If you were wondering whether Australia’s media has learnt anything from the last election, these past few days have given us the answer: no. No, they have not.
Take Sunday night’s television news: Albanese following up Friday’s long-awaited climate change policy with an education offering, wrapped in a soft campaign launch for “A better future”; Morrison fanboying racing cars in Bathurst, stumbling over his “windscreen not rear-view mirror” talking point for the day.
Wondering which got the best coverage? Don’t. If you’ve been paying attention, you already know — it was Morrison visuals all the way down, the 2019 election action man redux, subtweeting electrical vehicles with the roar of internal combustion on the way through.
Or take the media’s eagerness over the weekend to jump on board with the anonymous sources leaking the “Berejiklian for Warringah” stunt, trampling over concerns about the Coalition’s women’s issues which just last Friday threatened to become this summer’s no-hose-holding moment.
It’s not the fault of individual journalists in Australia’s political press corps. They churned out plenty of strong reporting and analysis of Labor’s climate plans. The Morrison government’s entire “women’s problem” came out of the deep digging by individual reporters over the past 18 months.
And as Morrison himself apparently admitted to new Nine CEO MIke Sneesby, the company’s analysts and commentators are hurting him — and he’s “grumpy, not furious” about it. He shouldn’t worry. Most of this commentary is safely hidden behind paywalls, well away from his target audience.
No, it’s not so much the reporters. It’s the business model.
We’ve long understood that, when it comes to politics, the financial imperative of drawing audiences means news media have to be as entertaining as they are useful, as the late Anthony Downs (he died just two months ago) wrote in his still-essential 1956 text, An Economic Theory of Democracy.
Trouble is, in the age of viral memes and clickbait, business survival has driven the ad-supported mass media (the media that most voters see) to prioritise the giggling entertaining moment over the responsibility to give voters (that’s us!) the useful information they need. It substitutes a patchwork of populist imagery, punchy media grabs and gotcha questioning for the contest of policy-driven ideas that is the (theoretical, at least) purpose of news media in a democratic society.
Let’s be honest: a deliberately dorky middle-aged man hanging on for dear life as a speeding car rollercoasters around Bathurst’s Panorama circuit is far more visually entertaining — funny, even — than, say, Albanese’s sober presentation of policy (his schmick new glasses notwithstanding!). But unless you’re prepared to decode the semiotics of it all, its utility to voters is approximately — um, add one, carry the two — nil.
Traditional journalistic practice struggles. “Both sides-ism” is hammered in so deep that Australia’s media are just not equipped to report this sort of asymmetric politics.
The Washington Post last week brought data analytics to the job in a “sentiment analysis” of more than 200,000 reports from 65 news websites to compare the media’s treatment of Biden and Trump when each was president. Shockingly, they found that Trump was both more reported and reported more favourably than Biden.
The right wing media (like the Murdochs’ New York Post) were predictably negative. But so, too, were the non-aligned media like Politico and even progressive voices like HuffPost and Salon.
Analysing the outcome, senior columnist Dana Milbank pointed to asymmetry: “Biden governs under traditional norms, while Republicans run a shocking campaign to delegitimise him with one fabricated charge after another.”
Translated to Australia: Albanese (and Shorten in the 2019 campaign before him) have to figure out how to run a traditional (albeit small-target) campaign against the unashamedly “pants on fire” Liberal and National Parties. And the media need to figure out how to report that fairly in the public interest.
Milbank points to two more problematic reactions: “Perhaps journalists, pressured by Trump’s complaints about the press, pulled punches. Perhaps media outlets, after losing the readership and viewership Trump brought, think tough coverage will generate interest.”
Same, again, in Australia. The conservatives work the refs harder than Labor (as Morrison did on Sneesby last week). And they’ve got an added weapon: they know they can rely on News Corp to work over the rest of the news media on their behalf.
Labor has better policies, they’re better economic managers, they try to govern for the people, they seek to unite. Labor has to fight 95% msm to be heard. Hardly fair.
Scotty seeks to divide to country whilst fattening the Coalition and big business coffers. Msm laud them as if they are outstanding contributors to democracy when in actual fact they are destroying it.
Which goes to show the lack of integrity in the MSM in not being unbiased in their reporting, and that has become the case sonce Howard allowed media to hold so many outlets that only money could buy, plus the desperate attempts to kill off the ABC by a thousand cuts. God help us if this bunch of heartless grubs ein again, because then Australia loses big time.
A Royal Commission examining Australia’s media would be beneficial. It is way too partisan as it is.
Royal Commissions have their uses. The best is that they shine a light on appalling behaviour and practices and reveal to ordinary Australians the abuses that are allowed to occur, many in plain sight.
The problem is that there is no compulsion for governments to implement the carefully considered recommendations that each RC makes. Child sexual abuse? extortionate banking practices? mismanagement of aged care residents? terrible treatment of people with disabilities? PHHHHT – not a cracker.
A Royal Commission isn’t required. Just legislate that they must comply with their own Code of Ethics and give the MEAA the power and obligation to penalize them for breaches:
https://www.meaa.org/meaa-media/code-of-ethics/
I think you’re correct GH, that’s precisely why I think they need to go back to old school tactics. Be seen at the markets, at fairs, at festivals, at the parks, at the beaches, at uni campuses. Be where the people are. Allow discourse, even argument to occur. The current do almost nothing, don’t scare the horses policies coupled with ‘non confrontational’ style politicking could well deliver Scomo another miracle…
Not to mention that it is the Coalition which is the party fixated on “the rear-view mirror”. LOL.
“better economic managers”. That phrase gripes me every time I see or hear it.
It is the biggest Myth in Australia’s Politics.
But the Coalition gets away with it, and the main stream Media do not pull them up on it.
It seems Morrison, and the rest of the Coalition can say whatever they like, making outrageous claims, but the Main stream Media is either too scared, or too lazy to call them out.
Meanwhile in the Nine SMH/Age yesterday, was an article by Janine Perrett (who also turns up in Crikey) attempting, spectacularly unsuccessfully, to make a tenuous connection between Berejiklian’s appearance at ICAC as the subject of an investigation with Keneally’s appearance as a witness. In her excitement, she overlooked that NSW Deputy Premier Stuart Ayres had also appeared as a witness.
Listening to David Lipson on PM yesterday ask the interviewee if the media should point out the errors in a person’s message, or just report what the person had said. (similar to that).
Would Richard Carleton even get a job today?
NOPE!
In 1949 I was 10 years old, and 1949 was the date of the pivotal election that saw the the defeat of Mr.Chifley, arguably our greatest prime minister and his replacement being the recycled UAP hack, Robert Gordon Menzies.What i do remember after all these years was a political ad for the Tories.It fearured a baby sitting on a rug with a ball and chain around their ankle, and the accompanying message was “Do you want your childen to grow up under socialism?”Unfortunately, crass though it was, it worked a treat.The Tory press won then and they will probably win again.I have lost all faith in the majority of my fellow citizens.
My caption to his photoshoot going around Bathurst – Scott Morrison: always the passenger, never the driver.
That’s because he doesn’t know the track or were it goes, and he doesn’t have a clue how to drive. Sadly though, he may still win.