A free press should be a strong bulwark of democracy. Each
day we read of journalists being arrested, or just simply disappearing, in
autocratic dictatorships like China and Russia or in some countries in Africa
and Asia. In many parts of the world citizens are denied accurate information
about what their governments and the rich and powerful are actually doing.
In Australia it has not come to that yet. Despite our media
being 70% controlled by Rupert Murdoch, we are still able to glean information
about what our political leaders and the economic power brokers are up to.
Now that Mr Turnbull has called for a double dissolution
election on July 2, the Australian media has gone into overdrive to keep us up
to date with what our politicians are doing. Whole teams of reporters and
journalists follow the party leaders in a never ending news cycle that seeks
more and more information. Often the information that is reported was not worth
knowing in the first place.
This 24/7 approach to election news is not necessarily a
good thing. For a start the constant news feeds and the stories about stories
about stories tends to make the average punter switch off all things to do with
politics. This is inherently dangerous. For our democracy to flourish citizens
need to be well informed about what is happening and what options there are to
future actions.
The media’s policy of giving almost constant election coverage
not only turns most voters off but it also puts the political parties in charge
of the news. On Mother’s Day, dedicated TV watchers could have followed Mr
Turnbull as he kissed his wife goodbye, met with some favourably inclined
voters, caught a plane in Sydney, got off a plane in Canberra and then
travelled through the rain to meet the Governor General. He alighted from his
car with the beatific smile of a world statesman about to proclaim that peace
had broken out all over the world and not that he was going to call an election
which we all knew about anyway. In earlier times the TV news would have just
shown the PM getting out of his car, not the Royal Progress like journey from
Sydney to Canberra.
Each day Bill Shorten, Malcolm Turnbull and a vast array of
other politicians of all persuasions, front up in high viz vests and hard hats,
or white dustcoats and goggles to shovel sand, look knowledgeably at machinery
and flashing electrodes, lay bricks, fondle watermelons, drink a beer, smile at
children or converse with carefully selected adults. These conversations are always
highly structured to cast favourable light on the politician involved. Just
last week we saw Malcolm Turnbull talking to a young couple who had just bought
a house for their 12 month old baby boy. This was to no doubt reinforce the PM’s
message that negative gearing is the favourite investment tool of your ordinary
mums and dads. He was not asked any hard questions about negative gearing or
the fact that his electorate of Wentworth is the negative gearing capital of
Australia.
Each night we sit watching the news and what we see are
politicians moving through highly orchestrated scenarios where they are never,
ever asked a question in anger. The media has been sucked in by the political
parties. It should stop giving wall to wall coverage of these arranged “news
events”.
By covering the inane meanderings of the politicians in shopping
centres and church bazaars the Australian media is actually toadying to the agendas
of political parties. As a result, more often than not on TV, we what the
political party wants us to see and not necessarily what we need to know. In days past politicians were not hounded 24/7 by a news pack. They stood in public arenas, often faced by hostile interjectors, and talked about their policies. People were interested by what hey had to say. Not anymore!
What needs to happen is for the ABC and the commercial TV channels
to state that they no longer will follow party leaders all over the country
reporting every little trivial thing that did or did not happen. They should
tell the politicians that each day they will give them twenty minutes to stand
before the cameras and answer reporters’ questions on policy issues. That
twenty minutes could probably be condensed down to ten minutes of watchable TV
news about issues that really matter. People would once again take a keen
interest in what was happening to their country.
Will it ever happen? No! So just settle back and continue being
pulped to death by My Kitchen Rules and The Gogglebox.
