Class, mass news media, and the 1993 election
Using a class analysis of the mass media's performance during the 1993 general election, this paper argues that news is one important site for the production and dissemination of ideology, structured around the needs of capital. By focussing on the debate about 'structural reform' of the industrial relations system, the paper argues that the real agenda during the election was how Australian-based capital should deal with the international recession.
Grey collar journalism : the social relations of news production
"On any meaningful notion of 'class' as a concept related to the social relations deriving from the system of production in a Capitalist society like ours, journalists are not 'middle class' ... they are not particularly well paid, their union and their industrial actions are, for all intents and purposes, the same as any other group of unionists." Keith Windschuttle 1998, p.351 The purpose of my Doctoral thesis - Grey Collar Journalism: The social relations of news production - is to analyse the role of journalists as public intellectuals (Louw 2001) and to do so from an understanding of newswork as a labour process. Along the way I have developed a critical appraisal of various theoretical approaches to the study of journalism. Broadly speaking this thesis is in the discipline of the sociology of journalism, but it is without question a crossdisciplinary thesis and necessarily so. In the first three chapters I develop and explain what I mean by Grey Collar Journalism and the 'journalist-as-intellectual'. This section of the thesis articulates what I call the 'labour theory of journalism' to further explain the ambivalent nature (Hallin 1994; Franklin 1997) of modern journalism. I argue here that this ambivalence in modern journalism is reflected in the contradictory relationship between grey collar newsworkers and the Nation-State. This is expressed through what I have called the 'emotional dialectic' of newswork and the 'dialectic of the front-page'. It is this labour theory of journalism that brings forth the concept of the grey collar journalists, which I define as a cohort of newsworkers who occupy a contradictory class location - broadly speaking the 'new middle class' to which the category of 'newsworker' belongs (Callinicos 1989b). Grey collar journalists are also public intellectuals in the Gramscian sense of being the producers and circulators of various ideas in civil society - snippets of ideology and social science - in the service of either of the major contending classes: Labour and Capital. The labour theory of journalism is then employed in a study of Australian political journalism to identify the social forces that create the conditions in which grey collar journalists operate. These are defined and analysed as the economic, class, cultural, political, historical and social relations of production that underpin the contradictory and ambivalent "emotional attitudes" (Orwell 1988, p.9) of newsworkers. In the next few chapters, Australian examples are illustrated in order to critically examine the highly politicised and culturally-mystified relationship between journalism as a set of social practices and the important centres of power in a monopoly capitalist society - in principal the ruling class and the state apparatus. This development of the grey collar thesis grounds a class-based critique of the liberal-democratic theory of the media as 'Fourth Estate'. In particular, I critically discuss changes to the MEAA Code of Ethics that were accepted in 1998, after lengthy debate in the union's ranks and in the media. The final chapters of the thesis test the explanatory power of the grey collar thesis against recent attempts to theorise journalism from a cultural studies perspective and the so-called 'media wars' debates of the late 1990s. In particular I challenge John Hartley's assertion that we are now in the age of postmodern journalism.
Cambodian refugee health care beliefs and practices.
Since 1975, when refugees from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia first began coming to the United States, many articles have been written about Southeast Asian or Indochinese refugees and health care. A careful review of the literature shows that most of these articles have one thing in common: they are written primarily about Vietnamese and do not address the unique health care beliefs and practices of Lao or Cambodian refugees.1 Although some beliefs and practices are common to most Southeast Asians, many are not. Understanding at least that differences exist, and hopefully what some specific differences are, will allow nurses and others to give better care to the various people commonly grouped together as Southeast Asians. This article will introduce readers to some Cambodian beliefs and practices related to health care. Of the principle refugee groups admitted to the U.S. since 1975, the Cambodians are presenting the greatest challenges to health care providers. Cambodians are usually poorly understood by Americans, their health status statistics are hidden among the broad category of "Asian-Pacific Islanders" or "Indochinese Refugees," and cultural and institutional barriers combine to make access to care an overwhelming problem. The end results, of course, are more problems and more expense for the Cambodians, increased stress placed on an already terribly overstressed people, and ultimately greater demands and expense placed on the health care system. One of the most common misunderstandings about Cambodians is that they (and Lao) are basically the same as the Vietnamese. "They speak the same dialect don't they?" There are some similarities, but there are also very significant differences.