Friday 29th July 2005
Public meeting - 'Corpocracy vs the global commons'

Margo Kingston

Journalist and author of 'Not Happy, John!'

OK, so the topic is ‘corpocracy vs the global commons, where are we as a progressive force and where have we got to go in order to start to turn the tide?’ I don’t know the answer to that, I don’t think anyone here does. I’d like to celebrate that fact. A lot of the time what we, what I, do is read and read and research and research and think that one day I’ll have the answer. But that’s not the way it works, especially these days with the internet and new media. We do not need to have a plan because there’s no point in it. We need to interact with each other to create networks. I don’t call them networks. I like to use the image of the web, the image of the spider joining up different people to form something beautiful and you don’t know what it’ll look like till its finished.

Recently I’ve been thinking what I’d do if web diary went independent and I ran the whole thing. Would this be a good time to do it given that the cross media laws are bound to go through and we’ll be crunched down to, according to Coonan’s latest, five big media players? Really that means two and Murdoch can have Channel 10, and any other station he wants. Packer and Fairfax can merge and then we won’t have any independent media at all except the ABC, and the ABC is no longer independent, as we all know. I was at the post-budget dinner at the lobby after the budget this year and I won’t say who, but a well-known senior ABC journalist came up to me and said, “Margo the ABC is no longer independent,” and I said, “Yes, Ok.”

Of course once Fairfax is gone, the dogs of Murdoch and Packer will fall upon the ABC. They’ve already started, as you’re seeing with incredibly long attacks on Media Watch in The Australian. It is so transparent – Who makes Murdoch papers accountable? Crikey and the ABC. So let’s run them down and then we can be free!

Even more dangerous for those of us who like to romance about the power of the internet to turn the tide. In April, Murdoch gave a speech where he said he had been wrong that internet media was not a threat to mainstream media, but that it was a big threat and that it would render them powerless unless something was done. So he said, we better buy into blogs, buy dating services - Fairfax has done the same thing here - and then we can cross promote and everything will be fine. We’ll give people the pretence that they can participate in the debate, participate in the news gathering etc, we’ll rip off all their work for free. Have a look at the mainstream web sites now, have a look at the conditions for use. One I’ve seen says that this big media company has the right to sue you to get back its legal costs if it has a legal battle over anything that you’ve written online. Do you know that? Trust is gone. We can’t trust any institutions any more. You know we can’t trust the Australian Securities and Investment Commission, the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC), Fairfax, Howard, Beasley, Carr, we can’t trust any of them. It’s all over. There are insiders and outsiders and we are here on the outside.

Where could I, as a progressive force, go in order to start to turn the tide? I’ve always argued to my bosses that content is king, that journalists have a duty, and that readers need to be able to trust journalists. My argument is that that is commercially sensible. If you rubbish your readers and abuse them and use them just to advertise to, then you will lose circulation and your readers will desert you. And they just roll their eyes and say “You’re mad and a relic from a by-gone era.” If I went independent how could I make that work? What I think is that I’m so old-fashioned that it’s brand-spanking new these days.

Have a look around any big institution, and big organisation that’s got a public duty and you tell me if you trust that institution. And see if you think that institution treats you, the reader, or the citizen, or the client with transparency, accountability, honesty and respect. I dare you to put your hand up and tell me which one. So I think that those values, are in fact priceless. Therefore it is possible to have a viable independent media site that will have enough audience and audience commitment to be viable. I don’t know if that’s true or not, I just believe it.

One of my grounds for belief is what I’ve found over five years doing web diary. There is a huge urge, a need, a desire to find something that each person can do that they feel they’ve made a difference and it can be the smallest thing, something that takes them three minutes a day. Web diary became almost impossible for me earlier this year. There were too many comments, my back was gone, I couldn’t do any journalism. I was chained to the computer doing comments. I thought I had no choice. I put a piece up on web diary saying I don’t really know how to carry on but I’m going to have to stop you writing to me. People came up and said, “I’ll help you with comments,” “I’ll do this,” “How about I help you with that.” I shouldn’t have been surprised at this because in the last five years, when you’ve let people into your confidence and told them what you’re doing, what you’re trying to get from a story, what questions you want to ask, they ask, “How can we help?”

You get a group of active citizens putting the pressure on the AEC, or the Department of Public Prosecutions, or as happened recently, with the rebel four Mandatory Detention Bill It actually can make a difference. So my model is; you cut out the middleman from the journalist and the citizen reader, you have citizen journalists, I hope. This means you have a direct relationship where you can guarantee accountability, trust, honesty transparency, and you can bring together – and this is the real ambition of having web diary, which I’m still holding on to – people from all walks of life. What I’m looking to do is find a way so that next year when there’s a meeting like this there’s double, or triple the numbers. We’ve got to get out of our enclaves, get out of our mutual despair.

The theme I’ve focused on is defending our democracy and trying to talk and explain and debate, what the rule of law means, what the separation of powers means, what the importance of due process is. I’ve realised most Australians don’t know what I’m talking about and that is a complete systemic indictment. I’m absolutely sick of people blaming Australian people for the mess we’re in. The fact is that people have failed to inform them and instead they are drowned by stuff that makes it impossible for them to see the woods for the trees. So I’m trying to get people from far right to far left, and everywhere in between, to put down their weapons, shut up, stop shouting and just work out what we agree on. What I think we can all agree to fight jointly on is the defense of our democracy. If we don’t have a vibrant democracy, none of us, no matter what our views will have rights or the ability to speak out and be a participant in the democracy.

So, we really have to do something different. I’ve read George Lakoff and I’m sure you’ve all heard about reframing the debate. We’ve got to rescue the language, we’ve also got to, somehow collect information, and empower people to help us collect the info. We’ve got to create a safe trusted space for genuine political debate where we’re trying to come to some common ground.
The job is for all of us and we’re all to blame for the mess. I’m 46 and all of you over a certain age, except for the young people in this room, are to blame for the mess. We won’t see the fruits of it in our lifetime, but our job is to do what the Americans did after S11, set up MoveOn, get the Deaniks running around Australia - I don’t know what we’d call them ‘cause we haven’t got a Howard Dean here – maybe the Tim Costelloites around Australia – and get grass roots political community activism across the political spectrum moving. So that’s what I’m going to try and do.

Thank you very much.

Margo's Sydney Morning Herald webdiary

'Not Happy, John!'

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