Managing the media for propaganda
The crucial question is whether the federal Labor government’s infatuation with propaganda is an aberration or an enduring feature of Labor’s degeneration into the political wing of a culturally powerful but narrowly based, sectional interest? John Muscat asks at Quadrant Online:
In terms of a broad classification, democratic leaders practise media management, since control is beyond their grasp, while authoritarian regimes resort to rank propaganda. It’s like the difference between editing a given text and rewriting it from scratch. If the health of a democratic society is linked to whether the line separating them is observed, there are grounds for concern about where we are headed.
Fair-minded observers concede that in terms of media manipulation, the Rudd Government was a quantum leap ahead of every preceding federal government. Everything from constantly repeated phrases and spin-lines, practised hand gestures, scripted interviews, staged events and press conferences, coordinated announcements, strategic leaks, online videos, social media forums and Orwellian policy titles (“Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme”, “Building the Education Revolution”) were deployed as a continuous wall of sound and vision.
Read the opinion piece at Quadrant Online.
