“Did the media get the election wrong?” asks Fairfax journalist Matthew Knott in an attempt to turn the spotlight fleetingly on he and his colleagues in the press gallery.
“The consensus, speaking to colleagues in the Canberra press gallery, is a reluctant yes. Some insist they got it spot on. But many admit they expected a more decisive Coalition victory than occurred. And they concede this influenced the way the media covered the campaign.”
While Knott’s moment of professional introspection is rare and commendable, he’s really asking the wrong question. The assumption buried in his gallery quick quiz is that the media’s primary role is not so much to report the news, as to predict it. But it that’s your measure of success as a journalist, you’re playing a loser’s game.
As this blog and others have tirelessly (OK, tiresomely) argued over the years, the focus of political reporting is too much on who’s winning the horse race and not on the substance. That is partly a consequence of the professionalisation of politics, the loss of specialist reporters and the commodification of straight news. Everyone knows what’s happened and is remarking on it via social media, so that encourages journalists to play up their “insider” credentials, deciphering the multiple layers of spin. They become professional pundits rather than reporters.
Peter Hartcher is one of the exemplars of this trend, often casting himself as a kind of diviner of what drives individual political leaders and connecting them to the zeitgeist in a way that can come across as toadying in pursuit of favourable scoops. Remember how he wrote up the now infamous 2014 budget?

“While Abbott was a cheap populist in opposition, he now reveals himself to be a purposeful prime minister. He’s not looking for popularity but respect. His budget is a bold political bet that people will not punish him for breaking promises but reward him for being tough and responsible.”

This isn’t to say all political reporting has to be just a bland recitation of the facts. Context and analysis are even more important now when political parties just routinely make stuff up and sections of the popular media meekly run with it. As Tim Dunlop has argued, political reporting comes alive and adds real value when it positions the noise within a wider signal.  But it achieves that not by journalists assuming the status of omniscient beings, but by admitting to their limited view and inviting others to fill in the picture.

“The new-media environment of engagement with the audience makes it easier than ever for journalists to take readers into their confidence and explain the reasoning behind a given article. Or to defend it, if necessary. In other words, engagement with the audience is the new objectivity, and any decent journalist should cultivate that approach.

On that score, I’m a big fan of the insights of Laura Tingle in her weekly chat with Phillip Adams on Radio National. What I like about Tingle is that unlike many other insiders, she doesn’t position herself as a sort of aloof Canberra Kremlinologist, deciphering the patterns in the plumes of smoke emitted from the ministerial wing. On the contrary, she often sounds worn down and just exhausted by the whole circus. It’s notable that one of the most telling images of the marathon election campaign was of Tingle on the panel during the second TV leaders’ debate, clearly exasperated by the umpteenth recitation of theatrical talking points that told voters nothing.
Screen Shot 2016-07-07 at 12.09.46 pm

‘Over It’: Tingle during the TV Debate

The Guardian’s Katherine Murphy is also a journalist who has done more than most to break down the imaginary fourth wall that isolates press gallery members from the public they are supposedly a proxy for.  Her daily coverage is presented in diary format, exposing the often incomplete and haphazard information upon which reporters are required  to squeeze into tidy narratives. She recognises, indeed luxuriates in the fact, that she doesn’t know everything, can’t know everything and will never know everything. In so doing, she exposes the pre-spun nature of so much for what passes as “political news”, all wrapped up neatly every day and presented to the public as fact.
As an aside, it’s significant that we’re having this election post-mortem alongside the release of the damning report by former civil servant John Chilcot following his seven-year inquiry into the circumstances that led to Britain entering the Iraq war 13 years ago. While most of the focus on that debacle has been on deficiencies in intelligence, foreign policy nous and political judgement, the media’s failure to ask tough questions and their increasing tendency to identify with the spin doctors has also come under scrutiny.

“So much of the current public distrust in the media and its incestuous relationship with the political establishment can be traced back to its failures in covering the Iraq war,” writes Ian Burrell in The Independent. “Where once its access to Westminster corridors was its most valuable currency, that cosy relationship means it is now too often seen as a mere mouthpiece for the ruling elite.”

There’s a lesson for Australian media here. Journalists need to stop seeing themselves as players. Their job is to represent the public to decision-makers, not the other way around.  We don’t want them to make forecasts; we want to them to demand answers to simple questions. We want them, beyond rare exceptions, to stop reporting self-serving anonymous scuttlebutt and to insist that people go on the record. We would prefer that instead of guessing and surmising and speculating, they just said “I really don’t know what will happen next. But here are the facts.”  And we would prefer their editors to stop asking them to issue “hot takes” on every little brain fart in Canberra and leave them to get their teeth into a story once in a while.
As Russell Marks writes in The Monthly, in perhaps the best analysis of the media’s failures this election, journalists can do us all a big favour by giving up the pretence that they are god-like electoral analysts or judges of spin. Stop the second-hand running commentary on how the management of issues will ‘play’ in the electorate, turn your bullshit detectors up to 10 and start testing the “perceptions” against the facts.

“While intelligent journalists are running themselves ragged acting as unglorified public relations assistants for politicians, they’re not testing statements and checking claims,” Marks writes. “News reportage becomes quite literally a matter of ‘Turnbull said A, while Shorten said B’, which is close to entirely useless without context. In the end, we are told, the voters get it right. But that expression of faith in the democratic process depends on faith in the fourth estate to present political realities so that voters can make sensible choices.”

Journalism is a tough job, even tougher when your resources are constantly being cut, the bosses are asking you to file constantly and social media is bagging you. But journalists can make it a lot easier for themselves by giving up the pretence that they are all-seeing political sages and focus instead on asking good questions, reporting facts, placing those facts in context and admitting that neither they, nor anyone, has any idea about what happens next.
In journalism at least, god is dead.
See also:

6 Comments

wilful · July 7, 2016 at 1:46 PM

Thanks Jim, all well said as always. I will disagree with your first line though: “turn the spotlight fleetingly”. If there’s one thing journos like more than anything, it’s talking about themselves. Not to any useful effect, but they can’t get enough of talking about the media.

MarcvsTCicero · July 7, 2016 at 3:13 PM

Good article although I think much of the mainstream media in Australia has ewwelargely become a talking points distributor for those politicians and political parties that they are aligned to. Particularly the case of the left leaning love media which happily, comfortably and uncritically reports press releases issued by their political favourites as news and similarly reports “leaks” from their favourites as facts.

    Christine Phillips · July 8, 2016 at 1:27 PM

    ‘Left wing love media’ Where did you find that ….?

Ambigulous · July 7, 2016 at 5:44 PM

You make very good points, Mr Denmore.
But I’d like to discuss this:

“Everyone knows what’s happened and is remarking on it via social media, so that encourages journalists to play up their “insider” credentials, deciphering the multiple layers of spin.”

Most of us rely on papers, TV, radio or online sources to find out ‘what’s happened’.
A tree can fall in the forest, but if it’s not reported I won’t know unless I was in that forest at the right time.

So the media can filter out events, including things folk have said.

I agree that Laura is very good. I depend on her for economic and financial analysis since I’m ignorant. I also benefit when she has time to read a report in full, and comment on it, even though it may be freely available on a website.

Here are some of my favourite things: clear prose, good synopses, telling comments, comparisons and contrasts I haven’t noticed, statistical info digested; and as you say, bulldust detectors set to 11.

The fact-diggers tend to be independent, don’t they? I’m thinking of Izzy (I.F.) Stone gleaning stunning nuggets from government publications. [‘Twas a pity he tended Stalinist.]

Phillip Adams, clearly wearing his heart externally, nonetheless seems endlessly curious about new perspectives, histories, biographies, philosophies and social questions. His wireless spot has been a breath of fresh air. Invaluable.

John L · July 9, 2016 at 9:23 PM

Laura Tingle, Katherine Murphy and Lenore Taylor are the credible political journalists that spring to my mind. The vast majority of the rest seem no more than cheer leaders, PR hacks or point scorers more concerned with being “in the know”, than actually dissecting policy or pronouncements for the critical informing of the general public who might like to know……..

sally boteler · July 11, 2016 at 1:26 PM

On contemplating the meaning of ‘the voters always get it right’ type of assertions I wondered if that isn’t because it’s not about right and wrong, anymore than it’s really about a ‘horse race’ or team sport or any of that superficiality conjured to whip up a bit of excitement.
The electorate just gets what the majority (however slim) ordered.

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