March 2005 #2

February was a busy month for the Australian media. We had bodies in car boots, international terrorist suspects returning to Australia, visiting prime minister’s wives, the abortion ‘debate’ and a bunch of new soapies and their stars to fill pages and air time with. Scandal, intrigue and the high jinks of the wealthy were the mainstays, with a few murder, drama and personality fluff pieces thrown in. But that’s not what I want to consider today. Have you ever heard of ‘masking’?

I suppose you have. We ‘mask’ things up to protect them while we’re painting. You know, put the tape over the bit we don’t want to paint. Then there are the masks we wear to cover up our faces. They might be for hygienic reasons or to stop dust getting up our noses. Then there is the masking that can occur when an issue is likely to be hot and media practitioners don’t want to cover it. Or, more likely, the spin doctors have done such a good job, media practitioners just don’t feel like it’s a real story.

And so it was that during February Australian government representatives and one John Carlson in particular, increased their efforts to get Australian uranium sold to China. The news broke on the 17th February and from my scanning of the papers and electronic sources, the best I could come up with was a short 30 second news grab from the ABC and an article in the Sydney Morning Herald business section. Now there might have been a small article in some other papers and perhaps even a mention on a late night news bulletin. But I doubt it.

At that time were worried about whether Mandouh Habib sould be paid for appearing on 60 Minutes and whether the Cornelia Rau case should compel the Minister to resign or what it might mean if a husband and wife (who is found badly beaten in a car boot) share their lives on internet porn sites. All these issues were a ‘mask’ to a much deeper and, in my opinion (and without lowering the importance of the each of the issues I just mentioned in their own right), more important and longer lasting issue that will impact on our futures with potentially devastating effects.

We have, in the last few weeks, been hearing about how a French company wanted to buy ‘our’ Western Mining Company operations. These impudent Froggies wanted to make some ridiculous offer for an Australian icon. And who should ride in on their white steed and save the day from these terrible snail eaters? Why, its Chip Goodyear on his trusty steed, BHP Billiton.

Having trussed up the pastry eaters with his coil of share offers, Chip set about hitting the airwaves and newspapers to put a little spin on the deal and let all Australians know that even though BHP wasn’t really an Australian icon any more, it was still the best private company to run WMC’s Olympic Dam site and other assets.

However, as if to prove it hasn’t entirely lost its critical edge, the ABCs AM program let loose its finance correspondent, Stephen Long, to have a cosy chat with Chip about this latest development. During that interview (on AM on the 9th March) Chip twice responded to questions that BHP Billiton is "in the nickel business, we’re in the copper business and we’re in the energy business". However it was a little follow on after he said this for the second time that is interesting. Here’s what he said, "And as interesting as it is to be in the metals, when you go around the world and do what we do, you see that economic development and energy consumption go hand in hand, and that's going to be met by carbon-based fuels, renewables and nuclear."

Now here is where the masking comes in and we need to get a handle on what is going onS. You may recall that over the Christmas break – when news is slow and all the journalists are on holidays (funny how the two coincide isn’t it) – that the debate over selling Australian yellow cake, processed uranium, to foreign nation came up a few times. Then, in the midst of the Habib hubbub, out comes a DFAT bureaucrat and announces Australia’s intention to allow uranium to be sold to China. Why is this important?

In Chip Goodyear’s little slip up he reveals the real intention of both the Federal government and the reason why there is a shake up in the uranium business occurring in Australia. He said, "… you see that economic development and energy consumption go hand in hand …". Here’s what the People’s Daily of China said in February, "China’s nuclear power generation capacity will triple … its total power output by 2020". Now this will only account for 4% of their total electricity capacity, but triple? Well, that means dollars. The People’s Daily goes on to mention the economic value of the nuclear power generation industry as being about $6 billion per year for the decade ending 2000.

The China.org website notes that at the moment China is considering tenders for the construction of four new reactors. In the short list are the usual suspects of the French, the Americans and the Russians. The US company, Westinghouse, has valued the deal at over $US1.5 billion per unit. The French, who have already been involved in the construction of 14 or more nuclear power plants in China think they’re might get a look in and I guess if a French company owned a uranium mine, well a ready made market would already exist.

Now heres another bit of masking that slipped under the rug. On the 17th February when asked by the Sydney Morning Herald about the deal to sell Australian yellow cake to China the Chinese Ambassador to Australia, Madame Fu Ying, said China "was considering an expansion of nuclear power and was interested in buying from overseas". At the same time the US was telling everyone that would listen that selling uranium to China was bad, bad, bad. Perhaps because they don’t want to be cut out of a deal. And I would suggest that the Ambassador was a little loose with the truth. China is not considering. It is!

So here is where it all comes back together. If you want to cover something up you ‘mask’ it in some way. Occasionally in the media this occurs inadvertently because the media practitioners make choices about what is printed or broadcast according to the news values of their organisation. Sometimes it occurs because of legal or ethical reasons. That’s why names are sometimes withheld. At other times though, its my conclusion that media practitioners are gently, but firmly told, to either ignore, down play or mitigate any negative aspects of stories.

I’ve maintained for a long time that there is no organised conspiracy to hide or withhold information. After all this story got out, even if it was only in a very limited and underplayed way. One reason I believe there is no conspiracy is that we just have to look at the content of what is passed off as ‘news’ to see that its just too dumbed down, in the main, to consider what we get as serious anyway.

So why was this story not splashed about our front pages and lead items on the evening news? I can only speculate but I suspect it has something to do with the fact that the vast majority of Australians are still very uneasy about the whole uranium processing and export deal. Although no recent polling on the subject has been released, we know from the 80’s experience that public opinion favoured the then Hawke government’s moratorium on mining and exports of yellow cake. The anecdotal evidence is that Australian public opinion has moved little since then.

In the middle of a proposed takeover of the world’s largest mineable uranium deposit we have had scant attention in the mainstream press paid to the issue of whether we, as a community, are prepared to expose future generations to the effects of the nuclear industry. While many of us think about nuclear weapons, the most devastating aspect to the nuclear industry is the ongoing pollution caused by the mining, processing and use of uranium products. The so-called "depleted uranium" weapons used in the Balkans and Iraq will continue their deadly assault on both humans and the environment for millennia. This is one part of the real story that has been masked by the media and its practitioners. While they mask a story and stop it from appearing or so change it that the true ramifications are hidden, they cannot stop the effects of radioactivity.

The question for me is not which private company owns Olympic Dam or Ranger or Beverley. Rather the question for all of us should be, "do we want to see nuclear power developed at all?" Given the huge construction costs and the very low kilowatt to dollar ratio nuclear power plants operate at, why should they be built at all? Not only that, but the huge volume of waste and by-products that are left behind in the processing of the raw uranium into ‘useful’ fuel, should concern us as well. As we know some of that is being used as weapons to kill humans far more quickly as projectiles than it would if left lying around. However, these weapons will continue to kill long after the first death they inflict.

We don’t hear about this story and we must ask why. We must demand of the private media an accountability that they so far, refuse to acknowledge. The airwaves the electronic media use belong to us as public resources. We hear so much about how the ABC has to operate at some high standard but we never hear the same complaints about Murdoch, Packer or Stokes. Why is that?

Public apathy and media licence goes hand in hand. Unless we demand and take back what is rightfully ours, that is the right to full knowledge and disclosure, the right to be given historical and background information on why a story is as it is, unless we demand both insight and entertainment what we will continue to get is the "let them eat cake" approach to so called ‘news’ and ‘current affairs’.

The masks need to come off and we need to hear the historical precedents to what is presented as ‘breaking news’. It won’t occur unless we do the un-masking. The busy-ness of the media should not be filled with press releases and spin. If the job was done well by media practitioners we would know more about what the real story of WMC, Extrata and BHP Billiton is. We would, I’m sure know even more about what is really happening around us. To that end, we must un-mask the media practices which are designed to keep us ignorant and uninformed.