Welcome to the world of Nineteen Eighty Four: The U.K. scandal and Australia

In his brilliant novel Nineteen Eighty Four, George Orwell depicts a nightmare world of the future. The State is all-powerful. It keeps the population under firm control by means of a permanent state of war, which demands strict rationing and a semi-military authority over people. There is a daily “Two Minute Hate” which mobilises people against the current enemy. The State watches people daily for any sign of disagreement. Ordinary people have no rights, no privacy, and virtually no power. At the climax of the novel’s climax, its hero, Winston Smith, in bed with a woman, has his house invaded by a trusted friend and he is dragged away for torture and brainwashing before being executed as a traitor.

And now look at what’s been going on in the U.K. The phone-hacking scandal is very complex and it’s difficult for this ordinary citizen to get his head around. I’ve had to make my comments very general out of caution. But some of the highlights seem to be as follows: Family members of dead soldiers may have had their phones hacked into by journalists; relatives of Jean Menezes, shot by police in London as a suspected terrorist, have been told by police that their private numbers were in the possession of a private investigator linked witha major newspaper; it’s claimed that the medical records, legal files, and tax forms of Gordon Brown have been accessed in order to discredit him; at the time of writing, nine people have been arrested and possibly charged by detectives in the U.K and senior executives have resigned; Liberal Democrat Leader and U.K. Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, has called for a thorough media enquiry and Senator Bob Brown, leader of the Greens in Australia, has called for an inquiry here into media ownership and media ethics.

There are also moves by powerful U.S. politicians to bring major media organisations to account for alleged irregularities. The Federal Bureau of Investigation now seems likely to be involved. The whole business is spiraling out of anyone’s control.

Democratic societies are supposed to be governed by a Prime Minister in Cabinet, accountable to a Parliament or a President and Congress. The police have a duty to enforce the law. An independent, free press is meant to offer criticism and advice.  All of these are meant to be separate organisations. This has not been happening in the U.K, the U.S, or Australia.

It’s claimed that police have been paid for information used by journalists to discredit the politicians they dislike. In America, right-wing people are being paid by right-wing-leaning media corporations, and they criticise the President and Congress. In Australia we have the suspicious business of an orchestrated campaign against the carbon tax. Tony Abbott, right-wing shock jocks and some of the newspapers have long been involved in a campaign targeting the carbon tax and the Greens - as Bob Brown stated in the media on 13^th July. Clover Moore, Lord Mayor of Sydney, has also been targeted.

So where are an individual’s rights, if journalists can target those they dislike and wine and dine with those whose policies they approve of? Do powerful media interests bully Members of Parliament? Are improper payments being made by journalists to police to discredit people and air dirty linen in public for improper purposes?

Why was Thatcher so close to media owners, though they are never mentioned in her memoirs? Why did Citizen Rupert support Tony Blair so enthusiastically, as well as supporting the war in Iraq? And if this can happen in the U.K., why not here?

It is all sounding much too like Nineteen Eighty Four.

Even the ‘Two Minute Hate’ has its counterparts today. As I’ve said, there was big media support for war in Iraq, or anywhere else, really. The U.K. newspapers’ manic support for Thatcher and her ludicrous war over The Falklands are well known. Here in Australia the State of Origin will do nicely. This farcical struggle between New South Wales and Queensland keeps Rugby League in the paper. The military language is important: Mate Against Mate, State Against State was used some years ago. Or more recently, When Two Sides Go to War…When the Blues went to play in Brisbane in a match no sane person thought they could win, the media trumpeted they were going into enemy territory.

The parochial media publicise every hamstring tear and bruised lip as if it were life-threatening information. And who gets their ads broadcast? Whose logo is on these matches? Mostly, it’s alcohol and gambling interests. The idea seems to be: keep the masses amused with trivial things, goad them on to hate some imagined enemy, keep them drinking and gambling, and keep sensible discussion out of the papers.

The best discussion of the whole messy business has been in The Guardian. There have been suggestions that Gordon Brown has been urging it on, in revenge against what News Corporation did to bring his Prime Ministership down. This may well be true.

James Murdoch has acknowledged “repeated wrongdoing” at News Limited and the editor of News International, Rebekah Brooks, resigned late last week.

What of Australia? We are assured that none of the above problems could happen here. But organisational culture runs across national boundaries. If problems happen in one country, it is likely that they will occur elsewhere. How would we know, until problems surfaced? It is in the media’s interest to keep everything cozy within the media family and keep the public ignorant.

A media enquiry would be an excellent idea. This is what it should look at:

• Who controls what media in Australia? And this means the whole media, newspapers, radio, and TV.
• What rules are there about promoting various causes on TV? What rules are there about advertisements? What would an independent audit show about how many minutes of ads are actually shown? Recent discussion in The Sydney Morning Herald suggests that the “guidelines” are being routinely abused, and always in a direction calculated to increase profits.
• What safeguards are there to make sure that people’s privacy is not invaded by journalists who act merely for the supposed titillation of the public?
• What safeguards are there to make ABC and SBS accountable to the public and not captive to the wealthy and powerful?
• How can we make it easier for people to complain, especially when their privacy is assaulted by powerful media interests? The complaints procedures we have now are ludicrous, and favor big money and powerful media interests. Complaints must be made in writing, and so on and so on; with so much rigmarole that any sensible person with a complaint feels it’s no use complaining at all.
• What more can be done to ensure that ordinary people’s voices can be heard, and not subjected to the will of the wealthy and powerful?

As I write, politicians and the public are debating an enquiry. Tony Abbott says that the media do a good job. Yes, a good job in frantically defending their own interests and riding roughshod over personal liberties when it suits them. In a useful piece, Michael Gawenda raises many real issues and asks what are the codes of conduct for Today Tonight and A Current Affair. The politicians say we don’t need an enquiry, and media moguls say no, no, no. But they would say that, wouldn’t they?

We shudder at tales of the East German Stasi spying on people and getting children to report on parents. The same happened in Orwell’s nightmare world. Are we confident that none of this could happen here, given what we know so far - let alone what may well be revealed in coming months? I’m not.

Let’s keep demanding an inquiry. It’s simple really. Do you trust politicians to tell the truth? Do you believe what you see on TV and read in the papers? Do you think we could improve things by setting up an independent regulator? It’s well worth getting this right. We all rely on the media to tell us what’s going on. What hope is there for rational decision-making if politicians, the press and even the police are in bed together?