The media industry is to Australia what the car industry is to Japan. Per capita, Australia has the highest media saturation on earth. In 2005, Australia had three commercial television stations, two government stations, 337 radio stations, and 712 newspapers, 1959 magazines. 25 per cent of homes had pay TV and 63% of dwellings had access to the Internet.

The strength of the industry at the domestic level has given some Australian companies the platform to grow into major international players. Australia's flagship company is News Limited. Built and owned by Rupert Murdoch, throughout the 60s and 70s it embarked on major international expansion in Britain and the US. In 1979, Murdoch established News Corp, which subsequently grew into the world's largest media conglomerate with major interests in China, Britain and America.

Other than News Ltd, major media players include Australian Consolidated Press, and Fairfax Media Ltd.

The commercial success of the Australian media can be attributed to the moralistic style of writing as well as the service bias of the Australian economy creating a need for public education/propaganda campaigns that pay for advertising in the media.

Ironically, even though the Australian media is very successful at enticing Australians to consume it, and interest groups pay handsomely to use the media, it is not effective at leading public opinion. Usually, journalists fail when they try to lead major public campaigns. Furthermore, they have alienated themselves from the public to such an extent that journalism is consistently rated one of Australia's least admired professions.

To deal with some of the problems caused by the Australian journalistic style, Australia politicians have imposed strict restrictions to limit the power of the press.

Style of writing - Morals and emotion but very little logic

In regards to the style of writing, Australian journalists write about public issues as if writing about sport. They try to stir up the red ants and the green ants so that conflict follows. Media consumers subsequently take sides, feel a sense of belonging, give their emotions a workout, and get pulled back to the media outlet that gives running commentary on the conflict's progress.

Journalists in other western countries also have a bias towards conflict but the conflict doesn't resonate as widely as it does in Australia. Perhaps the reason for the difference is that other western countries have stronger traditional cultures and more clearly agreed upon moral values, which makes them more of a challenge for journalists to divide. Because they find it more difficult to divide people, other western journalists devote relatively more space to voyeuristic coverage of celebrity gossip than do Australian journalists.

Court cases involving women are highly desired by the Australian media as they offer good conflicts between the head and the heart. Little pieces of prejudicial values can be mashed with emotional displays to push people in various directions.

In 1980, Lindy Chamberlain, the wife of a church minister, claimed a dingo stole her baby. The media claimed otherwise and focussed on Chamberlain's lack of emotion to prove she was a heartless monster.

In 1982, Chamberlain was sentenced to life in prison on the basis that foetal blood had been found in the family car. The forensics were later discredited. Chamberlain was released and her conviction quashed. Now that emotions have cooled, the facts of the case have been assessed more logically and Chamberlain's guilty verdict is held up as an example of the dangers of trial by media.

In 2004, Frank Cole, a Melbourne pensioner, claimed that he had shot a dingo and taken a baby from its mouth. Chamberlain said his story was implausible as he had inaccurately described the baby's clothes. Nevertheless, much of the media took his version as if it were true and questioned him about why he ruined the Chamberlain's life by not coming forth earlier.

In 2001, Joanne Lees told police that a man had stopped her and her boyfriend on the highway, tied her wrists together, put a sack over her head and forced her into his ute. She subsequently escaped and her boyfriend was likely shot.

There was a deal of evidence backing up her story. Blood was found on the highway and she had injuries consistent with being tied up. Two years later, she identified a man who fitted the description she had given to police. The man's DNA matched DNA found on Lees. He was later found guilty.

Rather than focus on the facts, the media wanted to make another Lindy Chamberlain out of Lees. It reported that an Aboriginal tracker was able to find her prints at the scene, but could not find the prints of a man. The Aboriginal tracker also said the blood looked old. The media also reported that Lees had cheated on her boyfriend and used drugs.

Lees initially vowed to sue for defamation but then simply left Australia as another unhappy pom.

In 2005, Schapelle Corby was stopped by a Bali customs officer with 4.1kg of cannabis in her body board bag. The custom officer said Corby tried to prevent him opening the bag.

Corby claimed that she did not try to prevent the officer opening the bag and that the drugs were put there by corrupt baggage handlers. The Australian media promoted her story and played up prejudices regarding Indonesian corruption to create the idea that the custom official was lying.

Logically, the case against Corby was strong. An average body board weighs between 3-5kg. If 4.1 litres of milk were put in the bag, it would be safe to assume most people would notice the difference in weight as well as the bulge. For some reason; however, some people assumed 4.1kg of cannibis weighed less than 4.1 kg of milk and therefore not easy to notice. The media was in no way inclined to educate them. To the media, logic was less important that the sight of Corby crying and accusations about the Indonesians being corrupt. Some Australians believed Corby to be guilty, others innoncent, which was the perfect outcome from a media point of view.

The Indonesian justice system found Corby guilty and she was sentenced to 20 years in jail. Her sister later sued a media outlet for defamation and won.

Writing tricks are useful ways to deliberately misdirect readers in order to provoke conflict. A good example of such writing tricks can be seen in an attempt to rustle up hostility towards Muslims following the 2002 Bal Bombings. The government funded ABC tried to provoke hostility towards Muslims so that it could subsequently denounce racism against Muslims. The strategy appealed to those who disliked Muslims as well as those who disliked people who disliked Muslims. Both sides gave their emotions a work out and felt a sense of belonging.

"Australian Muslims are being warned to be vigilant following the Bali attack."

From a perspective of rustling up fear, the sentence was clever because its passive construction allowed the actor/subject of the clause to be eliminated. (* Instead of writing , "The XYZ is warning Muslims to be vigilant" , the passive sentence was " Australian Muslims are being warned by the XYZ to be vigilant." The "by the XYZ " could then be cut out, and no source needed to be attributed to the warning. see complete transcript below )

Aside from cleverly using passive constructions, the news piece made good use of another writing trick known as nomimalisation to remove the subjects and objects of the clauses. For example, in sentences like,

" But the difficulty for any government will be how to manage the fear and anger now emerging following the Bali bombing"

it was not clear who needed to manage, nor who needed to be managed. The uncertainty was achieved by using verbs such as "fear" and adjectives such as "anger" as nouns so that there was no need to state who was angry or who was in fear. Was it Muslims in fear of a revenge attack? Was in Australians in fear of a terrorist attack? Was it left-wingers in fear that a Liberal government could get elected? Who was angry? Muslims? Australians? Left-wingers? The meat of the news piece didn't explain. It was deliberate misdirection. Any fear or anger on one side could be attributed to the other, and vice versa, which in turn compounded it. A perception of anger and fear all round in turn forced people to take sides and laid the groundwork for conflict.

Service based economy - high spending government

Arguably, the main reason why Australia has such extreme media saturation is that Australian governments directly and indirectly make the saturated coverage commericially viable. It is a longstanding joke in the media business that the Australian government becomes the nation's top advertiser every three years. It would be more accurate to say that the Australian government is indirectly the media's biggest customer all year round.

Australia has always had high taxing and high spending governments. These governments have naturally used their spending to try to maintain their power. Sometimes they have used spending to "advertise" government policy in regards to industrial relations, privatisation, new taxation policies or funding grants. The government brands the advertising with a non-legal political entity, the Australian Government, which viewers take to mean the prime minister and the senior government ministers of the day.

Aside from directly advertising the value of its polices, the Australian government also advertises that it wants to fund special causes. Once a funding application has been approved, the government runs communication campaigns to raise awareness that it has funded the cause.

The recipient of the funding in turn promotes the government, pays for advertising in the media or runs "public education" campaigns in the media. Again, the media benefits.

In China, the same word for propaganda is used for public education and perhaps "public education" in Australia should be thought about in the same way.

Failure to lead public opinion

When covering major events, the Australian media has proved that it is very effective at getting issues into the national spotlight, provoking emotions and triggering moral outrage. The media has not; however, proved itself to be capable of uniting Australians behind an issue. The Australian public has become so conditioned to taking sides, or taking a dissenting view, that when a journalist tries to get everyone to think the same way, a large number of media consumers do the opporsite to what the media wants of them.

The 1999 republic referendum was a good example of the media's lack of power to unite Australians. Polls showed that 90 per cent of Australians were in favour of a republic. Both sides of parliament supported a republic. A host of Australian celebrities proudly came out with their support for a republic and the Australian media proudly boasted it was in favour of a republic.

In addition to the broad public support, there were numerous issues that journalists could have used to anchor their persuasion campaigns into. The upcoming Sydney Olympics were a stage for Australia to show its maturity to the world, and to have the games opened by the Queen of England seemed a little childish. Likewise, the upcoming Century of Federation celebrations allowed the republic to be portrayed as a constitutional step forward, as Federation was a century earlier. Even the upcoming millennium celebrations seemed to be giving a sense that some kind of change should be happening.

The one sticking point was the republic model. Polls showed that 80 per cent of voters wanted the president to be directly elected by the people. Even though the media was almost 100 per cent in favour of the republic, it was unable to persuade the general public to make a slight shift in attitude. Journalists accustomed to writing to cause emotional and moral conflict just didn't know how to write in order to unite. Consequently, when they told the public to vote yes, the public did what they had been conditioned to do, and that was seek a dissenting view.

The media's innability to lead public opinion was also evident in 2007 when the Labor Party found itself in government in every Australian state as well as at the federal level, despite the fact that News Ltd controlled nearly three quarters of newspapers and has traditionally supported conservative government. News Ltd's attempts to support the Liberal government seemed to drive voters more towards the left-wing parties that held an stronger image of dissent.

Restraint of the media

Even though Australians are the highest consumers of media on earth, they don't like journalists. Furthermore, they have supported politicians restricting journalistic freedom. In 2007, Reporters Without Borders ranked Australia 28th out of 169 countries for press freedom. This put Australia behind less developed countries such as Namibia, Ghana, Latvia and the Czech Republic

Defamation laws are one of the biggest concerns of the Australian media. The laws define defamation as an action that causes someone to be ridiculed, be avoided, or have their reputation damaged. For journalists, being truthful in their reporting is not enough to avoid a defamation charge. As well as being truthful, what they write must be in the public interest. For example, if an Australian prime minister was cheating on his wife by having a homosexual relationship with his driver, the Australian public would probably be interested in the story. Despite being true, writing about the man love could constitute defamation as it may not be in the public interest to know about it. However, if the prime minister was making love with a powerful leader that Australia was doing business with, potentially the affair could corrupt the prime minister's ability to make decisions in Australia's national interest. Under such circumstances, journalists could quite freely report on it.

Cross-media ownership laws are another restraint on the Australian media. The laws prevent the common ownership of newspapers, television and radio broadcasting licences that serve the same region. The laws aim to encourage diversity in the ownership of the most influential forms of media in the hope of limiting the power of one owner to exert an undue influence on the democratic process.

In theory, the state-owned broadcasters, such as the ABC and SBS, are meant to provide an objective counter balance to the commercial imperatives of private media providers. In reality, the state funded journalists can't escape the media culture they have grown up in and they use the same techniques used by private journalists (see Bali bombing transcript below). Furthermore, although the state can't tell ABC journalists what to write, it can influence the selection of staff. Not surprisingly, ABC journalists have a long history of going into politics, which indicates the development of bias during their career. Furthermore, the ABC has a long history of ideology overiding its charter to reflect the national identity. For example, until 30 years ago, newsreaders on the ABC had to be male and had to speak with a British accent. Women, or men with Australian accents, just weren't suitable.

Whipping up hostility towards Muslims

Transcript of news report of the Bali Bombings by the government-funded ABC. Whips up hostility towards Muslims so that hostility towards Muslims can be denounced.

MAXINE McKEW, PRESENTER: Australian Muslims are being warned to be vigilant following the Bali attack.

One mosques (sic) and a muslim school have already been firebombed and NSW has set up a taskforce to respond to any retaliation against the Islamic community.

Muslim groups have warned their communities to be cautious, especially in public, and that women should not travel alone during the day or night.

Concerns about objectivity

The initial sentence was a passive construction that failed to specify the origin of the warning. Were Muslims warning Muslims? Was the taskforce warning Muslims? Was the journalist warning Muslims?
The location of the school or mosque was not specified, nor were any details about the damage caused. Did the school and mosque really exist?
Were the attacks out of the ordinary? Considering schools and religious institutions were regularly vandalised by youths prior to the bombings, it should not concluded that firebomb upon a non-specified school was in retaliation to the Bali Bombings. Some background context could have helped answer the question.
Different Islamic groups have attacked each other in Australia. Was there any evidence that the attacks were anything other than a continuation of an ongoing battle? Some background context could have helped answer the question.
Prior to the Bali Bombings, many Muslim groups had already warned women not to travel alone, and not to be around men that were not relatives. Was the latest warning out of the ordinary?

Thea Dikeos reports.

THEA DIKEOS, REPORTER: Australian Muslims are preparing for a backlash following the Bali bombing and it seems the wait at least in NSW is over.

There are calls for the Government to ban all Muslims coming to Australia.

DAVID OLDFIELD, ONE NATION MLC NSW: The fact is we have a common denominator Muslim terrorist -- we cannot afford the risk of this happening in Australia.

We are at war with terrorism.

THEA DIKEOS: David Oldfield says the Government isn't doing enough to avert a terrorist attack on Australian soil.

DAVID OLDFIELD: How will the Australian Government look if they fail to stop Muslim terrorists entering the country and then we have an explosion in Sydney or Melbourne?

THEA DIKEOS: But others are calling David Oldfield's comments ludicrous, saying there are 1.2 billion Muslims, the vast majority of whom aren't terrorists.

DR AMEER ALI, AUSTRALIAN FEDERATION OF ISLAMIC COUNCILS: There are terrorists in Ireland, India, Spain, Sri Lanka.

Are they all Muslims?

THEA DIKEOS: Evidence of a backlash against the Muslim community is emerging following an attack on a mosque in Sydney and the home of the Imam.

In Melbourne yesterday, a mosque was also firebombed.

And the verbal attacks continue.

TALKBACK CALLER, 2UE: The leaders of the Muslim community should be starting to really chase and make sure this doesn't happen in our community to ensure we keep our way of life.

THEA DIKEOS: Muslim Australian leaders have condemned the Bali bombings and have urged their followers to support the victims by offering assistance.

But threats of violence against the local Muslim community have caused them to take special measures.

DR AMEER ALI: We have sent instructions to Muslims around the country to be vigilant.

Women don't go alone in the street.

THEA DIKEOS: The NSW Government is taking the potential backlash seriously and the Premier has set up a task force to prepare for a breakdown in community harmony.

BOB CARR, NSW PREMIER: I want to offer this assurance to Australians of the Islamic faith -- we recognise that you are loyal Australians, that your commitment is first and foremost to this country, and our job in government is to see there are no reprisals and no act of hatred or vengeance directed at you.

THEA DIKEOS: But the difficulty for any government will be how to manage the fear and anger now emerging following the Bali bombing.

Thea Dikeos, Lateline.

Concerns about objectivity

Dikeous said there were calls to ban Muslims coming to Australia, but didn't state who was making the call.
What exactly was the backlash that Dikeos was referring to?
It was inferred that David Oldfield, a One Nation MLC, was making the call to ban Muslims, but in the broadcast he was only saying the government was not doing enough to prevent the chance of a terrorist attack in Australia.
David Oldfield could not be seen as representative of widely held NSW opinions. Polling showed his popularity at the time was less than one per cent.
It was inferred that a talkback radio caller delivered a verbal attacks. In fact, the talkback radio caller simply said Muslim leaders needed to denounce terrorism.
As with David Oldfield, a talkback radio caller to 2UE could not be seen as representative of widely held opinions in NSW.
The final line, "But the difficulty for any government will be how to manage the fear and anger now emerging following the Bali bombing ", was a deliberate misdirection. It used nominimalisation to change the verb "fear" and the adjective "anger" into nouns. In the process, Dikeos didn't need to state who was in fear, or who was angry. Nor did Dikeous need to specify what people were afraid of, or where their anger was directed. Were Muslims in fear of a revenge attack? Was the journalist in fear of a political party getting elected? Was the community in fear of a terrorist attack on Australian soil?
No credible evidence had been given of any fear of Muslims in Australia. No credible evidence had been given of anger at Muslims in Australia.
The story was about whipping up hysteria. It was not about reporting the facts in an objective manner.

Playing on prejudices against China

Refugee group fears for Chinese man

Dewi Cooke
The Age
August 18, 2007

REFUGEE advocates fear a Chinese man deported in June may have been imprisoned or killed on his return.
The man's wife and daughter have not heard from him since his deportation from South Australia on June 28, despite being in contact while he was in immigration detention for more than two years.
The man, a hairdresser, said he was targeted for having Tibetan clients. He sought protection in Australia after claiming he was tortured by Chinese police, but his application was rejected by the Immigration Department and the Refugee Review Tribunal.
A psychological evaluation by the Survivors of Torture and Trauma Assistance and Rehabilitation Service found he was "struggling to cope" with depression, anxiety and fear stemming from past trauma.
"I cannot understand how minister Andrews, knowing the attitude of the Chinese to Tibetan sympathisers and Tibetan dissidents … could send this man back," the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre's Pamela Curr said. "But that's what he's done, he's taken a punt and hoped, I suppose, that the man is delivered safely."
According to the Government, the man was accompanied on a commercial flight to Beijing by an Australian escort "engaged by the department". On arrival he was returned his passport and passed through customs "without event".
"The application for protection was exhaustively assessed including an independent merits review. There was also a challenge in the High Court and the minister's decision upheld," a spokeswoman for Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews said.
But in a letter to her husband six months before he left, the man's wife urged him to stay in Australia because "if you come back your life will be in danger. You will die. If I die alone, it is better than if we both die."
Advocates are concerned for the wife and daughter who earlier thought they were being watched by Chinese police and have not been heard from for four weeks.

A story that proposes that a man was rejected in his refugee application and returned to his homeland "without event" does not satisfy many of the tests that journalists used to define newsworthy. It is neither rare for people to apply for refugee status in Australia nor for the Refugee Review Tribunal to find that they were either lying or their claims were without foundation.

Dewi Cooke from The Age made a story where none existed by playing up prejudices against the Chinese government. Even though Cooke didn't actually say that the Chinese government had done anything wrong, the "fear" held by a refugee advocacy group was used to create the impression that it had.

The Media in Australia

Style of writing - Morals and emotion but very little logic

Service based economy - high spending government

Failure to lead public opinion

Restraint of the media

Whipping up hostility towards Muslims

Playing on prejudices against China