Holiday opinion piece practice
Posted on | December 29, 2005 |
This summarises a few things I’ve been working on lately…
It’s little wonder the US military is worried about the loose lips of bloggers on the front line. Over the past few years blogging has become a growing concern for employers of all kinds, whether it’s software companies wanting to protect their latest inventions, universities clamping down on the political positions of academics or parents worrying about the online nattering of nannies. Of course it’s quite a different story for ‘the oldest profession’: an omnivorous reading public apparently can’t get enough of the confessions of callgirls – or so publishers would have us believe.
Blogging isn’t simply about venting. It allows space for reflecting upon the intimate and emotional aspects of our working life, the details that co-workers - and particularly bosses - expect us to keep to ourselves. With many of us working longer hours than ever, and often in front of computer screens, blogging offers solace and a form of solidarity. This is an important function at a time when our jobs increasingly take us to different states or foreign countries, away from established networks of support.
Big institutions like the military can’t afford to have honest portrayals of their daily machinations circulating in the wider public. The obvious reason is that combat operations rely on secrecy in order to be successful: selective representations not only protect the strategy being pursued, they prevent sentimental responses amongst soldiers getting in the way of the job. This explains the famous euphemism for the innocent victims of bombing campaigns, now ritually described as ‘collateral damage’.
What yesterday’s article failed to recognise however is that despite the forms of censorship at play in previous wars, the emergence of embedded journalism and corporate sanctioned news agendas now makes it difficult for reporters to acknowledge when US soldiers suffer injury and fatality for fear of public opinion mobilising against the war. This is especially the case when death or injury is the result of accident or adrenaline as much as the aggression of an armed combatant – witness the controversy surrounding the death of football player Pat Tillman from ‘friendly fire’, or the bored soldiers depicted in Australian director Gregor Jordan’s film Buffalo Soldiers. Moreover, in a war where sedition laws can be boosted because ‘you are either with us or against us’, there is little opportunity for journalists to depict those on opposing sides of the conflict with any kind of sobriety, let alone sympathy or humanity.
If blogging destabilises the preferred portrayals of reality traditionally put forward by institutions to maintain their authority, we are currently witnessing an interesting moment as more workplaces recognise the damaging potential this poses and are forced to acknowledge the power of the individual voice. But the growing popularity of blogging demonstrates just how much people crave outlets that express the human dimensions and personal experiences that persist in spite of the sterile landscape institutional language would paint for us. It is this desire that will linger long after the blanket bans on blogging in professional contexts reveal how much the military, the corporation and even the university cherish the sanctity of the brand over the possibility of empathy.
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2 Responses to “Holiday opinion piece practice”
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January 4th, 2006 @ 1:24 pm
hi
just letting you know i’m writing a column for this weekend’s Insight (The Age) quoting this blog.
best
sophie
January 4th, 2006 @ 1:57 pm
Hi Sophie, that’s great (I hope)! Glad to know you’re reading.