ISSN: 1329-878X

Australian Media History No 99 May 2001 Order form Abstracts

Contents

Abstracts

Australian Media History, edited by David McKnight and Bridget Griffen-Foley

David Carter: Magazine History
This article reflects on the methodological and theoretical issues raised in the process of conceiving a history of mid-twentieth century periodical publication in Australia (1920-1970). It argues for an 'institutional history' of magazines and defines such an approach through a number of overlapping themes and questions: an examination of the cultural significance of the periodical's 'periodicity'; its shifting location in the print culture between the newspaper and the book; the relation of magazines to the marketplace and to professional journalism; the role of magazines in the formation of a modern intelligentsia; and magazines as belonging to a history of modernity in Australia, a 'history of writing' and a history of audiences.

Barbara Alysen: Today's News Tomorrow: Researching Archival Television
Television may be the most pervasive medium of mass communication but, unlike the print media, Australian television news and current affairs have largely defied the efforts of researchers to mount comprehensive retrospective research into their form and content. This paper looks at the reasons for the dearth of this research. It considers the technical and the policy issues involved in preserving Australian television and argues that media researchers need to take a greater interest in the preservation of, and access to, archival television.

Bridget Griffen-Foley: The Press Proprietor and the Politician: Sir Frank Packer and Sir Robert Menzies
This article surveys the relationship between Australian's longest serving prime minister, Sir Robert Menzies, and the controversial media proprietor Sir Frank Packer. It begins by briefly discussing the progressive liberalism that characterised the Daily and Sunday Telegraphs in the 1930s and 1940s. It then considers Packer's flirtations with the affairs of the United Australia Party and the Liberal Party in the 1940s, and the way in which Menzies, as leader of the opposition, viewed the press proprietor. The main part of the article explores the value that the prime minister and the Liberal Party placed on the support of the Packer media outlets, and the form that this support took. The article goes some way to describing how media tycoons and political correspondents interacted with politicians in the days before press releases and professional lobbyists became highly sophisticated news management devices.

Terry Flew: From 'Taste and Standards' to Structural Pluralism: Activism in the Australian Media Policy Process
This paper traces the emergence of media policy reform activism in Australia around media content regulations for commercial broadcasting, from 1953 to 1976. Its focus is on processes of participation in public inquiries, and the ways in which these were manifestations of what Anna Yeatman (1998) has termed 'activism in the policy process'. It finds evidence that such processes facilitated the emergence of more wide-ranging campaigns for media reform in the 1970s, but also finds that the extent to which such trends can be seen as applying a logic of 'governmentality' to broadcast media has in practice been limited by the predominantly commercial nature of the Australian broadcasting system, the conduct of regulatory agencies and their proneness to 'regulatory capture', and the extent to which the demands of media critics could be translated into implementable policies.

David McKnight: Facts Versus Stories: From Objective to Interpretive Reporting
This article discusses journalism as a form of 'vernacular literature' and explores two traditions of reporting: the objective and the interpretive. In the first, emphasis is placed on the fact; in the second, on the story. In these terms, the article examines the transformation of the reporting style of the Sydney Morning Herald from objective reporting to interpretive reporting in the early 1980s. It examines the Herald's journalism from the 1950s to the 1970s as an exemplar of the objective style. It also comments on the linkage between these styles and differing rationales about the purpose of journalism in terms of market values and non-market values.

Margaret Jones: Personal Reflections
Margaret Jones, a former foreign editor and literary editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, writes about her early years in journalism and her experiences as a foreign correspondent in Europe, North America and China.

Nigel Dick: The Road to Television Networking
Nigel Dick, who joined GTV9 as sales manager in 1956, went on to run Channel Nine in Sydney and Melbourne, as well as other television stations in Australia and New Zealand. Here he recalls his years in the Packer stable and considers more broadly the factors that led to the development of Australian television networks.

Craig McGregor: Review Essay - Journalism: Print, Politics and Popular Culture
Craig McGregor reviews Ann Curthoys' and Julianne Schultz's edited collection, Journalism: Print, Politics and Popular Culture, and reflects more broadly on the role of ideas in journalism and on his own career as a public intellectual.

General Articles

Kitty van Vuuren: A Newsroom of our own? Community Radio and News
Current media policy regarding rural and regional community broadcasting favours a competitive environment, which constrains the potential for community radio to meet its founding principles. These include the provision of alternative programming and the development of a new relationship between broadcasters and their audiences. Part of the problem stems from widespread adoption of dominant media codes and practices. A reorientation towards development journalism could offer a way forward, both in terms of facilitating community development and in terms of developing a true 'community' perspective for community radio news.

Marc Brennan: Child(hood) Abuse: Constructing the Australian Public in Public Service Advertisements
This paper intervenes in debates about the construction of 'publics' by the media. It traces the way in which one governmental genre of television programming - the public service announcement - attempts the difficult task of constructing a unified sense of 'the public' in Western Australia by means of appeals to a supposedly 'universal' discourse - that of the protection of children. The paper examines the ways in which these advertisements employ such strategies and discusses the limitations and implications of such appeals by looking at the citizens who are excluded from such a 'public'.

Lin Crase, Evan Patullock, Peter Lamb and Brian Dollery: Mobile Telephony in Rural Australia: Is it a Natural Monopoly?
Considerable debate surrounds the provision of mobile telephony to remote and rural Australians. Disquiet about the closure of the analogue network, controversy over its replacement and recognition of potential rural competitiveness from digital technologies are all significant aspects of this debate. Within the discussion surrounding regional and rural development, there is a growing concern over the standard of mobile telecommunications infrastructure in non-metropolitan Australia. Of particular interest are the mechanisms by which infrastructure is provided. More specifically, there appears to be a need for public subsidies for mobile networks since demand may be insufficient to stimulate provision through normal market processes.

This paper explores these arguments by drawing on data from the Upper Murray region of New South Wales and Victoria. Empirical results indicate a significant current expenditure by present mobile telephony users and a preparedness to increase this expenditure under an improved service scenario. There is also evidence of relative price inelasticity. This evidence is used to question the conventional wisdom of providing public funds to telecommunications firms to encourage extension of the mobile network to all rural communities.

P.E. Louw, N.K. Rivenburgh, E. Loo and G. Mersham: It's the Bush: Foreign Perceptions of Australia - A Comparative Study
Cities compete to host the Olympics because it is a unique global public relations opportunity to attract tourism, foreign investment, and international respect. However, hosting an Olympics also entails risks because host cities and countries must survive intensive international media scrutiny. Whether the Sydney Olympics will redefine overseas perceptions of Australia either positively or negatively is still to be established. Our study will address this question through an empirical, cross-cultural profiling of foreign perceptions of Australia from 1999 to 2001 in various countries to see whether responses differ, and/or whether similar patterns of change are observable across cultures at different points in time (pre- and post-Olympics). In parallel, media coverage of the 2000 Olympics (and Australia) is being monitored in the countries being studied. If any attitude shift is detected from 1999 to 2001, explanations can be sought from the recorded media coverage. This article represents the results of the first stage of the study - an examination of overseas attitudes towards Australia and stereotypes of Australians in 1999.