Former Finance Minister and Labor veteran Lindsay Tanner, who left politics at the last election, has written a scathing critique of modern political journalism and political practice Sideshow: Dumbing Down Democracy.
It takes aim at the Press Gallery, media companies, politicians and even voters themselves in a discussion of why the media and politicians seem caught up in a cycle of trivialisation and spin. Bernard Keane recently caught up with Mr Tanner to discuss his argument.
[podcast]https://uat.crikey.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Crikey-interviews-Lindsay-Tanner.mp3[/podcast]
Ahh The voice of sanity, recalling a better time where politicians , (with the appropriate presence and ability), bullied the press, made the issues and had their own agendas, instead of msm cutting, primping and gutting the message to make it fit into the entertainment that parades as “the 6pm news”.
Why have pollies at all if the spin doctors are the teat of response and direction? This is how both parties have been able to ignore their members and groom gormless, non talking heads that will shut up and let the spin bullies run the show. At least the quality of the current debates would have been better if rudd and turnbull were running the show. Their ability to speak their mind confused the gormless on both sides, so they sacked them, and we are left with mono syballic automatons.
The Spin cycle is here to stay unfortunately. – Rudd perfected it, Gillard is honing it, Swan thinks he is good at it.
@Astro, your posts are as always predictably biased and often just too stupid! Please go away and don’t waste this space! Thanks!
@goCOMsys
You must be naive if you can’t see the spin machine working harder than we have even seen in Australian Federal politics.
Tanner admitted it, so did Latham and so did Bruce Hawker, who himself at Hawker Brittain told The Panel if the spin / media cycle.
They even caught Swan with a shot of the Spin sheet in front of him.
I did the Spin Selling course in 1998, so I know the concepts and techniques.
@MASKIPPER
I wholeheartedly agree with the complex sentiments Tanner expresses. We have serious problems! However we’d be better off without the always uninformed, simplistic and more often than not plain stupid comments of types like “ASTRO”! (short for ASTROlogy, I wonder?)