Peter Dutton is attempting to shut Australian media out of the feel-good bipartisan acceptance of the Uluru Statement from the Heart by locking the opposition into rejecting the Indigenous Voice to Parliament. And in trying to make it party-political, he’s trapping the media to “both-sides” the debate along the fissures of the traditional Labor-Liberal divide.
It’s time, says US journalist Wesley Lowery in a key essay in Columbia Journalism Review, to abandon “performative neutrality, paint-by-the-numbers balance, and thoughtless deference to government officials”.
The opposition leader’s strategy insists the media cover the Voice as politics as usual, rather than recognise it as a moment to affirm a critical national project that meets the demands of a multicultural — indeed, multiracial — democracy.
In an interview with Nine’s Peter FitzSimons on the weekend, ABC Radio National morning presenter Patricia Karvelas — a long-time reporter on the Uluru statement — rose to the bait, saying: “Since Peter Dutton broke what was historically an attempt at bipartisanship, I think this Voice debate now is very partisan, and so I am being a stickler for not taking a position.” It came with a caveat: “I really think my job this year is to call out the lies and say, when appropriate, ‘No, that’s not the case.'”
But the narrow party-political frame of Canberra politics can never be an adequate way of understanding and explaining the offering in the Uluru statement.
Nine columnist Niki Savva put the dilemma bluntly: “While it is not true to say that every Australian who votes No in the Voice referendum is a racist, you can bet your bottom dollar that every racist will vote No.”
The result? Racist memes and tropes becoming centred in the No argument, particularly on social media, with “both sides” reporting of the referendum amplifying and normalising that racism.
In the midst of 2020’s Black Lives Matters protests, Lowery (who had won the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the 2015 protests) shook up the industry with his call for journalism of “moral clarity”.
In this latest essay, he calls out the trap — like Dutton’s muddying the clarity of the Voice — of an “obsessive focus on the minutiae of national politics”. He draws from James Fallows’ famous 1996 essay “Why Americans Hate the Media” to explain how this focus presents “every public issue as if its ‘real’ meaning were political in the meanest and narrowest sense of that term — the attempt by parties and candidates to gain an advantage over their rivals”.
He repeats the call for clarity over moral issues, to resist the coward’s qualifiers like “racially tinged” or “racially charged”. “Justified as “objectivity,” Lowery writes, “they are in fact its distortion.”
Despite what critics (including Lowery’s former editor Martin Baron) have said, he’s not repudiating the journalistic imperative of a truth built on footings of fact. He’s damning journalistic “inoffensiveness” dressed up as objectivity, “necessitated by an advertiser- and audience-based business model”.
The US press, Lowery says, too often continues to see itself as a white product, created by white journalists, based on the sensibilities of white readers and for the benefit of white communities.”
Australia’s 20th-century media (identified in Benedict Anderson’s “imagined communities” as the “print capitalism” central to the rise of nationalism) built the 20th-century settler nationalism project that former prime minister John Howard so successfully co-opted. Now, new Australia — young, diverse, more educated — has moved on from challenging Australia’s traditional settler media to adapt to the post-settler country we’ve stumbled into.
“The mainstream press,” says Lowery, “has been incapable of providing the journalism necessary to best serve and defend multiracial democracy because the mainstream American press has never, in practice, believed in multiracial democracy.”
Too harsh for Australia. Since the 1980s, the Australian media has been a critical — if halting — part of the country’s cultural and social journey. Both Nine and the ABC have been ready to engage with the Voice as the moment when the country’s politics catch up. Even parts of News Corp demonstrate a yearning to get on the right side of history.
Moving forward requires reaching back to journalism’s best values.
Lowery’s advice? “Diversity must be the cornerstone of our profession … We must value truth, democracy, and the equal and fair treatment of all people. We should stand up for the vulnerable — who are not voiceless; rather they are unheard by a society and institutions that refuse to listen — while taking heed that we do no harm.“
Does the Australian media need to change how it covers the Voice debate? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
Where did Australian journalists get this idea that reporting lies and not pushing back at lies is objectivity? It seemed to become a thing with Climate Change discussion ramping up. Was it just a pretense because they couldn’t keep up with the science and then filtered down to reporting more generally?
As for Cuddles Dutton, I suspect the least liked man in the country continuing to behave in the way that makes him the least liked man in the country will turn out to be a plus for the Yes campaign. Only the thugs and racists will be listening to him. Everyone else, whether they decide Yes or No, will turn elsewhere.
Mindless repetition of talking points from “both sides” requires no effort……………
……..pointing out that one of the “sides” arguments consist solely of bullshit requires actually doing something.
The Obersturmbahnfuhrer is the last of his species, squatting lonesome in the desert, howling at the moon.
I’m thinking more and more that ‘objectivity’ has long been weaponized. If you’re in a position where you have to take every blow for every blow you hand out, then any moral or intellectual advantage is immediately neutralized.
By the way, I love the idea of a Cuddles Dutton doll. Perhaps for Christmas, for children on Santa’s naughty list.
Providing it comes with a pack of hatpins and a copy of “Juju for Dummies”………………..
I assumed the doll already came with the hatpins stuffed inside it
I do so hate those “pre-pinned” Juju dolls……………
…….takes all the fun out of it.
Thugs, racists and Queenslanders if the polls are to believed.
Don’t underestimate the power of the thugs and racists of this British Colonial outpost. There are more than you think. They fill my heart with dread.
It is a symptom of Conservative influence over most mainstream media. Everything is political – no facts, just opinions, and opinions are all equally valid.
We’ve witnessed this right wing ‘whataboutery’ or ‘bothsidesism’ with ‘fair & balanced’ for talking points to masquerade as analysis e.g. Australian media (endless) discussion on climate science over decades (delaying tactics), but little action.
Offshore, Russia and their Anglosphere etc. Orwellian disinformation campaigns are based on confected or faux media based analysis to muddy the water on Russia’s imperialist Ukraine invasion; ditto media round the Brexit and Trump campaigns.
We’ve witnessed this right wing ‘whataboutery’ or ‘bothsidesism’ with ‘fair & balanced’ for talking points to masquerade as analysis e.g. media (endless) discussion on climate science over decades (delaying tactics), but little action.
Offshore, Russia and their Anglosphere etc. Orwellian disinformation campaigns are based on confected or faux media based analysis to muddy the water on Russia’s imperialist Ukraine invasion.
The US doesn’t actually really believe in independence. They believe in bipartisan boards etc. I have no problem with reasonable and relevant views being presented by No campaign. I do object to ahistorical claims about the Voice making the Australian Constitution racist. The No case is based on a lie – There has never, ever been a Constitution of Australia that was not racist. The original Races power explicitly gave federal government power to make laws with respect to races, except Aboriginals. Mainly aimed at giving states power to discriminate against First Nations people. The 1967 Referendum just crossed out the except Aboriginals part . The power was never envisioned to be applied to White Australians, only non-White. The idea the Voice somehow makes it racist is just ahistorical nonsense. It has always been racist.There has never been a non-racist Constitution.
There are many good things about Australia’s Constitution, not being racist is not one of them.
I am not much attracted to analysing the media on this issue. I would rather take issue with some of the actual combatants. Most of those on the “no” side” are adopting an old but crude tactic of describing a parallel picture of events and then proceeding to demolish the creature of their own creation as though that demonstrates the flaws of the real issue. It should be recognised as an invalid tactic. If you want to say the world as we know it will come to an end you better produce some actual evidence.
I am voting “yes” because it seems like a good idea to me but also because I am sick of the negativity which pours forth from all the usual suspects. I support Patricia when she says she will call out the lies. That is what the media should do on every issue.
Yes, PK has been doing an excellent job calling out the lies and obfuscation. The John Anderson interview was an absolute train wreck, the most recent Mundine interview I heard was the worst so far, and poor old Barnyard …
They’d be better off sticking to the facts and there’s really only one and it is powerful – when we’re back running the show, we won’t be listening to any advice or evidence so why waste taxes on a Voice. Maybe they don’t have any confidence they’ll be back running the show?
Didnt know which way to go until the various spivs, crooks and grifters of the National Party declared against it. Then good ol’ Spud confirmed it. I’m now a yes man.
The voice to parliament was commissioned by the libs! It was their ministers’ Wyatt and Leeser who started the narrative. Every time Dutton spits ‘Labor’s voice’ he should be reminded of that. It is the Uluru statement of the heart, from while the LNP were in power.
Yes indeed. And it is also worth remembering the first responses of Turnbull (then PM) and BJ (then Nats leader) to the Uluru statement. Both described it as a third chamber and said NO. Both were WRONG.
Birds of a feather flock together…
And lying.
How many Journalists and TV current affairs journalists in Australia don’t come from a wealthy family and elite private school background?
The ABC is full of them, and most carry the elitist baggage of the backgrounds.
I know of one great Journalist from the Saturday Paper who is not from the cookie cutter mould.
Paul did you get out of the wrong side of the bed, we live in a good country and all are entitled to their opinions within media guide lines.
A good country you say? Which still refuses to abide by humane refugee protocols, which still teats its indigenous people the way the Brits and Americans treated all of the native populations of the countries they raped.