Sydney’s Sun-Herald this weekend runs a piece featuring former politicians of all colours decrying the rotten state of our politics – from the relentless dumbing down of issues, to the fake polarisation of views to create opportunities for adversarialism, to the rehearsed spin, to the chronic inability to undertake real reform and, as we are seeing now, to the blatant trolling of emotive issues about race and religion to garner cheap votes.

These are all observations with which many sensible people would agree. But the wonder of these periodic analyses in the nation’s media is the failure of journalists to shine a light on the role of their own industry in debasing the political environment. This debasement comes via their focus on trivia, their relentless hunt for ‘gotcha’ moments, their eternal vigilance for gaffes and backflips and their obsession with opinion polls and judging the winners of the 24/7 news cycle. Overwhelmingly and conveniently for these people, the obsession is with process over outcomes.

Most disconcertingly, there seems a total inability in the media to comprehend that they are central players in this ever diminishing cycle. The politicians say nothing of consequence simply because the media, so focused on politics at the expense of policy, will turn any utterance of real substance into a supposed “gaffe” that then drives the news cycle for 48 hours until the next imagined stumble. Any politician brave enough to tell the truth is denounced as naive or tactically inferior. The biggest plaudits from the pundits go to the slippery sophists who can wriggle through policy minefields without triggering a tripwire.

This focus on tactics as an end in itself allows well- funded interest groups like the multi-national miners to brazenly derail worthwhile political reform at the expense of the taxpayer and destroy a prime ministership. Meanwhile,journalists sit by and focus on the prime minister’s earlobes or lack of handbag or living arrangements. Notice, for instance, how all the commentariat are now coming out and saying the nation was dudded over the backdown over the RSPT?  The story is the government panicked over the mining industry’s misinformation campaign. Well, where were these ‘good-policy-comes-first’ hard heads last year? Playing up the threat of capital strikes and singing from the miners’ songbook for the most part.

Fellow blogger Tim Dunlop calls the symbiotic relationship between journo and pollie the politics-media death spiral: “Simultaneously, the media, their markets shrinking, their authority under challenge, their business models imploding, turn inwards and cultivate an insider mentality that replaces connection with a mass audience with the desire to influence an elite one. Having abandoned their role as explainers, as reporters, they reduce political issues to a sporting competition, a beauty contest, or a game of gotcha.”

Nowhere is this vision of the media as “players” more evident than on Insiders, the ABC’s Sunday morning High Church celebration of the notion of journalists as participants in the political process, as savvy and world weary insiders who know how the game works and who sneer at those who don’t play by their made-up rules.  Overlooked is the fact that there is as an equally (more?) well-informed constituency on Twitter aware of the artifice and role-playing in their smug round-table discussions and questioning their capacity for offering any insight that is not self-serving or part of the continuous loop that joins the press with the politicians. 

The greatest irony is that all this (the lazy clubbish navel-gazing) is happening at a time of momentous change in the wider world of politics and economics. This is complex change that defies conventional narratives and requires insights honed from experiences that extend beyond writing from the hall of mirrors in which the supposed “insiders” live. Again, this why our Fourth Estate has become a Failed Estate. It no longer serves its function as an explainer or a contextualiser, reminding people of how local events are influenced by a bigger picture. Instead, these people are trapped in an ever-narrowing frame, talking to a smaller and smaller audience composed of people similar to them; hollow words resounding in an echo chamber of nothingness.

See also: Tim Dunlop (The Drum): How to Argue with a Journalist


16 Comments

ChrisintheCapital · February 20, 2011 at 4:28 AM

Really good article. Also love the alliteration in “The biggest plaudits from the pundits go to the slippery sophists who can wriggle through policy minefields without triggering a tripwire.” Superb.

tredlgt · February 20, 2011 at 7:02 AM

A pleasure to read , if only this article were to be seen by all journalists.

Anonymous · February 20, 2011 at 7:16 AM

Excellent article which should indeed 'must-read' material for all journalists.

Neitzche II · February 20, 2011 at 9:48 PM

I'd appreciate a good read,a hypothetical newspaper ,or a good viewing ,hypothetical NewsHour,that didn't need to be everything for everyone.A moment in a day with no celebrity gossip,or sports for that matter.MARSHALL MCLUHAN said the “media is the message” ,well possibly still true if the message is “you people are sheep,content to munch and never think”.

Anonymous · February 21, 2011 at 12:54 AM

I was amused by the Insider panel yesterday. Their lack of self-awareness was stunning. Fran Kelly the woman who has ruined breakfasts for me with her trivial obsessions of 'the politics” of it all. She was aided and abetted last by the finance wing of breakfast who happily spruiked miners' talking points on the RRT and never once laughing at their claims of sovereign threat etc etc. Labor says it wants more debate in its branches and among its members. Not going to happen it will be immediately jumped on by the Fran Kellys of this world as dissent. The iummature media have no idea of how decisions are made and how debate and dissent and finally compromise make for good policy., Kelly was disgusting when talking about the AWU conference. She has never sat at a table and negotiated anything. She doesn't understand how the world works. She seems never to have been to a union conference where the cut and thrust the heat and dust is mostly theatre. She doesn't understand the Libs do their deals in the boardrooms and convey the decisions to their minions in the Liberal party. Just look at the way they fell into kine behind the miners.
And yet these and the rest of her mates in the Canberra cocoon think they know what is going on. The show should be renamed Outsiders. I tend to read the tweet feed rather than watch the show. Qanda is the same. The ABC abrogating its responsibilities to just present vaudeville politics.

Anonymous · February 21, 2011 at 5:44 AM

An excellent article and something that supports 100% what I have been saying to family & friends for the past 6-10 years. I couldn't believe the media stories and opinions dead-set against the National Interest in the debate and faux outrage over the Mining Super Profits Tax. Who are these gormless, opinionated, dopey pricks and why did they want to increase the wealth of multi-billionaires at the expense of ordinary Australians? One grizzle:
Did you have to use a photo of the much-loved and long deceased NZ Prime Minister, Michael Joseph Savage – or Micky Savage to generations of Kiwis. Black mark – no rugby pun intended …

Anonymous · February 21, 2011 at 8:28 AM

Fran Kelly, remember, prepared and presented the ABC's “tribute” to John Howard, 'The Howard Years'.

She must be the most complained-about host on the ABC. If an employee of any public service attracted such voluminous criticism they'd have been dismissed years ago.

Let us hope Fran Kelly's employment is on borrowed time.

Anonymous · February 21, 2011 at 10:48 AM

The greatest irony is that it was the politicians who sold out to the media by allowing Murdoch to take over the landscape. A more diverse media would deliver more diverse opinions.

Anonymous · February 21, 2011 at 9:29 PM

Finally, FINALLY someone has said what's needed to be said. The media's inability to discuss and analyse its own agency in the political system has been verging on parody for years now. And when a guest on the Insiders or Q&A tries to discuss the role of the media in politics, and suggests that it take some responsibility for its stories and columns, Cassidy and Tony Jones will shoot them down within seconds. NO ONE WANTS TO HAVE THE CONVERSATION! Please, someone tell me where the mainstream media discusses itself (apart from 15 minutes on a Monday night on the ABC). Can we find away to make Australians just as cynical about any given column or hard news story as they are about the politicians these stories report about? The problem is real and overwhelming, but I can't for the life of me think of any positive action I can take…

Anonymous · February 21, 2011 at 10:03 PM

I agree with the thrust of the article. Surely there are those within the media that realise their complicity in the way that politics has been trivialised? It's also sad to watch the way that vested interests control the information produced by mass media and that this state of affairs is either tacitly ignored, or worse not realised by the public at large.

Anyway, I'm interested in the thing the the article doesn't touch on – solutions to the problem.

Anonymous · February 21, 2011 at 10:52 PM

Comments made this morning about the ABC's Fran Kelly …

Puff, the Magic Dragon.
Posted Tuesday, February 22, 2011 at 7:57 am

http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2011/02/21/newspoll-50-50-6/comment-page-7/#comment-773910

Fran Kelly (ABC Radio National) must have been watching different HoR than me yesterday. According to Kelly, the government had a ‘close shave’ and just avoided humiliation over the YA. Now the Poodle is being interviewed. He called the PM ‘Lady McBeth’ and FK is letting him run off at the mouth without challenging his answers.

evan14
Posted Tuesday, February 22, 2011 at 8:00 am

http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2011/02/21/newspoll-50-50-6/comment-page-7/#comment-773911

Yes, Fran Kelly just allowed Pyne to get away with asserting that Gillard bribed Oakeshott yesterday!
This, combined with La Grattan’s pep talk for Abbott & the Liberals – UGH!

BH
Posted Tuesday, February 22, 2011 at 8:33 am

http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2011/02/21/newspoll-50-50-6/comment-page-8/#comment-773925

Puff and Evan – I was disgusted with the rant that Kelly allowed Pyne to get away with this morning. She was supposedly wanted answers to the Libs problems but instead let him rant.

Can others listen and let us know what you think please. It was a FoxNews type ranting this morning and I’m sure the ABC doesn’t want to go there.

Fran Kelly should have pulled him up – she would never let a Labor pollie get away with that.

evan14
Posted Tuesday, February 22, 2011 at 8:35 am

http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2011/02/21/newspoll-50-50-6/comment-page-8/#comment-773926

BH: As I’ve said previously, Fran Kelly desperately wants a gig on 2GB – that ABC/The Drum gig ain’t paying enough for her, methinks. 😉
Her “hard hitting” interview with Poodle was as brutal as being hit with a damp lettuce leaf. 😀

evan14
Posted Tuesday, February 22, 2011 at 9:35 am

http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2011/02/21/newspoll-50-50-6/comment-page-8/#comment-773940

I was pissed off though that this morning, Fran Kelly & La Grattan basically let the Liberals off the hook, and raved instead about Rudd supposedly causing disunity within the Government.
Obviously when Newspoll doesn’t suit the narrative, Fran & Michelle ignore the figures.

Puff, the Magic Dragon.
Posted Tuesday, February 22, 2011 at 9:44 am

http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2011/02/21/newspoll-50-50-6/comment-page-8/#comment-773945

Evan14,
I was disgusted with Fran Kelly this morning. She let the Poodle off without a challenge to anything he said. And the way she described the HoR’s…(shakes head).

If I wasn’t waiting for the following programs I wouldn’t have her on. (The Law Report …

mari
Posted Tuesday, February 22, 2011 at 8:14 am

http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2011/02/21/newspoll-50-50-6/comment-page-8/#comment-773917

As I no longer listen to RN after years of devoted listening, I am not surprised at comments 346 and 347, I really wonder how many now listen to RN

Mick · February 22, 2011 at 12:27 AM

Heard Alexandra Kirk interviewing Bob Carr over the ALP review of the last federal election. Fair dinkum, you'd have thought she had a train to catch. She did not allow him to finish a single utterance without interrupting him, and then chattering her next question like a machine-gun withouth drawing breath.

Whenever she thought he was contradicting himself, she simply jumped in immediately, confronting him with the supposed flaw. The impression was that she was depriving him of time and space while herding him into a corner for the final kill.

Compare this to interviews heard on NPR, BBC, Deutsche Weller. The pollies are permitted to expound at length, and give considered replies, and explain or even acknowledge seeming contradictions.

No such thing for the “hang 'em high” Oz media.

Anonymous · February 22, 2011 at 1:59 AM

Anonymous @ February 22, 2011 8:29 AM, I totally agree with your points. I have always been astounded there is a total lack of analysis in the media by the media. They are instrumental in shaping our modern world, and place everyone from football players to politicians to business leaders under intense scrutiny, but they don't subject themselves to the same level of examination.

They also use their leverage to look after their own interests (which is not the same as the public interest).

This is an old example, but I remember watching TV the day that Princess Di died. The BBC announcers were saying, almost immediately after the accident, that it was certainly not the pursuing media pack that cause her death. If anyone but media were following her car, there is no way any media organisation would give them the same benifit of the doubt. I was blown away at how self serving the media was when they would not have provided any other group the same courtesy.

Another trivial, but telling example – on Insiders once, early in the KR government, Barry Cassidy made the point that some of the Prime Minister's AFP protection staff had overstepped the line by restricting the media's access to the PM. I was expecting footage of a policeman reading the riot act to a journo, going off his nut, but instead they showed us the incident – a policeman politely asking a camerman if he could stand somewhere else. Very rough. And this was considered important enough to show on national TV!

All forms of media have a huge influence on modern political dicourse, where they discuss everyone and everything but themselves. Every channel and newspaper should have a Media Watch equivalent, and they should have the intestinal fortitude to analyse themselves to the same degree, or more, than they do everything else.

Anonymous · February 23, 2011 at 5:29 AM

Fantastic blog. Raises some great issues. I wish this was published in some newspapers.

Anonymous · February 23, 2011 at 11:45 PM

The behaviour of the Canberra press gallery has ever been thus – well, at least since the early 90s. I arrived there in 1990 after working in major capital city media. I was always trained to present stories in an unbiased fashion, containing none of my opinion and explaining how a political decision would affect the lives of my readers. None of that nonsense in the gallery. It was all as described above. A concentration on the inane, picking winners and losers and, worst of all, constant caucusing so that they could all agree on what was the story, the angle, the meaning, etc. Original thought was in very short supply – Laurie Oakes being the major honourable exception.

It's a small-town mentality. Most of the so-called 'doyens' of the gallery have spent the major part of their working lives there, they tend to live close by and socialise with themselves. They have an inflated view of their own importance and wisdom. They are lacking in a view of the real world – and it shows.

Mr D · February 24, 2011 at 12:06 AM

Anonymous, that was my experience as well, although I never worked there full-time, only visiting for budgets and one-off setpieces.

I believe the quality of press gallery reporting would be improved by forcing them back to Sydney or Melbourne or anywhere else a few weeks a year to get another perspective.

You're right they get an inflated idea of their own importance, which comes from being cooped up inside that building with all those politicians and flaks and minders and wonks.

Should be a statute of limitations on being posted there.

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