Category Archives: Media

US: lots of technology, poor implementations

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AUSTRALIAN nationals do not require a visa to visit the United States as tourists. They merely have to fill in a form on a website, wait for approval and then carry a printout of the resultant permission when they travel.

But any Australian passport holder who visits the US to report on an event has to get a journalist’s visa, what is known as an I category visa.

Going through the process is illuminating because one discovers the level of incompetence in the American system, if nothing else.

In July, I received an invitation from SUSE Linux, a company based in Germany, to attend their 20th anniversary celebrations to be held in Orlando, Florida. As it would have been churlish to refuse, I indicated I would accept.

SUSE was once an independent company and was bought by Novell in 2003. Novell, at that time, was a public company and SUSE was run from the US, not exactly very successfully. In 2011, Novell was bought by Attachmate Corporation which decided to relocate SUSE in Germany and run it from there. Attachmate also took Novell private.

The US visa can be applied for online – but the form leaves much to be desired. Firstly, it is built using Microsoft technology and thus works best with Internet Explorer. Nobody tells you this – I found out by trial and error due to my technology background.

A form which is properly designed should take one from page to page, allowing for both negative and positive answers. If a particular question cannot be left vacant, then there should be an option to get past that spot.

But with the visa application form, this does not happen. For example, I was clearly not going to work for an American company during my stay in the US. But the logic (?) built into the form clearly decided that this was the case even though I had clearly indicated that I was applying for a visa for a foreign media representative. I could not progress from this page.

I had to contact the US State Department to find out what to do – and the way to contact them is not provided. No, I found out the email address by going to the website of the US consulate in Melbourne and emailing them. I got an automated reply, giving me the correct email address. What a bloody circuitous way to deliver information!

One has to upload a picture along with the application. And there are all kinds of inane questions to answer – have you ever been involved in terrorist acts? have you been involved in genocide? Sure, people who are inclined this way would genuflect and tell Uncle Sam that they are indeed so oriented. Who designs these forms?

After this, one needs to make an appointment at the nearest consulate or embassy. But the amazing thing was that when I did so, I could not select the category of visa which I had specified in my application. I was offered other choices. To get past the form, I chose the B1/B2 which is a business visa.

Came the day of the interview and I was witness to what technology guru Bruce Schneier calls “security theatre”. At the consulate, there are two solemn men in uniform who act as though everyone who comes through the door is a member of al-Qaeda. They would be comical if they did not take themselves so seriously. The process is drawn out as much as possible to make it seem as though the security is the best in the world.

Upstairs, again papers were checked. No bags allowed, no mobile phones either. One had to sit in an area where a TV was blaring American propaganda – the US is the land of innovation, the land of racial harmony (lots of footage of Muslims saying the US was a beautiful place to live), the land of education, the land of opportunity. No mention was made of the national debt which now stands at $US15 trillion.

After 20 minutes (my appointment was at 10am), I was called to the counter. I explained the problem about the visa category and was given a long list of things which I would have to do. I then asked, sarcastically why I had to be delayed because of an error in the US web form. Back came the reply, “I will speak to my officer”.

Back to the same counter after 15 minutes. Now the girl told me that I had filled in the form correctly, something I already knew. I was fingerprinted and then went back to wait.

After 40 minutes more of listening to the propaganda, I was called for an interview. No seat, it’s done standing up. There is no toilet available for use by visitors on that floor – though the staff obviously do have a place to do their jobs. Way to go, USA.

Routine questions were asked, some of them redundant. Are you travelling alone? (already indicated on the form). Have you been to the US before? (also indicated on same form). How long are you going to be there? (again, asked and answered on the form). Have you ever been arrested? I was about to say that I had been arrested 13 times but then held my tongue. Humour is not appreciated in the US these days.

I had already paid $A160 for the visa; now I was told that I would have to pay a further $A105. Maybe that’s how the US is managing its budget deficit these days, by charging such outrageous sums for visas.

Another wait to pay the fee. A total of 90 minutes in the consulate. I’ve seen things done far more expeditiously in the German and British consulates. And things done far faster in the Indian, Thai and Sri Lankan consulates too.

After three days my passport arrived in the mail with the visa duly stamped. Sad to see that the country which identifies itself with technological progress cannot even build a proper web form.

Thomas Friedman, fraud supreme

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WHAT does one call a writer who pretends that the life experiences of others are his own, and passes them off as such? A fraud? A poser? A plagiarist? I have not been able to find le mot juste.

Lest there is any mystery over whom one is referring to, I am talking about the diplomatic editor of the New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman.

Friedman has been ridiculed by journalists like Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald, and rightly so, for his ridiculous use of language and his incoherent writings which appear in what is apparently the greatest newspaper in the US. (That tells us why newspapers are closing down rapidly in that country.)

I’ve always felt that Friedman is an average reporter but a nothing writer. He cannot think straight and comes up with the daftest analogies and ideas to try and convey some meaning about complex situations. He fails, miserably. Maybe, as Taibbi puts it so eloquently, his editors are drinking rubbing alcohol.

But this kind of intellectual dishonesty aside, I never suspected that Friedman was also making up the anecdotes that go into his reporting. That was until I read this great piece by the late Alexander Cockburn.

Cockburn writes of a time in 1984 when his younger brother, Patrick, was in Beirut as the Middle East correspondent for the Financial Times. Friedman was doing the same job, for the New York Times.

One day, the pair returned to the Commodore Hotel, the place where most foreign journalists were staying, after a bloody day in the field – Lebanon was in the midst of a civil war. Friedman went upstairs to write his copy, Patrick found his way to the bar and sat down with a glass of whisky.

A little while later, a Shia gunamn entered the bar and proceeded to smash all the bottles in the premises. He did not spot Patrick, who was, according to Alexander, left with two conclusions: one, that “journalists drinking Scotch were unlikely to be viewed with fondness by the fundamentalist gunman”, and secondly, “he was drinking the last Scotch likely to be consumed in the Commodore for quite a while”.

According to Alexander, when Friedman descended later, Patrick told him about the incident. A few days later, it duly figured in one of Friedman’s despatches. But by the time Friedman wrote his first book, From Beirut to Jerusalem, in 1989, the incident had morphed into something that happened to Friedman! I checked it – you can find Friedman’s deceit on page 225 of the book as published by Fontana Press. “My first glimpse of Beirut’s real bottom came at the Commodore Hotel bar on February 7, 1984… I was enjoying a ‘quiet’ lunch in the Commodore restaurant that day when…”

Alexander put it down to Friedman’s monumental conceit. He is probably right.

But this is also fraud, pure and simple. It follows in the great American tradition of stealing and then calling something your own.

Money does tend to blur the perspective of many

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One can understand Matthew Ricketson’s despair over the criticism levelled at the report of the media inquiry of which he was part; after all, one never likes to see one’s work, especially when it is so high-profile, being regarded as the output of a government toady.

(Ricketson, a journalism academic, assisted a retired judge, Ray Finkelstein, in conducting an inquiry into the media in Australia recently.)

But then, Ricketson has only himself to blame. If he thought that news organisations would take kindly to the idea of oversight by the government, then his connection with journalism in the field is obviously rather tenuous.

As an aside, it is curious that though Ricketson expressed a wish to see the media industry reporting on itself without spin, the good professor himself was rather reluctant to tell readers that he was paid, and handsomely too, for his labours alongside Justice Finkelstein. A day before his outpouring which is linked to in the first paragraph of this piece, there were reports that he had received $2500 per day, or a total of $175,000, for assisting Justice Finkelstein. That’s much more than a year’s salary for most journalists who work in the newsrooms of the bigger newspapers in this country.

After receiving wages like these – Justice Finkelstein received $308,000 or $4400 per day – if the public were to judge the recipient as wanting to please, even a little, his paymaster, then that public would surely have to be forgiven. As with all humans, the tendency to avoid biting the hand that feeds us exists within our beings. It is part of human nature.

Consultants, analysts, call them what one wishes, always make sure to avoid annoying those who provide them with handsome commissions – else the danger of missing out when the next chance arises is very real.

No reflection on Ricketson or the good judge – they are human too. Thus, if either of them were to say they were not influenced by the commissioning authority, one would have to take that with a pinch of salt. Not to say that this happened consciously; it happens subconsciously to all members of the human race. We avoid conflict whenever possible.

It is surprising that someone who has been a journalist can ever condone a solution to a media problem which involves the government. Perhaps, apart from the influence of the commissioning authority, one can put that down to the individual never having lived in a country where government has more than a passing involvement in running the media.

From a personal point of view, I find the suggestion of a government-funded overseer abhorrent. My thinking may well be influenced by having witnessed government excesses towards the media during the 26-month emergency promulgated by the late Indira Gandhi in India between 1975 and 1977 – at a time when I was still in university – and also having actually felt the clammy hand of the government censor when I was chief sub-editor of the Khaleej Times in Dubai in the 1990s, at a time when that august publication was the biggest English-language daily in the Middle East.

The obvious argument put forward by those pushing for government funding of a regulatory body is that a situation such as those described above could never eventuate in Australia. Given the extent to which the government already tries to twist its version of truth before it reaches the media here, and the extent to which politicians try to influence what appears in print or is broadcast, by fair means or foul, I would much rather err on the side of caution.

The Australian Press Council may be a poor alternative but, after some beefing up, it is a much better solution than giving the government the ability to twist arms. The powers-that-be are already trying to scare the hell out of people as much as possible by bringing in more and more oppressive laws, the latest being the proposed two-year data retention legislation.

To actually hand the power of regulation of the one entity that can bring the government to heel to that same government would be rather foolish, to put it mildly. Do we really want to put the cat in charge of looking after the canaries?

Crikey: Hypocrisy with a capital ‘h’

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THE Australian newsletter Crikey is a publication that thinks it is top of the pile. It is always lecturing all and sundry about standards, journalistic and otherwise. But when its own shortcomings (and they are legion) are pointed out, one doesn’t even get an acknowledgement. I sent the following missive to the editor about the edition of June 1. No response at all.

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On many occasions I have put finger to keyboard to write a letter to the editor, pointing out the shocking editorials in your newsletter. But then, I’ve just put it off, due to my own laziness. Today, after reading the last issue, I probably was more annoyed than usual, so I’ve pulled your editorial apart.

“As Alexander Downer noted today,…”

If you have descended to the level where you have to quote Lord Downer, then things have gone well below the gutter.

“…claims we’ve reached a new low in parliamentary behaviour should be treated sceptically.”

Really? A “new” low? As opposed to an “old” low, I presume? That’s called tautology, in case you were unaware.

“Every parliament has its bad moments; its undignified, sordid, shambolic or disgraceful moments.”

Oh boy, if that isn’t stating the bleeding obvious. How about something original for a change?

“In any event, it’s hard for contemporary observers to judge standards from before the television age, which reshaped political tactics and altered parliamentary behaviour. And not necessarily for the better.”

Really? How did the broadcasting of parliamentary proceedings change things? Politicians have always behaved like grubs. Another untested statement.

“As Bernard Keane notes today, both the media and politicians face the problem of disengagement by Australians.”

Really? Lord Keane’s statement is just another opinion, so how can it be quoted as gospel?

“The general tone of vituperation….”

How clumsy can you get? “The general vituperative tone” would read so much better.

“– and childish behaviour of Tony Abbott and Christopher Pyne in the now-famous flight for the exits”

Famous? How did the incident become famous? It has no relevance to anyone outside this country. And it’s famous? Exactly how many cliches do you pack into one editorial?

” — is unlikely to do anything other than accelerate that disengagement, particularly when the Prime Minister herself is seen by so many voters as untrusworthy.”

I haven’t heard of untrusworthy. I have heard of untrustworthy. Even the spell-checker in my free text editor catches that kind of f***-up.

“If the standards of parliamentary behaviour are bad, we’ve also rarely seen a time when the country’s two most important political leaders were regarded so poorly by voters.”

Is that the way to reinforce a statement? Why doesn’t the writer go back to school and do a course in basic grammar? Anyone with basic education would use “Not only…” to begin that sentence.

“But both sides know that. However poor their behaviour, voters will still be required to attend the polls at the next election, and compulsory preferential voting will mean that, in all but a small number of seats, their votes will eventually filter through a major party candidate of one kind or another.”

Wrong again. Nobody is required to vote. One only has to turn up at the polling station and get one’s attendance noted. You can then do what you like with the ballot paper and stuff it in the box. And you are at the forefront of accusing others of getting things wrong. Pot, kettle, black.

Major party politicians have the game rigged.

Which game? Politics? Journalism? Badly-written newsletter editorials? After all the screw-ups, this conclusion seems based on nothing more than the writer’s imagination.

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I doubt there will be any response. When the emperor was told he had no clothes, he just continued on his merry way.

Journalism of the very best kind

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CHANNEL 4 has done journalism proud, with a follow-up to its documentary on the war in Sri Lanka. Last year, in June, the television network screened a documentary titled Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields which provided powerful evidence of war crimes by both the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers during the civil war which ended in May 2009.

The follow-up, titled Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished, screened on the night of March 14 in London; it is available on YouTube and is a powerful reminder that in a day and age when journalism is often referred to as a dying profession, good investigative reports are worth more than their weight in gold.

The documentary presents four cases of killing, all of which graphically point to planning and execution at the highest level of government. One case is that of the 12-year-old son of Tiger supremo Velupilla Pirapaharan who was executed after being questioned.

The fact that so much footage continues to emerge is a clear indication that many of the soldiers who took part in the war had reservations about what they were asked to do. The footage could only have been taken by soldiers, nobody would have been able to approach the areas in question.

There is some footage taken by Tamil sources, including the media unit of the Tigers, but the main evidence of targeted and planned killings could only have come from inside the army.

There is no over-dramatisation; presenter Jon Snow is sober throughout. The footage that Channel 4 obtained speaks for himself and the Sri Lankan government will be hard put to deny these charges.

The program has gone to air just as the US is getting ready to bring a resolution before the UN human rights council, which is meeting in Geneva, urging Sri Lanka to investigate the allegations of war crimes and seek reconciliation.

Sri Lanka is losing the propaganda battle over war crimes

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WHEN a sovereign nation has to respond to charges made in a TV documentary that screens in just a few countries, no matter how serious those charges are, then it has well and truly lost the battle to convince people that it is in the right.

Sri Lanka finds itself in this position after having, rather foolishly, decided to respond to a documentary made by Britain’s Channel 4 about alleged war crimes committed during the war against the Tamil Tiger separatist movement that ended in May 2009. (The programme is also available on YouTube; just search for “Sri Lanka killing fields”.)

The Lankan bid to refute the claims came a few days after Channel 4 broadcast even more evidence of Colombo’s complicity in war crimes – evidence given by two unnamed soldiers who went to the extent of claiming that the orders to kill Tamils en masse in order to get the war over with came from the country’s defence secretary, Gotabaya Rakapakse.

That Sri Lanka found it necessary to respond with an hour-long video is, in itself, evidence of the fact that the government is disquieted by the Channel 4 allegations made on June 14, in the programme titled Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields. But Colombo’s effort at propaganda is rather tame, to say the least.

First, the government video is narrated by Minoli Ratnayake, a good-looking Sri Lankan woman with a British accent, a clear sign of the cultural cringe from which Sri Lanka apparently still suffers, 63 years after gaining independence from Britain. Someone with a Sri Lankan accent would have been far more credible. And when a pretty woman, nicely dolled up, with her head tilted to one side in what is a markedly patronising manner, is chosen to be the face of a programme when she has no experience as a news presenter, it is a clear fact that the people who put here there are trying to use her as a prop, to get past the initial resistance that any sane individual has to government propaganda. Channel 4′s Jon Snow will not win any beauty contests, but he has tremendous credibility as a newsman.

There are lots of irregularities in the government video. First, to numbers of Tamil civilians killed. The Channel 4 video made a claim that as many as 40,000 Tamil civilians were slaughtered in the final days of the war. Gordon Weiss, the former UN spokesman in Sri Lanka, was used as a source. In the government documentary, a figure of 305,000 is cited as being the official number of people in the war zone, the Vanni area, in January 2009. From that, by deducting in dribs and drabs, Ratnayake concludes that only a few thousand were killed. But tellingly, she quietly reduces that 305,000 to 300,000 before beginning her mental pyrotechnics.

The figure of 305,000 itself is dubious. Giving evidence before the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission, a body set up by the government to supposedly investigate the goings-on during the war, Bishop Rayappu Joseph of the Mannar Catholic Diocese, said there were 429,059 people in the Vanni area as of October 2008. His source was the Kaccheri Office (the government collector or district office). And given this, that figure of 40,000 which Weiss put to Channel 4 looks rather small – the number unaccounted for is well over 100,000.

Ratnayake claims that Weiss had every reason to take part in the Channel 4 programme and spruik his views as he was trying to promote an upcoming book – that, according to the government, is why he participated in the Channel 4 programme. Nonsense. The Channel 4 programme was screened on June 14; I had a copy of Weiss’ book, The Cage, in hand by May 26. As I live in Australia and bought the book from the UK (cheaper by far), I had to place my order about two weeks prior to that date. Promote an upcoming book? Hardly. By the time Channel 4 went to air, Weiss was sitting on a best-seller and he was called in to comment as a result of the book, not the other way round.

The government documentary also claims that a protest by Tamils at the UN office in Kilinochchi, begging the international agency not to leave the war zone, was stage-managed by Tamil Tiger militants who told the people in the area to protest. Channel 4 says this was something which the people did on their own. It is difficult to believe the government claim because it is bolstered by a Tamil from the area – any Tamil who was asked to speak and refused would have been well aware that not taking part would probably have resulted in disappearing in a white van some evening and being never heard of again. Too many people have disappeared in this manner in Sri Lanka ever since Mahinda Rajapakse came to power in 2005.

Ratnayake also tries to cast doubt on the bonafides of Vany Kumar, one of the people whom Channel 4 featured in the programme. According to Channel 4, Kumar is a London-based Tamil, a medical technician, who happened to be in Sri Lanka and got caught up in the conflict. According to the government, she was a member of a front organisation for the Tamil Tigers and landed in Sri Lanka at the beginning of 2008.

The government documentary parades a number of Tamils to speak in its favour – and in such glowing terms that it all looks like stuff made up in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. One of these Tamils talks about Kumar being the head of the Tamil Youth Organisation women’s wing in the UK; here, it is a case of claim and counter-claim.

The rest of the documentary is taken up by telling the viewer about how vile the late leader of the Tigers, Velupillai Pirapaharan, was (true, he was a nasty piece of work) and dragging a number of ex-Tiger cadres before the camera to testify as to how good the government has been to them after the war. It all looks far too stage-managed to have any credibility. Sri Lanka’s government under Mahinda Rajapakse has a reputation for muzzling the press and even murdering journalists; given this, one has to take everything said by these Tamils with a kilo of salt.

What is clear is that, as the UN report into the war (PDF, 9.2 MB) claimed, both sides, the Sri Lankan military and the Tigers, were responsible for some outrageous atrocities. It is time for both sides to admit the truth and take their medicine.

Why the ABC has been forced to cut programs

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THE Australian Broadcasting Corporation has announced cuts to a number of programs which will result in staff in some centres losing their jobs. Surprisingly, the corporation, a government-funded entity, has cited “falling audiences for some programs” as one reason why it had to make these cuts.

It tells the tale of the corporation in just those few words. Exactly why a government-funded organisation should be chasing behind ratings is not clear. But the ABC has become like any other commercial network and wants to ape them. It wants to be in the limelight, not to provide services for the diverse range of people who live in Australia.

The second reason adduced by the ABC is vague but tells, in part, the truth: “increasing financial pressures on ABC TV”. This is an euphemism for the enormous additional outlay on the half-arsed 24-hour news channel that was launched last year.

The ABC is unable to even provide the full 24 hours of programming for this service and uses the BBC for an hour or more every day. Yet this channel is a matter of ego for AbC managing director Mark Scott and therefore will continue its half-baked service.

Some people will have to look elsewhere for programs that interest them; no longer is it the duty of the national broadcaster, which is funded by the taxpayer, to provide for all tastes. The ABC now has “a strategic commitment to focus its limited financial resources on prime-time programming”. Whatever that means.

The 24-hour news service has not only put a strain on resources, it has also given existing staff much more to do with less. A planned reordering of foreign correspondents had to be called off after staff protests. But yet the jazzing up continues. A commitment to triviality and artificiality has become the aim of the organisation.

Last year, when the host of the best current affairs program, the 7.30 Report, Kerry O’Brien, decided to move to other pastures, the corporation decided to change the focus of the program. It was relabelled 7.30, hosted on new, garish sets, and new personnel were sought. Unfortunately the two who were given the gig, Leigh Sales and Chris Uhlmann, are not best suited for a program which has made combative interviews its trademark and strength.

If anyone had to be given the gig after O’Brien, it had to be Virginia Trioli, a feisty and intelligent staffer,. who has shown her mettle in no uncertain way. But Trioli is of Italian descent. And the ABC is still very much an organisation of the British colonial era.

Audiences for this flagship program are now down more than 150,000 each night. And the corporation’s head honchos are wondering why. Only idiots would fiddle with a winning formula but the ABC did precisely that. All that is needed now is to appoint an external consultant to find out the reason for falling ratings. Scott is probably on the verge of doing that.

For at least the last five years – curiously, corresponding with Scott’s reign – there has been an increased trend towards fluffy, light stuff. The classic case is the appointment of Lindy Burns to host the drive program in Melbourne. Trioli was the host before that; there were numerous serious options available but Burns, who can be charitably described as a lightweight, was chosen.

The ABC promotes itself furiously, often much better than the commercial channels do. But as the promotions increase, so too does the quality drop. Scott has been given another term at the helm and by the time he finishes one wonders whether any serious programming will be available on the ABC at all.

The royal censor gets into the act

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THE British royal family, an anachronism in this day and age, has shown its tendency to dictate proceedings in a strange way, totally against the grand British tradition of free speech.

Prince Charles has instructed the BBC to place strict conditions on the feed of the wedding between his son William and Kate Middleton which it provides to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation; these strictures effectively prevent what would have been the best program on the wedding, the view of the Chaser team, from going to air.

What’s outrageous is that the restrictions are specifically aimed at the Chaser – other not-so-straight coverage, such as that planned by Australia’s Channel 10, has no restrictions placed on it.

Charles has laid down the law to the BBC and the organisation has bent over and shown its backside.

The wedding is not a private affair – hundreds of millions of pounds in state funds will be used to provide security. Only the wedding expenses are being borne by the House of Windsor and the Middleton clan – the British taxpayer is forking out by the bucket at a time when the country’s economy and the financial standing of a large percentage of the populace is not exactly what one can describe as healthy.

It is a royal shame to waste public money at a time when most of the rest of the country is struggling to pay its bills. But when did the royals ever give a hoot about the public?

It is far too late for the Chaser folk to organise their own footage of anything remotely close to the wedding; indeed, people would like to watch some part of the official proceedings as they listen to the unique take of the Chaser team who are a class act.

Every country that claims to follow the liberal tradition and have a free press has its own set of satirists – for example, David Letterman, Jon Stewart, and Bill Maher in the US, Ricky Gervais and the Little Britain team in the UK and the Chaser and a multitude of others in Australia.

But the cold, clammy hand of censor Charles has clamped down and it’s back to the colonial era again when Britain told Australia what it could and couldn’t do. And Britain wants to spread the democratic tradition to other lands, I’m told.

This is a fine example, right from the top, of the class-ridden British society. Censorship at its brilliant best. One more good reason, if any more were needed, for Australia to cut the apron strings and become a republic.

When sports bodies dictate the agenda…

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RUGBY matches telecast in New Zealand on Sky TV are made highly watchable by the two commentators – Grant Nisbett and Murray Mexted. Nisbett follows the game and Mexted, a former All Black, adds some spicy comment.

But that is all in the past. Mexted has been shown the door by Sky simply because he criticised the New Zealand rugby union authorities for their decision to cut four teams from the provincial Air New Zealand cup tournament next year.

Mexted was apparently told by Sky that the NZRU was a commercial partner and should not be criticised.

This isn’t the first time that Sky has shown such sensitivity; earlier this year when the Indian cricket team toured New Zealand, its officials took exception to the fact that Craig McMillan, who is associated with the Indian Cricket League, an unauthorised rival to the Indian board’s Indian Premier League, was a commentator for the one-day series.

McMillan was pulled from the team after the complaint during the fourth one-day tie. He was also supposed to be a commentator for the second Test at Napier, alongside former Indian player Ravi Shastri.

Shastri is said to be the one who raised the red flag about McMillan.

The Indian cricket board is king when it comes to cricket, be it the shorter variety or Test match cricket. The Indian team is a drawcard anywhere in the world given the huge number of Indians who are interested in what is to a large extent a boring game.

This trend has been present for some time – sports bodies trying to control media coverage. In Australia, the Australian Football League (Australian rules football) has tried to dictate terms to the the media.

The AFL has its own official website and supplies official pictures of the players to the media; these pictures cannot be used by online media.

Other sports do try to extract the maximum commercial gain from an event by selling rights to an official media organ – and the sad thing is that the media goes along with this.

Which means that actions like that of Sky TV are partly to be blamed for the sports bodies acting like prima donnas. When principle is thrown overboard, the public tend to get the short end of the stick.

When will advertising come to our ABC?

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Everyone in China bribes everyone all the time – presenter Jon Faine on the ABC 774 morning show

The ABC does not do advertising. The ABC does promotions. – Unknown presenter on ABC drive program

THE Australian Broadcasting Corporation is a sacrosanct institution in Australia. Both its employees and the public – who, by estimates, contribute eight cents per head to keep it alive – have a sense of ownership about the corporation.

Given recent trends, the ABC, a service funded by taxes, seems to be gearing up for advertising – even though it would take an act of parliament for it to be able to go ahead. The statements above are just two of many reasons why I think this is on the corporation’s radar.

The first statement is that of a shock jock, a statement designed to tickle the latent feelings against foreigners resident in the underbelly of Australian society. People like Sydney shock-jock Alan Jones use such devices to increase audience share. Nobody else could characterise China, a society of 1.2 billion people, in such a careless manner.

It is also an indication that the ABC has sunk so low that statements like this go unnoticed.

But why should the ABC be bothered about ratings? After all, the public picks up the tab. There is one possible reason: the only TV or radio station that is bothered about ratings is the one that’s looking to attract advertising.

The second statement is pure spin. It seeks to mask the fact that, from dawn to dusk, the ABC has a constant stream of advertising. The ad slots are so numerous that at times, on TV at least, programs begin as much as five minutes behind schedule.

In one way, this saves ABC presenters quite a bit of work. On a given day, there are any number of radio and TV programs which need to be plugged. On Thursday mornings, for example, there is a plug for Insiders, a political talkfest on TV on Sunday.

Never mind if some other political commentator can provide more incisive or erudite commentary, given that Barrie Cassidy presents Insiders, of necessity one has to listen to him.

On Wednesdays earlier this year, one had to endure an interview with someone from the Chaser team – the plug was mandatory as the Chaser team had a TV program on ABC the same night.

The ABC’s ads about its own services apart, there is a constant stream of media releases from the ABC about the same programs sent to other media outlets.

A few months back, when Phillip Adams was interviewing ABC chief executive Mark Scott to mark the latter’s completion of three years in the post, Adams made a telling statement – that there had been little or no controversy during those three years.

Except, of course, the controversy over the Chaser’s now infamous “make a realistic wish foundation” skit.

The fact that Scott’s reign has been free of controversy is again a good omen for advertisers – no advertiser likes controversy of the type the Chaser provides.

Scott’s reaction to the Chaser incident would also have served to reassure any potential advertiser – he doused any possible flame by demoting an executive over what was a perfectly harmless skit. Advertisers love that kind of thing – it means that the man upstairs is sensitive to what causes public controversy and is willing to step in to make the majority happy.

An additional fact to note is that over the last three or four years, there has been a steady change in the type of people who present programs on the ABC; some of the newcomers, like Lindy Burns for example, are so light-headed in their approach as to be silly. But this kind of anodyne, unquestioning approach is precisely what big corporations look for when planning how to spend their media budgets.

For me, what has cemented the conclusion that the appearance of advertising on the ABC is only a matter of time, was the Gruen Transfer on ABC TV. Whether the program was a management idea or came from the head of Wil Andersen is immaterial – it was the ideal vehicle to test how people would react to having what was blatant advertising on the ABC.

No doubt Andersen expected to be able to use his plentiful wit and satire to poke fun at the world of advertising, much in the manner that he did on The Glass House. But he did not factor in the skills of his regular panel members, Russell Howcroft and Todd Sampson, who hijacked the show very cleverly and used it to their own ends.

Though the ABC does try to avoid gratuitously mentioning the names of companies – to the extent that it calls Melbourne’s second football ground Docklands even though the ground’s owners sell naming rights to a different company each year – Howcroft and Sampson managed to get quite a few commercial entities considerable mileage.

The ABC, apparently, was not in any way upset about this, with the only kerfuffle being a ban on showing an ad that it deemed to be too confronting; the ad was available for viewing online. The program did quite well in terms of viewership and that would have been encouraging.

The ABC has a good example in the shape of SBS – the latter has introduced advertising in the same manner that one boils a frog. No doubt the same methods will be resorted to by Aunty a few years down the track.