EDUKATION REVIEW

This post’s headline might be a slight exaggeration, especially for someone who hates index fingers being constantly pointed at the big, bad and evil media. But in the case of reporting VSU protests, the media should be (at the very least) a suspect for causing the underlying assumption that student activism is dead.

The SBS documentary on the Daily Telegraph (which was screened in class) caused some freaky conclusions about the power of the media. Sure we’ve heard about the media manufacturing news, yet it’s quite different when you have the whole picture and process projected before you.

During our discussions, Juliette made an important addition to the debate over the agenda-setting function of the media. Not only does the media have the influence to manufacture news, but it accordingly has the power to bury the news.

The latter was evident at the height of anti-VSU sentiments by students. For the past decade, students have been negatively labelled apathetic when compared to the rich and vibrant student environment of the 60s/70s. Student protestism, according to many, is dead. Yet when the major anti-VSU protest took its course, which was considered by some the biggest protest since the anti-Vietnam War movement (or at least since 1996), the media barely covered the voices of students, and if it did, it landed on page 146 of the paper. Well no wonder then that students are seemingly silent nowadays.

Equally, reports on the alleged death of student activism are exaggerated. This is mainly due to superficial comparisons between the past and present. Of course it is undisputable that a 60s/70s scenario of driven students taking on the streets would be an unfamiliar sight today (is it?), but that should not account for labelling this generation’s students apathetic and therefore rendering the newsworthiness of their voices void and coverage unnecessary.

Most have associated the decline in student activism to an overriding interest in careers. Such an argument might be based on empirical evidence, but only if you draw comparisons to the past. There is, however, an abundance of examples that student protestism is alive and that it’s only dead in the media. My former post, that dealt with the extraordinary and consistent coverage of student life by Germany’s Der Spiegel, concisely proves that students are still breathing. In fact, many organisations still dedicate themselves to the vibrant nature of campus activism, like Australia’s “Books not bombs” organisation, the civil rights organisation, the campus activism network, or even the ‘mainstream’ culture-jammer group AdBusters.

There seems to be an underlying, somewhat cynical, paradox amid the debate over student protestism in the media. One the one hand, you have student activism supposedly laying dormant, yet on the other, you have the constant attacks on students on the left being “too active”. Take the example of Janet Albrechtsen’s recent, very opinionated analysis of the year 2005 (appropriately titled: “An excellent year for conservatives and the country”):

Similarly, the VSU reforms are based on a simple idea that no one should be forced to join a union, be it on campus or in the workplace. So if students want to jump on a bus to Woomera to protest against mandatory detention, fine. But don’t expect other students to pick up the bus fare by paying compulsory union fees.

It ain’t rocket science: if the media and their conservative counterparts soldier on with whinging over students dressing left politically, then how can those very people assume the momentous position of campus affairs being apolitical and dead? Are they questioning the legitimacy of students and their humanitarian causes, maybe comparing today’s idealism and semi-anarchy driven campuses to the grandeur of the suffragette movement, the anti-Vietnam War protests, Martin Luther King Jr. or Nelson Mandela?

If student voices are hanging by a thread as we are led to believe, then such condition is certainly reinforced and maintained by an active media.