Overcooking Neoliberalism: Des Freedman's The Politics of Media Policy

I have observed that the term neoliberalism is in my view over-used, and has lost much descriptive clarity as it has become something of an omnibus term of abuse for anything or anyone who you happen to disagree with. Increasingly, the term functions in much the same way as the word "bourgeois" did for radicals in the 1970s.

In order to clarify with an example, I have provided a link to a review I have undertaken of Des Freedman's The Politics of Media Policy (Polity Press, 2008). An edited version of this review of Des Freedman's The Politics of Media Policy appeared in Australian Journalism Review, Vol. 30 No. 2, December 2008, pp. 127-129. This journal, however, which can be hard to find online, as the Web site is four years out of date (NB: this link may not be accessible to you - I got it from the Informit database which QUT subscribes to).

My conclusion on Freedman's book was:

The Politics of Media Policy opens with a highly insightful analysis of how to do media policy studies in original and significant ways. Unfortunately, by anchoring its empirical analysis closely to a desire to expose the hidden machinations of neo-liberal ideology, it loses focus the more that it moves out of the dominant terrain of political economy in the study of media ownership. Des Freedman has pointed to important new directions in media policy studies, but has unfortunately only got half way to developing a new synthesis for understanding the relationship between policy institutions and broader ideas.

For more read here.

The US Housing Bubble

The map above provided by Richard Florida in The Atlantic gives a sense of how the housing bubble developed in the United States in the 2000s. This was in 2006, at the height of the boom. Note some of the incredible ratios of house prices to average wage on the West Coast - six regions in California reached as high as 15:1+ (Salinas, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, Oxnard-Thousand Oaks, Napa, and San Luis Obispo). Los Angeles and San Francisco were both 10:1+.

John Quiggan on US netroots (and why no Australian equivalent)

Very interesting post by John Quiggan on the rise of the 'netroots' movement of online liberal Democratic activists in the US, and why there is no Australian equivalent. I should say that I think he is wrong to say that the antipathy to bloggers from mainstream journalists is less in the US than in Australia.

Political blogging came into its own after September 11. In the past few years it has experienced phenomenal growth, including in Australia. John Quiggin tracks its rise. Artwork by Michelle Verghis. With elections approaching in both Australia and the United States, the role of blogs and bloggers is attracting increasing attention. Writing in The New Republic recently, Jonathan Chait described the netroots (the online community of liberal Democratic Party activists) as “the most important mass movement in US politics”.

He compared its significance with the conservative Republican movement that originated with the 1964 Goldwater campaign, and has dominated US politics since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Chait is highly critical of what he sees as the party-line sensibility and excessive vitriol of the netroots, but he is in no doubt they are well on the way to displacing the old centrist establishment, based on such groups as the Democratic Leadership Council, and on pundits such as David Broder, routinely described as the dean of the Washington press corps. This development is striking in a couple of respects.

First, the whole phenomenon of political blogging is barely five years old. The central focus of the netroots, the Daily Kos blog, was established in 2002, and was receiving only a few thousand visits each day in 2003. This year, it is receiving 600,000 visits a day, a figure comparable with the circulation of the Boston Globe or San Francisco Chronicle. Over the same period, the total number of blogs has gone from thousands to tens of millions. Equally striking has been the shift in the predominant political orientation of blogs.

Political blogging first emerged in the wake of the September 11 terror attacks, and the dominant figures were strongly pro-war, with political orientations that ranged from libertarian to conservative Republican. Prominent figures included Glenn Reynolds, whose Instapundit blog remains at the core of the right-wing blogosphere, and Australian Tim Blair. As late as 2003, conservative bloggers held a lead of two or three to one over progressive bloggers in terms of audience, number of blogs and so on. The conservative blogosphere extended a period of internet dominance that began with sites such as the Drudge Report, Free Republic and NewsMax.

The first big shift in this pattern came with Howard Dean’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, which was heavily backed by internet activists, and gave rise to the term “netroots”. Although Dean burnt out early in the race, his supporters remained active, and a pattern for the future had been set. By 2005, the political balance in the blogosphere had been reversed. Progressive blogs such as Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo and Think Progress now receive more traffic and, increasingly, more media attention than their conservative rivals. Moreover, the progressive blogosphere has been far more successful in mobilising new activists than its right-wing counterpart, though, of course, this reflected the much greater organisational strength of the Right at the time the blogosphere emerged.

Having bowed to pressure from the Right to correct perceived liberal bias, the centrist media establishment found itself increasingly attacked from the Left for seeking balance, in preference to factual accuracy, on issues such as the Iraq war, global warming and economic policy. On all these issues, the netroots claimed, the positions of the Bush administration were factually wrong, and the media was obliged to state this explicitly, rather than adopting the “he said, she said” style traditionally seen in the American media as the hallmark of objectivity.

How does the Australian scene compare? Adjusting for the smaller scale, there has been the same explosive growth, from a handful of blogs in 2002 to hundreds today. And the shift to the Left has been, if anything, even more marked. Although right-wing blogs dominated the scene early on, only a handful of note remain, while there are dozens of prominent left-wing and centre-left blogs. Individual blogs have largely been displaced by group efforts such as Larvatus Prodeo (leftwing), Club Troppo (centre-left) and Catallaxy Files (broadly libertarian).

On the other hand, there has been nothing comparable with the development of the netroots in the United States. Although most political bloggers make their general sympathies clear, few appear to be active members of political parties (an obvious exception is Senator Andrew Bartlett) and fewer still use their blogs for political organising or election campaigning. There are several reasons for this outcome. First, unlike the US system, where activists organising on the internet can easily become involved in Democratic party primaries and where election campaigns are heavily focused on the merits of individual candidates, the Australian system offers only limited opportunities for this kind of activity.

In Australia, participation in preselections is normally limited to party members, either in local branches or as elected delegates. Campaigning for preselections is a matter of old-fashioned canvassing, recruitment (or branch-stacking) and factional deals, none of which are readily adapted to the internet. At general elections, votes are largely determined by the appeal of parties and their leaders, rather than individual candidates. Second, whereas partisanship has increased substantially in the US over the past couple of decades, it has generally declined in Australia.

Although some issues, such as the treatment of refugees, have aroused real passion among people, the general temperature of debate is much lower. The most vitriolic political debates in the Australian blogosphere tend to be those surrounding George Bush and the Iraq war, where Australian bloggers are part of the broader international debate (Australia’s own military involvement being seen by both sides as largely tokenistic).

Finally, the antagonism between bloggers and the mainstream media, as a whole, is far less marked in Australia than in the US. Right-wing bloggers attack the ABC for its soft-liberal bias, while left-wing and environmentalist bloggers denounce The Australian for its treatment of global warming and the Iraq war, but these are just extensions of disputes taking place within the mainstream media.

Australian bloggers have been highly successful in gaining access to the mainstream media, and particularly its opinion columns. Tim Blair (an established journalist before he was a blogger) is now the opinion editor for The Daily Telegraph, while The Australian Financial Review regularly publishes economist bloggers including Joshua Gans and Andrew Leigh.

Conversely, with a few notable exceptions, Australian mainstream media outlets showed much less of the hostility to blogs initially evident in the US and have now embraced the medium with gusto. News Limited has its own blogocracy site, run by pioneering Australian blogger Tim Dunlop, and most opinion columnists (including some of those who were initially very dismissive of the whole phenomenon) now have their own blogs.

This is taken from the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance's "The Future of Journalism" site, and was originally published in The Walkley Magazine. Perhaps the claim that there has been enthusiasm for adopting online open publishing models in Australia may be a complement to the Australia journalism community who receive this work.

Barack Obama's Convention Speech

On John McCain

Now let there be no doubt. The Republican nominee, John McCain, has worn the uniform of our country with bravery and distinction, and for that we owe him our gratitude and respect. And next week, we'll also hear about those occasions when he's broken with his party as evidence that he can deliver the change that we need.

But the record's clear: John McCain has voted with George Bush 90% of the time. Senator McCain likes to talk about judgment, but really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush has been right more than 90% of the time? I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to take a 10% chance on change.

The truth is, on issue after issue that would make a difference in your lives - on healthcare and education and the economy - Senator McCain has been anything but independent. He said that our economy has made "great progress" under this president. He said that the fundamentals of the economy are strong. And when one of his chief advisers - the man who wrote his economic plan - was talking about the anxiety Americans are feeling, he said that we were just suffering from a "mental recession," and that we've become, and I quote, "a nation of whiners".

A nation of whiners? Tell that to the proud auto workers at a Michigan plant who, after they found out it was closing, kept showing up every day and working as hard as ever, because they knew there were people who counted on the brakes that they made. Tell that to the military families who shoulder their burdens silently as they watch their loved ones leave for their third or fourth or fifth tour of duty. These are not whiners. They work hard and give back and keep going without complaint. These are the Americans that I know.

Now, I don't believe that Senator McCain doesn't care what's going on in the lives of Americans. I just think he doesn't know. Why else would he define middle class as someone making under $5m a year? How else could he propose hundreds of billions in tax breaks for big corporations and oil companies but not one penny of tax relief to more than 100 million Americans? How else could he offer a healthcare plan that would actually tax people's benefits, or an education plan that would do nothing to help families pay for college, or a plan that would privatise social security and gamble your retirement?

It's not because John McCain doesn't care. It's because John McCain doesn't get it.

For over two decades, he's subscribed to that old, discredited Republican philosophy - give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. In Washington, they call this the ownership society, but what it really means is - you're on your own. Out of work? Tough luck. No healthcare? The market will fix it. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps - even if you don't have boots. You're on your own.

Well it's time for them to own their failure. It's time for us to change America.

On foreign policy

If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament, and judgment, to serve as the next commander-in-chief, that's a debate I'm ready to have.

For while Senator McCain was turning his sights to Iraq just days after 9/11, I stood up and opposed this war, knowing that it would distract us from the real threats we face. When John McCain said we could just "muddle through" in Afghanistan, I argued for more resources and more troops to finish the fight against the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11, and made clear that we must take out Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants if we have them in our sights. John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the gates of hell - but he won't even go to the cave where he lives.

And today, as my call for a time frame to remove our troops from Iraq has been echoed by the Iraqi government, and even the Bush administration, even after we learned that Iraq has a $79bn surplus while we're wallowing in deficits, John McCain stands alone in his stubborn refusal to end a misguided war.

That's not the judgment we need. That won't keep America safe. We need a president who can face the threats of the future, not keep grasping at the ideas of the past.

You don't defeat a terrorist network that operates in 80 countries by occupying Iraq. You don't protect Israel and deter Iran just by talking tough in Washington. You can't truly stand up for Georgia when you've strained our oldest alliances. If John McCain wants to follow George Bush with more tough talk and bad strategy, that is his choice - but it is not the change we need.

We are the party of Roosevelt. We are the party of Kennedy. So don't tell me that Democrats won't defend this country. Don't tell me that Democrats won't keep us safe. The Bush-McCain foreign policy has squandered the legacy that generations of Americans - Democrats and Republicans - have built, and we are here to restore that legacy.

As commander-in-chief, I will never hesitate to defend this nation, but I will only send our troops into harm's way with a clear mission and a sacred commitment to give them the equipment they need in battle and the care and benefits they deserve when they come home.

I will end this war in Iraq responsibly, and finish the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan. I will rebuild our military to meet future conflicts. But I will also renew the tough, direct diplomacy that can prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and curb Russian aggression. I will build new partnerships to defeat the threats of the 21st century: terrorism and nuclear proliferation; poverty and genocide; climate change and disease. And I will restore our moral standing, so that America is once again that last, best hope for all who are called to the cause of freedom, who long for lives of peace and who yearn for a better future.

On the economy

We Democrats have a very different measure of what constitutes progress in this country.

We measure progress by how many people can find a job that pays the mortgage; whether you can put a little extra money away at the end of each month so you can someday watch your child receive her college diploma. We measure progress in the 23m new jobs that were created when Bill Clinton was president - when the average American family saw its income go up $7,500 instead of down $2,000 like it has under George Bush.

We measure the strength of our economy not by the number of billionaires we have or the profits of the Fortune 500, but by whether someone with a good idea can take a risk and start a new business, or whether the waitress who lives on tips can take a day off to look after a sick kid without losing her job - an economy that honours the dignity of work.

The fundamentals we use to measure economic strength are whether we are living up to that fundamental promise that has made this country great - a promise that is the only reason I am standing here tonight.

On taxes

Change means a tax code that doesn't reward the lobbyists who wrote it, but the American workers and small businesses who deserve it.

Unlike John McCain, I will stop giving tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, and I will start giving them to companies that create good jobs right here in America.

I will eliminate capital gains taxes for the small businesses and the start-ups that will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow.

I will cut taxes - cut taxes - for 95% of all working families. Because in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class.

On fuel

For the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, I will set a clear goal as president: in 10 years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East.

Washington's been talking about our oil addiction for the last 30 years, and John McCain has been there for 26 of them. In that time, he's said no to higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars, no to investments in renewable energy, no to renewable fuels. And today, we import triple the amount of oil as the day that Senator McCain took office.

Now is the time to end this addiction, and to understand that drilling is a stop-gap measure, not a long-term solution. Not even close.

As president, I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology and find ways to safely harness nuclear power. I'll help our auto companies retool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America. I'll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars. And I'll invest $150bn over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy - wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels; an investment that will lead to new industries and 5m new jobs that pay well and can't ever be outsourced.

On education

Now is the time to finally meet our moral obligation to provide every child a world-class education, because it will take nothing less to compete in the global economy. Michelle and I are only here tonight because we were given a chance at an education. And I will not settle for an America where some kids don't have that chance. I'll invest in early childhood education. I'll recruit an army of new teachers, and pay them higher salaries and give them more support. And in exchange, I'll ask for higher standards and more accountability. And we will keep our promise to every young American - if you commit to serving your community or your country, we will make sure you can afford a college education.

On healthcare

Now is the time to finally keep the promise of affordable, accessible healthcare for every single American. If you have healthcare, my plan will lower your premiums. If you don't, you'll be able to get the same kind of coverage that members of Congress give themselves. And as someone who watched my mother argue with insurance companies while she lay in bed dying of cancer, I will make certain those companies stop discriminating against those who are sick and need care the most.

Now is the time to help families with paid sick days and better family leave, because nobody in America should have to choose between keeping their jobs and caring for a sick child or ailing parent.

On pensions

Now is the time to change our bankruptcy laws, so that your pensions are protected ahead of CEO bonuses; and the time to protect social security for future generations.

On abortion

We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country.

On gun control

The reality of gun ownership may be different for hunters in rural Ohio than for those plagued by gang violence in Cleveland, but don't tell me we can't uphold the second amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals.

On same-sex marriages

I know there are differences on same-sex marriage, but surely we can agree that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters deserve to visit the person they love in the hospital and to live lives free of discrimination.

On immigration

Passions fly on immigration, but I don't know anyone who benefits when a mother is separated from her infant child or an employer undercuts American wages by hiring illegal workers. This too is part of America's promise - the promise of a democracy where we can find the strength and grace to bridge divides and unite in common effort.

On individual responsibility

We must also admit that fulfilling America's promise will require more than just money. It will require a renewed sense of responsibility from each of us to recover what John F Kennedy called our "intellectual and moral strength". Yes, government must lead on energy independence, but each of us must do our part to make our homes and businesses more efficient. Yes, we must provide more ladders to success for young men who fall into lives of crime and despair. But we must also admit that programmes alone can't replace parents; that government can't turn off the television and make a child do her homework; that fathers must take more responsibility for providing the love and guidance their children need.

Individual responsibility and mutual responsibility - that's the essence of America's promise.

On equal pay

And now is the time to keep the promise of equal pay for an equal day's work, because I want my daughters to have exactly the same opportunities as your sons.

On patriotism

What I will not do is suggest that the senator [McCain] takes his positions for political purposes. Because one of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other's character and patriotism.

The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain. The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America - they have served the United States of America.

So I've got news for you, John McCain. We all put our country first.

On his background

In the faces of those young veterans who come back from Iraq and Afghanistan, I see my grandfather, who signed up after Pearl Harbour, marched in Patton's army, and was rewarded by a grateful nation with the chance to go to college on the GI Bill.

In the face of that young student who sleeps just three hours before working the night shift, I think about my mum, who raised my sister and me on her own while she worked and earned her degree; who once turned to food stamps but was still able to send us to the best schools in the country with the help of student loans and scholarships.

When I listen to another worker tell me that his factory has shut down, I remember all those men and women on the south side of Chicago who I stood by and fought for two decades ago after the local steel plant closed.

And when I hear a woman talk about the difficulties of starting her own business, I think about my grandmother, who worked her way up from the secretarial pool to middle management, despite years of being passed over for promotions because she was a woman. She's the one who taught me about hard work. She's the one who put off buying a new car or a new dress for herself so that I could have a better life. She poured everything she had into me. And although she can no longer travel, I know that she's watching tonight, and that tonight is her night as well.

I don't know what kind of lives John McCain thinks that celebrities lead, but this has been mine. These are my heroes. Theirs are the stories that shaped me. And it is on their behalf that I intend to win this election and keep our promise alive as president of the United States.

On change

I realise that I am not the likeliest candidate for this office. I don't fit the typical pedigree, and I haven't spent my career in the halls of Washington.

But I stand before you tonight because all across America something is stirring. What the naysayers don't understand is that this election has never been about me. It's been about you.

For 18 long months, you have stood up, one by one, and said enough to the politics of the past. You understand that in this election, the greatest risk we can take is to try the same old politics with the same old players and expect a different result. You have shown what history teaches us - that at defining moments like this one, the change we need doesn't come from Washington. Change comes to Washington. Change happens because the American people demand it - because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time.

America, this is one of those moments.

On the American spirit

This country of ours has more wealth than any nation, but that's not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military on Earth, but that's not what makes us strong. Our universities and our culture are the envy of the world, but that's not what keeps the world coming to our shores.

Instead, it is that American spirit - that American promise - that pushes us forward even when the path is uncertain; that binds us together in spite of our differences; that makes us fix our eye not on what is seen, but what is unseen, that better place around the bend.

Source: The Guardian

Creative Industries after a decade

This is a presentation I will be giving to QUT students in the Creative Industries: Theory and Policy unit on Thursday 14 August. It draws upon a presentation that I gave to staff and students at Indiana University in the US in May. It aims to outline the complex labour market dynamics of the creative industries, both in term of how they differ from other economic sectors, and how they differ from one another. It draws upon both Australian and UK data, and upon the work undertaken by Stuart Cunningham and Peter Higgs at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation.

Ci Theory And Policy Guest Lecture 14 Aug 08

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