Twillight
of the Chairman
Bridget Griffen-Foley
David
Flint
MALICE IN MEDIA LAND
Freedom Publishing, $24.95 pb, 269 pp, 0 9578682 8 6
DISCLOSURE:
I AM a humanities academic. It is, therefore, entirely inappropriate
for me to be reviewing this book. After all, the author maintains
that most academics in humanities departments are post-modernists
or post-structuralists, prescribing as dogma ‘the bizarre
and outdated theories of a handful of French philosophes’;
worse, much of academic thought in the last two centuries has
been related to the ‘partial removal or even the overthrow
of capitalism, of the free market and of the private enterprise
system’.
When I can spare a moment from plotting the overthrow of capitalism,
I am working on a history of Australian commercial radio. But
in the last year, more and more of this precious time has been
consumed by the contemporary spectacle of the regulator, David
Flint, and the regulated, Alan Jones, John Laws and Derryn Hinch.
When they haven’t been throwing bombs or found themselves
at the centre of ‘feeding frenzies’ (to use Flint’s
term), they have been writing books and attracting biographies.
So what is this latest book of Flint’s, and how does it differ
from his The Twilight of the Élites (2003)? It is
with a weary sigh that I have to concede I don’t really know.
Malice in Media Land is neither a memoir of the former
chair of the Australian Press Council and Australian Broadcasting
Authority (ABA), nor a measured commentary on the state of the
Australian media or a considered treatise urging regulatory reform.
Malice traverses much the same territory as Twilight
— we hear the same conservative gripe about the left-wing
bias of the ‘élite’ Australian media, including
the broadsheets and the ABC, and again have Professor John Henningham’s
1996 survey of journalists produced as evidence. Academics such
as Henningham and Peter Putnis are fine when they agree with you,
as are columnists for the ‘élite’ press such
as Gerard Henderson, Paul Sheehan and Greg Sheridan.
Flint early and clearly enunciates his political views —
on republicanism, Christianity, border protection and the ‘so
called “children overboard” affair’ — and
throughout the book he argues that the élite media and
the press gallery run crusades and allow comment to spill over
into ‘news’, and that proprietors now hardly ever determine
their outlets’ ideological opinions. It is fair enough that
these views are in sharp contrast to those of the left-liberal
non-fiction writers whom he dismisses, for Malice is yet another
missive in the culture wars and will be regarded as such by future
historians. (Still, I can’t help but wish that Flint would
acknowledge that the reason why universities, ‘once communities
of scholars, now have officially mandated missions, visions and
policies’ is related in large part to the Howard government’s
education policies.) Flint writes admiringly about some of his
subjects: Tony Abbott, who wrote the foreword to Twilight and
launched Malice, is lauded as ‘young, athletic, an outstanding
sportsman, rugged, intelligent’.
Malice is remarkable, principally, for its shallowness and its
lack of intellectual rigour. Flint condemns the media for allowing
‘comment’ to intrude by reporting that Mark Latham won
the 2004 election debate, even though it would have been remiss
for any media outlet not to report the winner of a head-to-head
contest, particularly when there was a clear consensus. Even John
Howard’s friend Grahame Morris, speaking on Sky News Australia
immediately after the debate, conceded that the Opposition leader
had won on points. Flint claims that, if the ethics and professional
standards of today’s media had been current during World
War II, all military theatres would have been presented as potential
diasters. But surely Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939
cannot be compared with Saddam Hussein’s more insular régime,
however heinous, in 2003?
Some of the most extraordinary claims in Malice concern
the media, which Flint helped to regulate for more than fifteen
years. He derides Media Watch for ‘attacking John
Laws for publishing a book, The Other Story [sic]’
and supports Morris’s contention that the presenter, David
Marr, should have ‘disclosed’ that he also had a book
competing for shelf space. Flint seems completely oblivious to
the fact that Media Watch was pointing out that Laws’s
There’s Always More to the Story (2004) bore a direct
link to the ‘Whole Story’ segment on 2UE that culminated
in the first ‘cash for comment’ inquiry. Flint insists
that there has been an increase in the overall diversity of the
Australian media due to new technologies such as pay television.
However, less than a quarter of Australian households have pay
television, and the only Australian news channel, Sky, relies
on Channels Seven and Nine for much of its reporting, and News
Ltd journalists for panel shows during election campaigns. Oddly,
when contending that legislation enabling a licensee to have two
radio stations in the one market allows it to cater to minority
interests through the second station, Flint cites as an example
2GB’s sister station 2CH, with its safe and mainstream ‘easy
listening’ music format.
In Flint, 2GB and its stable, including Alan Jones, have a great
fan. If Flint believes that tabloid newspapers provide an antidote
to the dominance of the élites over the media, he is even
more enthusiastic about commercial talk-back radio. He suggests
that ‘the people’ — for whom this book purports
to speak — found in talk-back ‘a place to express their
views, a place where they would be listened to without being ridiculed
and vilified’. Unsurprisingly, however, talk-back radio is
not subjected to the same scrutiny as is the élite media.
Flint (who presumably sees himself as the victim of a feeding
frenzy following the release of his correspondence with Jones)
condemns the media’s pursuit of Peter Hollingworth in 2001–02.
In recounting his conversations with business-people who mistakenly
thought that Hollingworth was accused of paedophilia to support
his contention that people only glance at daily newspapers or
the evening news, the author fails to consider the role frequently
played by talk-back radio in forming superficial impressions.
And how often has talk-back radio itself initiated a feeding frenzy?
Flint prefers to laud radio for setting the ‘news’ agenda,
and suggests that this is an achievement of the Howard era. Invariably
ahistorical, Malice is completely oblivious to the way in which
talk-back radio assumed this role in the 1970s.
One of Flint’s favourite talk-back hosts is 2GB’s night-time
host Jim Ball, quoted as a source for a tale about religious vilification
and described as a ‘well prepared presenter’ with views
often consistent with the majority. This is the same broadcaster
who referred to some Muslims as ‘the raw sewerage of humanity’
and inspired some Sydney Muslims to encourage advertisers to boycott
his programme. I can understand Ball recommending Twilight
on his website, as he does, but for a man of Flint’s stature
to return the favour is quite reprehensible. Flint should not
be able to claim ignorance of Ball’s more extreme views,
for in 2002 the Sydney Morning Herald reported that the
Muslims’ complaint about Ball might be referred to the regulator
over which Flint then presided.
For all its faults — and they are many — Malice
contains some interesting reflections on the problem of defamation
law stifling free speech, the financial pressures facing community
radio and the rise of the columnist as celebrity. Flint has not
been well served by his publisher. Numerous observations are repeated
throughout the book, often in a slipshod fashion. A BBC news editor’s
wartime reprimand to staff for submitting poor copy appears thrice,
in two different forms: ‘Would you risk your life to listen
to this?’ and ‘Would you risk your life listening to
this?’ Whole phrases are repeated, sometimes on the same
page, and Flint twice lauds the former Herald Sun editor Piers
Akerman for exposing the financial mis-management of the Kirner
government. Flint sometimes refers to Akerman as Ackerman, Allan
Fels as Alan, and the Australian Bankers’ Association as
the Australian Banking Association, while mistakenly calling his
former colleague Ian Robertson ‘Robinson’ and journalist
Fred Brenchley ‘Benchley’. Many individuals mentioned,
in some cases enthusiastically, including Jim Ball and Sam Chisholm,
do not feature in the index; the BBC, which appears throughout
the book, scores only one index entry, and most other media outlets
are not indexed at all. There is an excessive use of upper case,
and inconsistencies are rife. Freedom Publishing might have been
better off employing the services of a competent editor, proofreader
and indexer than producing a glossy newsletter promoting Malice
(a newsletter which, incidentally, incorrectly cites the ISBN
and the number of pages).
This is opportunistic publishing at its worst. Australian conservatives
deserve better.
