En Passant

Free speech is free speech for the billionaires. It is they who control the means of communication. That free speech for them is built on the denial of free speech for the rest of us.

Prank calls reinforce a sense of superiority among middle class listeners over the mainly working class targets. They allow an alienated often working class audience the ability to laugh at and hence feel superior to those other workers who have been pranked. A sort of jocular racism without the race, the logic of refugee bashing transferred to ‘dumb’ workers … The best way to regulate media offerings would be for unions like the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance to fight for and win greater power – with union house committees making decisions about production and the like to guard against the very attacks on workers that pranks invariably are.

If MEAA members went out indefinitely at Fairfax the revenue loss would in all likelihood quickly drag management back to the negotiating table.

Many years ago the BLF had a slogan – if you don’t fight you lose. It is as true today as it was then.

Close Fairfax down until it withdraws its job cuts.

Ali has committed no crime. There is no credible evidence against him, no charges have been laid and there is certainly no conviction or seemingly even a prospect of one. End the media lynching and the racist attacks on refugees.

Join us in demonstrations for asylum seekers on World Refugee Day in major cities around Australia in the near future.

No doubt former News Ltd employee Creina Chapman is the best person to be appointed a senior adviser to Tony Abbott. But shouldn’t the Opposition leader be subjected to some serious questioning about this? Who could do that? Oh I dunno, maybe Greg Sheridan from The Australian when he is next out for dinner with Abbott?

Under capitalism, information is a commodity, and the people who sell us this commodity are the same greedy bastards who sell us everything else. Most of what gets served to us as news or entertainment is as mass-produced and tasteless as a Big Mac. The main priority of the owners of television networks, radio stations and publishing companies is to turn a profit. This means cost-cutting, job losses and a lower-quality product churned out by overworked employees. A culture in which profit is given more importance than critical thought impacts on every facet of our experience of the mass media. From the indoctrination of journalists with the priorities of their employers to the promotion of political parties during election campaigns, the 1 percent who control the media have a great deal of influence over the ideas that are propagated in society.

Please accept my application for a position as a writer with you. I am a great writer, well at least in my own lunchtime. A look at my blog En Passant with John Passant at http://enpassant.com.au will attest to the truth or otherwise of that statement.

I can and will develop stories in my areas of interest – national and international politics generally, left wing and radical politics specifically, unions, tax, business and higher education. I will deliver stories from the 99%, and from their viewpoint, not the viewpoint of the one percent which dominates the mainstream media.

It wasn’t a wild protest. It wasn’t a riot. It wasn’t thuggery.

Those false accusations are examples of the constant racist stereotyping by the one percent and their media and part of the wider agenda to deepen even further the oppression of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

The important thing is to learn the lessons from the AFR for the coming battles, not to be seduced by them. When the class struggle erupts, forget the Financial Review and join the workers on the picket line. Organise, organise, organise, knowing that the AFR and the other bourgeois papers are your class enemy, not your friend.

While the media likes to give the appearance of debate and balance, the parameters are limited to discourse acceptable to the capitalist class. It is the self-activity of the mass of ordinary people that will give us confidence in our own opinions and interests. If there is no struggle, there is no challenge to the media’s lies and distortions, no alternative to the world-view of highly paid, well-connected editors and producers. Challenging the power of the media requires those who want to do so to become activists, not moaners.