One of the most interesting moments at the Political Reporting and the Internet session that I attended last week at the Brisbane Writers Festival came during questions, when a member of the audience riffed off a point Greg Barns had made. Barns was arguing that online and print media need not, as the old saw about journos v. bloggers would have it, be in a relationship of opposition, but could be complementary. His text was the interplay between the very fast moving Haneef story and particularly the news broken by Hedley Thomas in The Australian with online analysis and commentary.
Barns saw his role as being to add quick legal and political commentary - sometimes within hours of a new aspect of the story breaking. There was also a refutation contained in his tale of the other cliche often bandied around about online media - Barns spoke to key players, including Thomas, read and digested legal documents (including Justice Spender’s judgement on Haneef’s appeal). In other words, and this is true of a lot of the work that appears in fora like Crikey and New Matilda (and to a much more limited degree the blogosphere, but I think there’s potential there, though that’s a tale for another time) Barns’ writing on Haneef was based on analytical and research skills and fact finding and not just “instacommentary” and opinion, even though it was opinionated.
The question asked whether it was this accentuation of the news/comment cycle that made it difficult for Andrews and the government to respond effectively, and in fact whether the speed of the cycle left Ministers and their pressers blindsided. I strongly suspect there’s something in that.
Discussing this later with José Borghino, Editor of New Matilda, we were both reflecting on how the shift, particularly when ongoing and complex stories are breaking and in the context of the permanent election campaign, to a hypercycle in news and commentary affects both political events and the lived experience of content providers and readers alike.
I want to reflect more on this, and write something longer about it, but thinking about it on Monday, I was struck by some related thoughts while reading Robert Manne’s comment piece in the latest number of The Monthly. Manne was referring to the dynamics of the election contest over the past year - and it seemed when reading about things like the stoush over Therese Rein’s business affairs that these events had occurred years ago rather than only a few months back.
Such is the pace of politics and news that we’re living in a sort of eternal present, and any sustained analysis of longer term trends actually comes as something of a shock. One possible consequence of the sheer quantity of information overwhelming the quality of reflection is to further empower message shapers who do understand the mediascape and the time horizons - and that’s probably a bad thing for democracy because we’re deprived not only of substantive policy debate but also of almost anything able to be held in mind for long other than images and soundbites.
I’ve no doubt as well that the combination of the hypercycle of news and the permanent campaign (and the two are very much intertwined phenomena) has contributed very much to politics weariness among all of us - even the most hardened political tragics. In this context, the conclusion of José’s piece in this week’s New Matilda reviewing the political events of the last few days is most apposite:
Overall, the saddest aspect of this week has been the whole political sideshow. In a world crying out for renewal and re-thinking (from the localised bloodbath in Iraq to the looming environmental disaster around the world; from the attack of the sub-primes in the US and the UK, to the proliferation of nuclear-armed States) here we have John brainstorming a few ideas with his mates, while Kevin tries to keep a low profile and not frighten the horses.
Is this the best they can do?
Please Mister Prime Minister, call the election soon, so we can get it over with and start (maybe, hopefully, potentially, theoretically) doing something useful.
Elsewhere: Derek Barry has written a comprehensive report of the session I’m referring to at his blog Woolly Days.
It is nuts, isn’t it? Who remembers what the big political debates of say three weeks ago were? (And don’t be like Dolly and cheat with a crib sheet and look up the LP archives). And when have substantive policy matters really been debated this year?
The repercussions of the Andrews bungling is going to be news for quite a while by the way the Queensland Health Minister was talking yesterday.
And I still think there are legs in AWB, I’m hoping that if Labor wins the election (one that would be good to lose BTW) they can re-open the case. There’s a lot there to chew on.
Never mind remembering what happened three weeks ago. What about what actually is happening now, as opposed to all the reportage on the vaudeville? 30 pieces of legislation (i.e. new pieces of law which directly affect people in a multitude of often barely examined ways) were passed by the Parliament this week - who can tell me what any of them were about or what effect they will have?
About the only one that got any focus was the one that was probably the least meaningful - allowing local councils in Qld to use the AEC to hold plebscites on forced council amalgamations. (which I do support as a nice idea, but its hard to see it ever being used again as its motivation is so obviously immediate short-term political stuntery). Although to link back in to Kim’s point and one made in the original post, the council amalgamation stoush already feels like ancient history (as far as federal politics goes anyway - its still very current and hot at local level in many parts of Queensland)
Framing it as an online v print media issue seems misplaced; print media have a limited future no matter what happens in the blogosphere. Universal wireless high-speed internet will see to that.
It’s more instructive to consider the longstanding reporting v commentary question and here I think traditional reporting will always have a role whereas the status of MSM commentators is under serious threat and rightly so.
AAP, Reuters and other news feeds provide the essential material for both bloggers and the MSM and they depend on professional reporters using their skills to write factual stories (acknowledging all the caveats that have to be placed on the notion of ‘factual’). All this material is now available to anybody, with the result that the MSM’s regurgitation of it is less and less useful.
The commentary in the MSM is now generally inferior to what can be found online. Who wants to read the tediously predictable punditry of Gerard Henderson, Miranda Devine or Glenn Milne when there is so much lively and diverse opinion in the global blogosphere? Reading local columnists’ opinions about the Middle East, for example, is faintly absurd when there is so much good quality opinion available from people who actually live in the Middle East … or the USA, if one wants the imperial perspective.
I can see in the not too distant future a time when the news feeds are every bit as important as they are now but the notion of professional MSM experts-on-everything is discredited and they are all seen for the shock-jocks they are at heart. Bloody good job too.
The latest on the local Council Amalgamations.
New maps are on the Electoral Commission of Queensland website.
Andrew,
The Government legislatio extending warrantless e-mail and phone tapping to anyone who might be remotely suspicious of anything did come to my attention through ths SMH. Like the bad old days, when the ALP was undere ASIO surveillance, don’t you think?
Good post, Mark. The dilemma of today’s-fish-wrapping is ages old, but the accelerated version is something all serious bloggers and journos alike must think about regularly.
I think the lack of accountability during the Howard Years has a lot to do with it: if an issue does not explode, it is swept under the carpet for good. There is a degree of Big Media complicity here, but also public weariness with investigations which go on and on but never reward the attentive reader with a proper conclusion. We have all been grinded down to weary exhaustion by administrations wedded to secrecy and spin.
For example, the Haneef scandal should have culminated in Andrews’ resignation, apologies from the AFP, and a repeal of draconian anti-terror laws. Such an outcome would have restored faith in our democratic system and emboldened citizens to take an interest in similar stories. Instead, we get the opposite outcome, and a weakening of our democracy.
Phil’s comment on AWB is timely, given this latest story. Of course the AWB official inquiry was a whitewash, but I agree that there are still “legs” in this story.
Great post.
Given the ease with which phrases such as ‘eternal present’, ‘hypercycle of news’ and the like seem to roll off the metaphorical tongue, do you think its tied in with the same trends outside the realms of politics?
The whole thing just makes me think of Baudrillard.
All too true, Steve.
Everyone’s always going straight to the French when it comes media. Bah. Just like their national football team: old, ugly, oversensitive and overrated.
McLuhan did media effects best. He’d have said that the reason publishers like Steve Mayne and a certain few bloggers have been so relatively influential isn’t because of their chosen content—or any supposedly new news hypercycle—it’s because of the novel nature of their opt-in audience. Development in media occurs not through the information transmitted, but by the way it changes the behaviour of publishers and audiences.
Politics fatigue, though, that’s content-driven all the way.
I’d go further than Ken Lovell and suggest - I know, for about the 1000th tedious time, it’s a hobby-horse - that what the proliferation of ’superior’ online commentators have really done is sound the death knell for one of the great epistemological cons of the mass media era: the ‘professional’ commentator.
Once upon a time the main reason we would extend even a modicum of credence to the self-claimed ‘authority’ to frame our national narratives of a Paul Kelly was the banal actuality of their possession of the dominant tribal talking stick of the moment, ie the mass media opinion fora - the Op Ed pages and TV/radio broadcast slots. But incumbency in mass media positions of influence has always been as much a matter of stylistic acuity and capacity for soft ass-kissing (’diplomatic compromise’ I think Kerryn G rather sweetly calls it), rather than real Op Ed bite or originality. The primary hoops to jump through when trying to muscle your way into the MSM Op Ed game are space, timing and what you might call ‘opinion tone’. The latter aare poteential subject for endless tedious subjectivity argument about what is ‘good’ writing and ‘good’ timing ie how to straddlee the gulf between the ‘mainstream’ and genuine new ideas…but eveen just thef looking at the first onee shows how abssurdly loaded the ‘meta-debate’ about our public debates are: if you can’t state your case in about 720 words it doesn’t get a timely run in the places that hap our daily conversations. The problem with this is not that most writers don’t benefit from some kind of space discipline - they do, I more than most; it’s that as a society we all gradually come to mistake whaat is reallly just banal stylistic imperaitve for espistemological bedrock not to mention human virtue. I know ‘professional’ writers who reallly do think that the human mind is hot-wired for ‘optimum’ comprehension at - hey presto, how serendipitous! - 740 words, pyramid style, no sentences with more than two clauses and easy on the adjectives. Great if you’re a pro Op ed hack who happns to think that every ihoo can be summarrised like a movie pitch; shithouse if you are prety much evryone else of the worrld’ 6 000 000, who think that nuance, subtlety, poetry, contradiction, and depth aree teh juiice of life…even a limitation on public debate as banal as this MSm length one places the people who truly should be framing and leading our debates - experts and leaders in the relevant fields, elite academics, above all else, elected Reps like Andrew Bartlett wwhose job it iss to grapl wih those juices - at an enormous disadvantage. You are effectively obliged to play on the perpetual ‘away’ ground of Op Eddery, and that, in meta-epistemological terms is actually to concede the war before any given batttle even starts. By far the most pressing debate that we need to have is over who gets to define what the most pressing debates of our tims are; to havee those debates on the home grounds, and in the their-advantage skewed styles, of the ‘professional opinionistas’ is to lose it automatically, regardless of your position on any given mere issue.
How, Mark, to prosecute the paradoxical meta-argument that public debate would benefit enormously if everyone shut the hell up a lot more? My feeling has long been that unless and until we destroy the prophylactic notion that there can legitimately be some kind of contrived distance between ‘author’ and non-fiction output 9incuding opinions) - couched in terms of journalistic ‘objectivity’, ‘professional’ writing persona, sophisticated ‘irony’, playfullness, satire, authorial anonymity, the ‘Nuremberg’defence of the flak, hack and unter-parliamentary political attack dog - we wwill continuee to spiral into a kind of anarchic epistemological free-for-all.
Hence of course, the meta-wankery on my part of always finishing my possts like this:
Jack Robertson
Room13, 171 Rwontreee Streeet
BALMAIN NSW 2041
02 9810 6816
In the same way that we all know who Andrew Bartlett is, and thus that he is therefore fullly authorialy acountable. Good on you for eschewing teh safety of anonymity online, AB - it is, off course what paarliament iss all about: the ‘heere I standd’ rif that is what truly underpins the mejsty aand dignity of humn identity. That so many posters choose to discardd this choice - the glorious embracing of identity in public - goes a logn way towards my jaundiced attitude to the great ‘online revolution’ in OP Ed. It’s not about mere ‘publishing’ mode, folks: it’s about authorial transparenccy and acountability. Debatees about inteer v.MSM miss that point spectaularly. What will differentiate the increasingly pointless white noise of public tyre-kicking chatter from the substance is authorial transparency, not wheether it’ss publisshed on cyber or MSM paper. My own view is that any ‘professional’ political commentator should as a matter of course be required to declare income and voting history. But jusst imagine for a scond how the requirement to write under your owwn residentiial adress might improvee discourse. And someone explain to me why that idea is so wrong, btw?
Pardon the typoes. One-hande, baby on shulder. Great pot, Mark.
And a thoroughly rocked one, if I may say so JR.
I rather think that utter rubbish has its own value, and quality bullshit floats. Hey, I know I try my best.
Sadly, most definitely not always the case, Ken.
Most of AAP’s content is now press releases, distributed directly to the wire from whomever writes them. AAP has discovered there is a huge income stream to the had from this.
You may think no one picks them up, but I’ve seen - in the SMH, for example - many press releases run as news that I had seen on the wire only hours or a day before. These puppies ain’t written by journalists at the AAP. Sometimes, but only sometimes, they are polished by said journos/copy editors, but often not.
Obviously AAP and Reuters still write real reports with real journalists, but that is certainly not the case, for even the bulk of what the wire is now putting out.
Really sorry about the tragic sp. and gramm. mistakes in that post.
For a start, someone could get fired up, head over to your house and kill you (or at least do a bit of damage).
Some of your argument looks quite interesting. But the notion of reinstating the central importance of ‘authorial transparenccy and acountability’ seems a little misguided.
Blogs and internet communication don’t stand in opposition to traditional ‘authorial’ modes of reporting. It’s an adjunct.
Yes, there are a lot of anonymous people on teh interwebs. The way that good information/opinion/commentary is sorted is via the reader actually reading information and making up his/her own mind. Yes, there’s a lot of crap on teh interwebs. But there’s a lot of crap everywhere (Sturgeon’s law surely applies here: “Sure, 90% of science fiction is crud. That’s because 90% of everything is crud.”)
I’m still confused about what exactly is meant by ‘authorial accountability’ as well. You write something that someone else disagrees with, or is just plain BS. So what? You can get called for it on the interwebs as much as anywhere else (although in this case it’s publically available, as opposed to the MSM which rarely publishes retractions). What’s the accountability mechanism? Does someone come around to your house and give you a black eye or something?
Baudrillard provides an interesting vocabulary, but his theories are hyperbolic at best. He is good to read as science fiction, such as his idea that in the 1980’s history started going backwards (hence, as he said, the Year 2000 will never take place).
But I think the phrase “eternal present” comes from Eric Hobsbawm’s “perpetual present”… coined in the introduction to “Age of Extremes”. I’ve probably got this image severely misinterpreted, but the image that immediately came to my mind was Nietzsche’s “noon”, where the shortest shadows are cast. Its seems to me to imply a flattening of affect and diminishing returns.
Well in that case, stop hogging it and pass it around!
This pseudonym/accountability argument is rather arid. Are George Orwell’s essays depreciated by his failure to sign off ‘Eric Blair’? Do fellow baby boomers and Nation Review afficionados remember Richard Becket, or his pseudonym Sam Orr? There are many who would choose silence if forced to reveal identity - the vast majority of those in public employment, for starters. Even academics are vulnerable, as the Norman Finkelstein and Ward Churchill cases illustrate.
Andrew Bartlett above: “30 pieces of legislation..were passed by the Parliament this week - who can tell me what any of them were about or what effect they will have?”
Presumably it’s modesty that prevents Andrew from saying that one of them is down to him.
Well perhaps not exactly legislation, more he got an unanimous motion up, which invites, allows, challenges, the government to set up a royal commission into child abuse. Presumably the terms of reference can include examination of what’s going on in the territory, and heiner can be dealt with once and for all.
I haven’t got to the hansard of the motion and debate yet, but maybe Andrew can be prevailed upon to tell us of his thinking and hopes on this.
I, for one, congratulate him on it. If it turns out to be the last act of his parliamentary career, he can be proud of it. It shows that intelligence and good-will can really can turn a sow’s ear (Barnaby and Piers’ Rofe) into a silk purse.
Thank you Senator. Three cheers for Andrew.
It’s a bit of a distraction from the issues raised in the post, I think. Can we go back on topic, please?
Sorry, crossed with Danny. My comment referred to the anonymity/accountability argument.
Current Senate continues in office til July as it’s not a double dissolution election.
thank you for clearing me up on that Kim, mechanics of democracy is not my strong point, not that I have necessarily have one..perhaps humility?.
I’m very pleased to have to say, Doh!!
No probs!
I just saw the FRONT PAGE of the Government Gazette and discovered to my horror that the three most prominently displayed articles are opinion pieces from Dennis Shanahan or his acolyte Matthew Franklin denigrating Rudd and/or praising the Government. I’m not sure if the report on yestereday’s Parliamentary session from Franklin was intended to be opinion or news, but John Howard couldn’t have spun it any better.
It seems to me that the GG has taken the gloves off. It is frantic for the Libs to be returned and any semblance of objectivity has been totally abandoned. Which makes it a bit hard to see any difference between th enational broadsheet and any other political blog, other than circulation figures.
The very idea that an issue is released from a minister’s office without it having been assessed and weighed for possible media impact is laughable. So too is the assumption from the often self-important Barns that instacommentary has lasting value (as a story) or impact (in terms of shaping political perceptions and outcomes).
First, it’s hardly new that if you do something that upset people, you may get away with it at the time but it might come back to bite you later, when you’d most rather it didn’t. Second, this is the only way of getting around the clever-clever PR strategy of releasing information that might give rise to negative coverage.
Fuck the mediascape and ignore the time horizons. Not all information is of equal value. If salmon can swim against the currents of mighty rivers (without having to swallow every drop that flows by them) in order to get where they have to go and do what they have to do, then people can filter out unnecessary information and consider it.
What an effete, lame critique this is. If it’s a sideshow you can ignore it. Why is it any more sad than it was last week, or this time last year; and will next week be more sad or less?
Kim, three weeks ago I was paying tax, and concerned about education and house prices and climate change, amongst other things. I probably read something pertinent but I can’t remember it now. Everyone strapped to the hypecycle way back then was obviously wasting their time.
I’m glad I’m not a professional politician, and cheers for Andrew Bartlett plugging away in a wilful disconnect from the hypecycle.
Damn right Phil. The news cycle can kiss my arse (update: it does, actually. More news to come, stay tuned).
Agreeing with what Bartlett said about amalgamations. Now that there’s a new Premier and new Minister for Local Govt, it’s not going to be reversed.
May I respond to those who showed interest in my post, Kim?
Thank you Danny. As Kim says, I’ll be there until June 30 next year regardless, but am trying to see of the people of Queensland will let me hang around a bit longer than that.
I’ll try to put something up on my blog sometime over the weekend about the Royal Commission motion, but it wasn’t a piece of legislation (sadly), just an ‘in-principle’ resolution passed without debate.
But I guess it does relate back to my initial point - not only was there 30 pieces of legislation passed into law, but also some other issues and debates about significant issues which received next to zero media (and thus in most cases public) attention.
I notice one of the new laws did receive a bit of front page coverage in today’s Australian - unfortunately three days after it had already passed the Senate. Shouting matches in Question Time are obviously more significant than new laws where the “Australian Crime Commission has been granted star-chamber powers to drag people in for questioning without disclosing the reasons why they are being quizzed.”
Sure, Jack, just try to keep it germane to the broader topic, please.
I think Howard trampling all over the constitution with his Federal power grabs, including the QLD local council plebiscite, is one of the key themes of his campaign. Bully, wedge, smear, subvert etc.
Meanwhile, we need real action and debate on:
* what to do about climate change and refocussing the Australian economy to lower carbon emissions
* address ongoing issues with indigenous Australia in pretty much the opposite way in which Captain Brough & Master Howard are proceeding
* get public tranport funded federally (at least 50%)
* get public education up from our very low OECD ranking
etc,
And what do we get? Hissy fits on the last day of parliament. Hectoring and abuse. Questions not answered. Personal attacks. Sheesh. I think we are watching history in the making. Our politicians are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic as we sail to hit the last iceberg in the world.
I think we need a system where major political parties don’t exist. Fancy either Labor or Liberal back room boys coming up with a workable roadmap for our future? All they are capable of is biffo.
That’s a good idea, in keeping with the notion raised in another thread that Australia is basically a large city.
Damn right. The North Pole is melting.
I repeat:
The. North. Pole. Is. Melting.
Now this is just one story among many clamoring for attention on our front pages, and obviously the story does not develop as quickly as bodies in car boots and share price fluctuations etc, but on a scale of importance it’s not just “well up there”, it’s pretty much the same as an asteroid heading to earth.
And everyone is like “Yeah yeah we know” and politicians have in on their agendas to do something sometime soon…
Come on Gandhi, Kevin Rudd lost his cool in Question Time and lots of Labor MPs got ejected from the House of Reps. The PM is outraged that he is being smeared with the smear that his government’s smears are being called smears. Coalition MPs are walking with a cautious spring in their step once again. Malcolm Turnbull future leadership ambitions may have been seriosly harmed by the events of the past two weeks. Surely these things are much more important than the melting of the North Pole!