1985 Singles # 39 Billy Idol
7 minutes ago
Friday, 8 July 2011
From Yoko Ono to Lady Gaga: how pop embraced performance art
The pair are currently collaborating on The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic, a play that examines her life from her childhood in postwar Yugoslavia through her performance work to a staging of her death. "When it came to do the play I said to Bob [director Robert Wilson], the only person in my life who can do the music is Antony, because it really corresponds," she says. "One of the similarities between Antony and me is that in the moment of performance you really step to your higher self. You create another type of reality for the audience to enter. That's why it's so emotional. It's so funny, everybody is crying at Antony's concerts and everybody was crying in Moma when they were sitting opposite me."
Indeed, there seems nothing at all unusual about Hegarty collaborating with a performance artist. For one thing, his roots are in experimental theatre, and for another, the relationship between rock and pop and performance art appears to be blossoming as never before. In 2011, the biggest pop star in the world is Lady Gaga, a product of the same downtown New York club scene that spawned Hegarty, where what Gaga describes as an "interesting hybrid of performance art meets singer-songwriter-meets-drag-meets-theatre-meets-rock" is the common currency.
"When I was really young, I was fascinated with performance artists," Lady Gaga says, on the phone from Taiwan. "Leigh Bowery, Klaus Nomi. And when I got older I became fascinated with Yoko Ono and Marina Abramovic. I grew up with them, and sort of naturally became the artist I am today. It wasn't until I started to play out in New York and my friends said, 'Look how much this has influenced you,' that I realised it. The one thing there wasn't on the Lower East Side was pop music. So as a pop songwriter, I thought that would be an interesting way to make a name for myself in this neighbourhood. I figured if I could play the grocery store around the corner as if it was Madison Square Gardens, maybe some day I can assimilate pop music into performance art in a more mainstream way."
Looking at her sales figures, you have to say Gaga has succeeded beyond her wildest dreams: you wonder how the record labels who she says turned her down because they felt a mainstream audience couldn't stomach the more outré aspects of her performances feel now. Equally, you can see their point: pop and performance art traditionally have a very strained relationship. One theory is that rock and pop audience's negative reaction to anything that smacked of performance art was simply a legacy of public animosity towards Yoko Ono, the first performance artist to take her work to a pop audience: even before she met John Lennon, she performed Cut Piece, during which the audience were invited to attack her clothing with scissors at 1967's 14 Hour Technicolour Dream event at Alexandra Palace in London. "I thought what we were doing was high art, and there was a big difference between high art and pop music," Ono says. "High art inspires the human culture, pop music is entertainment. The mixture of high art with entertainment, which you needed to do so that people would accept it and understand what you were trying to do, was very challenging and interesting to me."
But her association with Lennon and her move from performance work into making music – "it was easier to go into the studio and make music with John rather than say to him I was going to do a big performance piece in Paris. It was about us being together, using the situation" – was, initially at least, met with derision and outrage. "Before I started working with John, I felt I was communicating pretty well, actually. When I got together with John, I thought that I was doing the same thing, but suddenly the hostility was there. High art is never accepted by the masses," she says. "I accepted that a long time ago. I had a great time with John. There was great love between us. Those things counted more to me than being accepted by the people."
There's an argument that the public's dim, if deeply unfair view of Ono – the woman who was held to have ruined the Beatles – tainted their attitude to performance artists who dared to dabble in rock music for years to come. Others feel the reasons are less straightforward. Abramovic thinks music and performance art fit perfectly together ("they're the highest forms of art because they're the most direct and the most immaterial"), but Laurie Anderson, who found herself catapulted from the New York performance art scene to pop stardom with the release of her 1981 single O Superman, initially felt the two worlds were entirely opposed to each other: performance art was by definition ephemeral, existing only in the moment of performance, which is the antithesis of making a record, something she only did because she got a grant of $500 and a friend argued she was being elitist. "Records were part of pop culture and I was a snob," she says. "Pop culture was for 10-year-olds. Nothing against 10-year-olds, but I was part of the avant garde, and we didn't want to be part of pop culture."
She subsequently revised her opinion and entered into the world of rock wholeheartedly, but still feels performance artists are a difficult fit in the music business. "It's odd because people from record companies used to feel they could come into the studio and sit back and go: 'Think this needs more bass.' I wasn't really using bass. I was using things like a lot of birds. And I think those guys would have felt silly saying: 'I think you need more birds.'" She laughs. "I guess I was one of their vanity artists or something."
Dan Fox, senior editor of art magazine Frieze, thinks the problem may have lain with mainstream antipathy to the visual arts in general. "We're suspicious of the visual arts because it's seen as somehow pretentious or a con job: if it's about the intangible and the ineffable, the idea that art can exist as an idea as much as a physical object that shows some degree of manufacturing or technical prowess, people are suspicious, and that's also fed by the connotations of the art world: big amounts of money, exclusivity, elitism. In rock music you have all these debates about being real and authentic, you know, three chords and the truth, that kind of thing. There's an idea that having some kind of different approach to performance is somehow antithetical to rock, because it's not about paying your dues."
Whatever the reason, when three members of the confrontational performance art collective Coum Transmissions decided to form Throbbing Gristle in 1976 – "We were disgusted and disillusioned with the art world, it was too formalised and institutionalised for us, and we were excited by sound" says TG's Cosey Fanni Tutti – they seemed to succeed in upsetting everybody: not just the kind of people who were upset by punk, but the punks as well. They meticulously documented the reactions, which means you can hear the audiences howling in anger and dismay at their early shows on the live box set TG24 and the answering machine message from the music journalist baldly threatening to kill them on the 1978 album track Death Threats. In fairness, if you deal in churning grey noise topped off with lyrics about serial killers and concentration camps, you should probably expect people to get upset, but there's a sense that the objection wasn't merely to what Throbbing Gristle were doing, but to their artistic background.
Tutti says the band were unbothered by their rockist critics: "I didn't even think about them to be honest, anybody else just didn't cross my radar. Why would I be interested in what the rock world thought about me?" Besides, the animosity had a positive effect. Ignored or vilified, Throbbing Gristle were forced to carve out their own niche, with lasting effects both on music – singlehandedly inventing a genre, industrial, that endures to this day – and the music industry. "We thought it would be fun to see how their business model worked, how we could subvert it, which we did. Rough Trade kind of came off the back of our label, Industrial Records. The whole independent scene kind of fell into place after that."
Thirty-five years later, a musician spawned by performance art is adored rather than despised. Lady Gaga describes her appearance at the 2009 MTV Awards, during which she appeared to bleed to death from a gash on her stomach while singing Paparazzi as "a performance art piece that re-enacted the death of celebrity in front of all America". Cosey Fanni Tutti – not a fan – probably wouldn't thank you for pointing it out, but it doesn't seem too distant from Coum Transmissions' 70s experiments with fake blood and wounds and simulated suicides. Gaga's interest in performance art seems to have had an unexpected effect on the mainstream audience: when she mentioned Abramovic in an interview, the artist says, her Moma retrospective was suddenly flooded with "this enormous audience of kids between 12 and 18 spending hours there". Abramovic adds: "She's really a phenomenon. With the costumes, the blood, everything, she's really looking to art, and she's generous enough to say where the interest is coming from, which Madonna will never do."
It could be that Lady Gaga has lured a mainstream audience with some pretty straightforward pop music, but there's always the chance her success indicates a shift in the mainstream audience's perception of performance art. Ono thinks that could be down to the cumulative effect of her forebears: "I think what we were doing was kind of a like a stepping stone, on a subconscious level. Maybe it was the preparation. This is happening now on a very big level."
Back in Taiwan, Lady Gaga is musing on her success in balancing pop with performance art. No, she says, she never worries that the spectacle of the latter detracts from the former. "I'm both. I'm musician and pop singer and performance artist. I could conversely argue to you that sometimes the music takes away from the performance art," she laughs, and heads off, to perform a gig in front of 44,000 people.
Alex Petridis @'The Guardian'
Tony Blair on the media (2007)
The purpose of the series of speeches I have given over the past year has been deliberately reflective: to get beyond the immediate headlines on issues of the day and contemplate in a broader perspective, the effect of a changing world on the issues of the future.
This speech on the challenge of the changing nature of communication on politics and the media is from the same perspective.
I need to say some preliminaries at the outset. This is not my response to the latest whacking from bits of the media.
It is not a whinge about how unfair it all is. As I always say, it's an immense privilege to do this job and if the worst that happens is harsh media coverage, it's a small price to pay.
And anyway, like it or not, I have won three elections and am still standing as I leave office.
This speech is not a complaint. It is an argument. As a result of being at the top of the greasy pole for thirteen years, ten of them as Prime Minister, my life, my work as prime minister, and its interaction with the world of communication has given me pretty deep experience, for better or worse.
A free media is a vital part of a free society. You only need to look at where such a free media is absent to know this truth.
But it is also part of freedom to be able to comment on the media. It has a complete right to be free. I, like anyone else, have a complete right to speak.
My principal reflection is not about "blaming" anyone. It is that the relationship between politics, public life and the media is changing as a result of the changing context of communication in which we all operate; no-one is at fault - it is a fact; but it is my view that the effect of this change is seriously adverse to the way public life is conducted; and that we need, at the least, a proper and considered debate about how we manage the future, in which it is in all our interests that the public is properly and accurately informed.
They are the priority and they are not well served by the current state of affairs. In the analysis I am about to make, I first acknowledge my own complicity.
We paid inordinate attention in the early days of New Labour to courting, assuaging, and persuading the media. In our own defence, after 18 years of Opposition and the, at times, ferocious hostility of parts of the media, it was hard to see any alternative.
But such an attitude ran the risk of fuelling the trends in communications that I am about to question. It is also hard for the public to know the facts, even when subject to the most minute scrutiny, if those facts arise out of issues of profound controversy, as the Hutton Inquiry showed.
I would only point out that the Hutton Inquiry (along with 3 other inquiries) was a six month investigation in which I as Prime Minister and other senior Ministers and officials faced unprecedented public questioning and scrutiny.
The verdict was disparaged because it was not the one the critics wanted. But it was an example of being held to account, not avoiding it. But leave that to one side.
And incidentally in none of this, do I ignore the fact that this relationship has always been fraught. From Stanley Baldwin's statement about "power without responsibility being the prerogative of the harlot through the ages" back to the often extraordinarily brutal treatment meted out to Gladstone and Disraeli through to Harold Wilson's complaints of the 60s, the relations between politics and the media are and are by necessity, difficult. It's as it should be.
The question is: is it qualitatively and quantitively different today? I think yes. So that's my starting point.
Why? Because the objective circumstances in which the world of communications operate today are radically altered. The media world - like everything else - is becoming more fragmented, more diverse and transformed by technology.
The main BBC and ITN bulletins used to have audiences of 8, even 10 million. Today the average is half that. At the same time, there are rolling 24 hour news programmes that cover events as they unfold. In 1982, there were 3 TV stations broadcasting in the UK.
Today there are hundreds. In 1995 225 TV shows had audiences of over 15 million. Today it is almost none. Newspapers fight for a share of a shrinking market. Many are now read online, not the next day.
Internet advertising has overtaken newspaper ads. There are roughly 70 million blogs in existence, with around 120,000 being created every day. In particular, younger people will, less and less, get their news from traditional outlets.
But, in addition, the forms of communication are merging and interchanging. The BBC website is crucial to the modern BBC. Papers have Podcasts and written material on the web. News is becoming increasingly a free good, provided online without charge. Realistically, these trends won't do anything other than intensify. These changes are obvious. But less obvious is their effect.
The news schedule is now 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It moves in real time. Papers don't give you up to date news. That's already out there.
They have to break stories, try to lead the schedules. Or they give a commentary. And it all happens with outstanding speed. When I fought the 1997 election - just ten years ago - we took an issue a day. In 2005, we had to have one for the morning, another for the afternoon and by the evening the agenda had already moved on. You have to respond to stories also in real time.
Frequently the problem is as much assembling the facts as giving them. Make a mistake and you quickly transfer from drama into crisis. In the 1960s the government would sometimes, on a serious issue, have a Cabinet lasting two days.
It would be laughable to think you could do that now without the heavens falling in before lunch on the first day. Things harden within minutes. I mean you can't let speculation stay out there for longer than an instant.
I am going to say something that few people in public life will say, but most know is absolutely true: a vast aspect of our jobs today - outside of the really major decisions, as big as anything else - is coping with the media, its sheer scale, weight and constant hyperactivity.
At points, it literally overwhelms. Talk to senior people in virtually any walk of life today - business, military, public services, sport, even charities and voluntary organisations and they will tell you the same. People don't speak about it because, in the main, they are afraid to.
But it is true, nonetheless, and those who have been around long enough, will also say it has changed significantly in the past years. The danger is, however, that we then commit the same mistake as the media do with us: it's the fault of bad people.
My point is: it is not the people who have changed; it is the context within which they work. We devote reams of space to debating why there is so much cynicism about politics and public life. In this, the politicians are obliged to go into self flagellation, admitting it is all our fault.
Actually not to have a proper press operation nowadays is like asking a batsman to face bodyline bowling without pads or headgear.
And, believe it or not, most politicians come into public life with a desire to serve and by and large, try to do the right thing not the wrong thing.
My view is that the real reason for the cynicism is precisely the way politics and the media today interact. We, in the world of politics, because we are worried about saying this, play along with the notion it is all our fault.
So I introduced: first, lobby briefings on the record; then published the minutes; then gave monthly press conferences; then Freedom of Information; then became the first Prime Minister to go to the Select Committee's Chairman's session; and so on. None of it to any avail, not because these things aren't right, but because they don't deal with the central issue: how politics is reported.
There is now, again, a debate about why Parliament is not considered more important and as ever, the Government is held to blame. But we haven't altered any of the lines of accountability between Parliament and the Executive.
What has changed is the way Parliament is reported or rather not reported. Tell me how many maiden speeches are listened to; how many excellent second reading speeches or committee speeches are covered. Except when they generate major controversy, they aren't.
If you are a backbench MP today, you learn to give a press release first and a good Parliamentary speech second. My case, however is: there's no point either in blaming the media. We are both handling the changing nature of communication.
The sooner we recognise this, the better because we can then debate a sensible way forward. The reality is that as a result of the changing context in which 21st Century communications operates, the media are facing a hugely more intense form of competition than anything they have ever experienced before.
They are not the masters of this change but its victims. The result is a media that increasingly and to a dangerous degree is driven by "impact". Impact is what matters. It is all that can distinguish, can rise above the clamour, can get noticed.
Impact gives competitive edge. Of course the accuracy of a story counts. But it is secondary to impact. It is this necessary devotion to impact that is unravelling standards, driving them down, making the diversity of the media not the strength it should be but an impulsion towards sensation above all else.
Broadsheets today face the same pressures as tabloids; broadcasters increasingly the same pressures as broadsheets.
The audience needs to be arrested, held and their emotions engaged. Something that is interesting is less powerful than something that makes you angry or shocked. The consequences of this are acute. First, scandal or controversy beats ordinary reporting hands down.
News is rarely news unless it generates heat as much as or more than light. Second, attacking motive is far more potent than attacking judgement. It is not enough for someone to make an error. It has to be venal. Conspiratorial.
Watergate was a great piece of journalism but there is a PhD thesis all on its own to examine the consequences for journalism of standing one conspiracy up. What creates cynicism is not mistakes; it is allegations of misconduct.
But misconduct is what has impact. Third, the fear of missing out means today's media, more than ever before, hunts in a pack. In these modes it is like a feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits. But no-one dares miss out. Fourth, rather than just report news, even if sensational or controversial, the new technique is commentary on the news being as, if not more important than the news itself.
So - for example - there will often be as much interpretation of what a politician is saying as there is coverage of them actually saying it. In the interpretation, what matters is not what they mean; but what they could be taken to mean.
This leads to the incredibly frustrating pastime of expending a large amount of energy rebutting claims about the significance of things said, that bears little or no relation to what was intended.
In turn, this leads to a fifth point: the confusion of news and commentary. Comment is a perfectly respectable part of journalism. But it is supposed to be separate. Opinion and fact should be clearly divisible. The truth is a large part of the media today not merely elides the two but does so now as a matter of course.
In other words, this is not exceptional. It is routine. The metaphor for this genre of modern journalism is the Independent newspaper. Let me state at the outset it is a well-edited lively paper and is absolutely entitled to print what it wants, how it wants, on the Middle East or anything else.
But it was started as an antidote to the idea of journalism as views not news. That was why it was called the Independent. Today it is avowedly a viewspaper not merely a newspaper. The final consequence of all of this is that it is rare today to find balance in the media.
Things, people, issues, stories, are all black and white. Life's usual grey is almost entirely absent.
"Some good, some bad"; "some things going right, some going wrong": these are concepts alien to today's reporting. It's a triumph or a disaster. A problem is "a crisis".
A setback is a policy "in tatters". A criticism, "a savage attack" NGOs and pundits know that unless they are prepared to go over the top, they shouldn't venture out at all.
Talk to any public service leader - especially in the NHS or the field of law and order - and they will tell you not that they mind the criticism, but they become totally demoralised by the completely unbalanced nature of it.
It is becoming worse? Again, I would say, yes. In my 10 years, I've noticed all these elements evolve with ever greater momentum. It used to be thought - and I include myself in this - that help was on the horizon.
New forms of communication would provide new outlets to by-pass the increasingly shrill tenor of the traditional media.
In fact, the new forms can be even more pernicious, less balanced, more intent on the latest conspiracy theory multiplied by five. But here is also the opportunity.
At present, we are all being dragged down by the way media and public life interact. Trust in journalists is not much above that in politicians. There is a market in providing serious, balanced news. There is a desire for impartiality.
The way that people get their news may be changing; but the thirst for the news being real news is not. The media will fear any retreat from impact will mean diminishing sales. But the opposite is the case.
They need to re-assert their own selling point: the distinction between news and comment. And there is inevitably change on its way. The regulatory framework at some point will need revision. The PCC is for traditional newspaper publishing.
OFCOM regulate broadcasting, except for the BBC, which largely has its own system of regulation. But under the new European regulations all television streamed over the internet may be covered by OFCOM.
As the technology blurs the distinction between papers and television, it becomes increasingly irrational to have different systems of accountability based on technology that no longer can be differentiated in the old way.
How this is done is an open question and, of course, the distinction between balance required of broadcasters but not of papers remains valid. But at some point the system is going to change and the importance of accuracy will not diminish, whilst the freedom to comment remains.
It is sometimes said that the media is accountable daily through the choice of readers and viewers. That is true up to a point. But the reality is that the viewers or readers have no objective yardstick to measure what they are being told. In every other walk of life in our society that exercises power, there are external forms of accountability, not least through the media itself.
So it is true politicians are accountable through the ballot box every few years. But they are also profoundly accountable, daily, through the media, which is why a free press is so important.
I am not in a position to determine this one way or another. But a way needs to be found. I do believe this relationship between public life and media is now damaged in a manner that requires repair. The damage saps the country's confidence and self-belief; it undermines its assessment of itself, its institutions; and above all, it reduces our capacity to take the right decisions, in the right spirit for our future.
I've made this speech after much hesitation. I know it will be rubbished in certain quarters. But I also know this has needed to be said.
@'BBC'
Well here's one thing he got right!
This speech on the challenge of the changing nature of communication on politics and the media is from the same perspective.
I need to say some preliminaries at the outset. This is not my response to the latest whacking from bits of the media.
It is not a whinge about how unfair it all is. As I always say, it's an immense privilege to do this job and if the worst that happens is harsh media coverage, it's a small price to pay.
And anyway, like it or not, I have won three elections and am still standing as I leave office.
This speech is not a complaint. It is an argument. As a result of being at the top of the greasy pole for thirteen years, ten of them as Prime Minister, my life, my work as prime minister, and its interaction with the world of communication has given me pretty deep experience, for better or worse.
A free media is a vital part of a free society. You only need to look at where such a free media is absent to know this truth.
But it is also part of freedom to be able to comment on the media. It has a complete right to be free. I, like anyone else, have a complete right to speak.
My principal reflection is not about "blaming" anyone. It is that the relationship between politics, public life and the media is changing as a result of the changing context of communication in which we all operate; no-one is at fault - it is a fact; but it is my view that the effect of this change is seriously adverse to the way public life is conducted; and that we need, at the least, a proper and considered debate about how we manage the future, in which it is in all our interests that the public is properly and accurately informed.
They are the priority and they are not well served by the current state of affairs. In the analysis I am about to make, I first acknowledge my own complicity.
We paid inordinate attention in the early days of New Labour to courting, assuaging, and persuading the media. In our own defence, after 18 years of Opposition and the, at times, ferocious hostility of parts of the media, it was hard to see any alternative.
But such an attitude ran the risk of fuelling the trends in communications that I am about to question. It is also hard for the public to know the facts, even when subject to the most minute scrutiny, if those facts arise out of issues of profound controversy, as the Hutton Inquiry showed.
I would only point out that the Hutton Inquiry (along with 3 other inquiries) was a six month investigation in which I as Prime Minister and other senior Ministers and officials faced unprecedented public questioning and scrutiny.
The verdict was disparaged because it was not the one the critics wanted. But it was an example of being held to account, not avoiding it. But leave that to one side.
And incidentally in none of this, do I ignore the fact that this relationship has always been fraught. From Stanley Baldwin's statement about "power without responsibility being the prerogative of the harlot through the ages" back to the often extraordinarily brutal treatment meted out to Gladstone and Disraeli through to Harold Wilson's complaints of the 60s, the relations between politics and the media are and are by necessity, difficult. It's as it should be.
The question is: is it qualitatively and quantitively different today? I think yes. So that's my starting point.
Why? Because the objective circumstances in which the world of communications operate today are radically altered. The media world - like everything else - is becoming more fragmented, more diverse and transformed by technology.
The main BBC and ITN bulletins used to have audiences of 8, even 10 million. Today the average is half that. At the same time, there are rolling 24 hour news programmes that cover events as they unfold. In 1982, there were 3 TV stations broadcasting in the UK.
Today there are hundreds. In 1995 225 TV shows had audiences of over 15 million. Today it is almost none. Newspapers fight for a share of a shrinking market. Many are now read online, not the next day.
Internet advertising has overtaken newspaper ads. There are roughly 70 million blogs in existence, with around 120,000 being created every day. In particular, younger people will, less and less, get their news from traditional outlets.
But, in addition, the forms of communication are merging and interchanging. The BBC website is crucial to the modern BBC. Papers have Podcasts and written material on the web. News is becoming increasingly a free good, provided online without charge. Realistically, these trends won't do anything other than intensify. These changes are obvious. But less obvious is their effect.
The news schedule is now 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It moves in real time. Papers don't give you up to date news. That's already out there.
They have to break stories, try to lead the schedules. Or they give a commentary. And it all happens with outstanding speed. When I fought the 1997 election - just ten years ago - we took an issue a day. In 2005, we had to have one for the morning, another for the afternoon and by the evening the agenda had already moved on. You have to respond to stories also in real time.
Frequently the problem is as much assembling the facts as giving them. Make a mistake and you quickly transfer from drama into crisis. In the 1960s the government would sometimes, on a serious issue, have a Cabinet lasting two days.
It would be laughable to think you could do that now without the heavens falling in before lunch on the first day. Things harden within minutes. I mean you can't let speculation stay out there for longer than an instant.
I am going to say something that few people in public life will say, but most know is absolutely true: a vast aspect of our jobs today - outside of the really major decisions, as big as anything else - is coping with the media, its sheer scale, weight and constant hyperactivity.
At points, it literally overwhelms. Talk to senior people in virtually any walk of life today - business, military, public services, sport, even charities and voluntary organisations and they will tell you the same. People don't speak about it because, in the main, they are afraid to.
But it is true, nonetheless, and those who have been around long enough, will also say it has changed significantly in the past years. The danger is, however, that we then commit the same mistake as the media do with us: it's the fault of bad people.
My point is: it is not the people who have changed; it is the context within which they work. We devote reams of space to debating why there is so much cynicism about politics and public life. In this, the politicians are obliged to go into self flagellation, admitting it is all our fault.
Actually not to have a proper press operation nowadays is like asking a batsman to face bodyline bowling without pads or headgear.
And, believe it or not, most politicians come into public life with a desire to serve and by and large, try to do the right thing not the wrong thing.
My view is that the real reason for the cynicism is precisely the way politics and the media today interact. We, in the world of politics, because we are worried about saying this, play along with the notion it is all our fault.
So I introduced: first, lobby briefings on the record; then published the minutes; then gave monthly press conferences; then Freedom of Information; then became the first Prime Minister to go to the Select Committee's Chairman's session; and so on. None of it to any avail, not because these things aren't right, but because they don't deal with the central issue: how politics is reported.
There is now, again, a debate about why Parliament is not considered more important and as ever, the Government is held to blame. But we haven't altered any of the lines of accountability between Parliament and the Executive.
What has changed is the way Parliament is reported or rather not reported. Tell me how many maiden speeches are listened to; how many excellent second reading speeches or committee speeches are covered. Except when they generate major controversy, they aren't.
If you are a backbench MP today, you learn to give a press release first and a good Parliamentary speech second. My case, however is: there's no point either in blaming the media. We are both handling the changing nature of communication.
The sooner we recognise this, the better because we can then debate a sensible way forward. The reality is that as a result of the changing context in which 21st Century communications operates, the media are facing a hugely more intense form of competition than anything they have ever experienced before.
They are not the masters of this change but its victims. The result is a media that increasingly and to a dangerous degree is driven by "impact". Impact is what matters. It is all that can distinguish, can rise above the clamour, can get noticed.
Impact gives competitive edge. Of course the accuracy of a story counts. But it is secondary to impact. It is this necessary devotion to impact that is unravelling standards, driving them down, making the diversity of the media not the strength it should be but an impulsion towards sensation above all else.
Broadsheets today face the same pressures as tabloids; broadcasters increasingly the same pressures as broadsheets.
The audience needs to be arrested, held and their emotions engaged. Something that is interesting is less powerful than something that makes you angry or shocked. The consequences of this are acute. First, scandal or controversy beats ordinary reporting hands down.
News is rarely news unless it generates heat as much as or more than light. Second, attacking motive is far more potent than attacking judgement. It is not enough for someone to make an error. It has to be venal. Conspiratorial.
Watergate was a great piece of journalism but there is a PhD thesis all on its own to examine the consequences for journalism of standing one conspiracy up. What creates cynicism is not mistakes; it is allegations of misconduct.
But misconduct is what has impact. Third, the fear of missing out means today's media, more than ever before, hunts in a pack. In these modes it is like a feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits. But no-one dares miss out. Fourth, rather than just report news, even if sensational or controversial, the new technique is commentary on the news being as, if not more important than the news itself.
So - for example - there will often be as much interpretation of what a politician is saying as there is coverage of them actually saying it. In the interpretation, what matters is not what they mean; but what they could be taken to mean.
This leads to the incredibly frustrating pastime of expending a large amount of energy rebutting claims about the significance of things said, that bears little or no relation to what was intended.
In turn, this leads to a fifth point: the confusion of news and commentary. Comment is a perfectly respectable part of journalism. But it is supposed to be separate. Opinion and fact should be clearly divisible. The truth is a large part of the media today not merely elides the two but does so now as a matter of course.
In other words, this is not exceptional. It is routine. The metaphor for this genre of modern journalism is the Independent newspaper. Let me state at the outset it is a well-edited lively paper and is absolutely entitled to print what it wants, how it wants, on the Middle East or anything else.
But it was started as an antidote to the idea of journalism as views not news. That was why it was called the Independent. Today it is avowedly a viewspaper not merely a newspaper. The final consequence of all of this is that it is rare today to find balance in the media.
Things, people, issues, stories, are all black and white. Life's usual grey is almost entirely absent.
"Some good, some bad"; "some things going right, some going wrong": these are concepts alien to today's reporting. It's a triumph or a disaster. A problem is "a crisis".
A setback is a policy "in tatters". A criticism, "a savage attack" NGOs and pundits know that unless they are prepared to go over the top, they shouldn't venture out at all.
Talk to any public service leader - especially in the NHS or the field of law and order - and they will tell you not that they mind the criticism, but they become totally demoralised by the completely unbalanced nature of it.
It is becoming worse? Again, I would say, yes. In my 10 years, I've noticed all these elements evolve with ever greater momentum. It used to be thought - and I include myself in this - that help was on the horizon.
New forms of communication would provide new outlets to by-pass the increasingly shrill tenor of the traditional media.
In fact, the new forms can be even more pernicious, less balanced, more intent on the latest conspiracy theory multiplied by five. But here is also the opportunity.
At present, we are all being dragged down by the way media and public life interact. Trust in journalists is not much above that in politicians. There is a market in providing serious, balanced news. There is a desire for impartiality.
The way that people get their news may be changing; but the thirst for the news being real news is not. The media will fear any retreat from impact will mean diminishing sales. But the opposite is the case.
They need to re-assert their own selling point: the distinction between news and comment. And there is inevitably change on its way. The regulatory framework at some point will need revision. The PCC is for traditional newspaper publishing.
OFCOM regulate broadcasting, except for the BBC, which largely has its own system of regulation. But under the new European regulations all television streamed over the internet may be covered by OFCOM.
As the technology blurs the distinction between papers and television, it becomes increasingly irrational to have different systems of accountability based on technology that no longer can be differentiated in the old way.
How this is done is an open question and, of course, the distinction between balance required of broadcasters but not of papers remains valid. But at some point the system is going to change and the importance of accuracy will not diminish, whilst the freedom to comment remains.
It is sometimes said that the media is accountable daily through the choice of readers and viewers. That is true up to a point. But the reality is that the viewers or readers have no objective yardstick to measure what they are being told. In every other walk of life in our society that exercises power, there are external forms of accountability, not least through the media itself.
So it is true politicians are accountable through the ballot box every few years. But they are also profoundly accountable, daily, through the media, which is why a free press is so important.
I am not in a position to determine this one way or another. But a way needs to be found. I do believe this relationship between public life and media is now damaged in a manner that requires repair. The damage saps the country's confidence and self-belief; it undermines its assessment of itself, its institutions; and above all, it reduces our capacity to take the right decisions, in the right spirit for our future.
I've made this speech after much hesitation. I know it will be rubbished in certain quarters. But I also know this has needed to be said.
@'BBC'
Well here's one thing he got right!
'Lord' Christopher Monckton interview w/ Adam Spencer
He spoke not once, but twice to Adam Spencer yesterday morning...
Link to audio and download
Former SAS commander breaks silence on Tampa
Former Defence Force personnel have spoken out about the Tampa and children overboard affair, accusing the Howard government of manipulating events for political purposes.
In August 2001, the Norwegian freighter Tampa rescued 438 Afghan asylum seekers and was then refused entry into Australian waters.The former second-in-command of the SAS counter-terrorism squad, Labor MP Peter Tinley, says sending SAS troops in to deal with the Tampa was a complete overreaction.
"I can't help but feel the PM John Howard viewed the SAS as something that would resonate politically to the message of border security," he said.
"You can't amp it up more in the public's mind than saying 'We're going to send in the SAS, we'll show you how tough we are on border security'."
The former head of Military Public Affairs, Brigadier Gary Bornholt, says the asylum seekers on board were never a threat to Australia.
"In Defence it wasn't a big deal, because these numbers of people were very, very small and that's why they didn't represent a security threat," he said.
The claims come in a new documentary, Leaky Boat, co-produced by the ABC.
Former prime minister John Howard insists his government's actions were in the national interest.
"I was never afraid to have this debate, people want governments to represent them occasionally, and to actually express how they feel," he said.
"The Australian people didn't want their Government to look as though it was being pushed around."
Former Labor leader Kim Beazley also faces criticism from within Labor for initially backing Mr Howard's approach to dealing with the asylum seekers.
Former Labor MP Carmen Lawrence gave a blunt assessment.
"On this, I just think he was absolutely wrong," she said.
After the Tampa affair, the boats kept coming, and then the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks happened.
Fears of terrorism were mixed in with the asylum seeker debate - a ploy criticised by the retired Commander of Australian Theatre with the Navy, Vice Admiral Chris Ritchie.
"It seemed to me to be a funny way to get to Australia if you were a terrorist. There are other easier ways to get into Australia than spend six months in Nauru," he said.
Children overboard scandal
The debate was further inflamed when the Government released photographs it claimed showed children had been thrown overboard.
That in fact never happened.
In the documentary, former Defence minister Peter Reith reads from a scrapbook diary from the time.
Regarding the photos, he says: "They're from Defence. Release them. I didn't have a view about what they proved or didn't prove. In fact I didn't think they proved much anyway."
Brigadier Bornholt says he called Mr Reith's media adviser to explain that children were not thrown overboard.
"He didn't take the call. It went through to his voicemail. This would be the only voicemail that I can ever recall leaving for him ... and I used to leave a number, that he never received," he said.
The documentary also reveals how the thoughts of ordinary Australians polled in focus groups were used to develop the rhetoric uttered by politicians during the debate.
Political debate
When it came to information made public by the Defence Department, former head of publicity Jenny McKenry revealed details were carefully filtered.
"We were told that there was to be nothing in the public forum which would humanise these people. We were quite stunned," she said.
The director of the Leaky Boat documentary, Victoria Midwinter Pitt, hopes it will give people a window into how the political debate operates.
"It's not so long ago that you can't remember your own feelings and your own impulses at the time, but it's long enough ago that there's distance and there's perspective," she said.
"What I hope is that it will give people a chance to question their own thinking, and the way that we come to the conclusion and join the political debate.
"You know our collective will matters. It does. It's why these things happened."
Ten years on from the Tampa, the issue of asylum seekers is as polarising as ever.
Ms Pitt says the overwhelming majority of illegal immigrants come to Australia by plane.
"We don't hear that on the news. We hear another boat's arrived, but I don't switch on the news and hear another plane has just landed and 70 people are going to overstay their visa from it," she said.
"And that's really the issue with illegal immigration, people who come by plane."
Adrian Raschella @'ABC'
Portugal drug law show results ten years on, experts say
"There is no doubt that the phenomenon of addiction is in decline in Portugal," said Joao Goulao, President of the Institute of Drugs and Drugs Addiction, a press conference to mark the 10th anniversary of the law.
The number of addicts considered "problematic" -- those who repeatedly use "hard" drugs and intravenous users -- had fallen by half since the early 1990s, when the figure was estimated at around 100,000 people, Goulao said.
Other factors had also played their part however, Goulao, a medical doctor added.
"This development can not only be attributed to decriminalisation but to a confluence of treatment and risk reduction policies."
Portugal's holistic approach had also led to a "spectacular" reduction in the number of infections among intravenous users and a significant drop in drug-related crimes, he added.
A law that became active on July 1, 2001 did not legalise drug use, but forced users caught with banned substances to appear in front of special addiction panels rather than in a criminal court.
The panels composed of psychologists, judges and social workers recommended action based on the specifics of each case.
Since then, government panels have recommended a response based largely on whether the individual is an occasional drug user or an addict.
Of the nearly 40,000 people currently being treated, "the vast majority of problematic users are today supported by a system that does not treat them as delinquents but as sick people," Goulao said.
In a report published last week, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) said Portugal had dealt with this issue "in a pragmatic and innovative way."
Drug use statistics in Portugal are generally "below the European average and much lower than its only European neighbour, Spain," the report also said.
"The changes that were made in Portugal provide an interesting before-and-after study on the possible effects of decriminalisation," EMCDDA said.
@'Yahoo'
World drug report 2011
Today there is widespread recognition among Member States and United Nations entities that drugs, together with organized crime, jeopardize the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. It is increasingly clear that drug control must become an essential element of our joint efforts to achieve peace, security and development. At the same time, we must reinforce our commitment to shared responsibility and the basic principles of health and human rights.
The World Drug Report documents developments in global drug markets and tries to explain the factors that drive them. Its analysis of trends and emerging challenges informs national and international drug and crime priorities and policies, and provides a solid foundation of evidence for counternarcotics interventions. Drug markets and drug use patterns change rapidly, so measures to stop them must also be quick to adapt. Thus the more comprehensive the drug data we collect and the stronger our capacity to analyse the problem, the better prepared the international community will be to respond to new challenges.
World drug report 2011 (PDF)
The World Drug Report documents developments in global drug markets and tries to explain the factors that drive them. Its analysis of trends and emerging challenges informs national and international drug and crime priorities and policies, and provides a solid foundation of evidence for counternarcotics interventions. Drug markets and drug use patterns change rapidly, so measures to stop them must also be quick to adapt. Thus the more comprehensive the drug data we collect and the stronger our capacity to analyse the problem, the better prepared the international community will be to respond to new challenges.
World drug report 2011 (PDF)
The Supreme Court's Cocaine Problem
Ask a chemist the difference between cocaine and crack, you’ll likely hear about acid-base chemistry. Ask the other type of chemist and you’ll likely hear “about 5 years”. It is mainly the sentencing differences, rather than the chemical differences, that dominate discussions on cocaine and crack. Those sentencing differences were kicked-off by The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 (eventually Public Law No: 99-570), which resulted in vastly different mandatory sentences for federal cocaine versus crack crimes (US Code § 841).
How different? It took 500 grams of cocaine to get a nickel in the Big House, but only took 5 grams of crack to land you in the clink for the same time (see A, B & C). Clearly, it was legally advantageous to do and deal in blow rather than rocks. Based on this 100-to-1 sentencing difference, belies how chemically similar these compounds are...
Continue reading
drrubidium @'Scientopia'
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