There’s been a quick consensus take on the federal election: Australians have voted for a more civilised, less combative, post-conflict politics. From climate wars to (largely imported) culture wars, Saturday’s vote was emphatic: “Yeah, nah.”
But what about our conflict-addicted news media, whose model is built around news that promotes the fisticuffs of politics? Are they ready to move on? Doesn’t look like it. Rather, since Saturday night, the political press corp has been struggling to keep up with the Mr Joneses: sure, they might know something’s happening, but they don’t know what it is.
The political media are still deep in denial over their spectacular campaign failure, despite there probably never having been an election where what the media thought mattered (gotcha, prime ministerial stunts, budget deficits) turned out to be so disconnected from what actually mattered to the voters.
Worse, as the audience seized the power delivered by social media to yell back, to demand something better, Australia’s media sneered with a “you just don’t understand” arrogance. Even the morning after the electoral rebuke, the Insiders panel — all of them among the best of the bunch — were still head-noddingly insisting that Albanese’s week-one “gaffe” had made a difference.
They were able to shift seamlessly from understanding the Fowler demonstration, that candidates can no longer be foisted on a reluctant community, to a round of ruminations about whether there was some electorate via which a defeated Frydenberg could be parachuted back into Parliament. (Umm, no. There isn’t.)
Look back over the past six weeks of reporting (if you can bear it): it’s difficult to think of a greater institutional failure in Australian public life matched with such truculent defensiveness, a refusal to spend even a moment on self-reflection.
As late as Friday, the SMH/Age’s David Crowe (one of the few political writers who had a good campaign overall) tweeted: “Sure, the shouting has been over the top on some days. But I’ve got no time for all the bile directed at the press pack here.”
Here’s an idea: let’s axe the packs. The daily leader stunts to feed moving images and grabs into the evening news contribute absolutely nothing for voters trying to grapple with the issues that matter to them. Those stunts enable the parties to control the agenda in their own interests.
It frustrates our audience and makes journalists less popular. Just look at last week: the testier Albanese got — the more he made the pack the enemy — the better he rated.
News Corp seems to have already decided how it will approach the new post-conflict political order: with more conflict, not less. No surprise — it’s their business model, after all. It reckons that with independent teals, Greens and Labor reds, they’ll be able to paint a garish horror show for its pay-walled (and declining) grumpy old men demographic.
Time, then, for the rest of the news media to recognise that there’s now precious little useful news in News Corp.
At the same time, traditional news media needs to recognise that there’s a lot more to news than the 20th-century mediums of free-to-air TV, radio and the old mastheads. Plenty of the most interesting work (including in this past election) is being produced in new digital media (including *cough* here at Crikey). The critiques and debates in social media can be bracing, but it’s where the debate is happening. Engage or be left behind.
It’s time to rethink just what the media ecosystem is today.
While we’re at it, time to rethink some of the tired formats, including Insiders with its horse-race focus. We saw some signs of a better approach in some of the 7.30 special reports or from the ABC’s regional correspondents. Let’s move on from the metaphorical finger-in-the-chest interrupting aggression of the standard political interview (as, not for the first time, Tracy Grimshaw’s more sophisticated technique revealed last week).
And time to rethink just what makes “news”. Public integrity, treatment of women, diversity and aged care were all pushed onto the public agenda by journalists over the past term — then forgotten as soon as the election kicked off.
Let’s keep hold of what matters — such as the climate emergency — and shake off the lazy both-sides approach that has powered the climate wars (and maybe recognise that the “economy” is not the same thing as “debt and deficits”).
And one last thing: the next billionaire who comes knocking with offers to buy news media credibility with conspiracy-laden front-page ads? Let’s send him packing, too.
The main alternative to our oligarchs’ media is the ABC. Now is the time to legislate a formula that will support the ABC as the public broadcaster even when its criticisms rile the government of the day. Similarly, Radio Australia and their international network of journalists need legislated certainty, so it can survive even when it is criticising governments Canberra is trying to woo.
yes please
Completely independent funding is the only way. Politicians cannot be trusted when public money is involved. Climate change,federal integrity, womens rights and political donations were the important issues. Get those right and many other important issues can be decently and democratically perused.
I was continually astonished that as soon as the campaign started it was if the last 3 yrs of lies, corruption, rorting, stacking of tribunals with mates, robodebt etc never happened. Journos seemed to think both major parties started off as equals and photo ops. gotchas , who won the day etc was all that mattered. A very poor display with just a few exceptions.
Me too.
And they overlooked Morrison’s ‘gotchas’ as well. The campaign coverage by the media, broadly speaking, was embarrassing and woeful – superficial, aggressive, and hopelessly partisan. An embarrassing pack of circling hyenas acting on orders.
With plenty of asides about Morrison’s strength as a superior campaigner (=code for BS-artist).
Agreed. We have had years of the Coalition not being held to account for the appalling corruption and broken promises. I do blame Murdoch and the ABC has been running scared. The Coalition have not concealed their desire to cow our national broadcaster——- through death by a thousand cuts.
Agree absolutely which made me switch off reporting. It is blindly obvious Australia ‘s press has been sequestered by the right. But 66% off Australians said nuh! The dumbed down rhetoric and reporting is completout of step with the times. The press too seem to have forgotten the educated females are faster becoming a major force.
The ABC TV coverage on Saturday night was pretty pedestrian and only memorable for the bad stuff. When Leigh Sales wanted to take Tanya Plibersek on over Mediscare from 2016, I could only wonder why she didn’t go back further to “faceless men” and “reds under the bed”.
ABC Breakfast show giving equivalence to Murodoch’s tabloids and the Age/SMH, while ignoring The New Daily and other on-line publications badly skews the national conversation.
Sales and Probyn were as ordinary as I expected them to be. Usefully, Speers was given a role he was reasonably good at and where the opportunities for interrupting were strictly limited. Bridget Brennan was underused.
Yes that section of ABC morning reporting has become irrelevant no given the staunch support of LNP by both Murdoch and 9 (Costello)
Arguing with Tanya Plibersek about mediscare from two elections ago was astonishing, only surpassed by Annabelle Crabbe’s long winded questions to candidates in noisy rooms.
Strange that Leigh Sales overlooked the more recent LNP’s ‘Death Tax’ scare campaign in the 2019 election. This election, on the LNP’s Brisbane leaflet, it was “Albanese has supported an Inheritance Tax”. I guess it just depends where the ABC news producers prefer to look. The LNP has bludgeoned them beyond recognition.
The Murdoch ‘stenographers’ must be pretty miserable working in a profession for which they have such little respect
That would require their having some self awareness, or at least integrity, which would preclude working there at all.
Let’s hope the Labor committee formed to consider ideas on how Murdoch can be nobbled presents it’s solutions soon.
leaving aside the appalling behaviour of the press pack at Albo pressers, consider the dreadful behaviour of Leigh Sales. During Albo’s last apppearance she reeled off a list of his gaffes and stunningly included what she defined as a mistake: the false claim that he first proposed a 5.1% wage increase to all workers which he later walked back to minimum wage workers only. She insisted over Albo’s protestations that she was right and when he at length set the record straight she did not blink or aopologise. Then on election night she ran the “the Mediscare campaign was lie” at Tanya P whose attempt at an answer was muffled by leigh Sales heckling and sniping. Awful behaviour.
I have always considered ABC News and Current Affairs to be more serious than commercial and sensationalist shows like A Current Affair – but Tracy Grimshaw outclassed Leigh Sales hands down when it came to the Morrison interviews.
…. The Sales Pitch – She gets Albanese in gives him the rounds of her kitchen : while Morrison is off “Scott Free”.
To that one-sided serve of “Mediscare” ordure :- when has she ever raised the scare campaign waged about the same time (by her lionised Turnbull plus Schemo and Dutton et al) re “The decimating effects of Labor’s negative gearing policy on home values and the national economy” – while they were sitting on Finance modelling that said was BS, it was just hyperventilated crap. That any such “effects’ would be miniscule and passing.