The decision by NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian to limit hers and other ministers’ appearances at the 11am presser is bad for journalists. But it could turn out to be good for journalism.
It challenges the privileges of the craft: the right of the journalistic cat to look at the king, er, premier — and ask the questions, hard and otherwise.
Breaking out of the daily news cycle dictated by rolling state government-controlled press conferences offers an opportunity to break the restraints of access journalism that has led Australia’s media to miss so many of the big stories of disease and pandemic inequity.
All-in press conferences — whether these pandemic times’ televised events or the ever more mundane ministerial affairs that mark the daily round out of Canberra — are a poor tool for accountability. They’re the pretence of access; all theatre using the journalistic audience as a device to be seen on the evening television news with a tight message.
Journalists embrace it as one of the all-too-few opportunities to get answers to hard questions that reveal unknown facts, but their structure and content (and the premier’s control of the mic) meant it was only ever another opportunity for the government’s political messaging.
Premiers have used the conferences to shape the behaviour of their citizens, with months-long discipline: stay locked out in Western Australia and Queensland; locked down in Melbourne’s 2020 wave; get vaccinated in NSW’s 2021 breakout.
Every protagonist needs an antagonist — and that’s where the journos come in. Their questioning attempts to knock the premier off-message, dig out a gotcha moment from the endless round of lockdown-too-hard, lockdown-too-soft finger pointing which, jujitsu style, the premier turns back as talking point.
The only stumble seems to have been the admission by NSW’s Deputy Premier John Barilaro to a regional media briefing that the hard curfew in the local government areas of concern was driven by media bullying. Embarrassing? Sure. But for whom?
By making the media the counterpoint, premiers have been able to sideline both real accountability and the media. Exhibit one: the slide of the Herald Sun as Melbourne’s dominant voice in part due to its unrelenting search for a political scalp over the breach of hotel quarantine.
Since early August, Berejiklian has attempted to shift the press conference narrative from fear (“national emergency!”) to hope (“6 million jabs!”), marked with more nurses, fewer police. She seems to think this is good behavioural psychology, encouraging people to endure lockdown for a little longer and get vaccinated a little sooner.
Now she’s laying the groundwork for the post-lockdown political landscape with the 70% roadmap out. But she’s finding the Sydney media is reluctant to let go of the catastrophised narrative of rising cases and overwhelmed hospitals. She’s also recognised that the journalists are getting bored with repetition and are eager to talk about something else, like… maybe ICAC.
The solution? Lower the profile of the 11am presser by limiting the central character to occasional guest appearances.
No wonder journalists feel used.
Sydney’s media has never seemed to like Berejiklian (some of it, perhaps, for good reason). As a women, she can’t even rely on News Corp — it would be much happier with her more acceptably male Treasurer Dominic Perrottet.
The presser reset is an opportunity, too, for the media to reset on pandemic coverage. The centring of political leaders has made COVID-19 a political story rather than the social and economic story that most people are living. The narrow policy differences between states and parties has seen reporting spiral into an accountability of process rather than policy.
“Why didn’t minister Hunt meet with Pfizer?” Not: “What concessions should governments make to accommodate the commercial interests of big pharma?”
Or: “Did NSW get ‘secret’ vaccines?” Not: “What’s the right mix of need and per capita distribution of a constrained resource?”
This has hurt Prime Minister Scott Morrison (“hose-holding” is not his strong suit) and strengthened the premiers who control the doing part of the country’s public health infrastructure.
Now, as the pandemic debate shifts from lockdown and lockout, journalism can keep up by turning the lens from politics to a reporting that centres where people are, with issues like vaccine equity and finding out what’s likely to pass for post-COVID normality.
What do you think about Berejiklian abandoning daily press conferences? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name if you would like to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say column. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
Gladys only showed up today because the Labor leader Chris Minns called a presser for 11am. She knew Chris would bag her decision to cancel her pressers, so she promptly buckled under the pressure. Well played NSW Labor.
Yes good strategy and as she had opted to go into hiding and the press were left with just a Labor presser, the churnalists had no choice
Read this yet?
Runaway Gladys
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has a lot more than ICAC to be worried about.
She is responsible for Australia’s worst COVID outbreak, she has allowed it to spread into Indigenous communities, and the capacity of the NSW health system to cope with her reopening plan raises major questions — questions she won’t have to face every day in her quest to avoid accountability.
But there are other ways to subject oneself to scrutiny beyond participating in the ritual of the media conference, writes Bernard Keane.
Pity FEDERAL LABOR NOT SO SHARP. Scotty gets a free run because Albo wont stop hiding. At least Minns presents an oppo face to Gladys. Well presented and coherent.
With the excellent talent in Fed Labor, why do they let Albo say nothing. imagine if Abbot was oppo leader – he’d be drawing blood from Morisson every day. How about Tanya, Kristina, Penny, or Chalmers, get a front spokesperson airing??
Labor are trying a different tactic after losing the last election. I think Fed Labor are relying on $cotty and cohorts to bury themselves (very risky but it is happening). The problem though is that the msm and big business run a protection racket for the Coalition. They choose to ignore the malfeasance within the government, the scandals, the rorts, the funnelling of taxpayers $$$ to Murdoch/big business/donors because they reap the reward…$$$.
Is it any wonder $cotty is dragging his feet in establishing a National Integrity Commission (my preference because of the letters NIC, how could anyone resist it?). He knows his government would keep the NIC busy for decades (allegedly). This dirty government must be thrown out, hopefully by a large margin.
Such a shame churnalists can’t continue to do their outstandingly poor job and ask Killer about this
ABC:
contact tracers discovered on June 24 they had missed a number of party guests who spent at least five days in the community after being exposed to COVID-19.
The response is at odds with comments from the Minister and Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant to the parliamentary inquiry into the management of the pandemic last month.
authorities first became aware of the party on June 21.Dr Chant told the inquiry that, on June 25, “It was unknown at the time that there was not containment of the West Hoxton party”, even though the crisis was discovered a day earlier.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian, Mr Hazzard and Dr Chant have repeatedly refused to say whether the Chief Health Officer had advised that Sydney should lock down sooner.
However, Dr Chant last month told the inquiry that “the key issue” in discussions with Mr Hazzard about a potential lockdown was whether the West Hoxton cluster was contained.
She described it as “the seeding event in south-western Sydney … that led to the lockdown”.
In her [last] media conference to Berejiklian refused to say when she first knew that the West Hoxton cluster was not contained.
And now she doesn’t have to worry about anything other than signing off on the next property development for maates, and rewriting history to hide her outstanding corruption and greed.
Don’t really agree. The pressers have revealed to the public just how much most of the media also plays the game of spin and counter-spin and how under-prepared they are. If you want to ask questions that create accountability about policy you need good knowledge of the policy, a critical mind and quick thinking. This is not common in the press, who have mostly been sent out to pursue narratives dictated by their editors with an eye to commercial imperatives, gathering eyeballs. Richard Willingham and Raph Epstein are two examples who do display these skills and having regular daily access to politicians works for their audience. Notably they don’t work for the commercial media.
That, deprived of the daily pressers, journalists will go out and do what you describe seems unlikely. Most media don’t have the resources to devote time, editors don’t want it and most hacks apparently lack the skills.
Well summed up, the possibility of the churnos doing their job due to an absence of Killer Gladys is almost zero, they are all beholden to the arm of the Murdoch/Sotkes/Costello Coalition media machine
And don’t forget Bruce Gordon of WIN. Gordon holds a 50% share in the NRL St George Illawarra Dragons club through WIN Corporation.
Gordon now lives in Bermuda with additional residences in Sydney and Monaco.
Tax haven heavens.
In 2021, the AFR assessed Gordon’s net worth at A$870 million.
Gordon is one of eleven living Australians who have appeared on every Rich List since it was first published in 1984.
A sound Liberal man.
https://www.michaelwest.com.au/bruce-gordon-and-win-corporation/
Can’t beat a quality Liberal
Gordon became a business associate and close friend to Italy’s longest-serving post-war president Silvio Berlusconi.
With events that transpired surrounding Berlusconi’s family holding company Fininvest, Gordon was subsequently linked to the Italian media and political figure’s arrest in 2013.
Agree, as it becomes more about providing fresh, free and often monotonous political PR content for legacy media of leaders, delivering sermons to rusted on viewers at home.
Like the appalling Q&A or any other panel or live discussion, many issues cannot be presented well nor the knowledge aggregated, if at all, through verbal discussion masquerading as analysis conducted by PR and/or political types (but useful to deflect from or discredit climate science); infotainment.
The written word is much more useful but threatening to those avoiding science, strategy, substance etc. Maybe a pool of suitable journalists can avoid the face to face persuasion of e.g. the PM by demanding written responses to questions and issues.
Absolutely spot on re the dearth (hi, grundle!) of “…good knowledge of the policy, a critical mind and quick thinking…” among churnalists.
Your last sentence is so depressingly true.
Maybe a journalist could ask why South Australia and Tasmania aren’t getting hammered for doing EXACTLY what Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia do? For the love of god, Crikey, couldn’t you ask these questions? I like to think that you are above the rest … I have the utmost respect for you, but sometimes you really let me down.
Crikey may not be as readily acceptable in pressers as the epsilon churnos who work for the Coalition in the various media houses. Doesn’t mean you get to ask a question even if you get to front up.
Interesting – I live on NSW South Coast (Eden-Monaro) but my wife and I came to Hobart for a family funeral 10 weeks ago (before the lockdown) and still here. My car is in Melbourne. We have no intention of leaving restriction-free Tasmania for a while yet. My sister is visiting Hobart from Perth and said while Morrison and Gladys keep on about needing to live WITH Covid, the attitude in WA is the same as here in Tas, which is that we prefer to live WITHOUT it, thank you very much. She reckons the LNP is toast in Perth.
How about adding: “Why was the 2nd half of the extra allocation to NSW kept secret?”