A Bolt from the Green

Andrew Bolt is interesting to contrast with Miranda Devine, in that he shows none of the flair or panache so keenly demonstrated by the latter. Each time Devine is set loose on a topic, she sinks her teeth in and rips it to pieces, not caring how she savages it, content to know that people have been told.

In comparison, Bolt is merely lazy. His output on his blog is nothing short of prodigious, but the majority of it is a link to something that he finds objectionable, then a sentence or two amounting to little more than “this is lies! Damned lies and fabrication!” (Poor grammar simulated for effect). You have to wade through a morass of these items to actually discover his columns, or anything of substance –and I use that term loosely.

“Five reasons not to trust this jihad against our farmers” gets the title right, at least: inflammatory, discriminatory, and predicated on a lie. He’s doing his bit for right wing opinion-holders everywhere. Sadly, Bolt has forgotten how to write. Almost every paragraph is a mere sentence long, and none of them are interesting. The most damning quote, from Frank Sartor, has been plainly denied by its alleged source.

Bolt is content to throw meaningless figures at the audience, provided by “furious” interest groups, and then somehow tie them together by suggesting that it’s all part of a “green conspiracy”. Bolt is entirely unaware of the fact that he’s using the language of fear to suggest that environmentalists have embarked on a fear campaign based on science that he considers “dodgy” at best.

Bolt’s work is eminently forgettable, to the point that one would be hardpressed to remember, by the end, why they had started reading in the first place. The problem is this: with the plainly superior Miranda Devine now comfortably installed at News Ltd, what is the use of carrying Bolt’s dead weight? The Melbourne/Sydney divide isn’t as important as it used to be: the internet lacks frontiers.

Is inserting your own history into a tangentially related story really necessary?

In "Was outing anonymous blogger Grogs Gamut really necessary?", Kate Doak has produced a mostly serviceable article about what came to be known on Twitter as "#groggate". The issue is covered in a straightforward way and deals with relevant issues of online journalistic ethics, but the way that The Scavenger has presented the story is by literally sexing it up.

Even before the article proper begins, the audience is given context: the author of the article is a transsexual who was outed in some way that goes undefined in the article. A media commentator does not need to say "I am qualified to comment on this because I have lived through an analogous situation"; a media commentator would be better placed saying "I am qualified to comment on this because it is my job to do so" - but of course, they shouldn't say that because it is implicit.

Doak is trying to insert herself into a story that can stand perfectly well for itself. It's an uncomfortable graft onto an otherwise straightforward piece. The Grogs Gamut case - a public servant's identity was revealed by a writer from the Australian - is an interesting one, and definitely valid for exploration in the identity management landscape of interconnected social media, but this is only basically attempted here.

It's somewhat ironic that Doak would go on to explicitly outline the qualifications of Massola and Latika Bourke later in the piece – and only tangentially writing about what she is presumably being paid to write about.

At this point it becomes clear that this is an uncomfortably written and not strictly proofread article, featuring "it's/its" confusion and also a "compromised" tweet - that is, one edited to fit within 140 characters but presented outside the medium so as to look like an exercise in illiteracy.

Doak attempts to write both a personal and investigative piece and doesn't quite "make it" with either approach. The whole endeavour is compromised, initially by an attempt to add personality and relevance, and then by a total breakdown in vision.

It ain't easy being Devine

Much as it pains me to say this (and this is an area in which I am not able to maintain a veneer of bipartisanship), Miranda Devine (Miranda Devine!) understands the internet better than Jonathan Green could ever hope to.

“Frannie and friends removed the video from the 10:10 website when complaints started, but it was too late. She has let the cat out of the bag.”

Devine is cognizant of the fact that nothing on the internet ever dies, which is why I’m able to link you to this absolutely abhorrent piece that she wrote in 2007 conflating The History Boys with pedophilia.

That aside, it’s time to actually address her premiere blog post in her new home on the Herald Sun blogs, “What it really means to be Green”. Devine starts with an easy target, Richard Curtis’ “10:10 No Pressure” video:

The problem is that Devine has chosen to take this ill-advised (and, more offensively, boring) video as a serious indication of the actual leanings of environmentally minded people: she sincerely believes that Greens are determined to kill everyone. This is not even paraphrasing her and twisting her words: she has literally referred to greens as a “totalitarian death cult”, and makes repeated references to Nazism. She takes everything to such extremes that it’s difficult to take her seriously, but she absolutely wants you to.

Devine’s work is actually a perfect piece of opinion writing, online or off. It is tempting to simply quote the entire thing because, regardless of what you actually think of her opinions, she is a master craftswoman of the form. She writes polemics, and people can’t help but be inflamed by them (or, somehow, agree with them).

Miranda Devine earns her money, and she is clearly more at home in her new News Limited digs than she ever was at Fairfax. Godspeed, Miranda. Never stop doing what you do.

The Hardy Experiments: a failure by the ABC

Marieke Hardy, defender of the literate, came under fire by The Drum because they chose to run an article that she had written that they considered to be in poor taste. Jonathan Green ran an “Editor’s note” on “The Pyne Experiments” four days after its initial publication, and removed the “offending” article.

The column, reproduced here, is admittedly not an excellent piece of online journalism, but it was public for four days before they chose to pull it. Any damage that it might have done would have been done by such time and, if nothing had been said, it would have stood as an ultimately throwaway column that one would forget immediately after reading it. By drawing attention to its removal, an issue has been created where previously no one had cared enough to be vocal about it.

Green’s note is condescending to Hardy:

“I feel I let her down this time, because the assault on Christopher Pyne she filed this week was not on a par with the main body of her work.”

This is not the same as saying “Marieke has done a terrible thing”; Green has transformed the issue into a giant mea culpa on his own part.

This editor’s note shows weakness on the part of Green, The Drum and the ABC to have simply kowtowed to the apparently invisible threat of Pyne. The fact that once something is published on the internet it never truly dies has been lost on Green, as evidenced by the fact that I was able to link to the original text of Hardy’s column.

It is almost admirable for Green to have attempted to own his mistake, and to deflect any blame from Hardy, but in completely removing a column that was asinine at worst, and condescending to its author, he has ignored the way that the internet operates and made something out of nothing.

Pure Poison infiltrates the Battleship Australian

Pure Poison is a sub-blog of Crikey, positioning itself as a sort of textual and online counterpart to the ABC’s Media Watch. In recent times, The Australian has come under fire for going to “war” against the Greens and Pure Poison stands as one of several outlets that have objected.

The Australian’s defence to criticism of its war on Greens: stop oppressing us! stands as Pure Poison’s response to The Australian’s response to general media response to The Australian’s partisan coverage of many aspects of politics in the lead up to the election and the aftermath. That sentence may seem convoluted but so, too, do The Australian’s defences for their actions.

Author Jeremy Sear makes a great deal of the fact that The Australian has failed to delineate its reportage from its editorials. The most satisfying quote that one can pull from the article is “News Ltd has acted not as a trustworthy broker of information but as an advocate for the Coalition” – emphasizing specifically what responsible journalism is supposed to be about. If one cannot tell the difference between the editorial and news sections of a newspaper, then that newspaper has not done its job correctly according to the largely unwritten charter of professional journalism; it’s like journalism’s collective unconscious is uniformly failing to be tapped into by News Ltd.

Sear’s article is relatively brief but savage nonetheless. It pointedly mentions that The Australian wants to “destroy” the Greens and has ignored the meat of its criticism. It suggests that The Australian has undermined its own credibility in all future coverage of the Greens and the new minority government.

Pure Poison is the sort of thing that exists precisely because outlets like News Ltd and people like Andrew Bolt exist. Sear’s work will remain a sad necessity as long as news outlets like The Australian treat their readers with contempt.

Racist with an S

How do you spell racist?

Marieke Hardy describes herself as “your favourite ABC investigative reporter”. Addressing a lesser-known (that is, Victorian) political scandal, Hardy has chosen to go behind the scenes of Labor MP Don Nardella’s “spelling slur”.

Constituent Fiona Peterson wrote to Nardella, "You seem to not want to help anyone except the immagration people". Nardella’s reply read simply: "My advice to you stands from my initial email reply. Learn how to spell 'immigration' before using the word again"

The only outlets that appear to carry the story in a quick Google search are the Herald Sun and News.com.au, both owned by News Ltd. The stories are identical, and while Nardella’s quote contains the implication that this was not the extent of his correspondence with Peterson, the item itself suggests that Nardella did nothing but dismiss Peterson.

To Hardy herself: she covers the other side of the story, that of defending Nardella and identifying an endemic problem: racists can’t spell. Hardy has taken a non-story and transformed it into a comedy piece that also exposes a disturbing (and disturbed) subset of the internet. In so doing she reveals the more pressing issue: that racism and ignorance remain unremarked upon in society while politicians are the frequently cast as villains, particularly if their ideology is diametrically opposite that of the publishing outlet’s.

Hardy is guilty of this in that she presents Pauline Hanson as a punchline without comment – and this is where reader bias comes in, because I thought that was funny. By making a direct correlation between hate speech, racist ideas and diminished intellectual capacity, Hardy has informed, entertained and demystified a subset of “the other”.

No one could confuse Hardy’s investigative reportage with actual investigation and reportage, but she has produced an admirable piece of work nonetheless.

And That Was the Election that Kind of Was

Occasional pundit and all around media consumer Ben Pobjie comes to us this week with a brief rundown of the election … such as it was. Pobjie presents his audience with an early interpretation of what looks to be a long-running confusion, and he starts by dispelling some very basic myths.

Pobjie’s first task is to dispel the bizarre notion that Australia deliberately hung itself. His joke structure is sound: “Trust me on this: people who voted Labor wanted Labor. People who voted Liberal wanted Liberal. People who voted Green wanted Green. People who voted Family First wanted a lobotomy.”

He is factual and funny and clearly showing his own political leanings all at once. The entry is tagged “idiots”, as Pobjie is clearly disgruntled at the illogical state of political discourse in Australia – in that he rightly wonders why anyone would wish this situation upon their country.

The second point is more trivial and semantic, but still valid for its criticism of political journalism practice.

Pobjie’s parting shot is leveled at Bob Katter, who has begun to gain a cult following. Pobjie illustrates the befuddlement with which Katter tackles hot button issues, but sadly this has served only to make certain corners raise the man to the level of Chuck Norris, another figure thoroughly undeserving of his legend. (A quick consultation of Wikipedia attests to Katter’s somewhat repugnant political views).

Pobjie’s article is successful in that it acts in a “venting” blog form but also as a call for more level headedness and accuracy in political reportage. Pobjie also scores bonus points for enabling people to justify quoting “bitch, please” on a university blog.

Gillard and Abbott nearly let The Punch have a knock out

The Punch is supposed to be News Ltd's answer to ABC’s The Drum, and similar sites such as Crikey and its spin off Pure Poison. Coming from a News Ltd funded operation, “Julia and Tony learning the art of limited overs politics” is presented surprisingly without much in the way of spin – especially in the context of it being published a mere eight hours after the somewhat dismissive “Bob Brown is feeling lucky”.

Paul Colgan approaches his subject, the second people’s forum of the election campaign, in an informative but folksy way. Colgan almost immediately admits that the cricket analogy that he is using is tenuous at best – and it was already wholly lost on me, regardless. I’m not “down home” enough for this sort of talk but undoubtedly a lot of The Punch’s readers would understand.

This recount of the forum is remarkably balanced, with Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard both coming across as flawed individuals receiving mixed reactions from their shared audience. Colgan is critical of the responses of both of them, but seems to pay particular attention to the perceived ridiculousness of Abbott’s answers in regards to peak oil and the Global Financial Crisis. It is definitely not something that I would reasonably have expected to ever read on The Punch, and certainly not on something run by News Ltd.

Colgan’s article was apparently composed in haste with a minimum of editing applied: several sentences are missing key words, meaning that the reader has to deal with a couple of stumbling blocks. Still, despite its flaws, Colgan has produced one of the more readable items on The Punch website. Damning with faint praise, perhaps, but true nonetheless.

Wendy Francis vs. Moral Relativism

In the “Twitter election”, the parallel universe that has been running through the #ausvotes hashtag on Twitter, Family First Queensland candidate Wendy Francis has caused a stir. Francis posted a stream of tweets claiming, “Children in homosexual relationships are subject to emotional abuse. Legitimising gay marriage is like legalising child abuse” and similar. The internet and Twitter being the way they are, a politician can make an ill advised comment and delete it. The traces remain, however – if someone sees something particularly noteworthy, they will be sure to take screen caps and distribute them widely.

“Bigotry and homophobia in politics” reads almost as an apologia for Francis’ own words simply because they are born of ignorance and are not as repellent in the author’s eyes as those of One Nation’s John Groves. While Francis has never incited people to violence as Groves has, simply chalking Francis’ claims up to ignorance is irresponsible.

The author, “Bastard Sheep” (who apparently does not use his real name online), believes that education is the solution to Francis’ issues and worldviews. The fact remains that she is espousing the viewpoint that gay marriage and child abuse are the same thing. Francis’ claim is that she speaks for the “concerns of mainstream Australia”. She wants “mainstream Australia” to listen to her, and therefore she firmly believes that what she is saying is true and in the country’s best interests.

The “Bigotry and homophobia in politics” blog entry illustrates that a story can spread across the Twitter and blogospheres and be interpreted in a variety of ways. For Bastard Sheep, Francis’ comments were insignificant relative to the violent threats of John Groves, and not taken on their own merits.

(A more in-depth account of the John Groves issue, which is a mixture of reportage and opinion, is available at Nicholas Perkins’ blog.)

Rise of the LOLBolts

Andrew Bolt is perhaps better known in Melbourne than he is in Sydney, but the thing about the internet is that it is the great equaliser: as such, we can read his venomous and under-inflated opinion pieces wherever we are in the world.

Bolt is a target ripe for parody, and as such a twitter account purporting to be written by the man himself appeared online. It was not until nearly 18 months into @AndrewBolt’s Twitter reign that the “real” Bolt acknowledged the fake’s existence.

The Fake Bolt responded to the real Bolt’s outrage through Crikey with the arch headline “Real Andrew Bolt is wrong, says Fake Andrew Bolt”. With one of the subjects of the article also being the writer of the article, there is a clear bias displayed, but this is irrelevant.

Fake Andrew Bolt is writing in a different register to his normal satirical mode; here he is explaining himself while simultaneously painting a negative picture of the real Andrew Bolt and his apparent lack of humour. The article works because of the place of its publication: Crikey balances serious reportage and tongue-in-cheek humour on a daily basis.

Fake Andrew Bolt isn’t as high profile as fake pundits along the lines of Stephen Colbert, but he operates to the same principle: that of “Poe’s Law”, which states that fundamentalism and conservatism are largely indistinguishable from satire and parody. (For a decidedly different reading of Poe’s Law, check the always confusing Conservapedia)

In Australian media and political discourse, Twitter is becoming an increasingly pervasive and influential tool. Real Bolt can try to dismiss Twitter, saying, “I don’t really need to tell people what I had for breakfast”, but it is difficult to deny the impact that Twitter has had on a media savvy subset of Australian citizens. That some people can’t tell the two Bolts apart really says all that needs saying.