The symbiosis between politicians and journalists continues.
Government politicians spent more than $500,000 last financial year and departments spent more than $2 million in media clipping services. Some of that money will find its way into journalists’ pockets in the form of copyright fees because most of it was spent on photocopies and most journalists in Australia retain copyright for paper copies.
Politicians want to monitor what is being said about them in the media in the areas they administer so they can respond if necessary.
According to answers to questions of notice in the Senate, Communications Minister Richard Alston spent $95,878 to media monitoring companies for copies of clippings and transcripts of broadcasts. This is on top of buying the full versions of the papers.
Staff of media monitoring companies get up very early in the morning a clip according to clients’ needs — for example every article mentioning “”Alston” or “”communications”.
I suspect most Ministers’ offices are very inefficient on media monitoring. They get the expensive paper versions for use on the day and maybe chuck or file them. Nowadays there is far more efficient electronic searching available of the major newspapers, but searchable electronic transcripts of live voice in broadcast news and current affairs bulletins is not publicly available, though no doubt it will be before long.
While politicians are monitoring journalists, so journalists continue to monitor politicians. And despite the general view that standards are falling and so on, I think more journalists are using new information technology to advantage. Alan Ramsay in the Sydney Morning Herald is excruciatingly good at extracting quotes from Hansard to demonstrate political humbug, hypocrisy and inconsistency.
And did you see Kerry O’Brien interview Paul Keating this week? He dragged out quotes from Keating on AM about pastoral leases and native title. He had Keating on the spot a bit, but did not press it home.
“”Never mind the quotes, Kerry. Never mind the quotes,” he protested. “”I’ve got the Act here. Let me quote from the Act.”
In fact, O’Brien’s quote was that Keating had said that his original Native Title Act would extinguish native title on pastoral leases. Whereas Keating was now arguing that his Act deliberately did not extinguish native title on pastoral leases and that his government was pure on the issue.
The best you could say was that the Labor Government deliberately left the question ambiguous. Their legal advice was that pastoral leases (by their own force) extinguished native title, so it would not be an issue. That was almost right, after all, the court ruled 4-3 on the issue.
But the point is not about native title. It is about how journalists now have access to easily searchable databases of direct quotes from politicians and it is likely to change politicians’ behaviour. Hansard has now been on the Internet for a year. For the past few months, the Prime Minister has put all his press statements (including the text of ad-lib broadcast performances) on the Net with automatic free e-mailing to subscribers who can then build their own searchable database of the material.
Ultimately, it means politicians will not easily be able to do U-turns without acknowledging it. They will be exposed to the blowtorch of what they said in the past much more frequently as more easily searchable databases build up. At present few go back more than a couple of years. As time wears on, though, comparisons with past positions will be made more frequently. The comparisons will not be restricted to the memorable statements, but electronic searches will expose virtually everything a politician has said on any topic any time — obscure adjournment debates, answers to questions on notice from years ago, doorstop interviews from months ago and so on.
The full-text searching available now is very powerful and very quick.
It might make politicians more honest. In the past their usual response to accusations of inconsistency has been to deny or qualify. In future they might have to face up to it. They might have to say, “”Yes, I thought that then, but I have changed my mind now, and this is why.” Or, “”I was wrong then, I have found new facts.”
Consistency will no longer be the political virtue that it is now foolishly thought to be. Perhaps politics has had such a reputation for the dishonesty of broken promises, that politicians have had to emphasise the virtue of consistency too much. Electronic searching might change that. It will no longer be a mortal sin to change one’s mind, forget things or get the facts wrong occasionally, because it will be more common for these things to be exposed under electronic searching.
Some politicians might occasionally get away with “”Never mind the quotes, Kerry.” But not often.