As in drama, conflict drives the news business. The more black and white the conflict is portrayed as, the greater the passion the issue raises, the greater its confected ‘news’ value. Once a savvy media organisation works out what gets people worked up, it’s a fair bet it will go out of its way to construct narratives around those very issues.
Welcome to the idea of the mainstream media as a gigantic trolling device. The business model, in the absence of anything else in these days of news of a commodity, is to post deliberately inflammatory commentary and to feature as much as possible those commentators who elicit a strong reaction from audiences. Good or bad; it doesn’t matter. It’s the culture war as a business model.
This explains why the ABC, for instance, is so ready to provide multiple platforms for professional provocateur Andrew Bolt and his News Ltd stablemates to recycle memes aimed at outraging the intellectual and cultural left that patronises the national broadcaster’s programming in the absence of any other media outlet that provides a serious analysis of public affairs.
While the ABC isn’t a commercial organisation, it does face substantial pressures; in its case to demonstrate to its political overseers – particularly on the Right – that it delivers sufficient “value for money” to as broad as possible an audience and to show its programming is not a form of upper middle class welfare. It is fair to say that these overseers, who have flourished since Howard’s day and who strangely continued to assert great influence even under Rudd, will not be content until such time as the ABC is a facsimile of commercial talkback radio.
In practical terms, the outcome of all this appeasement of a prickly and paranoid Right is a pandering to views that already saturate the rest of the media – particularly tabloid newspapers and commercial talkback radio. If those views also receive the endorsement of the ALP, even better, which explains why the ABC is so ready to promulgate the myth that The Greens are anti-Semitic (despite 12 per cent of the electorate giving them their first preference votes in the last federal election).
In the commercial media, the culture wars are used as a business strategy to drive page impressions and breathe life into a dying industry desperate for an audience, any audience. This is why News Ltd, for instance, spends so much money on so many columnists whose job description is to elicit condemnation from tertiary educated , liberally minded people who find their views objectionable.
How all this informs people isn’t exactly clear. But then it’s not really supposed to. It is part of what Kevin Rudd’s former press secretary Lachlan Harris describes as The Opinion Cycle. It’s about generating an ongoing wave of outrage to pull in eyeballs, put bums on seats and manufacture a reaction for commercial advantage. That reaction then becomes part of the story, so that the narrative becomes self-generating.
Believe it or not, that’s the way a dying mainstream media makes its bucks these days. And it’s why our political debate is so narrow and exhausted and self-serving. It’s why the media desperately wants to keep alive the idea that there is serious scientific disagreement about man-made climate change. It’s why the media wants you to believe that the world will come to an end if the budget doesn’t return to surplus and why it is no rush to tell you that Australia’s refugee “problem” pales into insignificance compared with the issue in Europe.
Ultimately, it’s about maintaining a permanent rolling outrage to obscure more prosaic truths that do not lend themselves to the favoured red team-versus-blue team template. It’s successful, for sure. Like the circus, it draws in big audiences to look at the ads. It is guaranteed to cheer one side and outrage the other. But it sure as hell isn’t journalism.
See also: Grog’s Gamut: Decline and Fall
See also: Lachlan Harris: It’s a Fact: Opinion is Rising
See also: Beck’s Toxic Legacy
22 Comments
Anonymous · April 3, 2011 at 10:45 AM
Thank God for Blogs like this is all I can say. Twitter/Blogs is the new media and its free. What Bolt did today was to hammer a nail into the coffin of what was a good Sunday Morning get together of generally opposing views which offered a good insight into the workings of the media and Government. But today, Insiders/Bolt did my head in. No more for me.
Dan · April 3, 2011 at 11:16 AM
Bolt's contribution to Insiders today was classic Dr. Goebbels. Make the lie big enough and keep repeating it. His refusal to even listen to the answer to the question he asked of Lenore Taylor was clearly because he knew the answer was not the one he wanted. A disgraceful performance. I'm trying very hard to support Bolt in his current court case on the grounds that speech should be free – however muddle-headed, but he makes it very hard.
Felix · April 3, 2011 at 11:23 AM
Journalism is rather shallow these days. Those who play for Team Right are more than matched by those who play for Team Left. Andrew Bolt likes to portray those on the Left as hand-wringing, bed-wetting, bleeding hearts who are unable to think on their feet. Mr Adams counters by portraying those on the Right as rabid, venomous, hateful right-wingers. Their aperient newspaper columns do provide a service for the constipated. Journalism is hardly likely to improve while people like Bolt and Adams are allowed to use their columns for personal vendettas.
Paul Foord · April 3, 2011 at 11:44 AM
Felix writes 'Those who play for Team Right are more than matched by those who play for Team Left'
To me that rings as a false equivalence, Bolt and the shock jocks appear to be without peer.
Mr D · April 3, 2011 at 11:45 AM
Not sure Adams is the firebrand for the left that Bolt is for the right these days, Felix. Adams is part of the old Whitlamite left. I'd say the better match is Bolt vs Jeremy Seer, though the latter (unforunately) doesn't have an MSM platform as far as I'm aware.
Mr D · April 3, 2011 at 11:50 AM
Yes, Paul, there was a discussion on Twitter today that if the ABC is going to insist on treating Insiders as a circus, they really need a bully from the left to match Bolt. But we struggled to think of anyone in the media. The ABC has been neutered and all the firebrands at Fairfax (Sheehan, Henderson) are of the right as well. It's clearly nonsense that there is some equivalence between left and right among media demagogues.
Hillbilly Skeleton · April 3, 2011 at 11:55 AM
Mr Denmore,
I'd love to read your perspective on the Andrew Bolt Court case.
Hillbilly Skeleton · April 3, 2011 at 12:01 PM
There is no Left Wing firebrand journalist in Australia because 12 years of John Howard, Richard Alston and Rupert Murdoch made sure they, or anyone who showed tendencies towards becoming one, were purged from the commercial media, or neutered if at the ABC because they still can't just be summarily sacked.
Actually, the only firebrand Lefty journos I can think of are David Marr and Mungo Maccallum, and they are just as likely to skewer the ALP as any Right Wing Shock Jock/Yellow Journalist.
Cecily · April 3, 2011 at 12:37 PM
I'm reading 'Flat Earth News' after seeing your reference to it here. So glad I found your blog and that book. They help explain my complete disaffection with the media. I have a little quandary now though – to watch/read the news or not. If it isn't really the news, then I'm not really missing the news if I avoid it, but I feel like I am, so I still watch/read it… in a detached manner with a jaundiced eye!
Kevin Rennie · April 3, 2011 at 12:52 PM
I often ignore the Insiders these days because of the credibility and exposure its gives Bolt. Today's installment underlined this when he repeatedly bullied the other participants and MC Barrie Cassidy. He was allowed to interrupt, hector and hold centre stage. Does the ABC really think this is about informed discussion or just ratings?
Henri Bunsen · April 3, 2011 at 12:56 PM
I wish I'd said that, Mr Denmore.
Anonymous · April 3, 2011 at 4:40 PM
Completely agree. Andrew Bolt has no place on the ABC. The slurs, the deliberate misinformation, the persecution complex, the bullying, the same old same old partisan views repeated over and over….This is not a left vs right thing. I'm quite happy for Andrew Bolt to be a conservative mouthpiece. But his style of 'journalism' belongs in the tabloids and on shock jock talk back radio stations, NOT on the ABC and certainly not on any program that seeks credibility. @Old_Skool72
Pip · April 3, 2011 at 6:12 PM
I used to think Andrew Bolt was pretending to be a grandiose paranoic, now I think he is.
David · April 4, 2011 at 12:59 AM
What's happening at the ABC is very interesting. Are they gaining any extra audience by becoming News Lite?
David Irving (no relation) · April 4, 2011 at 2:50 AM
How amusing that Planet has a Wikipaedia page, Mr Denmore.
I'm a bit disturbed to find out that she comes from Adelaide, though. On behalf of my city, I apologise to the rest of Australia. We didn't mean to do it.
Anonymous · April 4, 2011 at 5:38 AM
Bravo, again Mr D
One of the best things about Saturdays that I really miss badly, is the absence these days of the fulminations of Alan Ramsey in the SMH.
Why don't the ABC see if he would be interested in the gig on Insiders? A perfect replacement for the grossly inaccurate, infuriatingly conceited and relentless Right Wing proselytiser and provocateur, Bolt
Unless my recall is totally fried, Ramsey was a dynamic demolisher of both political stripes and trotted out anecdotes and facts to support his case and illustrate bullshit, cant and hypocrisy. OK, he hated Howard but that was no sin at all and at least he fully justified this loathing on numerous entertaining occasions.
Perhaps he would consent to this part-time job and please La Gillard by working on in his retirement too?
Anonymous · April 4, 2011 at 6:17 AM
Alan Ramsey is too “balanced” for Their ABC.
Anonymous · April 4, 2011 at 7:45 AM
Great article.
This post also enlightened me to the “Outrage Porn” that the media loves to peddle
“And, as with all vices, vast and lucrative industries are ready to supply the necessary material. It sometimes seems as if most of the news consists of outrage porn, selected specifically to pander to our impulses to judge and punish and get us all riled up with righteous indignation.”
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/isnt-it-outrageous/
Steerpike · April 4, 2011 at 9:18 AM
The media are currently trading what would have been their greatest online asset, trust, for short term gains in the form of page views.
Every 'net citizen knows the term “don't feed the trolls” and is generally very adept at being able to spot them and respond accordingly. This is why trust is such an important online commodity. Trolls are more likely to succeed if their have engaged online communities normally and allowed trust to develop before they begin actually trolling.
The media came into the online game with an inherent bonus – the public had years of trust associated with their names and brands. I don't actually believe the media have any idea just how important what they are currently squandering away really is. Just about every single successful online company would sell their souls for even a tiny modicum of the trust the public used to have for professional journalists.
It'll be interesting to see if any of the mainstream media outlets are able to turn it around – personally I doubt it. Too much power in the lure of pageviews.
Anonymous · April 4, 2011 at 1:02 PM
Solution? Don't just bitch about it.
Anonymous · April 4, 2011 at 11:30 PM
Methinks the rot set in in the 1970's with a bloke called Rupert (not the rabbit). I haven't bought a newspaper since that time.
Stop Murdoch · April 7, 2011 at 4:28 AM
“to demonstrate to its political overseers – particularly on the Right – that it delivers sufficient “value for money” to as broad as possible an audience and to show its programming is not a form of upper middle class welfare.”
Disagree with this idea. I believe that Murdoch/Scott are deliberately destroying the ABC. Murdoch is doing the same to the BBC.
The reason for doing this is that quality journalism/objective commentary, if allowed to exist, competes with the rubbish dished up by the likes of Murdoch (and wins hands down!). People really don't want to be fed mindless crap, but if that is all they can get they will accept it.
And by 'compete' I'm not talking in the financial sense, it is a monopoly on the means of propaganda he wants.
Ask anyone in Brisbane what they think of the Courier-Mail and they will tell you it's rubbish, but they buy it because Murdoch has a monopoly on newspapers there and it's the only thing they can get.
I've actually started watching channel 7 and 10 news (saw the cadet scandal the day before the ABC first ran it!!) – the first 15 minutes – and don't bother with ABC or 7:30. It's just too crap.
Happy Mr Scott?