(insert at end: Trademark (©) symbols have been added to references that are probably covered by copyright, dead peoples’ estates or simply for a further belch that any culture’s language is not free from commercial plunder)
Gimme a handful of puce coloured bumper stickers emblazened with “Love Me … Love My Horse” and I can flog ’em to bikies. Gimme three minutes of genuine film footage of boggly-eyed ETs© eating poached eggs with Princess Di and I can make a bundle. Gimme fifteen minutes with Austudy Vanstone and Vocational Education and Training Minister David “work for the dole” Kemp giving up their travel allowances and literally begging to become 1997 full time students or unemployed, broadcast live, and I’ll make waves, man. Then I’ll start a surf mag called Waves© about, um, waves man. And I can sell ads for sand!
The fact is, no matter what form of information that people may peddle in this ghastly industry of media(tion), it all gets to you, avid viewers and users of Lux©, via the same channels and in the same format as the stuff which supposedly ‘matters’. And if we were to take the literal here, it’s all ‘matter’, see? The little black lines physically separating advertising space from editorial space in a ‘paper may be the biggest battlefield of the free flow of information in some of our minds, but most of the time it is literally a black buffer to stop the machines printing over some peddler’s full colour beer ad. “Bugger that! Demand a free spot next issue because some fool spoiled that immaculately-designed froth on the beer’s bloody head with bloody black alphabet things! Chrrrist!”
The theoretical, maybe even warlike factions which most of us goofy, the-world-is-so-big kids cling to is THE GOOD of “editorial” and THE BAD of “advertising”. I shall not dare mention its dreaded bastard offspring yet – you may be reading this in bed and the wind is howwwling outside …
Editorial is the “bloody black alphabet things” which symbolises (in long nights of pining for world peace and a common humanity) the free flow of information between ‘the event’ and ‘an unbridled, perceptive, but above all illuminating account of said event’. This interpretation varies, of course, between languages and relative pay packets in the two publishing houses of this country, but let me use it as a benchmark for the time being. That is, if the bench were green and mooed like a chicken.
Editorial, in its purest sense, is such an abstract concept that no-one has ever been able to make much money out of it, aka ‘the FREE flow of information’. It is devoid of ‘pushing a line’ (see above), devoid of emotive or reflecting viewpoints (impossible) and would, if it could exist, be as useful to read as columns of stock market data without the axës marked. What remains of the ‘editorial position’ is usually a subtly tinged, tainted and institutionally taught avenue of hiding the subjective and opinion, the ol’ news adage of ‘recounting or reporting upon events showing as little bias as possible (buzzer goes off here).
This lie is what they still teach in Journo 401, that the uttered, reported and broadcast word is the physical embodiment of mass telepathy (“hey, I know what you’re thinking”). Even though ‘the best schools’ still churn out ‘the best journalists’, the flaw is in the definition of the art and profession itself: objectivity (pure editorial) is impossible and subjectivity (biased editorial) is tainted and cloaked by the illusion that reportage and journalism is in a vacuum, its participants and employed critics being wizened, above it all and objective. Note News Corporation’s push for Superleague©, both in an editorial and advertising sense, through every artery that Rupert Murdoch controlled (and he has ’em all). Eight full-page advertisements on successive right-hand pages of Newscorp’s The Australian with plaudits emblazed by the sports writers on the cover were a very real example not long ago, its sheer show of might being a blow to any form of credibilty of reportage herein.
Whew, let’s flesh this page out a bit with a highfalutin comparison of pure editorial and its tainted buddy: Picasso© died poor and earless. He himself clapped wildly at his abstract, thought-provoking squiggly doodles, but they had no basis to anyone outside of his his small group of multiple personalities. His squiggles were snapped up posthumously by wealthy ‘starmakers’, through agents, who love a bit of a tale of insanity to talk about while viewing vertically-hung splotches. See also: the theoretical role of journalists before they get a column, people on hunger strikes without any TV cameras around and filmmakers ascending to heaven without a super 8© and an editing suite.
In comparison, Warhol© died rich and with enough lead in him that some cunning git is probably mining him right now. He promoted himself, soup and thought-annuling art in such a way that his self promotion was pretty much the art. See also: Gonzo journalist(s), owners of red MG© convertibles and Molly Meldrum (who’s never uttered anything but a superlative in years of music ‘criticism’ under the wing of ‘The Majors’). This is what I shall call the pseudo-editorial and, apart from being a bit suspect in its own ways, is much closer to the real state of play in this big Superleague© that we call ‘subjectivity’, or life.
Alas and woe, the level of nirvana called editorial is closed to us mortals. And furthermore, hiding one’s biases (purposefully or ignorantly) is tantamount to killing fairies – who knows what media virgin or buffoon is going to take everything you write or say or film or digitally re-edit in Photoshop© as The Truth, The Facts, The Bible?
My question: why hide a bias under the lie of ‘objectivity’? The answer: because then everyone could be a writer, own a news corporation, publish a shoplifting guide … and then, how could the goverment control/tax/receive favour from the media? And more importantly, where would the advertisers spend their money?
Ah yes, advertising. The other, brighter, more colourful and trough-like side of the thin black line. Where dreams (of charging per column centimetre) become reality. Where the frothy heads of yer favourite ale are la(r)ger than life. Its encroachment is already total, not a single media source can survive without its delicate helping hand, its gentle, persuasive word to the producer/nightclub manager/publisher/bankroller that maybe the kids DO like Australian movies about losers/commercial eurohouse techno/pictures of themselves pissed with their tongues hanging out. “We spend a lot of money here (insert name of owner who knows little of the club’s sliding chromosome count in the male majority), and I have parcels and parcels (and warehouses) full of the latest (industry mechanised) hits which, you know, your DJ can play (and maybe even keep a copy) and s/he can give away and all you need to do it put a little logo in your ad, on your bar and we’ll take your first born child. Okay mate?”
Fair enough, I accept that I want to be taken for all I’ve got most of the time. But it is not this seedy beast that I want to slay today. No, dear consumers, I want to talk of its evil offspring, the bastard son of two immoral codes – of pseudo-editorial and advertising – and its name be ‘advertorial’. Quake fellow minions, the ultimate lie is nigh.
xxx [sic. I think I finished this direct to plate]
Pelican is the student magazine of the University of Western Australia. This article went by the sleep-deprived and addled scalpels of any number of people but including Neil Wurmal, Rob Schutze and Kirstyn Lee.
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