Opinion- 25 December 2006 |
Harry Robinson Reflects on the Year That Was |
Feeling Good?
We got through the year 2006 pretty well, don't you think? Billions in the
bank, only a handful of dead soldiers overseas,
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Sunrise January 1, 2006 |
Intelligent Design repulsed by our sanity radar, record donations to charities for the festive season.
And we won The Ashes back.
Could omens shine brighter?
True, climate change moved against us and found us unready, the nuclear
power question raised its inconvenient head and found the public in a daft
dither, the wheat scandal soiled our self righteous belief in ourselves, the
national parliament was dominated by a sly philistine government and
undefended by an anachronistic opposition -- until the final few weeks.
But what would you have? Nobody is perfect, no nation is perfect and no year
brings perfection. Our imperfections scarcely went sub-rosa and, anyway, the
opposition chose Kevin Rudd to lead his side of the House. Hopes rose.
How did our popular guardians, the media, behave during the year? With all
the consistency of badly made porridge.
Most of the time they were a sticky mix. Several events excited them,
though. First came Prof Ian Frazer and the vaccine to head off cervical
cancer. He won plaudits mostly for being Australian of the Year and less for
his achievement. Still , it was a salute in the right direction. The next
media eruption came with the trapped miners event in Tasmania. This was made
for media, at least in the view of media managers. After a week of horrors,
heroism and hope the public were turned off by the hysterics in all media.
Did media managers tactfully ease off? No, they kept on giving the public
more melodrama than they wanted while pollies and union apparatchiks put
themselves into camera positions for the final scenes.
Next came the death by stingray of Steve Irwin, croc hunter or tormentor
according to taste. He caught the media mongers napping. At first, he was
merely a sensational story--until American media began to blow him up big
time. His profile here was partly curiosity, partly clown. But when the
Americans in their simple way showed he was an international star, why would
our home grown media not latch onto the puff? When Germaine Greer poured
some of her cold acid onto this national embarrassment, she was good for
tabloid damnation. The Irwin death had editors in a frenzy.
In a different key, the last big media episode of overkill came with Shane
Warne's announcement that his bowling days were all but over. Fluid tonnes
of ink, rolls of paper, aeons of radio time, scads of screen sequences
assured us that a cataclysm had occurred and would rumble through a dark
future. A few timorous voices muttered that the hero's personal life had
disagreeable patches but they were drowned out in a sea of media
lamentation.
The year underscored the media's reputation -- averse to mental challenges,
hungry for melodrama, the cheapeer the better. This matters to the
Educational-Scientific community because the only path toward influencing
governments is through media. They will take note of Ed-Sci proportionally
to their media support. Ed-Sci cannot rely on media, Ed-Sci must concoct
ways to manipulate media -- manipulate the entrenched manipulators. Sup with
the devil, if necessary.
Remember Toowoomba and the water recycling affair? That delightful city on
the edge of the Darling Downs was facing a chronic shortage of potable
water. Mayor Di Thorley went into huddles with scientists and water
engineers. A solution presented itself -- cleanse the town's water including
sewage and recycle it into the main supply. She was advised that it could be
done safely. She was told that the practice was common in cities around the
world without harm.
Mayor Thorley decided to put the proposition to the people which was honest
and democratic of her but it appears that she made one error of judgement:
she came on too strong and thus aroused opposition. Nay-sayers sprang up and
the battle was joined at a public meeting. Arguments went back and forth. On
radio we heard one anti-yuk man say: "And then the scientists brought up some
new figures .. I dunno where they got 'em but ."
It was the voice of the anti-intellectual strata of our nation. It revealed
disrespect and distrust of intellectual people.
That was the voice which threw Mayor Thorley's referendum out. The forces of
Ed-Sci need more than logic to counteract the "I dunno where they got 'em"
syndrome.
Harry Robinson -- for 25 years worked in television journalism in Oz and the US and was for several years air media critic for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Sun-Herald.