McNews: Would you like lies with that?
BY MARCEL CAMERON
For the past week Green Left Weekly's dedicated bands of street sellers in Melbourne have had competition from an unlikely source on this city's street corners. Scores of teenagers in blue hats and T-shirts with the slogan "Pick me up" have been recruited to hand out thousands of free copies of Rupert Murdoch's latest bid for the hearts and minds of the masses, the daily mX.
mX was launched, with much media hype and fanfare, at Flinders Street train station on a busy Friday lunchtime. Green Left Weekly sellers were inundated with people demanding to know if this was the "free" paper. The young marketing crew with their plastic smiles were followed around by TV cameras and posed for press photographers. By evening the sidewalks and train stations were littered with soiled copies.
If the experiment works, such "free" McNews papers may spread across Australia. Would you like lies with that?
Perhaps Murdoch has had a change of heart and has decided that his "new" rag must address real issues and report on the lives of real people? Don't hold your breath.
mX is the same old crap we have always been fed every day by the corporate media, repackaged with gripping headlines such as "The bitch is back to punish the weak: Cornelia Frances will host Seven's hot new show The Weakest Link" and "Bush's twin girls are not fair game". There is even a special page for women, "mX Chicks' Diet: Milk's a fat lot of good". Men can read "mX Blokes" with its useful tips on how to "pick up chicks".
In recent years, the personal approach of standing on street corners (traditionally associated with the radical press) has been discovered by the marketeers. How can the image of Greenpeace be boosted as a grassroots, activist organisation in touch with its constituency? Easy. Hire squads of young people to approach people with glossy brochures. How can the heartfelt concern about the growing tragedy of homelessness be exploited to sell advertising space? Get the homeless to sell the Big Issue.
It's probably not a coincidence that in the weeks leading up to the launch of mX, Green Left Weekly sellers were harassed by Melbourne City Council infringement officers after a truce of three years. We stood our ground at the corner of Bourke and Swanston streets and we won't give it up without a fight.
During Jeff Kennett's reign as Victoria's premier, local elected councils were replaced by appointed commissioners who were more sensitive to the voices of their constituents — the business community. Public space came under sustained attack, from the building of the Grand Prix circuit at Albert Park to the quiet corporate takeover of what used to be public domain.
Labor premier Steve Bracks has the same priorities. McDonald's now lease the pavement in front of their Swanston Street premises, giving private security guards and police the right to evict buskers, Aborigines and Green Left Weekly sellers.
Cynical capitalist projects like mX do not worry us. Even if Murdoch payed people to read such garbage, thinking people would still long for a genuine alternative like Green Left Weekly.
However, there is a real threat that must be taken seriously by all who value democratic rights in a country where media ownership is among the most concentrated in the world. That threat is the creeping restriction on our right use our streets to popularise a radical and humane alternative to this decaying capitalist system.
[Marce Cameron helps organise the distribution of Green Left Weekly in Melbourne. If you would like to help distribute the real free press in Melbourne — free from capitalist control and ruling class bias — contact Marce at 9639 8622 or email <melbourne@greenleft.org.au>.]