Bite Size Advice. Paul J. Thomas

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       Posting Date: 28 January 2013

       Democracy in danger

      In a recent post I expressed concern that politics is degenerating into a farce, with short-term popular sentiment increasingly impacting long-term policy formulation. Hopefully, I left readers with a clear sense of the dangers of the don’t-offend-anyone politics which now characterises Australian political life.

      What I did not focus on was the role of the media in whipping up emotive opposition to sensible social and economic reform. The media, according to Lindsay Tanner, a former minister for finance in the Labor Government, is turning political reporting into a “carnival sideshow” driven by entertainment imperatives.

      In his recently released book, Sideshow: dumbing down democracy, Tanner tracks the relentless decline of political reporting in Australia and abroad. He describes in great detail how the media manipulates the discussion of substantive issues in ways that entertain rather than inform. “Policy initiatives are measured by their media impact, not by their effect”, laments Tanner.

      Tanner, quite rightly, asserts that “genuine democracy requires an informed electorate” but bemoans the fact that the media controls access to the electorate. “The media publishes what people want to read or watch and the public demand for serious news is in decline”. Consequently, politicians have been pushed into a self-defeating game of feeding the news cycle with stunts.

      Tanner notes that as political coverage gets sillier, politicians are forced to get sillier to get coverage. “As politicians need to be interesting to compete in a world governed by the rules of entertainment, they happily collaborate”. Yet he believes that Australians deserve much better than the carefully scripted play-acting that now dominates our nation’s politics.

      Journalists are always looking for quirky and amusing items that divert or titillate the audience. Tanner cites the 2008 presidential primaries where Hillary Clinton attracted saturation coverage for allegedly revealing some cleavage on the campaign trail. “The amount of flesh on display would have barely troubled a middle-class maiden aunt in Victorian England. Yet it was enough for the media to make it the lead news story across the country”, writes Tanner.

      Tanner contends that the hyperbole which characterises media reporting is blatantly designed to manipulate the public’s emotions. He cites a number of examples where the media created unnecessary panic including the Global Financial Crisis, the Year 2K computer bug and the swine flu epidemic. The media reporting of these events produced a public response out of proportion to the threat.

      A popular tool used by the media to distort impressions of politics and current events is “selective coverage” says Tanner. “When petrol prices spike, the media go into overdrive. When they fall, coverage is much more low-key.” Equally, every time interest rates rise, we see stories featuring struggling families. Yet when rates fall, little is said about the plight of self-funded retirees.

      I think that Sideshow: dumbing down democracy should be compulsory reading for all journalists and reporters. Some reviewers have rated Tanner’s book as “refreshingly frank”. Others have labelled it a “scathing critique” of contemporary political journalism. Personally, I’d go one step further and categorise Tanner’s description of the media as “alarmingly true”.

      Finally, and in fairness, I must acknowledge the media’s claim that they simply produce what consumers want. As a society, we would rather read about the sordid private lives of celebrities than have a serious debate about the long-term benefits of public policy. Just as we get the politicians we deserve, we also get the media that we deserve. As citizens, we are complicit with falling standards.