Monday, July 04, 2011

Mark Day, Sky News, and the sowing of seeds ...

(Above: found here, amongst the illustrated parables).

One of the great pleasures of travel is to be reminded that most people only have the vaguest notions of Austria ("oh I just love koalas") and what's perceived to be a mess of mountains close to home strikes others in this crazy, troubled world as just a hill of beans.

This is worth bearing in mind when returning to the thoughts of generally grumpy Paul Sheehan, who today opens his piece with the news that the NSW government's first three months has passed without scandal.

Now in New South Wales this might be deemed to be newsworthy - a bit like lightning doesn't strike golf course, or no car crashes reported this weekend - but it surely makes O'Farrell opens with a classy 100 tedious reading. The generally grumpy Sheehan has always favoured the apocalypse, and his hymn to the wonders of O'Farrell is remarkably dull, of the kind you might read in Singapore when a columnist decides to celebrate the workings of government.

After reviewing the record, it all amounts to this:

All in all, I think a dispassionate verdict on the government's first 100-day action plan could be summarised with one word: done.

Shaking the head in disbelief at the uxorious, euphonic, sycophantic nature of it all (where is that wretched lobbyist Michael Photios, the usual weekly apocalyptic Sauron in Sheehan's scribbles), the pond moves quickly on to something more newsworthy, and surely that has to be Gillard stops Murdoch bid in the Fairfax press, which bobs up under the header Late rule change undercuts bid for national TV service.

Somehow the tender for Australia TV - a dismal service which, as seen in a Singapore hotel, mainly consists of the Wiggles and soaps as a way of extending the Austrian brand widely throughout Asia - has ended up in the office of headkicker Stephen Conroy, and the aim might well be construed as subverting the tender process, so that the channel continues to reside within the ABC rather than competing upstart, Murdoch-owned Sky News.

We immediately rushed over to the anonymous editorialist for The Australian to discover what was going down, but all was normal - just pieces about air safety being the priority, the UN being stark raving mad, and how foreign investment built much of our wealth, so don't get too excited about the rich black soil of the Liverpool plains and the water table beneath it being turned into festering coal mines to serve the Chinese and their insatiable demand for super-fast trains.

Not a whitter or a twitter about the tender.

Instead it's left to Mark Day to brood about the issue, in Australia Network tender process lacks transparency, and Day manages some nifty boot scooting as he ponders the politicisation of the process.

If you read the Fairfax piece, it seems quite clear that the tender process doesn't lack transparency. The Labor party is determined on payback and making sure that Murdoch's media doesn't get its hands on the Australian Network, and the job has been handed to Conroy, always ready to step up to the plate with News Corp. after years of being bashed around the head about the NBN.

Now that's what the pond calls transparency ...

Poor Day, not wanting to upset the possibility of there still being apples in the apple cart, is forced to resort to bemused bleating:

There's an old rule in journalism that if things just don't seem quite right, chances are they're not. If ever the Not Quite Right rule deserved to be applied to an opaque and puzzling matter of national importance, it is the tender processes for the $230 million Australia Network contract.

Day spends his entire column wondering about former chairman Rudd's role in the affair, and then disingenuously spreads his palms as he wonders why Sky might be on the outer:

Others suggest unwillingness on the part of the government to give the contract to an entity associated with News Limited (publisher of The Australian) and its proprietor, Rupert Murdoch. This is about as tenuous as it gets - Murdoch's News Corporation currently has 39 per cent of BSkyB's one-third share in Sky News Australia, although that will rise if or when Murdoch acquires the other 61 per cent of BSkyB. It is widely believed that Conroy has a profound dislike of News and gives solid support to the free-to-air TV broadcasters, of which Seven and Nine are each one-third shareholders in Sky News.

Oh dear, it's tenuous is it? And it's widely believed Conroy has a profound dislike for the pounding he and the NBN has received over the years?

Extraordinary news.

Remarkably those inner urban elites at Fairfax had little doubt that the tenuous explanation had a Tarzan glue-like grip:

The Gillard government has made an unprecedented intervention in an official tender process to stop Sky News Australia, partly owned by Rupert Murdoch, winning a $223 million contract to broadcast Australia's overseas television service.

Now there, as Humpty Dumpty might say, is a knock down bit of tenuousness.

By the end of his piece, all poor old Mark Day can suggest is that questions should be asked:

I understand Freedom of Information processes are about to be used to see if light can be shed on the procurement process. Parliament sits this week and questions should be asked in both houses. Greens senator Bob Brown could use his new balance-of-power numbers to press a Senate inquiry.

Bob Brown and the filthy greenies riding in on their high horses to ask questions and use balance of powers numbers to press a Senate inquiry, to sort out a commercial problem for News Corp?

But dammit, shouldn't those wretched interfering greenies and their new-found Senate powers - which means July 1st marked the beginning of the apocalypse and the end of civilisation as we know it - simply be destroyed by News Corp?

The irony of poor old Day's suggestion of a Bob Brown intervention is bemusing, especially as elsewhere in the rag, Glenn Milne is let off his leash in the usual way to scribble Saint Bob Brown steps into spotlight, a piece all about how Bob Brown is going to feel the flame of the blowtorch being put upon his belly, and then in the usual way lists all the faults and failings of the greenies.

This is the mob that's going to sort out the tender for Sky News?

Poor old Mark Day is left to mutter a final aside:

The government should be aware of another old rule that has a habit of coming into play in the wake of an NQR. It's the TWO rule - Truth Will Out.

But what if the truth is already out there, and Conroy has been appointed to kneecap the Sky News bid?

Well at that point it's likely to be war between News Corp and the Labor party ...

Hang on, it's war already, and as always, payback is a bitch, and the remarkably restrained response by the News Corp rags - NQRs and TWOs and such like guff - is surely only a holdback until the final decision is made.

Speaking of twee TWO metaphors, naturally the good book has plenty of words about the sowing of seeds. Take 2 Corinthians 9:6:

The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.

Or Ecclesiates 11:6:

In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good. (more biblical seed sowing here).

Or as Chauncey Gardiner himself noted in Being There:

Spring is the time for planting ...

And if you don't cut the roots, all will be well in the garden, or perhaps wisest of all, life (and perhaps business) is a state of mind.

Well they all make as much sense as Mark Day's dark mutterings about NQRs and TWO's, and what a jolly way to start the week, as Hate Media © News Corp goes about its daily business ...

(Below: Chance tends his garden and his tenders).

3 comments:

  1. The latest catch cry is 'Double Dissolution'
    and make it happen now!
    I would be all for another election right now if I could see a clear leader with backbone and integrity. Once upon a time - in a Galaxy Far Far Away - nope that's the wrong introduction, so sorry - let me try again. Once upon a time (yes this is still a fairy story) I really believed the Liberal's might be the right party for Australia, considering the damage the Labor Party has and is and will be doing for the foreseeable future.

    Then I grew up! You see it matters not which party is in power currently, they all have the exact same agenda, albeit under different posh names. There is the Carbon Tax, the Emissions Trading Scheme and the Direct Action Plan.

    http://justmeint.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/understand-the-meaning-of/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you, thank you, thank you...

    'a dismal service which, as seen in a Singapore hotel, mainly consists of the Wiggles and soaps as a way of extending the Austrian brand widely throughout Asia'

    This is an example of PsyOps at its Very Best. Given enough time the Asians will see the Real Outcomes of following Hayekian Neo-Classicism (or sumpn like that) and opt for sumpn else.

    Or, or...our Favourite Rag has really got the message and is doing a bit of Look Over Thereness - It Ain't Us, Hones!. No wonder News Ltd/Sky were hot to trot for this tender; management must have the wind up sumpn rotten about the Oz masthead for some reason.

    Sorry, you give a zillion examples in your joyous blog as to why they should.

    Great Fun.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Lets face it - based on the performance of the News Corp papers, they would deliberately make a mess of any contract they win to create an advantage for the Liberal Party.

    ReplyDelete

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