THE media, as much as the politicians, are on trial in this election. The circle is a vicious one. Politicians, corporate leaders, CEOs of pressure groups and almost anyone with any public profile do short courses on how to deal with the media. They are told the media has certain characteristics or culture. In order to look good in the media, you have to play to that culture.
Journalists then have the world in their hands. All of society’s leaders are doing it their way. That just reinforces the media culture.
The past week of the campaign has exemplified it. A whole day of the campaign has been wasted on what an unnamed source told Channel Nine’s Laurie Oaks about Julia Gillard’s position in a Cabinet discussion in the lead-up to the Government’s adoption of a maternity-leave policy.
Once Oaks published the leak, the rest of the media followed, even though they did not know the source and could not verify his or her reliability. They assumed the leak it was completely true, not exaggerated or taken out of context. They should have ignored it, or not give it the prominence they did.
What Gillard said in Cabinet a year ago has precious little bearing on the main matter voters should be thinking about this election: which side will be better for them and/or Australia.
But catching a politician being inconsistent is of high news value in the media world. Equally, catching two members of the same side saying different things, even slightly different things, is of high value in the media world. But neither is of much value to voters assessing who should govern.
Conflict is of high media value, so attacks by one side on another are given high news value. This is easy stuff compared to the complexity of policy analysis.
The media demand for consistency is based on the utterly false premise that the 100 or so MPs from each of the main political parties should think exactly the same on all matters in the political purview and that each of them should be utterly consistent in all they say in their political careers.
It is absurd. People should develop and change their minds as they get more information or as circumstances change. Some diversity within political parties should be welcome.
Media is influencing this election more than most. This is because neither side is putting forward any significant new policy in the way that at least one side has done did in virtually every election since 1949, and particularly, say Gough Whitlam in 1972, John Hewson in 1993 and John Howard in 1998.
It leaves a vacuum. It means that stories with the news values of impact and consequence, which, to be fair, do get a bit of a run now and then, get much less run than stories with the news values of conflict and personality.
And you have to ask why have politicians eschewed major policy initiatives? The answer to that is that managing the media has become more important than pursuing policy precisely because the media cares little for policy analysis. Policy development does not get rewards.
Policy working is not news; policy not working is news.
Worse, a small element of overall good policy not working is news, at least that small element is.
In this media-managed world, the news is the grand announcement that a government or opposition is going to look at something. The Henry Review into tax is a good example. Everything from the announcement on has to be media managed. In the case of the Henry Review the report was sat on for three months while the Government developed its response so it could be released at the same time – so the Government’s agenda becomes the news, overshadowing the wide-ranging policy report.
In this instance it backfired. Good. Serve the Government right by being too smart by half.
What about a bit of debate?
Another media modus operandi is to find someone who would be worse off under whatever new policy is proposed. The media will find, say, a BMW-driving one-legged leper or a stay-at-home Dad with a PhD on a disability allowance who might be worse off under a given proposal. Suddenly, they become front-page news, even though, overall, the country would be better off under the new policy.
In this voracious and vexatious media environment, politicians will only attempt policy under which no-one will be worse off. It is, of course, a fantasy. Every change brings at least a few losers, but media obsession with them should not defeat good policy development.
You might think that policies that pander to prejudice – “tough-on” polices, I call them – are an exception. But they are part of the same phenomenon – pandering to what goes down well with slabs of the media consumed by voters with lower education and income. These days, no politician dare lead by acting sensibly and contrary to prejudice. It is dispiriting.
An example from each side.
The Coalition has been spooked on Work Choices. Against the national interest, it has sworn not to change any element of Labor’s industrial relations landscape in the next three years. But there many things wrong with it that any government might want to fix. In particular, the new regime denies individual employees and employers agreeing on things like working hours and penalty rates that they both want. They should be allowed to get on with it.
Labor has been spooked out of anything that looks like “a great big tax”. Yet, we need tax reform, particularly on carbon. It should be argued beyond slogans and “no one worse off”. Higher energy costs coupled with compensation for those on low and middle incomes can cut energy consumption.
Not all journalists and media ignore detailed policy arguments, but the preponderance of media does and it is going to take an extremely courageous politician to break this cycle which is so destructive of the national interest.
CRISPIN HULL
This article first appeared in The Canberra Times on 31 July 2010.