At a time when we're celebrating the 20th anniversary of the coming down of the Berlin Wall patting ourselves on the back for our wonderful democratic freedom-of speech society, according to Julian Morrow we're also in the midst of the AFC (Australia's Funny Crisis). Tonight in Sydney Morrow gave the annual Andrew Ollie Lecture. The lecture in part was another apology for the "Make A Wish Foundation" and a public kiss-and-make-up with the ABC. Thankfully, in addition, Morrow gave context with wise words about the role of the ABC to be impartial, to walk the double edged tightrope of diversity vs answerability trinagneld with responsibility for public funds. I currently find we're more often full of outrage, Victorian era principles and with the Chaser's banning I think we're becoming a country full of fear.
Morrow's lecture was great, amusing and insightful on regulation standards on the ABC. As this years prime target of these standards he speaks from an informed, experienced and somewhat burnt point of view. His balance of apology and defence for diversity was sterling. "Do not err on the narrow side... Guessing community standards is a difficult game and those with the narrowest views should not be the judges... Being willing to take risks for content earns more respect than erring on the side of caution... When you make bad judgment, renew your commitment to good judgement. Don't cave in to the furious cries of the mob nor leting the narrowest of tastes prevail... The essence of judgement is maintaining your independence and self trust". If the CEO's after speech thanking Julian was the public "you're out of the sin bin son" public man-love speech then so be it. In the tradition of a famous ALP slogan.. "Its time." (Come to think of it, that's the current jingle for Channel 7 2. Um, That's not Channel 72, but rather Channel 7's second channel.... ABC1 and ABC2 work so much easier... HSV1 uh no, they'd think that was a car and its only regional anyway).
AFC? Let's take that one more step. I"ll call it the "Australian Fear Crisis". We're so politically correct at the moment we're jumping at shadows, scared of saying what we really think if its not conformist and our fresh, satiric sense of humour is in danger of being compromised. Axing of the Chaser's War on Everything is a glaring case in point. Morrow's words about primary and secondary audience access and control of response ring very true; a double edged sword of everyone having access to so much on the internet... gateway not only to what the ABC want you to see but to what they do not. Having just watched the celebration doco on the fall of the Berlin wall, I thought Morrow would like that wry contrast. No, I"m certainly not saying our current cultural political correctness is anything like the spying Stasi regime of East Germany, but upon this anniversary we need to remind ourselves to live the values we espouse rather than to tell people (or just imply by invisible passive aggression) what we can think, see, laugh at.
Listen to the lecture regardless of your position on the chaser thing. Its interesting; and with the ABC encouraging us to be on the internet more and more, there is an element of irony in their needing to be careful of their broadcast bregulation policies because content access is now totally de-regulated.
1 comment:
Yep, I too caught the broadcast of Julian's lecture on Sunday night. It was brilliant.
I particularly liked his suggestion (which the ABC boss seemed to take on board) that the ABC should draw a distinction between complaints from the "Intended Audience" (people who bothered to tune in to the transmission/show) vs complaints from the "Secondary Audience" (people who only later got outraged following a media beat-up and/or global, viral dissemination via YouTube).
I also liked his breakdown of complainants into:
Group 1: those who are genuinely hurt by something and are owed an apology,
Group 2: those who are not directly affected but are expressing outrage ON BEHALF OF Group 1 and are not themselves owed any apology at all, and
Group 3: those on the fringe who are just having a say for the sake of it.
Julian spoke so well that during the first part of his lecture I said to my wife, "There’ll be someone in the ALP right now checking which marginal seat needs a good candidate." Then came that well-deserved dent in K. Rudd's helmet over his knee-jerk reactions to things like Henson's photographs. After that, maybe the Libs are checking *their* vacancies for marginal seat candidates. :) But I don’t think so.
Cheers – Mike
Post a Comment