It is common enough knowledge that most television news readers are too stupid to spell their own name. The pretence has long dropped that these plastic-faced suits are actually journalists rather than trained monkeys reciting what they see off the teleprompter before them. Is it not curious then that we give any regard whatsoever to what they say? Is it not a peculiar piece of social conditioning that the sight of a statesmen-like male and an attractive female behind a news desk acts as such a powerful signifier (to borrow a term from semiotics)? Why is it that information received in this manner is somehow ‘the news’ and not merely gossip, opinion or propaganda?

If a person walks into a shop they may ask the sales assistant’s opinion on a certain product. How is this information processed? Is it not with a due sense of caution and scepticism? With the exception perhaps of the most apathetic, the sales assistant will endorse all the store’s products with particular emphasis on the most expensive items. They have an agenda. It is in their interest to present the products in a positive light. As consumers, we are sensitive to this fact and interpret the information accordingly. How much more does this apply to a car salesperson or a real estate agent? With large commissions on the line we know ‘the news’ presented comes from a source with an agenda.

The news readers we see on television also have an agenda. It is in their interest to communicate the information presented for them as though it were complete, accurate, unbiased and the full story. They are paid huge wages not to think but to parrot. Channel Ten’s Sandra Sully and Seven’s Chris Bath ‘earn’ a quarter of a million dollars per year for their robotic soliloquies. Typical of the gender wage bias, Nine’s Mark Ferguson earns twice as much with Seven’s Ian Ross earning double again (i.e a million dollars a year to read the teleprompter and then symbolically shuffle some papers as the camera fades out). These wages are clearly not for the job they do but rather the image they provide. Ian Ross, so it would seem, more than anyone in Australia holds all the signifiers to project wisdom, truthfulness and impartiality. More than anyone else, what he says will be believed, will be ‘the news.’

So why do we believe anything the news readers say? We know they have been, and still are, nothing more than the chosen mouthpiece of men like Alan Bond, Christopher Skase, Kerry Packer and, the emperor, Rupert Murdoch (according to Michael Wolf, ‘the man to blame for the idiotic hodgepodge we call a modern media company’).  We know they will reduce complex politics of the day to ten second sound bites. We know for every second of interview footage included, hours have been edited out. We know as the news reader rattles on about royal visits, fun runs and pregnant/anorexic/married/divorced celebrities that entire wars are going unreported. And yet, can we reasonably expect anything more?

In the strictest sense of the word, no person and certainly no news team can be unbiased. The human adult brain comes fully equipped with cultural, social, ethnic and religious prejudice. We all live our lives by certain maxims and view our world through various epistemological prisms. Throw into that mix our learned priorities and developed preferences and it becomes rather irrational to claim neutrality or impartiality in any grand narrative sense.  And this is presuming the news reader (or whoever it may be) even seeks to be those things. If we consider also that every major television network has enormous business and political agendas and that some people will purposely set out to deceive, it becomes increasingly difficult to believe anything at all.

John Lennon famously sang, ‘I’m sick and tired of hearing things from uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypo-critics. All I want is the truth.’ Centuries earlier Pontius Pilate, while deciding what to do with a troublesome carpenter, openly mused, ‘what is truth?’ Perhaps the X Files was wrong, the truth isn’t out there. Perhaps we need accept that all news is biased in one way or another and it is up to us to play the game of the free market and find the truth we like best. I’m not at all suggesting that truth does not exist as a philosophical category. That is a debate for another day. When it comes to ‘the news’, however, where a television network decides not only how to present information but what information to present, the concept of truth, even of facts, becomes subjective and relativised.

Canadian Journalist Alexandra Kitty perhaps felt she was opening our eyes to a shocking truth in 2005 when she released ‘Don’t Believe It!: How Lies Become the News,’ and the companion book to the documentary, ‘Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism.’ If we are honest though, she is only stating what deep down we already know. The left-wing of politics decry the audacity of Fox News’ sloganeering boast, ‘fair and balanced.’ If you are someone who agrees with the general political stance of Fox News, however, is this not true? As Shakespeare’s troubled prince of Denmark once quipped, ‘there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.’

Are there any objective ways to measure the quality of news? Well yes (to a degree at least). Could ‘the news’ in Australia be improved? Absolutely! Be that as it may, we do not live in North Korea with only state approved media available to us. We live in a democracy and, particularly through the internet, we have access to a wealth of information, views and opinions. We are free to seek out the blogs, op-eds, commentators and contrarians which appeal to us. We are well able to source out ‘the news’ which fits best into our worldview.

Why do we treat news readers as impartial sources of information? It is a willing suspension of disbelief. We like to pretend they are.

I’m drunk. Well I was a little while ago. At the moment I am nursing a very tender head and stomach and reflecting on the night before. It was a good night certainly. I cannot help, however, wondering if the last five beers were absolutely necessary. The thing is, I have this reaction when it comes to drinky. My brother calls it the Jones curse. You see, on any given day of the week I could happily sleep till midday (and beyond). The one time, however, when I really want to sleep, the morning after a big night out, I can not. I think it is something to do with getting dehydrated while I sleep. When I get up to have a drink, usually after an unsatisfactory four or five hours, I can’t go back to sleep. I am forced to endure the full brunt of the hangover whilst being painfully awake. This has led me to quietly muse the human condition as it relates to being hungover.

The process is rather simple and transcends gender, culture, place and time. We go out, we get drunk, we fall asleep and we feel horrible the next morning. I wonder though, what if the order was tampered with. How would our societal rituals be affected if we had to endure the hangover first? What if we had to endure a five minute headache upfront for every drink we wanted? What if we had to wallow in hours of nauseous, vomiting torment before a big night out? Would we still do it? Probably. I suspect, however, that most people would drastically tone down the amount of drink if they had to suffer in advance.

What then does this say about humans? If we have to pay upfront for something we are sensible and calculating in our approach. If, however, we are given a free line of credit we tend to go crazy.

This leads me to wondering about the ethics of credit cards. In a sense credit cards exist to exploit our oh so human tendency to enjoy now and pay later. In 2002 Australians had amassed $21.5 billion of credit card debt. In 2005 we were $30 billion in the red. As I am writing this (2007) we collectively owe $40 billion on credit cards, although according to John Howard this is no biggy. It seems as if, many of the crippling financial problems people faced could be avoided if only we were more inclined to pay for things then enjoy them, not the other way round.

There is sad materialistic decadence in most Western nations. Australia certainly adheres to this axiom. When we turn on the television in the morning we are bombarded with advertising explaining why we need one product or another. Our favorite radio stations are inundated with messages from corporations. As we drive to work we pass billboards which further proselytise the post-modern mantra. Possessions and happiness are continually represented as the ideal symbiosis to the point where they indeed correlate in our minds.

It is little wonder then that when we finally get to work we stay there and work really hard. I mean really stupidly hard. In 2005 Australians worked longer hours than any other western nation (1855 hours per year). Even the capitalist Americans (1835) and the industrious Japanese (1821) look like loathsome sluggards next to us. Former Workplace Relation Minister, Kevin Andrews, even wanted to change the law so that we could sell two of our four weeks annual leave and work even longer.

The thing I find perturbing is that at least getting drunk is, well can be, a positive social experience. It goes without saying that getting drunk and starting a fight or committing a crime is bad. Mostly, in my experience anyway, having drinks with friends is a rewarding, uplifting, even therapeutic exercise. Whilst the hangover is terrible (it’s getting better as I write actually) the interaction is wonderful.

With credit card debt it seems as if we are giving ourselves a hangover for no good reason. This may sound like the idealistic philosophising of a poor man, but what does it benefit your soul if your television is 50 centimeters or 50 inches? Television is an easy example but the same general rule applies to cars, computers, video games, handbags, shoes, dining suites and outdoor settings. The thing about our market culture is that it is built on the premise that possessions become obsolete very quickly and must be replaced by more possessions. It is impossible to get satisfaction (ask Mick Jagger) from material possession because they are designed to provide only a fleeting relief before the next product you need is created, marketed and coveted. Wouldn’t it be better to spend time with friends or reading a book than working overtime to pay off a huge credit card debt?

It can seem so mischievous, the way in which our human inclination is manipulated. In September 2007, for example, Crown Casino was sued by a pathological gambler because they lured him with free flights to Melbourne and even gave him up to $50 000 credit each time he visited. He lost $30 million over a 14 month period.

Even the US, and to a lesser extent Australian, army recruitment operates on the ‘pay later’ principle. The army is presented as an ideal career, especially for people from poor areas. The benefits are of course plentiful; secure employment, free education and training, travel opportunities, medical benefits (a recruitment officer once told me the army is helping him build his real estate portfolio). But what if they had the hangover first? What if the had to pay upfront with post-traumatic stress disorder, loss of a limb, death?

This isn’t leading to any grandiose solution for the world. I am as much a slave to the system as anyone. Still, it is interesting to identify how we, as a society, are the creators of the snares in which we fall. As Karl Marx once said, ‘with all our producing we produce our own gravediggers.’ I guess the best we can hope for is to be alert to the pitfalls of a ‘play now, pay later’ society. It would be healthy, methinks, to also question occasionally if we really want the things we feel an impulsive desire to buy. Well the Jones curse is wearing off and I am going to have a nap.