Attack Of The Towering Trot

THE next poor fellow to divorce the former Mrs Bunyip will learn rather quickly that harsh words come in two varieties. The first sort hurt but their effect is muted, as hearing grim truths about one’s poor habits and regrettable activities tends to encourage silence rather than anger, silence with sometimes a dash of shame. The other kind, they’re the barbs that can escalate the simplest spat into what attending police will log as “a serious domestic”.  It is one thing to hear genuine vices proclaimed – screamed, actually – but quite another to be heaped with convictions for offences no more than contemplated, a category that includes all those misconceptions about what went on that night on the mooring with Joan (who was drunk, going through a difficult time and just needed a little help with her self-esteem).  The thing about legal papers and lawyer bills is that, eventually, they turn those bitter moments into memories. Slowly the temper cools, blood pressure medications can be chucked and it becomes possible as anger subsides to fall asleep without balled fists and grinding teeth.

Such has been the happy state at the Billabong for the past few years, but not last night. When the light was dimmed and imagination re-ran the day in its sepia stutter of mise-en-scenes, it was the spectre of a snarling Martin Hirst that rose from the drowsy subconscious. And once again, as he did through most of yesterday afternoon, he was flinging terrible, unjust slurs and charges. Wearing one of Mrs Bunyip’s less-fetching aprons, wielding an ice pick in one hand and a fashionable martini in the other, the phantasm's words were honed by cruelty and cut with a rapier’s slash.

The Billabong  is “a low-rent rightwing blog” and the Professor “a troll” cum “dribblejaw” who feeds faux “facts” to Andrew Bolt. This death-beast percolation fires up the jackboot media, yesterday inspiring a garden-variety reporter to call Deakin University’s Associate Professor of Media Studies (just as he was settling down, no doubt with a chic martini) and grill him in that evil, Murdoch way.

ethicalmartini ethicalmartini 

#mediainquiry I just had a call from #thedAilytelegraph on a witch hunt for reds under the bed. Weds #newslimited papers doing a hatchet job

3 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

Vile, foul remarks, but there were more and worse memories to haunt last night’s dark hours. When a tweeting admirer urged Associate Professor Hirst to spurn a “fascist” Bunyip and pay no heed at all to posts about the academic’s proud Trot pedigree, he rejected with a revolutionary’s zeal the very notion of staying schtum. He is out for blood, he explained in his response, replying that “baiting them is fun. They are nasty and don't have a sense of humour or social justice.”

In the case of a mild and inoffensive Bunyip, Hirst might be right about the social justice bit. But nasty? No sense of humour? What a hurtful man he is to say such things, so hateful it requires a real effort to extend good fellowship’s hand and remind him, gently and calmly, why empty vessels will always make the most noise. It is no more than logic, really. If a sense of humour is lacking at the Billabong then something else must be responsible for the chuckles at his expense that he sense, and a process of elimination nominates him as the source of all that mirth.

If Hirst would but spike tweets like this one, that would be a big step toward his goal of being taken seriously – quite a challenge for a fellow who works at Deakin, of which a modest commenter notes: “ATAR entrance cutoff in 2011 to the Deakin faculty of Media and Communications at the Geelong Campus was a stunning 59.05”.

ethicalmartini ethicalmartini 

#mediainquiry #newslimited asks are you now or have you ever been a #Trotskyist nothing about my opinion. As a #socialist I am not allowed

4 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

Associate Professor Hirst, it is not that you are a socialist. There are still quite a few of those about, especially in the common rooms of universities until recently devoted to the useful disciplines of wool classing and crutching. The real problem is that you are a Trot, which in this day and age suggests, you know, a self-absorbed preciousness.

Advocating the hopeless cause has always been a fine way to stand out from the pack, to wrap  ego in the pure and burnished glow of inspirational otherworldliness. Mainstream Left and dominant Right? Why, don’t you know that each is wrong, and ’tis only from the throne of theory and Trot abstractions that the shortcomings of all others’ agendas can be divined and, with a contemptuous wave, dismissed. It is the playground of your noxious, know-it-all teenager -- an expanding demographic which has come to include university-supported Peter Pans of the middle-aged variety. And best of all, the Trot creed cannot fail because it will never be put to the test, meaning Associate Professor Hirst can remain the smartest and most interesting guest at any inner city barbecue. He will think so, anyway, which really is the most important thing.

Still, it remains something of a mystery why the Press Inquiry made Associate Professor Hirst its lead witness. Trotsky was, after all, an advocate of doing away with censorship, as he explained in 1938:

“Any workers ‘leader’ who arms the bourgeois state with special means to control public opinion in general, and the press in particular, is a traitor.”

Since the inquiry’s other witnesses have been rather keen to fit free speech with overseers, hobbles and reviewers, not to mention generous, grant-bestowing “parents”, Hirst would seem once again to have been cast as the loneliest voice in the room.

But then, when you recall what else Long Winded Leon had to say about free speech, the genius of kicking off a show trial with a thinker of Associate Professor’s stature becomes crystal clear:

Once victorious, the proletariat may find itself forced, for a period of time, to take special measures against the bourgeoisie, if the bourgeoisie adopts an attitude of open revolt against the workers’ state. In this case, restrictions to the freedom of the press go hand in hand with all other measures used in preparation for a civil war. When forced to use artillery and aviation against the enemy we will obviously not tolerate this same enemy maintaining his own centers of information and propaganda inside the camp of the armed proletariat.

The revolution, Associate Professor Hirst’s revolution, is not yet upon us or ever likely to be, so those restrictions are needed now and, to all intents purposes, forever after.

It all makes perfect sense to the superior mind, especially after a few martinis.  

Three Sleazy Pieces

THE RAIN that swept over Melbourne last night forced the morning’s appointment on the golf course to be bumped into this afternoon, when a little sun is expected to peek through grey skies. Indeed, it is doing so already, which means there is just time to post a quick thought about the Press Inquiry and its quest to establish standards and codes of behaviour. As the list of witnesses is stacked heavily with Murdoch haters and an ivory tower Trot, there is a slight chance the inquisitors might not have had their attention directed to other news organizations, their journalists’ little mistakes and the measures pursued when those errors were brought to light.

Since the window for written submissions closed on October 31, it is too late to provide any formal assistance. Still, as both Judge Finkelstein and Fairfax contributor Ricketson are down with the web, as the youngsters say, there is a slight chance one or other might stumble across this post and contemplate calling a few additional witnesses, notably the ABC’s Mark Scott and Fairfax’s Greg Hywood.

Three areas of interest will be enough for now, as Double Bogey Daddy has just called to make sure the Professor’s  Wedge of Wonder will be available for sinking improbable chips.

JOURNALISTIC STANDARDS #1:

In October, 2008, The Age published a report by Carolyn Webb accusing Theo Theophanous, then a member of Victoria’s Labor government, of raping a woman in his parliamentary office. Amongst its litany of other, scathing conclusions, the Press Council found that Webb enjoyed a prior relationship with the accuser, stayed as a guest at her home in Greece, neglected to report inconsistencies and failed to interview two women who would have cast grave doubt on the accuser’s credibility. These sins of omission and commission, both by the reporter and her newspaper, were so egregious even Media Watch was appalled.

Impact: Theophanous’ political career came to an abrupt end and his reputation was trashed.

Consequences: Ms Webb remains a reporter for The Age, in whose pages she recently wrote of a trip to Bali and her dismay at finding it full of Balinese.

JOURNALISTIC STANDARDS #2:

 In 2006, two office cleaning companies complained to the Victorian Ombudsman that political interference saw government contracts go to moppers, dusters and bin-emptiers other than themselves. Each cited at least one of three stories by Sunday Age journalist Michael Bachelard, all purporting to report concerns that undue influence had been brought to bear by Theo Theophanous, as laid out in the first sentence of the initial report:

Major Projects Minister Theo Theophanous tried to influence a ministerial colleague last year over a tender for multi-million dollar contracts to help a mate who had sponsored one of his private fundraising events.

The Ombudsman’s report notes that Bachelard screwed up the chronology of various meetings, which called his scoops’ premise into question. Bachelard’s response:

Now, I'm - I may have been told that it - it in those general terms, I may have been told that it was over the particular tender. But I suspect what happened was I was told it in general terms then I went and found out that there had been a tender process just recently and - and probably somewhere in the murky depths of my mind put two and two together over the actual timing of the lobbying and probably didn't clarify that down to the point of exactly when the lobbying had taken place. I confirmed to my satisfaction that lobbying had taken place. I confirmed to my satisfaction that the contracts had been let and GJK had been a big winner.

Later, when Bachelard’s colleague, Carolyn Webb, was bollocked by the Press Council over the spurious allegations of her undeclared friend having been raped, that body also took note of an article by Bachelard devoted to much the same matter in the Sunday Age. While dismissing Theophanous’ grievance on that particular point, it also observed:

Mr Theophanous claimed that this article was a "hatchet job", factually incorrect and falsely alleged lack of integrity and improper financial dealings. He complained that he had been given no opportunity to comment prior to publication and that the article did not mention that the writer, Michael Bachelard, had been "criticised" by the Ombudsman in 2007 for making baseless allegations of impropriety against Mr Theophanous. The newspaper responded that Mr Theophanous had been given an opportunity to comment and that the Ombudsman's findings did not refute Mr Bachelard's earlier report.

In the Council's view, this article trod close to the line of fairness and balance through its degree of reliance on unattributed quotations and assertions as the basis for very severe criticism. The Council also believes that it is often unwise, and sometimes clearly unacceptable, for a newspaper to publish an article by a journalist who may be vulnerable to perceptions of a conflict of interest in favour of or against a person referred to in the article, at least if the relevant facts are not disclosed.

Impact: Further damage to Theophanous’ reputation and much wasted time and money investigating a complaint found to be without merit. To the good, the Ombudsman did urge changes to the tendering process, but these did not flow from Bachelard’s charge.

Consequences: Bachelard has just been promoted to the job of Fairfax’s man in Indonesia.

JOURNALISTIC STANDARDS #3

Four Corners put to air a programme, Lords of the Forest, reported by Ticky Fullerton. The Australian Communications and Media Authority found that it was both grossly inaccurate and extraordinarily biased. This response to the Four Corners smear addresses just how bad it was.

Consequences: The public was misled and the ABC’s credibility compromised.

Result: Ticky Fullerton was promoted and now comperes Lateline Business.

 

When the Press Inquiry finishes hearing from enemies of free speech, it might want to consider those and other matters. That is, however, a humungous "might".

Media Regulation: Take It From a Trot

BEING a principled Bunyip can have its downside. Make a promise to be somewhere and do something and, much as circumstances might change in the interim, the obligation to turn up and perform as promised cannot be shrugged off. That is why tomorrow morning will see The Professor on the first tee at Imperial Bearbrass, where Double Bogey Daddy needs someone with a reliable short game to compliment his long drives in a very social Ambrose event. Unless it buckets down, always a possibility (fingers crossed) in Melbourne, there will be no getting out of it.

What a pity! It would be much more interesting to secure a seat in the Marsh Auditorium at 555 Londsdale Street and witness the inaugural public hearing of the Independent Inquiry into Media and Media Regulation.

It should be a great show, perhaps the finest display of partisan politics and naked self-interest ever to be gussied up with a retired judge and pointed at the public purse. Start with the very first witness, Dr Martin Hirst, who will be introduced, to quote his bio, as “associate professor and journalism curriculum leader in the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University.”

That is not Hirst’s most notable distinction, however. As is thumbnailed on the bio page of the archival website Marxist Interventions, the inquiry’s first source of wisdom “has been active in socialist politics since 1975 and claims to have been the only Trotskyist to ever work in the federal press gallery as a journalist.”

No mere scribbler or teacher of aspiring scribblers, Hirst is the real, revolutionary deal, as one of his fellow Trots commented after a June, 2007, demonstration outside the Australian High Commission in Auckland, where he was teaching at the time. The grievance was John Howard’s intervention in the Northern Territory’s troubled Indigenous communities, which the trans-Tasman ferals saw – Surprise! Surprise! -- as racist neo-imperialism. It was a rough and tumble gathering, with at least one arrest for assaulting police, the rioters egged on by Hirst, as a comrade on the barricades explained:

...very good speeches from all the groups in support-Julia and Joe from Socialist Worker, Martin Hirst, Lecturer in Media studies at AUT, Jared from Workers Party, Jim Gladwin from Citizens against Privatisation, and statement read out from Kulin Nations and Aboriginal declaration of sovereignty’ by UNITY editor Daph Lawless in Consulate occupation that broke through police lines.

Yes, it would be fun to attend tomorrow’s hearing, not least because the witnesses get even better after that.

More on the other stars of the show a little later in the day.


UPDATE: If you fancy a little preview of Hirst's likely theme, go here, where he has just posted a little essay about Andrew Bolt, the Mordy-Litijus tribe and why free speech is acceptable only so long as people like Hirst find its sentiments congenial:

The Herald &Weekly Times justification on this point seems to imp[ly that anything goes in the freedom of speech stakes . . .  This argument takes no account of the public benefit and public interest in having a legal means to curtail hateful, hurtful and inflammatory propaganda."

Trots, as everyone knows, go out of their way not to give offence.

UPDATE II: While he approves of gagging free speech he finds unpleasant, Hirst squeals when he perceives the same motoives in others. Listen closely from the 3:00 mark, when Hirst accuses the U.S. of "trying to shut me up" for disagreeing with its campaign against terror and terrorists.