Robert Manne has a smear job at The Drum regarding ‘rich’ people buying into the media.
Monckton also knows that such outlets rely on the willingness of those he calls the super rich to invest in causes that serve their interests and, as he would see it, therefore the interests of their societies. In speaking about an Australian super rich angel to invest in a Fox News-like enterprise, Monckton could not have had Rupert Murdoch in mind. Murdoch presently owns newspapers that account for 70 per cent of national and state-wide circulation in Australia. Australia’s media laws are aimed at preventing cross-media ownership. Rather, the kind of super-rich individual he must have had in mind was someone like the person who had supported his trip to Australia and for whom he was delivering the Lang Hancock Memorial Lecture – Gina Rinehart.
But what else go we discover?
This article first appeared on the Left, Right, Left blog on The Monthly.
Would that be the same The Monthly owned by the (very) wealthy property developer Morry Schwartz?
Of course, you to laugh – Manne must fear Gina Reinhart more than Rupert Murdoch.
When the Finkelstein Inquiry hands down its report, it is certain that there will be no recommendation requiring News Limited to relinquish any part of its 70 per cent cross-Australia press assets. Even if that were to be advocated, which it will not, there would be nothing to prevent mining magnates like Gina Rinehart from buying up what News Limited was required to sell.
Then he says some nice things about libertarians.
Whether for both cultural and commercial reasons a stand-alone television station like Fox News is viable in Australia and the UK is of course an open question. Yet even if it is not, what Monckton correctly grasps is the malleability of public opinion in the face of daily, entertaining, populist, libertarian-conservative propaganda.
But it’s not all praise.
Free market fundamentalists are the present day disciples of the intellectually sophisticated Viennese economists, Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, who struggled first against the socialist economists of the 1920s and then against the Keynesians from the late 1930s and beyond.
Why their disciples should now represent the intellectual avant-garde of those who repudiate the work of the climate scientists and have joined forces with the American creationist Bible Belt in the greatest rebellion against science and reason since the Darwin controversy, is a matter of some interest.
Does Manne walk around in shoeboxes and collect his urine in jars yet? Watch out Robert, those Gina and Rupert germs are everywhere!
bruce
10 Feb 12 at 9:39 am
Are they still paying that dill
Mike of Marion
10 Feb 12 at 9:41 am
What did Mr Manne say about Morry Schwartz and Graeme Wood?
JamesK
10 Feb 12 at 9:45 am
‘Everything is what it is and not another thing’
He just can’t understand that people can accept AGW but also not agree with a Carbon Tax or ETS being the best mechanism.
sean
10 Feb 12 at 9:56 am
Nothing. Hypocrisy doesn’t exist in left world.
JC
10 Feb 12 at 10:12 am
Manne is just another Top 5% luvvie, resentful of his peers who make up the so-called “Top 1%”.
Peter Patton
10 Feb 12 at 10:16 am
Oh, FFS, when it burns, it really burns.
pssssttttt professor. Australia already has a “Fox News-like enterprise”. It is called Foxtel. And pssssttttt…do yourself a favour and check out the share registry of these companies. Let me give you a hint. Look for the words “News” and “Corporation”.
Peter Patton
10 Feb 12 at 10:24 am
So Manne has heard of Mises?
Now, if only he would read Mises.
GP
10 Feb 12 at 10:28 am
So now he’s ignoring Mises and Hayek because a creationist somewhere might agree with Hayek and Mises?
I’m pretty sure creationists believe in gravity.
wreckage
10 Feb 12 at 10:45 am
Or it would be, if it actually was a “matter”.
I am a disciple of Hayek and Mises, I think AGW is a load of hopping frogshit and that all “guy-in-the-sky” fables are ridiculous and primitive. Does Manne have any evidence whatsoever of any other “forces” being “joined”?
Ooh Honey Honey
10 Feb 12 at 10:48 am
Summarised Manne:
“Classical Liberals were against over-arching government controls and command economies then, but they still are now. Frankly, I’m suspicious. What gives?”
wreckage
10 Feb 12 at 10:50 am
So now he’s ignoring Mises and Hayek because a creationist somewhere might agree with Hayek and Mises?
So true
sean
10 Feb 12 at 12:32 pm
“..it is certain that there will be no recommendation requiring News Limited to relinquish any part of its 70 per cent cross-Australia press assets..”
They act as though it is like owning 70 percent of real property in an area or 70 percent of shares in a company. But the 70 percent circulation figure is dependant upon how many people buy their newspapers. It will decrease if less people buy their papers or decrease if more people buy their opponents publications. The best way to solve the problem is to ensure Fairfax sells more papers, not break News Limited into bits to ensure it (in total) sells less.
Given News Limited shares a lot of content between papers, selling, for example, the Herald-Sun would not mean the circulation for it would remain the same – it may go up or may go down. If it goes down, the end result may simply be that total circulation for all papers – News and Fairfax – reduces – hardly something that helps “diversity.”
TJW
11 Feb 12 at 2:59 am
Manne’s an idiot to think everyone is just putty in the hands of any media brainwashing these days.
I guess he thinks the political polls show we are brainwashed.
I stopped buying newspapers or watching any TV news, f years ago, due to its leftist bent and covert ability to downplay the worst excesses of a socialist government while it searches assidously for items to inflate about any conservative party or government.
Funny thing, though, I’m still the same conservative I’ve been for 50 years,despite all their beast efforts, and I’ve discussed politics with numerous people who have been able to see through any spin and find the fact so they made their own minds up about policy or government!!
Yet I doubt Manne would want to label me intelligent for resisting media brainwashing.
What I think is wrong with these leftist commentators is they refuse to accept that someone from another ideological position hss given the masses more of what they want,made money out of it and shown up the big government, bleeding hearts socialist media as wanting–cash, followers and ideas–to whitthe looming cliff fall of Fairfax!!
Jazza
11 Feb 12 at 11:21 am
Bolt now has some of James’ fisking of the article.
blogstrop
11 Feb 12 at 12:35 pm