A message from my friend Derick to the Gold Coast Bulletin on Facebook flashed up in my notifications last night. I felt compelled to agree, but I got distracted and later I couldn’t retrieve it. I asked a few friends and no-one else could find it either so I checked with Derick, the author. He could still see it on his screen so we have concluded that it’s just not publicly viewable - but it should be.
I used to occasionally contribute comments on news articles on the Gold Coast Bulletin’s own webpage. I was conscientiously polite and constructive. I only ever added comments to deepen or advance conversations, but I got frustrated when I realised how they turn the access to comments on and off to mediate and conceal public opinions. Several times I wrote responses and they weren’t published - so I don’t bother anymore. It seems like not many other people do either so it’s inconsequential.
To Derick’s Facebook message, screen-captured above for anyone to read, I was simply going to thank him for speaking up for Mona Hecke. But now, since I’m on my own webpage, I’m emboldened to write my own truth on this matter.
Mona campaigned for a sophisticated set of ideas for a “Better City and a Better Life” www.monahecke2020.com
If Mona had been elected, I believe she would have been a brilliant Mayor. I say this as her friend, and not because she is my friend. Mona is my friend because she is a remarkable, intelligent person with a generous spirit and a strong belief that the Gold Coast needs a new, inclusive style of leadership. Mona did not deserve the treatment she received by local news media. And it’s not just Paul Weston. Potts, Woods and others seemed to take it in turns to misrepresent Mona, and Hancock, the Bulletin editor, enabled it without once giving Mona any right of reply. This behaviour wasn’t confined to the Bulletin journalists. Add the commercial TV news reporters, particularly Channel 9’s Brendon Wolf, and radio - myGC, Hot Tomato and others.
Most consumers of daily news don’t recognise the extent to which reporters manipulate narratives and influence public mindsets - because the practice is all-pervasive. But to anyone who followed the campaign reporting closely like I did, it’s evident and orchestrated in ways that I haven’t observed in other cities. The perpetrators seem to even derive glee - like a point-scoring game amongst a gang of trolls.
I find this deeply disappointing. Don’t they want the best outcomes for the city? Don’t they want a proper contest of ideas? Wouldn’t a diversity of ideas and opinions make better news and engage more people?
All Mona wanted and expected through her campaign was a fair go, but news reporters stuck to their repetitive, singular, domineering perspectives which, frankly, I find uninteresting and regressive. I recently started calling this preponderance a mediacracy and to my surprise when I consulted Wikipedia, the term has already been coined - in 1974 - as a situation in government where the mass media effectively has control over the voting public. That’s not the kind of democracy I want to live with but it’s beyond my control to change the situation.
I’m pretty sure I could see Tom Tate’s tongue in his cheek at the close of a 9 News media conference this week when he answered a Dorothy Dixer with praise for the Bulletin. “I think it’s a good single source of truth” he said.
When I get back to my PhD research, I intend to add a chapter in my thesis about mediacracy. In the immediate future, I’m gonna concentrate on looking after my elders, and catching up on creative and productive endeavours. If I have need or time to follow news, I’ll go to sources that I feel I can trust.
