Friday
Aug242012
#8 - Skeletons in the closet
Dave Gaukroger Posted on Friday, August 24, 2012
Something Wonky goes international and looks at stories of Australians hidden in foreign embassies.
The Focus Group discusses skeletons in the closet.
- “Larry Pickering - the conman stalking Gillard”
- Abbott: I was charged with indecent assault
- Prime Minister Julia Gillard may well have sealed her own fate
- Peter Rudge, independent candidate in NT election - A decent man stretched beyond endurance
Jeremy gets on his high horse about education. Abbott says Gonski reforms unaffordable
Sabine Wolff tells us what’s stuck in her craw.
The Inbox of Doom takes on racism and privilege.
Reader Comments (16)
I'm not one to be nasty and I hope this doesn't come off as too harsh but wow, Sabine should send that as an audio resume to Rupert Murdoch. That was pretty much just spewing every single piece of crap argument that's come from the opposition to media regulation so far. Heck, she shouldn't even stop at News Ltd, that "the pollies are call you stupid, be offended!" rhetoric is what the right wing extremist crap on about all the time in the USA, she could get a great job on Fox News.
The reality is the public is getting mislead by our media, in particularly News Ltd, on a rather large scale and data is showing that apparently we're not able to figure out what's fact from fiction all the time.
*calling you.
(make no mistake, I myself am indeed incredibly stupid).
This is the first episode I’ve listened to but I wanted to check whether I’ve got the concept of the “stuck in my craw” segment right. Somebody records a few minutes of opinion about an issue, and then you put maybe 15-20 minutes of rebuttal and mockery around it? But you’re only playing a recording of them and so if you say something they think misrepresents them, goes beyond what they’ve argued, or that they just disagree with, that’s too bad. And then you do a ‘bonus’ thing where Jeremy makes peculiar noises over the top of the thing the person recorded?
I’m a little confused because all of that seems fundamentally disrespectful. Seems like the podcast equivalent of a shock jock using their control of the microphone to cut a caller off and go on their own rant about the caller and Juliar and whatever else for ten minutes after the caller has hung up. I’m all for robust disagreement, but if someone has made a contribution to your show and their ideas seem so wrong to you, maybe having an actual argument with them would be an appropriate course of action.
I thought the craw was pretty good, actually.
Dunno if it was just because I heard it rather than read it, but I sabine's craw did get me thinking. I also think the responses from our intrepid podders were on the money. I just wish there was a way for the little people to call bullshit on the big people in a way that gets their attention - that's what I saw in the finkelstein report that seems to be of value: Basically a bigger sort of Media Watch. The problem being that there are a hell of a lot of little people, and most of them don't have anything of interest to say (he says, not missing the irony)
I don't remember her exact wording, but one thing that sabine said that DID get me guffawing was the suggestion that people who write crap would be laughed out of town. I'm not sure that's true. Writing/saying crap for a whole career, maybe. But once somebody has established a following and a pulpit, they can get away with a fair bit. But what to do ... and is doing anything worse than doing nothing? In theory the competition of ideas is what matters ... eventually. But it can take time.
On the other hand, I don't actually believe the ALP is going to actually _do_ anything. I will be extremely surprised if they do, and I might even be a bit grumpy about it. Even if we're to believe that the ALP is stalin's reincarnated representative on earth, they're hardly going to create institutions to control the press just in time to hand those over to somebody else to modify to suit themselves. Quite apart from being ethically questionable, it would be strategically stupid. My bet is that nothing will happen, and all the dire warnings about it are just tactical.
On the school funding thing. I don't have kids (and I don't seem to be in any danger, unless those "godfather" agreements bite, heaven forbid), so it's a bit hypothetical. But it did only occur to me quite recently that there is a big hole in the "all kids should be funded the same" argument, and indeed it does come down to equitable access. I think it's reasonable that schools taking government money should be held to a standard set of requirements. I'm sure they live up on the academic side, but private schools do manage to dodge the problems that public schools face. They can exclude problem students. They can (and did when I was at school) play the system on assessments to keep their averages up (it was accepted wisdom in SA in the 80's that certain private schools had their less excellent students do their state-assessed components as independent applicants, which then helped the other students when the school-assessed component was scaled).
So yes, I think I am perfectly fine with every kid getting exactly the same level of state and federal funding - provided that every kid gets exactly the same access to the education that they can afford. And that means first-come-first-served (subject to the obvious - i.e. no boys in girls schools, and basic acceptance of the school's philosophical tenets). No tests, no interviews, no assessment-based scholarships, none of that. The same deal that every other school and student gets. If private schools really do deliver a higher standard of education, then people will pay for that. Otherwise it's just a way for parents to pay a bit extra for an easier ride.
If a school doesn't want to play by the same rules as everyone else, then they don't have to take the guv's coin. And, as a taxpayer (one who gets precisely zero benefit right now from school funding), I think it's reasonable to demand this.
Guys, what are you doing? This was a descent into hackishness. Dave, I thought you were better than this.
Which bit was a descent into hackishness?
The stuck in my craw segment is like responding to a blog post from someone else - this was the first time it's been something we've both vigorously disagreed with.
True, it's not an argument back and forth - but then very few podcasts are. We don't have the setup to record a debate with a third person remotely. And yes, a drawback of this is that Sabine doesn't get the opportunity (within that particular episode) to reply to our response to her comments - if she really had something she wanted to add I'm sure we'd be happy to discuss that in the next one. The internet isn't over. We weren't nasty to her - we just disagreed with her arguments and explained why. (Given that I think the arguments in question are disingenuous and shallow - particularly the patronising "they're saying you're dumb!" line Sabine echoed from News Ltd and to which I've responded before - I think we were pretty restrained.)
It's not like we do a conversation with the writers of other articles we critique - it's kind of a they-say-then-we-respond thing. There isn't really a practical alternative.
But I think listeners like hearing some different voices and perspectives, and having them critically engaged with, notwithstanding the limitations of the format.
(And Tobby - my responding to Sabine in real time wasn't ever intended, by me anyway, to go out anywhere. Dave and Jacob just found it amusing. I think uploading it is more sending up me and my easily-infuriated nature than Sabine.)
If it helps, I think the level of cackling was about right.
Tobby, the idea behind "Stuck in my craw" has always been to have someone else provide a starting point for further discussion and for Jeremy and I to give our view on it. I invited Sabine to do a segment because I was concerned that if we continually had like minded people on then we risked becoming an echo-chamber. From your comments, and Ben's, it's obvious that you feel that we didn't handle a contrary opinion well, and we'll obviously take that on board. However, we had no intention of trying to belittle or mock Sabine, even though we both disagreed with her argument.
Regarding the out-take that we posted, it wasn't intended to mock Sabine, if anything it was to have a bit of a laugh at Jeremy's exasperation.
I hope that both of you give the show another chance at some point.
Does anyone know what sabine thought of it? I'm for the contrary opinion thing.
I've removed the outtake of Jeremy that was in this week's links. After receiving some of your feedback I can see that when I decided to post it I misjudged the way that it could be received. I thought it would be an amusing look "behind the curtain", I didn't even consider that it might appear malicious as that was certainly not my intent.
Posting the audio was solely my decision, and I got it wrong. Sorry.
I fail to see how the commentary on Sabine's piece was any different to Jeremy and Dave's commentary on written and published opinion pieces, except in this situation Sabine submitted herself to it voluntarily and know exactly where to go to respond.
Sabine, and anyone who submits anything to this segment must know our hosts views on certain issues and surely must be aware that if they're going to try and argue a point that Jeremy or Dave disagree with strongly, it's going to be met with criticism especially if it's just empty rhetoric with nothing of substance to support the argument. Sabine says that the Australian media consumer is smart and can work out when they're being bullshitted yet 51% of people polled in June this year believe they are going to be worse off under the carbon tax which we know is not true! That is a direct result of the media either lying themselves or propping up the lies of others.
An uninformed electorate is a huge threat to democracy. Yes it's worrying that the population apparently isn't working harder to inform itself better in its own time but that's even more reason to see that some form of scrutiny is applied to our media. Quite frankly, I think that if a media publisher is knowingly trying to deceive its readers then a commercially significant fine is completely appropriate because what else is going to stop them from writing shit?
Never heard of Sabine, but I would be embarrassed to proffer such absurdly wafer thin argument.
It's magical thinking to assume we have appropriate checks and balances over the veracity of reporting in the msm and that somehow they're not still driving the bulk of the narrative - no matter how many blogs might challenge that view.
Sabine's bit was highly disingenuous about the product she is defending.
Most people consume news product because we want to know what is going on and to help form an opinion about what is happening in the world. "News" purports to be that product. We would reasonably expect our news-derived facts, and the opinions derived from these facts, to have been reasonably tested and checked before being sold to the consumer.
Just think of it as a form of quality-control that you're not selling your end customer a dodgy product.
If we have to do all of our own fact checking, as Sabine appears to be suggesting, then why are we buying a news "product" in the first place?
Completely off-topic. I'm resisting joining twitter just to agree that "bitey" is indeed a very good name for a cat.
I appreciate that Dave responded professionally to the criticism in this thread. When I first listened to her out-take segment I thought something was honestly wrong with the audio or there was an encoding bug or something, Jezza you might want to go see a GP mate. I understand that the logistics of getting people on are difficult and thus a pre-recorded segment is the go to try and broaden who the show speaks to and the opinions represented, but I think this was a pretty piss poor effort. If you verbal people who send stuff in you'll soon see that well of opinion dry up. If you want to record something more than just a circlejerk I'd say there probably is scope for a proper discussion on these issues. Arguing with someone who did a pre-record and giving them no scope to respond in a timely fashion is pretty unimpressive. Good luck in the future though, hope this oversight was a one-off.
I didn't know of Sabine or her work prior to this podcast.
Her argument that we don't need media regulation because "we're very, very smart" reminded me of the South Park episode Chinpokomon. Discerning media consumers, I think not...