Angry Old White Men

I read somewhere that I am an angry old white male. That's because I subscribe to The Australian. I've been reading The Australian since the 1970's, so it seems that I've been old and angry all my life. I read somewhere else that I'm an inner city Latte drinking pinko green watermelon because I read Green Left Weekly. Must have read that in The Australian newspaper. 

Elsewhere I am congratulated for my commitment to independent media by subscribing to New Matilda, excoriated as a climate change denier because I read the Herald-Sun,  exposed as a climate change alarmist because I raised a mild criticism about Andrew Bolt's  TV talk show,  reviled as anti Catholic because I support a Royal Commission on Child Abuse, a coconut because I read Tracker, a communist because I support community owned and operated Melbourne Community TV broadcaster Channel 31, a liberal pansy because I watch ABC TV,  a conservative hard liner because I write in support of broadcaster Alan Jones right to speak freely.

What can be labelled can be hated. But doesn't hating something only make it stronger?

This was on my mind as I read the latest spat between The Australian and the ABC. Andrew McIntyre, in an article for The Australian  titled  For Normal Viewing Lean Left, writes:

...so many educated, generally mildly apolitical, well thinking middle class people with a regular diet of the ABC and Fairfax, simply are not aware that, for instance, the world has stopped warming for the past 16 years, that hurricanes and extreme weather events have declined and are not related to global warming, that Doha was a dismal failure, that the NBN has never had a cost benefit analysis, that Green jobs cost money ... and jobs, that growing the economic pie is not the same as redistributing tax revenue...

I'm not going to join in and contribute my own content analysis, a formal, often formulaic and sometimes fatuous and definitely old fashioned, quaint even, methodology for analysing mass media texts I have roundly criticised on these pages before. I have been especially critical of the so-called revelations of  bias in The Australian newspaper by media academics. 

McIntyre is basically calling for greater scrutiny and regulation of the ABC to eliminate bias. If we are not careful Australians are going to, quite scientifically and forensically and with the best of intentions, regulate free speech out of existence. Surely, if the market of ideas is truly robust and, as McIntyre writes:

...in the US the population would, without the omnipresent media bias, score fully 20 percentage points further to the Right. If correct, this is very troubling...

then why doesn't the market  itself correct  bias? As it is, the ABC audience is as big as it ever has been. 

It just might be that Australia is a nation of individuals thinking for themselves and making up their own minds, free from the chafing yolk of censorship and state sponsored interference in the production and consumption of mass media objects. Watching, reading, and listening are all passive acts which precede the active and onerous business of forming an opinion.  Heaven help us if  we ever only allow those things that are agreeable to us, only read what accords with our prejudices, or only speak what we believe  is agreeable to others.

Happy Christmas to everyone, hope all your dreams come true. Whichever way you lean.