near the point of 'Why Do I Keep Doing This?' Rhyme is now breaking through, with this video, hitting 1 million views in its first week of release.

Awesome.




PREVIOUS: Taking time recently to listen around to dozens of new Australian bands, singers, has been incredibly rewarding and exciting. The diversity of genres and levels of experimentation Australian musicians are taking on is breath-taking. Gut feeling says we're about to see a new wave of Aussie acts breaking internationally, but not just in US, UK, but across South East Asia.

Will be highlighting some of these excellent new Australian musicians and singers in the months ahead. Sometimes just a tease, with a follow-up later.

Here's one new singer definitely worth hearing now. Rhyme. Still only a few independent singles into her career, she is advancing rapidly as she continues to record, write and experiment. She's on Facebook here.

Another World War For Australia?

Australian, American and Chinese soldiers training together in the Northern Territory, in early May 2015

 World War II, Korea, even the Vietnam wars were all long ago. (Mostly due to reporting restrictions) even the Iraq and Afghanistan wars seem in the distant past, for Australians. Whole generations have passed since Australia last deployed tens of thousands of troops at a time to an American War Zone.

It could never happen again, we are told, Australians would never tolerate such large deployments, and the subsequent death tolls.

And yet, the chances of Australia being drawn into a full-blown conflict between China and the United States may have never been higher.

At least, that's the message some are trying to get out. It's not so much a warning, as a 'Well, You Better Get Used To This New Reality' PR campaign. Is the public already being softened up for another World War? One that would draw in Australia?

From here:

The source was anonymous. But the mouthpiece has a measure of credibility. High profile military analyst and former US Naval War College lecturer John Schindler tweeted last week: “Said a senior NATO (non-US) GOFO to me today: ‘We’ll probably be at war this summer. If we’re lucky it won’t be nuclear.’ Let that sink in.”

The warning comes as Europe engages in some of its biggest ever war games — right on Russia’s front door. It’s a deliberate ploy, intended to remind Moscow of the consequences of its duplicitous invasion of Ukraine.

Half a world away, the “w” word was mentioned again yesterday. This time in an editorial by a Chinese state controlled paper. Said the Global Times: “If the United States’ bottom line is that China has to halt its activities, then a US-China war is inevitable in the South China Sea.”

It came as China’s government effectively declared a “no fly zone” over the disputed waterway after warning the US over its “provocative” aerial reconnaissance of several islands.

China is maintaining its stance that its aggressive construction work on disputed islands in South-East Asia is no different to building highways or public facilities anywhere else on the mainland. Such is its determination that these disputed territories are its own.
Combined, the increasingly threatening talk is causing many to take notice: High-profile US Billionaire investor George Soros told the World Bank last week: “If there is conflict between China and a military ally of the United States, like Japan, then it is not an exaggeration to say that we are on the threshold of a third world war."

Early in May, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation began one of its largest ever war-games. The naval anti-submarine exercise was designed to send a message after a series of aggressive Russian submarine incursions into the territorial waters of Baltic States such as Latvia, Finland and Sweden.

Last month, a number of Baltic State defence ministers issued a statement condemning Russia’s activities, once again declaring its old Cold War enemy their “biggest threat to security”.

Russia retaliated by highlighting the deepening relationship between neutral Finland and Sweden with NATO was a “special concern”.

Some 18 warships and submarines took part in the oddly named exercise, “Dynamic Mongoose”. It involved 10 NATO members and the otherwise neutral Sweden.

 

It came just weeks after NATO members — including Britain — sent tanks and troops to conduct live-fire exercises with Estonia: Once again an act designed to send a signal to Russia — keep your hands off the Baltic States. The tiny Baltic state separated from the former Soviet Union in 1991.

This week saw the launch of a third major NATO military exercise: Combat jets from the US, UK, Germany, France, Switzerland and the Netherlands have gathered in Finland, Norway and Sweden for extensive Arctic combat drills over 12 days.

Russia has not been idle in its response. It has teamed up with ally China to conduct war-games in the Mediterranean Sea. The 10-day operation ended last week after the two world powers boldly displayed their warship muscle in the equivalent of Western Europe’s backyard ‘swimming pool’.

Yesterday, Chinese officials responded to US military overflights and a probing visit by one of its warships.

“For a long time, the US military has been conducting close-in surveillance of China and the Chinese military has been making such necessary, legal and professional response — why did this story suddenly pop up in the past weeks?” Senior Colonel Yang Yujun commented yesterday.

“Has the South China Sea shrunk?”

“Some people have been intentionally and repeatedly hyping this topic. Their purpose is to smear the Chinese military and dramatise regional tensions. And I’m not ruling it out that this is being done to find an excuse for certain country to take actions in the future.”

That country is, of course, the United States. And Australia is the United States most loyal military ally. If the US starts a war with China, Australia starts a war with China.

Don't expect any fightback from PM Tony Abbott, or most of the Australian Parliament if it comes down to that. Abbott would revel in the media opportunities of such a vast and deadly conflict.

The Rest Of The Story Is Here

"We're Being Governed By Idiots"

'Victory Day' front pages like this just look downright ridiculous now:

The Abbott Government disaster/fiasco (take your pick) drags on and on and on. The Australian Financial Review's Laura Tingle in absolutely scathing form:

"we don't seem to quite be able to take in the growing realisation that we actually are being governed by idiots and fools, or that this actually has real-world consequences.

We finish the week with a Prime Minister who has lost his bundle and is making policy and political calls that go beyond reckless in an increasingly panicked and desperate attempt to save himself; a government that has not just utterly lost its way but its authority; and important policy debates left either as smouldering wrecks or unprosecuted.

At issue is not just whether Tony Abbott loses his leadership, or whether the budget bottom line deteriorates even further, but signs that our political system really is in deep trouble – not as a polemic point, but in a very real sense. 

............................

"Idiot" is the word that comes most often in Labor's focus groups when voters are asked about the Prime Minister. And lest you're thinking this is just what Labor would spin isn't it, we had a confirmation this week from focus group polling conducted for Fairfax by one of Australia's most respected focus group pollsters, Visibility's Tony Mitchelmore, with the small caveat being that these voters didn't describe Tony Abbott as an idiot but a fool.

Tony Abbott has already lost Western Sydney. And after Rupert Murdoch's Daily Telegraph and right wing radio ranters worked so hard in 2013 to help win the area for him:

Voters in Western Sydney – selected because they had switched their vote from Labor to Liberal at the 2011 NSW election – described the Prime Minister as "incompetent, an international embarrassment and a fool".

These perceptions are not just a problem for Tony Abbott and his future, but for the broader Coalition, given that the government's conduct in the last couple of weeks can only leave voters with the idea that the idiocy stretches well beyond the Prime Minister's office.

 Worth A Full Read