‘Fake news’ and ‘misinformation’ don’t just mean outright lies. Misinformation includes selective or half-truths. What someone chooses not to say is as much misinformation as choosing to tell lies.
The Australian mainstream media went on an orgy of misinformation last week – ironically over the imminent defeat of a government bill supposedly aimed at combating ‘misinformation’.
The Australian mainstream media marked the death of the government’s Censorship Bill today by censoring debate about it. As hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens celebrated the announcement on Friday evening that the government’s Bill will fail to get the necessary votes when it is presented to the Senate next week, the media resumed its role as the government’s chief tyrannical collaborator by pretending that there were more important things to discuss.
As if there were many things more important than one of the most sinister Orwellian pieces of legislation ever put before the Australian Parliament. Not that the mainstream media were willing to admit that, simply because the bill didn’t apply to them. In a spectacular display of chutzpah, the legislation supposed to prevent the dissemination of misinformation specifically excluded the two worst sources of lies and mendacity in modern society – politicians and the mainstream media.
Ordinary people would have been jailed for posting comments deemed by apparatchiks as “harmful” to national interest, but journalists working for large companies wouldn’t.
This clause was, and still is, the modern Australian equivalent of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact – two ostensible opponents calling a ceasefire while they enslave and destroy their common enemies – the uppity citizens of Australia and the unregulated, free social media platforms from which they, the citizens, increasingly prefer to seek their news and engage in debate.
This is not, though, the end of the free speech war in Australia. It is merely the end of the beginning.
The government and the mainstream media still resent the people for wishing to speak freely – and social media for allowing them to do so […]
After decades of a cosy symbiotic relationship, the members of the political and media classes now find themselves alienated against the voters/readers they once took for granted.
And they have responded in the only way they know how, by desperately flailing at the levers of power.
And both are doing so purely from naked self-interest. Politicians crave power and mainstream media speaks lies for power. Both are dying. The mainstream media are losing audience and advertisers and teetering on the brink of collapse. The Albanese government was elected with one of the smallest first-preference votes in Australian history.
Like cornered animals, they’re desperate and dangerous.
Both sides of politics are pressing ahead with a plan to require digital registration for the privilege of using social media in Australia.
It is the sort of State control that provides precious vindication for career politicians, regardless of what side they come from.
While the media is supporting it, not because it makes the internet safer for children but because it punishes their biggest commercial rivals.
No wonder Anthony Albanese is so keen to grovel to Xi Jinping: he clearly envies the Dear Leader’s “Harmonious Society” total social control.
Maybe the next doomed bill Albanese will introduce will be to establish a ‘social credit’ system.
Actually, forget I said that – best not to give the bastard any ideas.
