How can the fourth estate be a truly independent observer of government when some of its leading practitioners have become partners or spruikers of the same government?
Over recent weeks that question has assumed real currency as a growing number of senior Australian media operatives have been cosying up to the Rudd government in a way that conjures potential for conflict, compromise or at least bad optics.
Take ABC journalist Geraldine Doogue. Surely her reputation for vigorous independence can only be harmed by delivering these words in thanking Kevin Rudd for his keynote speech at the Sydney Institute’s annual dinner last week (complete with a salute):
I do hope that you continue to enjoy your time as Prime Minister, and enjoy bringing us along with you. And may I thank you in that eloquent way you immortalised recently … Prime Minister, we salute you!
None of the media heavyweights who attended the weekend Ideas Summit used words or gestures that appeared to be quite as obsequious as those of Geraldine Doogue, but the highly visible presence of the top brass from News Limited, Fairfax, Seven and the ABC could easily be construed as a blurring the boundaries between the reported and the reporters. Not to mention the editors of The Monthly and the Griffith Review, whose support of the Rudd worldview is already established and, after the weekend, even more of a special partnership.
What happens when the same government runs into trouble and deploys its spinners to get good coverage from those media organisations?
What happens the next time a big media company lobbies government to secure more government advertising?
What happens to the adversarial relationship over media policy or broadcasting licences when the big guns who attended and proselytised the Ideas Summit are sitting across the table from the ministers who sat with them at the Summit?
Media’s role is to scrutinise, government’s role is to be scrutinised. Kevin Rudd has got a lot of uber media types just where he wants them.
The relationship of the media to our leaders is nearly always closer than we would care to believe. Glen Milne jumps to mind but I agree with Eric Beecher. The Ruddmaster(PR) has taken it to quite another level. This 2020 gabfest is a particular horror and case in point. It is actually quite sad to hear Geraldine Doogue’s gushing words. It harms her wonderful reputation.
Without doubt nearly all the Canberra Press Gallery acts as if they are the PM’s Press Secretaries. and not independent and questioning scribes. Journalists are human but like “body language” there is a “spoken and written language” that lets out their true feelings and inclinations. An example would be to follow Agenda Sky News for a while and see how the contributing journos perform with leading questions and laudatory remarks about the PM and poor old Brendan gets a snicker. And to an earlier submission let us not forget the “little johnny” that was put on by the gallery. John Howard had a host of vitrolic haters. The PM has a couple of anti journos but they cannot be called haters but that may come. The same thing happened in the US with Hilary getting broadsides and Obama just love from the media. Then it was a comedy programme “Saturday Night Live” that put the record straight.
Yes, it’s been a horror 2 days for real democracy. Why did Rudd snub Button’s funeral? Since when did a blancmange of ideas out of a conference from a dubiously narrow selection, no costings, no govt imprimatur per se, justify blanket free media coverage? Not even Rio 92, Bali 2007 got that. Is there any editorial sense left in this country or is the centre now reformed into ALP Inc? How very stupid of them.God knows I’m into public intellectual life, having infested about every ANU libary getting 2 degrees but this is not real policy development. It might just be the Right like Downer, and the odd Green voter like me, picking holes but it can’t sustain a democracy regardless. The official Green Party themselves have really failed to front the co-option process either and get involved in active critique. Dropped the ball really having been totally ignored themselves.