Media Manipulation

From Future Perfect To Militarist Machinations; From Free Trade To Globalist Conflict

- Dennis Small

“If way to the better there be, it exacts a full look at the worst” (from “In Tenebris ii”, Thomas Hardy).

There will be “battles over water and food within the next five to ten years as a result of climate change”, says the head of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim. He urges campaigners and scientists to work together to form a coherent plan in the fight against climate change (“'Climate Change Will Lead To Battles For Food', says head of World Bank”, 3/4/14, www.theguardian.com/).

“It's as if we are rekindling and reigniting the flame of patriotism” (Auckland Mayor Len Brown on preparations for Anzac Day, 2014 – One News, 6 p.m., 23/4/14; on an earlier occasion, Brown had welcomed NZ troops back home from Afghanistan, telling the nation that they had been defending “freedom”).

“…read between the lines of every newspaper article that comes before you and…question the deeper implications of every radio and television report you tune in to. Things are not as they appear. NBC is owned by General Electric, ABC by Disney, CBS by Viacom, and CNN is part of the huge AOL Time Warner conglomerate. Most of our newspapers, magazines and publishing houses are owned – and manipulated – by gigantic international corporations. Our media is part of the corporatocracy” (“Confessions Of An Economic Hit Man”, John Perkins, Ebury Press, 2005, p221).

“And when war is on the agenda in Washington, news coverage gets skewed to an extreme” (ch. 3, “The Media's War” in “Target Iraq: What The News Media Didn't Tell You”, Norman Solomon & Reese Erlich, Context Books, 2003, pp28/9).

In Aotearoa/NZ, the mainstream media – like media in the capitalist West generally – operate according to certain canons that reflect ruling class interests. Take the shibboleth of free trade. Free trade is central to the neo-liberal dogma that has dominated Western politics, especially the Anglo-American set, for over 30 years. The prevailing media line has been both to legitimate and articulate the ideological orthodoxy of neo-liberalism. Dissent has been systematically stifled and marginalised. This, of course, illustrates the principle of Marxist analysis as to how vested economic interests determine the ideological content of culture, whatever the qualifications or modifications we might like to make of this particular theory, e.g. Gramsci's hegemonic approach. In the following article, I shall consider various media machinations and manipulations within the context of neo-liberalism and trace the trend to market militarism.

Free Trade And The Media Marketing Blitz

Back in the late 1980s, the now infamous “Mad” Mike Moore (NZ's current Ambassador to the US) strenuously led the charge in Aotearoa/NZ to implement an American-mandated programme for corporate free trade. Free trade indeed became the engine driving global economic growth. In discussing the concept of “globalisation” and its various forms and applications, Professor Manfred B Steger comments that: “Many people associate economic globalisation (my emphasis) with the controversial issue of free trade. After all, the total value of world trade exploded from $US57 billion in 1947 to an astonishing $US14.9 trillion in 2010” (“Globalisation: A Very Short Introduction”, Oxford University Press, 3rd Ed., 2013, p41). And in that last mentioned year, “China, as the world's leading manufacturer”, supplied a vast flow of exports, including to “the US, the world's most voracious consumer”. Professor Steger goes on to remark how “the public debate over the alleged benefits and drawbacks of free trade still rages at a feverish pitch as wealthy Northern ( i.e. ‘developed’ or industrial, especially capitalist) countries and regional trading blocs have increased their efforts to establish a single global market through far-reaching trade liberalisation agreements” (ibid.). As he notes, free trade ideologues like Mike Moore and his soul-mate, current NZ Trade Minister Tim Groser, preach a message of global wealth and enhanced consumer choice, besides promoting special gains for the countries they represent.

As indicated above, central to the cultivation of free trade and the free market has been the role of the corporate media and its dissemination of capitalist culture, especially the doctrine of neo-liberalism. “During the last two decades, a small group of very large transnational corporations (TNCs) have come to dominate the global market for entertainment, news, television, and film. In 2006, only eight media conglomerates – Yahoo, Google, AOL/Time Warner, Microsoft, Viacom, General Electric, Disney, and News Corporation – accounted for more than two-thirds of the $US250-275 billion in annual worldwide revenues generated by the communications industry” (ibid, p82). Media business mergers along with the accompanying concentration of power and influence have continued since this date. There has thus been the creation of “a global oligopoly” in the international “infotainment industry”, the outcome of which we can see demonstrated on our television screens every night and read in our newspapers every day. As a result of free trade/investment, “the market-oriented discourse of globalisation itself has turned into an extremely important commodity destined for public consumption. Business Week, Economist, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, and Financial Times are among the most powerful of dozens of magazines, journals, newspapers, and electronic media published globally that feed their readers a steady diet of market-globalist claims” (ibid, pp106/7). A couple of correspondents for the Economist, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, have even promoted the globalist ruling class in their book, “A Future Perfect: The Challenge And Hidden Promise of Globalisation” (Heinemann, 2000).

Free Trade Follies

In the West, during the period of the late 1980s and beyond, there were - including in the US - a considerable number of critics of free trade. We scored a major victory in the 1990s with the defeat of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). But for the most part, any voices critical of free trade were effectively suppressed by the political forces marshalled under the reign of the TNC heavyweights and related agencies, until the turn of the next century at least. In Aotearoa\NZ, the mainstream media soon took their cue and dropped any meaningful coverage of contentious issues. Yet by then some organisational stirrings had already grown into active opposition. During the late 1980s the then Trade Aid Movement Coordinator, Marie Venning, convened a discussion group that became GATT Watchdog, an activist non-government organisation (NGO), contesting the Government's agenda - GATT being the acronym for the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade where the new free trade Uruguay Round was being cranked up. CAFCA was, of course, a committed member of GATT Watchdog.

In the early days, our cause did get some media attention and there were even signs of a so very important and properly democratic debate shaping up. For example, in a newspaper article covering various viewpoints, we (i.e. GATT Watchdog) warned that: “Free trade is seen by a number of leading analysts as the greatest threat to the planet and its peoples… As a vehicle of globalisation the GATT process will deepen inequalities both between and within countries. It will accelerate and deepen the effects of the current monetarist New Right experiment with Aotearoa/NZ” (“Horrors In Store: Threat Of Gattzilla”, John Draper, Sunday Star, 26/9/93). In reaction, the NZ government and Big Business set up their own groups and advocates to spread the neo-liberal gospel with the focus on the alleged benefits of free trade and the free market, e.g. the Trade Liberalisation Network, as well as globalist-oriented agencies like the NZ International Business Forum and the New Zealand United States Council. Public relations (PR) and media hype reached new depths of corporate manipulation and suppression. The NZ Establishment has pursued the “holy grail” of free trade with fundamentalist fervour, whatever the costs (“The Costs Of Free Trade: Aotearoa/NZ At Risk”, Dennis Small, CAFCA, 1996; “Trade Dream Keeps Receding From NZ's Grasp”, Press, 17/6/14). It has even been stealthily selling out our nuclear-free status in order to gain a deal with the US, as well as reintegrating with the American military. Free trade and investment systematically undermine our democracy, environment, sovereignty and independence. The media have been crucial in helping orchestrate all this.

Crony capitalism is on the rise. The Rightwing National government even has the stench of corruption about it with most voters seeing it as having a policy of “cash for access”, with so-called “Cabinet Club” dinners and similar methods of catering to rich donors (TV3, 6 p.m., 3 News, 28/5/14). But the most disturbing thing about all of this is that public perception does not seem to translate into a corresponding public concern. Neo-liberalism - as ushered into Aotearoa/NZ by the 1980s era of Rogernomics - has obviously had a deeply corrosive effect on our democracy and the public morality essential for accountable governance. Given shifting baselines, “the new normal” is that power can now rule in the open interest of greed and wealth, however denied by its proponents and screened from view by the Government's media cronies. Having said this, it needs to be acknowledged for instance that TV3 has been better than TV1 in its scrutiny of Ministerial abuses of public office and National's “dirty deals”, e.g., the Oravida affair involving Justice Minister Judith Collins. On these matters of late, privately owned TV3, although conventional enough, has certainly proved better than State-owned TVNZ. Over all, it has also given significantly more attention to other sensitive issues such as the role of our spies in American death squad drone operations. But by May 2014, both TV channels were striving to paint a gloomy picture as possible for the Labour Party in the general election due in September. They have been selling a message that Labour's poor showing in political polls reflects its coming defeat, which demonstrates how the conservative media try and use poll results to influence voting and so help further undermine democracy. Outrageously, Patrick Gower, the chief political reporter of TV3, even declared at one point that Labour's hopes for an election win were finished (pilloried on Media Take for calling the election 90 days out, Maori TV, 1/7/14).

Critically Scrutinising And Evaluating The News

As global crises grow we can predict that media-orchestrated infotainment will grow too, as part of the Establishment's “bread and circuses” strategy. The use of very Rightwing, so-called celebrity “performing” hosts and presenters constitutes a key element of this. These hosts freely peddle their bigotry and prejudices. This is the signature mark of the dumbed down fare promulgated by the corporate-controlled TV stations, and another trend in line with the TNC-prescribed agenda. For example, State television - like most of the mainstream media in Aotearoa/NZ - has generally done its best to play down the implications of the mounting climate change crisis over the past couple of decades, whatever the more revealing reportage from time to time. Following an earlier item on One News (6 p.m., 1/4/14) about the United Nations' latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, TV1's Seven Sharp host Mike Hosking openly declared his climate scepticism when referring to the report, dismissing it as just more “doom-mongering”. This echoes the reactionary sort of sentiments long reflected by certain talkback radio hosts, e.g., Leighton Smith charges the allegedly “hard-left” Greens with being part of “the global warming con” (“Beyond The Microphone”, HarperCollins, 2013, p236). Fittingly enough, in this particular vein, Mike Hosking has promoted both Prime Minister John Key and the luxury Lexus car - a touted symbol of the success of corporate globalisation (“Hosking Plugs Car And Key”, NZ Herald, 1/2/13, http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10862709). In connection with a satirical skit on the supposedly “rent-a-crowd” protesters against the Government's budget and PM Key's corporate dinner speech at Sky City Casino, Hosking smugly suggested that the protesters should spend their time getting jobs instead (TV1, Seven Sharp, 16/5/14).

In similar fashion, Colin Espiner, a Sunday Star-Times columnist, maliciously slagged off John Minto with the epithet of “rent-a-protester“(1/6/14). John has spent a lifetime contesting social injustice and working for a better and fairer world. Espiner, on the other hand, who at that time worked for Fairfax Media owned by the likes of Gina Rinehart, & co., got a boost to his own career as Press Political Editor with a trip to the United Kingdom for three months in 2004, travelling on the NZ Business Roundtable Douglas Myers Fellowship. In 2009, John was a weekly columnist at the Press writing feisty opinion pieces on the themes of social injustice and other such issues. John's column was an exception made by the newspaper for Leftwing opinion. Espiner, however, was suggesting around the same time that the new National government adopt more free market measures and even some ACT Party proposals – from selling off State assets to implementing “education vouchers or bulk funding of teacher salaries” (“National Must Change Up A Gear”, Press, 13/7/09). Freedom for the likes of Espiner means corporate control. But hang on; while Espiner obviously scorns what he calls “old-school socialism”, he has just discovered that inequality represents a real danger to his privileged lifestyle, citing “Capital In The 21st Century” by Professor Thomas Piketty! (“The Problem with Greed: The Gulf Between Rich And Poor Is Now Threatening Capitalism's Very Survival”, Sunday Star-Times, 22/6/14). Ironies and contradictions abound in capitalist ideology and practice as Marxist predictions prove acutely prophetic about capitalist accumulation. And even Colin Espiner can also recognise certain costs to the environment that entail “the irony of asking capitalism to fix what most scientists now agree capitalism has caused”, viz. global warming (Press, 24/9/07). But he is anti-Green, advocates deep sea drilling for oil and gas, and promotes PM John Key as a “centrist”. The day of reckoning is coming for Business Roundtable-type greed and toadyism, eh Colin?! Unfortunately, all humankind looks set to pay the price, let alone so many other species on this small “Goldilocks” planet.

It is easy to find many such examples of neo-liberalism at work throughout the mainstream media. Chris Trotter, who replaced Minto as Press columnist, has pertinently criticised the in-built neo-liberal bias of TV3's The Nation (Press, 17/6/14). In particular, Trotter picked out the programme's presenter Lisa Owen for her Rightwing attitude. For Trotter, this was especially demonstrated in an episode where Owen interviewed “the Children's Commissioner, Dr. Russell Wills, on the subject of child poverty” (ibid.). Having seen this same episode myself, it was indeed “a disturbing example” of interviewing style (The Nation, 14/6/14). Owen persisted in trying to frame the issue in terms of the older generation having to sacrifice more for the younger generation. In contradistinction, Dr. Wills said it came down to well-off people like Owen and himself having to contribute more – in other words, the rich paying their proper due share for the greater good. Owen actually replied to this challenge by saying she found it a “nebulous concept”! You can't get more self-serving than that. Owen always finds redistribution and social justice just too hard to deal with, coming up with some such ploy or other (e.g., The Nation, 24/5/14). Look out, Lisa, if it's all too hard now it's going to get a hell of a lot harder, and eventually evoke a really nasty outcome! So let's be as pre-emptive as possible. Interestingly, as we have noted in the past, columnist Chris Trotter is not a consistent "Leftwing" writer having some very Rightwing views. In a later piece, he most laughably supported free trade to the hilt and the sale of Lochinver Station to Chinese corporate Shanghai Pengxin (Press, "Labour Stance On Lochinver Laughable" 12/8/14). Trotter is full of contradictions and confusions, not even realising that free trade is central to the neo-liberalism which he sometimes criticises

Protecting The Rich And Powerful

Neo-liberal attitudes are pervasive in the NZ mainstream media with Rightwing extremism sometimes deliberately fostered. TV3's “shock jock” Paul Henry, who was even condemned by Amnesty International when working at TV1, is even more ludicrous than Mike Hosking in parading his reactionary self-indulgence (The Paul Henry Show). In Aotearoa/NZ today, there are very few counterweights to this neo-liberal infotainment and celebrity host syndrome on our screens, although TV3 still screens the worthy and popular Campbell Live (“Here Come Ye Messiah: In A Sea Of Current Affairs Mediocrity, Give Praise To John Campbell”, Grant Smithies, Sunday Star-Times, 4/5/14). Notably, not only does Campbell Live give social issues a more fair-minded treatment but it stands head and shoulders above other political commentary programmes on environmental matters. There are now indications of serious concern by the Government about the content of this programme. The general state of media affairs in our country reflects the Western condition. Throughout the Anglo-American axis in particular, the agents and purveyors of capitalist hegemony have carefully cultivated the code of neo-liberalism in all its aspects. “The codifiers of neo-liberalism are global power elites that include managers and executives of large TNCs, corporate lobbyists, influential journalists and PR specialists, intellectuals writing for a large public audience, celebrities and top entertainers, state bureaucrats, and politicians. Serving as the chief advocates of neo-liberalism, these individuals saturate the public discourse with idealised images of a consumerist, free-market world. Skilfully interacting with the media to sell their preferred version of a single global marketplace to the public, they portray globalising markets in a positive light as an indispensable tool for the realisation of a better world” (“Neo-Liberalism: A Very Short Introduction”, Manfred Steger and Ravi Roy, OUP, 2010, p11). Any negative social and environmental aspects to the globalisation process are regularly sidelined or played down, at least as much as possible. In similar fashion, any geopolitical obstacles to Western capitalism from Putin’s Russia to socialist-oriented Venezuela are the targets of concerted criticism.

In Aotearoa/NZ, the 1980s’ New Right/neo-liberal era served as the platform for the capitalist restructuring of our politics, society and economy. The media, as an integral part of Big Business, have been fundamental to this process. Dr. Paul Harris and Linda Twiname in “First Knights: An Investigation Of The New Zealand Business Roundtable” concluded that “the majority [of New Zealanders] would reject the Roundtable's brave new world of the market” (Howling At The Moon Pub.,1998, p214). Such a conclusion has not bothered the likes of the Press and journalists like Colin Espiner. Indeed, Fairfax Media, owner of the Press, Sunday Star-Times, and a raft of other Australasian media, embarked on a project of neo-liberal social engineering with the sponsorship of its absurd NZ Business Hall of Fame. Greedy capitalists have a PR problem, which projects like the Business Hall of Fame are intended to address, and so get people to admire them. They have carried out a comprehensive programme of manipulation. In 2008, Fairfax Media became “the naming sponsor of Enterprise NZ's Business Hall of Fame”, which was formed in 1994 (Press, 3/4/08). The Enterprise NZ (ENZ) Trust, along with the Young Enterprise Trust and the Lion Foundation's Young Enterprise Scheme, are the outfits which have also spread the capitalist creed within the school curriculum, courtesy of our public education system (“Cunning, Coded Curriculum”, John Minto, Press, 20/11/06). Fairfax Media's Head of Business News, Fiona Rotherham, pushes more foreign investment, more deregulation, and so the facilitation of more foreign control, endorsing a recent report by the so-called NZ Initiative, an organisation which replaced the Business Roundtable (Sunday Star-Times, 4/5/14).

Neo-Liberalism Thus Remains Rampant

Entrepreneurialism is the driving core of capitalism, its callous, greedy heart. It fosters the values of individualism, selfishness, acquisitiveness, competition, status-seeking, inequality, conspicuous consumption and narcissism. The Press and other organs of Fairfax Media, along with the rest of the mainstream media, thus cultivate belief in entrepreneurialism, the free market and neo-liberalism as fulsomely as they can. Over the years, the outlets for Leftwing voices in the mainstream media have been increasingly blocked. Examples range from the corporate takeover of the Listener to the Press's takeover of the Sunday Star-Times (“Star-Times And Press Join Forces”, Press, 7/7/12). In the latter instance, while both papers belong to the Fairfax Media empire, the Press is one of the country's most reactionary papers whereas the Sunday Star-Times has traditionally been the most fair-minded. Political discourse in Aotearoa/NZ is today permeated with a very colonised mindset. Neo-liberal and Americanised jargon is abundant - from “NZ Inc.” to the “beltway”. A number of journalists are basically spin doctors. Our national elections are American Presidential-style with a cult of personality. There are now a million missing voters given the neo-liberal erosion of democracy and meaningful debate. Access to the media (including TV), however, has been instant for a new, powerfully-funded, neo-liberal lobby group, the Taxpayers' Union, which has very close links with the National Party and ACT. This group was co-founded by blogger David Farrar, also National's pollster and another regular TV commentator, along with lawyer Jordan Williams, who fronted a Big Business-backed anti-MMP campaign in 2011.

Flowing on from all this cultural conditioning and restructuring, we again confront in 2014 a calculated electoral campaign by the NZ Establishment to destabilise any Leftist attempt to create a fairer and more sustainable society. This was brilliantly highlighted on a recent TVNZ Q & A session, one where Susan Wood so enjoyed the discomfiture of Labour Party Leader David Cunliffe (TV1, 22/6/14, - see below for more on this session). An exasperated Robert Reid, the General Secretary of FIRST Union, angrily and so rightly called this Establishment to account for its blatant machinations – its deliberate subversion of the democratic process. As he declaimed, around the Western world Leftist political parties have been continually destabilised by corporate forces and their media manipulations. As a dramatic illustration of Robert's point we can cite Rupert Murdoch's plot to “kill” the Whitlam Labor government in Australia in the mid-1970s, a plot which was actually part of a wider US Central Intelligence Agency conspiracy (Sunday Star-Times, 29/6/14: this article did not mention the CIA). Similar CIA attempts at destabilisation were made in the 1980s against NZ's nuclear free stand (see historical series of Peace Researcher, online at http://www.historicalpeaceresearcher.blogspot.co.nz/). In his Q & A statement, Robert Reid said that any Leftwing leader always got his head shot off by the ruling class. With specific reference to Cunliffe's case, Robert rejected Wood's allegation of hypocrisy. As he rightly contended – and was soon validated accordingly – there was a bigger story behind it all. And so it goes.

A hilarious, bizarre and most revealing example of the Rightwing garbage spouted about the virtues of the free press is expressed by Colin Espiner, who was at the time Head of News at Fairfax Media, in an article in the Sunday Star-Times just cited above (op. cit, 29/6/14). In a fulsome rant, Espiner defended Rupert Murdoch, News Corp, and British Conservative PM David Cameron against “the Leftwing media and the British Labour Party” (ibid.). For him, the British phone hacking scandal comes down to a “media turf war” between the Murdoch empire and the Guardian. He actually goes on to conclude that: a free press “is fearless and beholden to no-one” (ibid.). Espiner even makes a disclosure that he had “previously worked for a Murdoch newspaper in Australia” but that he had spent a lot more of his life “working for his arch-rival, Fairfax” (ibid.). While Murdoch sold his stake in Fairfax Media some time ago, Fairfax Media bought its NZ papers off Murdoch back in 2003 when Espiner had already been at the Press for over a year. Murdoch's legacy lives on with Fairfax Media drawing heavily on his publications like the Times for overseas news. You are dreaming, Colin. You are just an agent of the media “corporatocracy”, of an incestuous oligopoly, and are thus just another hack apologist for the rich and powerful. But maybe, given the troubles of Fairfax Media these days, Colin was just keeping his options open? Yes, indeed, by August 2014 Colin Espiner had left to take up a new job as head of communications at Sky City.

Getting Even Greater Corporate Control Of The Media

The key principles and assumptions of neo-liberalism can be summarised as the idealisation of the supremacy of the market over government, along with unleashed economic growth, and the celebration of material consumption (“Neo-Liberalism”, op. cit, pp11-15). As well, it is a doctrine or ideology which also takes the form of both a “policy package” and “mode of governance” (ibid.). Besides media hosts and presenters, neo-liberalism obviously informs many of the working assumptions of a number of NZ TV reporters. TVNZ's Chief Political Reporter, Corin Dann, often gives vent to his Rightwing bias. A graphic example was a Q & A interview with Labour Party Deputy Leader and Finance spokesperson, David Parker, where Dann's rudely aggressive style of questioning contrasted markedly with that in a matching interview with Finance Minister Bill English (18/5/14). Dann's style was similar to that adopted by Lisa Owen of TV3's The Nation as described earlier. Parker was obviously exasperated with the treatment dished out to him. In the case of English, Dann keenly pushed the ideas of the far-Right ACT Party, e.g., a flat tax rate to purportedly encourage faster growth and the sale of more public assets. In an interview with former Labour PM Helen Clark in her role as head of the UN's Development Programme, Dann pushed capitalism as the answer, showing no awareness of any problems (TV1, Q & A, 4/8/13). TV1 and TV3 continually give plenty of publicity to ACT and the Conservative Party, National's vital allies. They regularly and even dramatically promote the policy proposals of these two minor parties. Despite their much greater public support, the Greens get relatively little attention as the election nears. Systematic discrimination prevails against the Greens and other Opposition parties on vital issues such as energy, water quality, biodiversity, inequality, free trade, etc. A stark illustration of this was the announcement of the Government's highly contested new national water standards on State television. A TV1 6p.m.One News item featured two National Ministers and a couple of scientists in dispute but no Opposition MPs or NGOs (3/7/14). Real sustainability, like social justice, are dirty words for the neo-liberal media. Meantime, the new Internet-Mana Party has upset the media with its unprecedented dynamic – with the maverick, multi-millionaire Kim Dotcom backing a Leftwing party.

Given some embarrassment for the Labour Party on the issue of political donations from a Chinese immigrant businessman, Donghua Liu, the media have eagerly further developed the theme of the untrustworthiness of Party leader, David Cunliffe, and so how unlikely it is for Labour to win the election. For instance, two rightwing Press columnists, Hamish Rutherford and Duncan Garner (who has also long been the host of TV3's 3rd Degree), jointly painted a bleak picture for the Labour Leader in separate pieces on the very same page (21/6/14). Garner's headline proclaimed: “Cunliffe Train Wreck Derails Party's Hopes” (ibid.). Such journalists play the game of constantly reinforcing negativity for the Left. The political donations campaign reeked of another National Party “dirty tricks” campaign in collaboration with the media in order to take the heat off National's crony capitalism. Garner, indeed, could even openly refer to National's “dark arts” while only blaming Cunliffe (ibid.). This particular National Party/media campaign, in fact, proved to be a damp squib fired up by wild allegations. But, of course, the media in general beat it up to try and hurt Labour as much as possible. They never have to apologise, and the damage is already done.

TV1's Corin Dann said that the Liu affair showed that the NZ public does not trust David Cunliffe (One News, 6p.m.,18/6/14). Q & A presenter, Susan Wood, even appeared gloatingly gleeful when interviewing Cunliffe about the Liu donations controversy (TV1, 22/6/14). We shall return again to this particular instalment of Q & A, below. At this point, it is worth noting that Susan Wood's conservative bias is so strong that she actually once went out of her way on Q & A to stress that in her opinion Rightwing blogger Cameron Slater was only aiming for a good story when he put out some embarrassing information on the then Auckland Mayoral candidate Len Brown (TV1, 20/10/13). Slater, of Whale Oil infamy, had very close connections to the opposition Mayoral campaign, and is a regular informant and adviser to PM John Key. Thankfully, of course, there can still be some good, fair-minded journalism within the context of overall media bias. For instance, in connection with the Liu donations affair, Press reporter Vernon Small (not a relative of mine) has unravelled some of National's dark arts and dirty tricks in showing just how vacuous the charges have been against Labour and its leader (26/6/14).

To date, there is plenty of evidence indicating the far greater deviousness and untrustworthiness of National PM John Key but the same media has done its best to protect him from close scrutiny. For instance, the Murdoch Sky channel, Prime, works so hard to cover up National's dirty tricks and other abuses of power that at times it might as well be just another PR organ of the Government. For the NZ neo-liberal Establishment, the very wealthy Key with his American properties, investments and other connections, is supremely their man (“Wall Street Journal Hails Key Approach”, Press, 11/03/09). He is considerably more glib, affable, pragmatic, opportunistic and politically savvy than former National leader, Dr. Don Brash. A former money trader at the notorious Merrill Lynch, Key even epitomises the global shift to the militarist market with his full acceptance of the role of State terrorist, facilitating drone strikes for the crumbling American empire (“Key Comfortable With Drones, Spy Agency Work”, Press, 21/5/14). Wikileaks has revealed US cables that “note PM John Key's strongly personal pro-American outlook” (Sunday Star-Times, 12/12/10). Key's visit to Washington in June 2014 for a strategic photo op session with President Obama and his de facto selling out of our nuclear-free zone status was heartily celebrated by the NZ media. There is virtually no discussion or debate on the obvious dire implications. Some more on this below.

Deliberately Dumbing Us Down And Stifling Dissent And Real Debate

The programmed systematic superficiality in so much of the media - so very deliberately designed in intent to dumb us down and distract us, and pander to our most primitive emotions and motivations - undermines both our understanding and capacity for positive responses to all the problems that confront us. In the case of mainstream TV, we get an endless stream of lavish coverage for entertainment and sporting celebrities, Hollywood pap, crime stories and simplistic sensationalism, as channelled in particular by the American networks (as an illustration, TV1 screened four American items in its short noon news bulletin, One News, 18/6/14). The ongoing subversion of Radio NZ's “public service independent media model” is especially disturbing (see [Guyon] “Espiner Becomes RNZ Morning Report Host”: www.thestandard.org.nz/). It has been aptly said that “[Guyon] Espiner's appointment alongside that of Mike Hosking on TV One's Seven Sharp and Paul Henry replacing Nightline on TV3” are intended to give “a hard Right view of news just in time for the next election” (ibid.). Guyon Espiner is the brother of Colin Espiner. In the neo-liberal climate, and especially the darker era we are entering, an independent media model of public service and alternative avenues of information and opinion is something that is increasingly intolerable to the guardians of the surveillance national security state (NSS) as mandated by Big Brother America. The experience of TVNZ7 has certainly demonstrated that there are people able to give us a really good public service TV with stimulating alternative views of both the domestic scene and the wider outside world, a world that is going to press even harder on our collective prospects for the future (support the Coalition for Better Broadcasting: www.betterbroadcasting.co.nz/).

For many years, the mainstream media have sniped away at the alleged “Leftist” bias of Radio NZ. This is all so very enlightening given the overwhelmingly dominant Rightwing bias of the media in general. The current remodelling of Radio NZ is being conducted under the purview of a very conservative Board of Governors (www.radionz.co.nz/about/board-profile). Some examples of Board membership can illustrate this particular assertion. Richard Griffin, appointed as Chair to the Board in 2010, served as Chief Press Secretary and Media Adviser to National PM Jim Bolger from 1993 until 1998. Griffin was also Manager of Policy Development, Government Relations & Communications for TVNZ from 2000 to 2007. He is a director of the PR consultancy Fraser, Griffin, Wood. Deputy Chair of the TVNZ Board of Governors is Josh Easby, who has a commercial media background, including work with the Australasian media group APN News & Media Ltd. Former National Defence Minister Paul East is even on the Board! Nearly all the rest of the Board members have private corporate backgrounds. “Board chairman Richard Griffin brought [Paul] Thompson in as the “new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and change-maker” (“Musical Chairs”, Nikki Macdonald, Your Weekend, Press, 29/3/14). During his previous career, Thompson has been a typically Rightwing Editor of the Press and a Fairfax Media CEO. These changes to Radio NZ have deeply conservative and disturbing implications. Until recently, Ministers, including PM John Key, had refused interviews on Morning Report.

Some insight into Radio NZ's new CEO, Paul Thompson, is afforded by a brief Perspective piece he wrote in 2005 when editor of the Press (“Feisty But Free Of Bias”, 19/8/05). Thompson asserted that: “Despite the protestations of some readers and most politicians, the Press is no longer a political organ. We do not favour one party over another. We are not wedded to any ideology” (ibid.). All of which is so much transparent bunkum! What is so worrying given Thompson's current public job is that either he was only posturing or unaware of his own contradictions. The Labour government was then in power and a general election due. Thompson declared that the Government of the day would rightly get the most scrutiny of all the political parties, thus holding “the powerful to account”. He then went on to expound the paper's ideological beliefs. “These include an absolute conviction that an open and free society and economy that encourage enterprise and create opportunity are the keys to our future success. We abhor bureaucratic waste and incompetence. We believe welfare as a way of life hurts most those it was set up to help… On tax, we are convinced leaving more in the pockets of those who earn it is a good idea and is achievable. We believe education has been mishandled by successive governments and remains the single weakest policy front…We will argue these positions strongly, among ourselves as journalists and in our editorials” (ibid.). So much then for the lack of political ideology! Paul Thompson's political declaration can easily be interpreted as a coded version of neo-liberalism.

Getting The Corporate Image Right

A very similar pattern to the current regime at Radio NZ is now reflected on the Board of TVNZ. All of the TVNZ Board members have corporate backgrounds. For instance, Barrie Saunders is the co-founder of Saunders Unsworth Ltd., a company with a rather notorious reputation in public policy lobbying and corporate PR. He is a former editor of the National Business Review. It is important to note here how the establishment Rightwing network connects with such public service board members. For example, Professor Jane Kelsey has described how “the lead role in negotiating the new free trade and investment agreement between NZ and Taiwan was apparently outsourced to Charles Finny, a consultant at Saunders Unsworth (“Outsourced!: Privatisation Of State Power Extended To Treaty Negotiations”, Watchdog 133, August 2013, http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/33/14.html). The Wellington Chamber of Commerce was evidently also engaged in these secret negotiations, yet another example of the corporate-driven free trade/investment agenda within the overall context of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) framework. Finny is a former Wellington Chamber of Commerce CEO, as well as having a long background as a Government adviser and free trade negotiator. Another TVNZ Board member is Richard Long, a former Editor of the Dominion Post.Both Long and Finny have been well-known supporters of American foreign policy. Finny was even once moved to defend himself against the charge of close collaboration with American state power (“I'm No Spy Says Kiwi Named As Top US Contact” by Wikileaks, Dominion Post, 13/12/10, http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/4450581/I-m-no-spy-says-Kiwi-named-as-top-US-contact). In addition to the TVNZ Board, Maori TV has recently been rejigged to the Right with the appointment of former National MP Georgina Te Heuheu as Chairperson of the Board of Governors and Paora Matthews as CEO.

More widely, the hegemonic position of politically conservative private interests in relation to State-owned public media raises many questions. It clearly threatens even tighter neo-liberal control in the interests of the power elite and the NSS. Given the militarist trend of Western foreign policy, authoritarian political cliques will be eager to exercise greater control of the flow of information and the corresponding suppression of dissent. The National Party under PM John Key has been positioning itself, with the help of the media, to try and portray the Opposition parties as extreme. It represents its’ own policies as centrist when, in fact, these policies actually amount to a neo-liberal form of extremism – a commitment to foreign control, TNC takeover, militarism and the trashing of our environment (“It's Going To Be The Centre v Left, Says Key”, Press, 9/6/14). The authoritarian trend is illustrated, for instance, by the corporate capture and crushing of democracy in Environment Canterbury (ECan) in the interests of Big Dairy and Chinese control. One of the Government's appointed Commissioners for ECan, the neo-liberal acolyte David Caygill, is an outspoken advocate for the continuing suppression of democracy in this particular organisation. John Key's electoral statement was grossly perverse, saying: “The next election is…between us in the middle and the far Left of politics” (ibid.). He then echoed the ideological beliefs of Radio NZ CEO and former Press Editor', Paul Thompson, as expressed above: “We believe in economic growth, jobs and a welfare system where we expect people to work and all of those things. They believe in taxing people a lot more, much more redistribution, spending a lot more money” (ibid.). Key emphasised the Government's “free trade policies”. Social justice and real redistribution represent “the politics of envy” for multi-millionaire Key (as he has made plain in other statements).

In Parliament, National members demonstrate particular concern about the Green Party (Parliament TV). Any regulatory measures that might be likely to impact on corporate profits are an anathema to National and its allies. So the neo-liberal game is to label the Green Party as “extreme Left”. Among others, National Party adviser Matthew Hooton (a regular TV commentator) and ACT's “Mad Dog” Richard Prebble strenuously push this line. Terms like “Stalinist”, “Marxist”, and “Communist” are freely tossed around to suggest some dark and sinister conspiracy. The media keenly collaborate in this, providing a ready forum for hard-Right commentators. State television has been continually helpful to National in moving the political spectrum to the Right. For example, presenter Simon Dallow once asked Corin Dann if Labour does not want to be seen as associated with the “extreme Left”, given Labour's refusal to go into a formal alliance with the Greens (TV1, One News, 6 p.m., 9/4/14). Dann agreed. Nicely done, boys, eh?! Yet political scientist Dr. Bryce Edwards does not even consider the Greens as “Leftwing” any more, given their talk of “eco-capitalism” and such stuff (TV1, Q & A, 18/5/14).

The Contested Free Trade Model

The first decade of the new century saw trade liberalisation via the Western-manipulated World Trade Organisation splinter apart in the face of strong resistance from countries like India and China. Above all, the wheels came off the free trade bandwagon in the field of agriculture (e.g., “Farm [i.e. Food] Security Hinders [Free] Trade”, Press, 9/8/08). Obvious holes had long been showing up in the theory of free trade as it relates to food (e.g., Watchdog 121, August 2009, “Food And Free Trade Theory: Peddling Snake Poison”, Dennis Small, www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/21/10.htm). As Professor Manfred Steger emphasises, the struggle over free trade continues today. Our current big concern is the TPPA, a prospective pact embracing 12 countries in the Asia-Pacific region (see: www.itsourfuture.org.nz). In the meantime, globalist economic momentum has run out of steam to some significant degree. The West has lost much of its grip on the process. Meanwhile, round the world competing power blocs and movements generated by globalisation present a host of new problems and challenges for better international co-operation and a sustainable future (“Who'll Run The New World Order?”, Slavoj Zizek, Sunday Star-Times, 11/5/14). There are “multiple centres of global capitalism” and the “principal contradiction” of the market versus democracy (ibid.). We must add to this challenge the basic contradiction we face as a species – the absurdity of economic growth destroying the planetary environment on which we ultimately depend. The National Party exemplifies this absurdity in action.

Today, then, we confront a whole range of vital issues as never before. “The current food crisis, [fluctuating in acuteness from year to year] highlights the interconnections between political, economic, and ecological problems that are accentuated by the process of globalisation” (“Globalisation”, op. cit, p89). Globalisation and free trade have generated instability, yawning inequities, and the widespread disruption of established societal patterns and traditions. Previously so-called “emerging nations” like China, India and Brazil are now big capitalist competitors for what resources remain on a small, vulnerable planet, as well as ravaging their own ecosystems. Environmental catastrophe now looms, especially given the worsening impact of anthropogenic climate change. Some of the more responsible established media certainly show serious concern for the state of human civilisation (e.g., “Special Feature: Truth In The Ice: The Climate Change Projections Were Wrong. It's Much Worse Than They'd Thought”, NZ National Geographic 127, May/June, 2014). There is “the potentially fatal threat to Earth's life support system” (ibid, p51). Dangers come from “falling food yields, freshwater shortages, loss of habitat, infectious disease, resource wars and the mental-health consequences that could limit our collective ability to cope” (for background and trends see Peace Researcher 46, December 2013, “The Challenge Of Climate Wars: Countering Resource Conflict And Genocide”, Dennis Small, www.converge.org.nz/abc/pr/46/pr46-007.html).

Significantly enough, in the latter chapters of his highly popular book on “Globalisation”, Professor Steger heartily endorses the ongoing efforts of the social justice and environmental NGO movements. He considers them under the rubric of what he calls “justice globalism”, contrasting this sort of globalism with the other two prominent globalist movements - “market globalism” selling an “overarching neo-liberal worldview”, and the various reactionary or rebellious “religious globalisms”, e.g., Muslim jihadist movements (see chapter 7, “Ideologies Of Globalisation: Market Globalism, Justice Globalism, Religious Globalisms”, op. cit.). Warning against the revival of dangerous totalitarian and violent movements on both the Right and Left, Steger calls in the concluding paragraph of his book for “the building of a truly democratic and egalitarian global order” (ibid, p137). Steger is Professor of Political Science at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa and Professor of Global Studies at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

Embracing A Resource War Future!?

“Propaganda is to democracy what violence is to totalitarianism. These techniques have been honed to a fine art, far beyond anything that Orwell dreamt of” (“The Chomsky Reader”, Noam Chomsky, ed., James Peck, Serpent's Tail, 1988, p136). As Western “democracy” becomes more authoritarian with the consolidation of the NSS, State-mandated violence threatens to become even more legitimate given the media manufacture of consent. Chomsky's own analysis from which I have just quoted above - a damning indictment over the years of Western duplicity and evil deeds - points forward to this syndrome (see also “Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy Of The Mass Media”, Edward Herman & N Chomsky, Random House/Vintage, 1988/1994, among other writings). These days, our TV screens and other media have plenty of warmongering propaganda. Current US-led posturing over Russia's role in the Ukraine, along with American antagonism to North Korea, China, Iran, Syria, Venezuela and jihadist/Islamist movements in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Nigeria, Mali, Yemen, Philippines, southern Thailand, etc. is now systematically and almost daily – and for years to come! - backed by the militarist commemorations of World War I and II, and all set against the background of a Hollywood-fostered zombie/vampire culture and Social Darwinist survivalism. Unless we can radically change our ways we are on track for World War III.

The psychological warfare implemented by the National government, as directed by Washington, has succeeded in turning NZ's nuclear free legislation on its head. Despite now being effectively back in the nuclear folds of the ANZUS* alliance, our country still remains nominally nuclear-free, a condition which supposedly represents the last stubborn obstacle to a full military relationship; and one that the US is willing to countenance in the meantime, while working openly enough to undermine even this parlous status by relentlessly chipping it away (e.g., NZ ships are now allowed to visit American ports like Pearl Harbor, Hawai'i, during the RIMPAC war games). And John Key plays his duplicitous, cynical game of saying that we still have some independence, a game the mainstream media plays to the hilt. But, in fact, these days our nuclear free stance is mostly just pure pretence, a sop to public opinion that would mean nothing in the event of the outbreak of hostilities between the de facto ANZUS alliance and any enemy or enemies, e.g. a war between China and Japan (treaty bound with the US) over territorial claims to disputed islands. We are obviously deeply embedded again in the American doomsday machine and our military high command is openly gleeful about it. Suicidal stupidity rules as ever! *ANZUS - the Australia, New Zealand, US military treaty that was the foundation of all New Zealand’s defence and foreign policy from its inception in 1951 until the US, under President Ronald Reagan, kicked us out in 1986. It remains in force today, but only between the US and Australia. Ed.

No political party has stood firm on our nuclear independence. Both the Labour Party led by the eminently ambitious Helen Clark and, ironically enough, in conjunction with New Zealand First, were influential in setting the agenda for closer collaboration with the US (see “Other People's Wars: NZ in Afghanistan, Iraq and the War on Terror”, Nicky Hager, Craig Potton Pub, 2011, reviewed by Jeremy Agar in Watchdog 128, December 2011, http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/28/13.htm). The Green Party proclaims our independence but has failed to vigorously protest our reintegration into the nuclear war machine. In April 2014, Admiral Samuel J Locklear, the Commander of US Pacific Forces, blatantly reinforced our resource war future during a visit here. Interviewed on TV1's Q & A programme, Admiral Locklear responded: “Absolutely!” to a question as to whether there will be resource wars in the future (20/4/14). So forget about the propaganda bullshit of fighting for democracy and human rights. The new era is becoming openly Social Darwinist in nature – red in tooth and claw, the human version of the “survival of the fittest”, and this all flows naturally from capitalist competition and neo-liberalism. And it can only have one outcome, obvious at least to anyone who seriously thinks about it – nuclear holocaust! For those of us who absolutely refuse to conform to such a so evidently destined future, democratic resistance and non-violent rebellion must go up a gear, and quick! We owe a huge debt to the Waihopai protesters (Watchdog 135, April 2014, “Three Cheers For The Domebusters Who Kicked Waihopai In The Ball”, Murray Horton, http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/35/10.html). More generally, even the World Bank and other such international Establishment institutions want to be positively pre-emptive in trying to prevent wars, whatever criticisms we might make of their development policies.

From Neo-Liberalism To Neo-Fascism?

Identified among “the principal elements of the fascist outlook” are the following traits: a “code of behaviour based on lies and violence”; “racism and imperialism”; and “opposition to international law and order” (“Today's Isms: Communism, Fascism, Capitalism, Socialism”, 6th ed., William Ebenstein, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1970, p132). In the 21st Century, the US has certainly exhibited a lot of such behaviour in line with previous history (e.g., see “Lawless World: America And The Making And Breaking Of Global Rules”, Philippe Sands, Allen Lane, 2005). A current case in point is the West's brazenly open backing of the overthrow of the democratically elected Ukrainian government and support for the new Kiev regime, closely linked with neo-fascists and friendly oligarchs and now headed by a billionaire chocolate maker prepared to be savagely repressive against many of his own people (e.g., www.globalresearch.ca./ukraine-was-a-playbook-cia-coup, & “CIA Working On Proxy War Against Russia In The Ukraine, 28/2/14). Whatever the obvious faults of the previous Ukrainian government, US-led posturing is pure humbug. It has been very dangerous brinkmanship (“Russia Readies Nukes”, Press, 10 & 11/5/14). Whether it is Ukraine, Egypt, Thailand, Venezuela or some other unfortunate country, the US & co. play a cynical game of power politics, revolution or counter-revolution (“Venezuela Shows That Protest Can Be A Defence Of Privilege”, Seumas Milne, Guardian, 10/4/14: www.theguardian.com>Opinion>Venezuela). The West has long used street action and related methods to target elected governments in the interests of Rightwing elites. Washington acts according to its perceived interests, and always under a fog of disinformation and propaganda courtesy of the mass media. As its long and bloody historical record testifies, it does not give a damn about the peoples concerned. But, in 2014, from Ukraine to Iraq there has been mounting blowback (for some relevant background see Peace Researcher 43, May 2012, “Middle East Turmoil and Beyond: Political Blowback In Action”, Dennis Small, www.converge.org.nz/abc/pr/43/pr43-008.htm).

In a process that has long roots, marketing the market has come to rely on shock tactics and increasingly even war (“The Shock Doctrine” [2009] shown on Maori TV, 27/5/14). In the 21st Century: “As neo-liberalism clashed head on with global jihadism, President George W Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair turned the security crisis afflicting the world into an opportunity for extending the hegemony of neo-liberalism on new terms. Thus, in the first years of the 21st Century, neo-liberal market language merged with a neo-conservative security agenda” (“Neo-Liberalism”, op. cit, p121). Indeed, neo-imperialism fused the market and military in a new wave of corporate privatisation under the Bush II Administration in conjunction with its predatory global reach. Market militarism as spearheaded by the Anglo-American axis was unleashed in the West's resource war on the world's poor. Yet as the complexity of many conflicts, often cross-cutting, compound across the planet with deepening divisions both within and between countries - from Iraq and Syria to South East Asia - the Western propaganda machine has a growing problem in devising a coherent and clear message to try and shape public opinion at home. The key words of “democracy”, “freedom”, and “human rights” are increasingly going hand in hand with references to oil and other resources.

Propaganda Ever More Orwellian

According to one possible projection, the propaganda machine will only effectively function by becoming even more simplistic, hypocritical and Orwellian (e.g., Western values versus those of Muslim jihadists). While the resource war mindset of the Anglo-American axis was evident long ago, the ongoing problem for Western strategists and their media mates has always been how best to disguise it in their war propaganda (“Demilitarising Nation States: Opposition To The Resource War”, NZ Environment 44, Summer 1984, pp26-32; “Target Iraq: What The News Media Didn't Tell You”, op. cit, ; “Weapons Of Mass Deception: The Uses Of Propaganda In Bush's War On Iraq”, Sheldon Rampton & John Stauber, Tarcher/Penguin [Centre for Media & Democracy], 2003; Peace Researchers 41 & 42, July & November 2011, “More Media Warmongering Parts 1 & 2: Signs Of Things To Come”, Dennis Small, http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/pr/41/pr41-006.htm & http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/pr/42/pr42-008.htm). Given compounding challenges these days to Western hegemony, there will certainly be continual appeals to direct self-interest and fear-driven, pre-emptive defence against jihadist threats, etc. Conflicts could soon spiral out of all control if world powers are not prompted to urgent positive action rather than belligerent confrontation. Possible flashpoints are spreading.

For sure, the open acknowledgement of the looming dangers of resource wars by Admiral Locklear also signals the readiness to employ more openly Social Darwinist arguments, something American strategists were looking at seriously soon after the end of World War II. George Kennan was the head of the US State Department Policy Planning Staff in the late 1940s. In a then secret document PPS23, February 1948, Kennan warned that: 'We have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population… In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity…We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction…We should cease to talk about vague and…unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratisation. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better (“The Chomsky Reader”, op. cit, p318). The American power elite has preached freedom from a very privileged position, which is now rapidly disintegrating.

Countering The Neo-Liberal Media

As we have noted above, Professor Manfred Steger in his examination of globalisation and its implications concluded with a hearty endorsement of the NGOs involved in the “justice globalism” movement (“Globalisation”, op. cit.). We need to build this movement as fast and effectively as we can. Clearly, the development of a much more active peace and anti-nuclear movement working in close association with environmental and justice NGOs is a desperately urgent priority. An essential element of all this must be the constant scrutiny, critical analysis and challenge of the neo-liberal media. Otherwise, this media pack will continue to herd us towards the brink, and even stampede us into the abyss.