Over the past week journalists have been out on Twitter arguing with their audience about the job they’re doing at COVID-19 press conferences: “It’s accountability!” they declare. “It’s a political hit job,” Dan-stans reply. It set the hashtag “#Thisisnotjournalism” trending over the weekend.
It’s a clash of wants: the community wants to know what the lockdowns mean for it and journalists want the story. Maybe both matter.
The problem? Pressers have gone post-modern, keeping only the shell of accountability. Journalists are no longer the audience — they’re part of the show: the chorus classic Greek drama, filling out the stage, amplifying and clarifying the hero’s words.
Politicians from Scott Morrison to Daniel Andrews aren’t talking to journalists. They’re seizing the screen, talking direct to the community, live streaming into a 24-hour news environment.
Press conferences and briefings have always been more public relations than political accountability, shaped by the media of their time. The press conference from Bob Hawke to John Howard had its own theatre, designed for the demands of nightly television news. It dragged big policy announcements off the stage of parliament and on to the small screen.
Still, the journalists mattered. They were the channel of delivery for the message. They had to be accommodated, respected.
It meshed those announcements with the insider press briefings, brought to Canberra politics by wartime leader John Curtin. Think of it as an early Team Australia moment, a device for bringing the gallery’s newspaper reporters into the tent with shared information.
The all-in background briefings in Canberra were smashed up in the late ’60s by the emerging gallery stars of the late 20th century. Nation Review’s Mungo MacCallum declined to attend, freeing himself from confidentiality conventions when other journalists told him what he’d missed.
Alan Ramsay (then at The Australian) destroyed its conceit, shouting “You liar!” at prime minister John Gorton from the parliamentary gallery when Gorton contradicted a background briefing.
The expansion of long-form interview programs in the 1980s — from Laurie Oakes on Nine’s Sunday or Kerry O’Brien’s Lateline — empowered (or forced) leaders like Paul Keating and Howard to conduct their once-were-background briefings out in the open, until the format became tainted by the relentless hunt for the gotcha moment on one side and politicians’ “media training” on the other.
Any pretence at background was destroyed when Keating’s off-the-record “Placido Domingo” speech at the 1990 press gallery Christmas party was publicly reshaped into his leadership challenge.
During last summer’s bushfires and now with COVID-19, premiers are reverting to the press conference as briefing — direct to their audience.
They’re adopting the style popularised by former Queensland premier Anna Bligh during the 2011 floods, positioning themselves as the channel between the experts and the community, making themselves the go-to for advice and information.
The journalistic chorus is expected to fill out the room, to clarify if necessary, and to keep out of the way.
Meanwhile, with the second coronavirus wave in Victoria, journalists want a life-imitates-art accountability, through exhaustion if necessary.
Australian politicians are cautious here: under questioning about her 1990s legal work for the AWU, Julia Gillard exhausted the reporters, but the questions carried all the way through to the subsequent trade union royal commission.
No wonder Morrison prefers to lean on his standard press conference dismissals, from “on-water matters” through to “just gossip”.
As with all political theatre, Donald Trump has hurried us on to the reality-TV conclusion. He hand-picks his own chorus, starting with Fox News before moving on to the new right-wing kid in the room, One America News Network.
Last week he went all the way, inviting members of his Bedminster golf club into the room who alternately cheered and booed his exchange with reporters.
America’s press pool once again found itself elevated to the antagonist in the Trump populist drama, positioned where Trump wants it: the enemy of the people.
In briefing style pressers, appropriate in the current situation, the theatrical “speaking-to-the-people” is OK by me, but the questions need to be audible and the questioners need to be seen.
Secondly, the journalists need to be disciplined in their approach. They are there as surrogates for the community, not as competitive scavengers for click-bait gotcha moments.
It is a pity a leak-proof, 10 minute meeting of journalists is not possible, after the briefing but before questions, to determine who is going to ask what and to increase the chance of effective follow up.
So the questions become a proper second act of the spectacle. That’s only fair.
> ” They are there as surrogates for the community”
I suggest ‘delegates’ for the community but the click-bait is what affects the ratings so we are stuck, once again, and I suggest : permanently, with the lowest common multiple Keith.
A jab in the arm in regard to the education system where high school is available only having acquired a standard (of 50 years ago) in literacy and numeracy would be useful but given that high schools are glorified creches no improvement in standards and be anticipated there.
The questioners not only need to be seen and heard, but they need to identify who they are and who they work for.
Raf Epstein on ABC Melbourne explained that the media outlets can no longer afford to send a sound recordist as well as a reporter, hence the questions can’t be heard.
‘Dan-stans’?
Calling your readership names is hardly the gold standard in professional journalism.
” The problem? Pressers have gone post-modern, keeping only the shell of accountability. Journalists are no longer the audience — they’re part of the show: the chorus classic Greek drama, filling out the stage, amplifying and clarifying the hero’s words.”
Oooh, yes indeed. More of this stuff please, Cky. Damn ripper article.
Alistair Cooke made similar and numerous remarks from about the time of Reagan. As to political duplicity and mendacity of the press (leaving the politicians to one side) it was better under Nixon than Clinton.
Now we have the accepted mode of ‘post truth’. As to ScoMo, Trump communicates directly with his audience so why not Trump’s mate?
I suggest that it is somewhat serious for the community (civilisation?) when the discourse of the nation is conducted on Twitter and similar but, in the main, the media have only themselves to blame for the opportunism that was pounded into sensationalism.
Oh come on. Have you actually watched a Dan Andrews daily briefing? He literally stands on stage calling out “any more?” until the journos have literally run out of questions. If they can’t lay a glove on him (and when did that become the measure of journalistic success – heat not light?) then that’s their look out not his.
Agree.
Yep. I agree
If people fancy fair dinkum ‘messaging’ of consequence, Andrews today;
‘We have taken over the running of another 3 Aged Care homes today, because people in those homes deserve a better quality of care’.
The Fed’s ‘management’ of Aged Care demanded a response, and it got one.
The rest is just noise.
And why weren’t the Feds doing the taking over, it is their bailiwick?
Daniel Andrew’s patience is exemplary. As hard as the Journalist go at him, asking the same question over and over in slightly different formats because they don’t like the original answer, he keeps his cool. A lot of the Journalists are there purely for a “Gotcha” moment.
And when their reports are listed in their respective publications, the stories are sensationalized.
A typical example is where Daniel Andrews will answer a question with “I’ll get back to you on that”, or “I can’t answer that because it’s not in my area”, the newspaper report comes out with “Andrews refuses to answer questions”.
Journalists standing in the community has virtually hit rock bottom because of their antics.
I’d say so called “journalists” (those that aren’t interested in the story or providing information, just in gotcha’s and hunting for blood) are the ones that are diminishing journalism.
At it sucks, cause not all journalist suck, but they are a stain on those who do wonderful work. You only have to look at Rick Morton’s live tweeting of the RC into age care.
Whilst Margaret Simons had a diatribe about how the sausage was made and they were just doing their job, how dare the audience criticise those journo’s, to her credit she also later conveyed she had gotten feedback from “fellow” journo’s letting her know that live conferences were hard cause the bosses were watching and telling them what to ask. Essentially confirming what the public suspected all along – journo’s doing the bidding of partisan media barons.
To quote the great John Pilger, this week;
“Journalism is basically doing your best to keep the record straight”.
Pity.
It is interesting to compare the reportage of major Court trials as an adjunct to the perceived social (or rather inflicted) social correctness of the reporter. Having made that point some of the Judiciary do not seem able to resist the temptation of a sermon.
Nothing that I have read in the few hours regarding Palmer has referred to the evidence presented but we have been ‘threatened’, inter alia, with the risk of ‘bankruptcy’ of a State. A comment regarding the saga of Pell could be included. The reportage was not about evidence there either.
Perhaps it is a simple case of sentiment and not facts that sell.