I was having a chat last night with a friend and colleague about the theme of media decline. He’s a bit sceptical. I’m a tad sceptical about it as well, possibly for different reasons, and I won’t elaborate because I suspect that his ideas will turn up in a post sooner or later, but one thing I think we agreed on was that coverage of Australian politics in the print media is changing - and not for the better - for a number of reasons and in a number of ways. One case in point is the fact that the local media in Brisbane basically didn’t bother to cover our local elections in any depth, and only began covering them at all when the campaign was already well under way.
I’m not sure what the reason was - the fact that the result was regarded as a forgone conclusion may have been one. As it turned out, not only were they missing out on the chance to engage in some “public journalism” and analyse in depth issues that all the opinion research tells us are of great public concern - for instance the transport tangle - but they also missed what in any media terms would be defined as a real story - the swing against Labor in the wards.
One other symptom is Glenn Milne’s column yesterday. It reads for all money as if Milne would rather have bummed around on his long weekend and filed some copy only with reluctance. Ostensibly writing about the meeting last week of Labor’s marginal seats committee, he gives us the staggering news that Rudd would like to be re-elected (who thought otherwise? seriously?) and that the ALP has already started thinking about the next campaign. Well, blow me down! There’s then some free-floating and pointless speculation about an early election, undermined by Milne’s own comment that both Hawke and Howard lost ground when they went early after a truncated first term. But what’s most remarkable is the total cynicism on show - and this from someone who takes a swipe at Graham Richardson’s “Whatever it Takes” tome. Milne repeatedly makes comments along these lines:
You might recognise her from the TV broadcasts of Parliamentary Question Time, if, tragically, you’re condemned to watch them, as am I.
Here’s the punchline:
To get to the bottom of all this, I could call Julie Collins and ask what Tim Gartrell said last Monday.
But I haven’t bothered.
Shorter Glenn Milne: I’m too lazy to do the job I’m richly rewarded for doing, because I’ve already placed the events I’m writing about in a world-weary and cynical frame.
Who knows? Milne might have actually discovered a story if he’d gone looking for one, as opposed to writing a bunch of unfounded speculation and giving us all the benefit of his boredom. And boring us in the process.
I suppose this is supposed to be some sort of populist alignment with readers’ supposed apathy and cynicism about the political process. But by writing a pure process oriented story which isn’t even a story (as opposed to, heaven forbid, dealing with some issues seriously, or taking his responsibilities as a journalist seriously), Milne gives the game away - his total blindness to the reason why the media are also regarded with extreme cynicism and skepticism.
There’s always lots of talk in media and academic circles about the lack of funding for investigative journalism, the dumbing down of reporting, the lack of effect that exposing scandals has, and so on. But surely what’s truly extraordinary is a media that can’t even be bothered reporting political news, and makes a virtue of that.
Cross-posted at PollieGraph.
I’d say the shorter Glenn Milne is “I picked the wrong horse in 2007 and now my insider sources are outsider sources”. Poor punch-drunk poison dwarf. If he doesn’t want the gig, I’m up for a go writing bollocks for money.
What a coincidence. I couldn’t get past the first paragraph of Milne’s drivel without my chin hitting the desk. Has he literally got nothing left to write about since Costello executed the worlds greatest sulk? Even writing about that would be more interesting.
Suspect, as others have noted, Milne was foolish enough to alienate entirely the Labor/Green side of politics. This doesn’t matter that much for Bolt or Piers who just make stuff up, or regurgitate some ultra right wing bile, but it does for Milne because he needs contacts. As to the standard of political journalism - I suspect the 24 hour news cycle makes it almost impossible for many journos to do the indepth reporting politics really requires. Maybe they’re just not all good enough
Cynical and dynamic would be one thing, but cynical and lazy? He seems to be asking to be fired.
Actually, what’s worst about this “You might recognise her from the TV broadcasts of Parliamentary Question Time, if, tragically, you’re condemned to watch them, as am I.” is that somehow Milne thinks that is the main thing that goes on in parliament. And it’s only the Reps he cares about as well. I bet he has no idea what’s happening in either Chamber or the Main Committee at any time other than Question Time.
Mind you, he’s not alone there. Which is back to your main point, Mark, about a complete disinterest in the policies and only interested in the politics at a very superficial, tit-for-tat, level.
And of course, there are all those things the general public care about and which rarely, if ever, get addressed in parliament in any substantive way.
Yes, Angharad, that’s true - although as you also intimate, you can actually get a fair bit of information that goes unreported from Question Time itself as well as other aspects of parliamentary proceedings and committee reports, transcripts etc.
I’m big on the whole media decline thing. My blog basically takes an article from someone who supposedly has the inside dope and takes it apart, which shouldn’t be possible in an era where the press are better educated than ever and where there is more information available than ever before. I have my betes noire, they’re lazier and stupider than people like Paul Kelly or Alan Reid were in their day.
They do a poor job of informing people about our government, which is their central role. Kevin Rudd put together an entiregovernment, setting up both the successes and the fatal flaws of this government. What coverage was there of that? Nothing - unless you count the accommodation of the Rudd family pets, and that only got a run because there was a fucking press release put out about it.
The nearest thing to political coverage is someone like Annabel Crabb doing a theatre review of Australia’s best-subsidised, most consistently dull theatre. Snippets and snarks just isn’t good enough.
And, fuck polling. There are consistent interests in public policy. In the shitstorm over education, are there actually any good teachers out there? No, don’t ask the press secretary to the education minister, because that person wouldn’t know. Why not go into the stupid rules which make bureaucrats cut vital services in the name of economising? Bureaucrats don’t do this stuff because they’re mean, they do it because the rules under which they work pull them in conflicting directions. Yeah, it might take a bit of skill to make it lively, but it’s possible.
Glenn Milne produced one good article - I think it was January - but has picked himself up and moved on like it never happened. The Australian has never been a decisive factor in any election ever. It is possible to be bagged every day for the rest of your life by that newspaper withiout it having to affect your career in any way whatsoever. Now that the whole Howard-Costello thing has been shown to be so much crap, his role as Costello’s sock-puppet is of no importance.
Milne does have a point though, to some extent. If you were Tim Gartrell, would you take Glenn Milne’s call? I think first-person interviews are redundant if the interviewee is just going to slide around the questions and the interviewer is grateful to have the interviewee spout the same old lines. Any quote that Gartrell might give Milne is not worth reading anyway.
The pack mentality is stupid and reflects the mentality that public officials have done their job when they’ve spouted their lines.
The media industry is one industry where the rights of consumers count for nothing, and I’m said about it. I could go on - hell, I do.
Come on Mark stop this critique, the big-wig columnists like Paul Sheehan’s are going after the big stories.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/tv-turns-into-battle-of-the-blondes/2008/03/23/1206206916397.html?page=2
The sad truth is that there were no good old days. Without leaks even Watergate would have gone virtually unnoticed. The best journalists thirty years ago (Oakes, O’Brien, Negus) are the best ones today but they aren’t hungry anymore and they don’t do much print. My biggest gripe is that the new journo is not better trained and not more knowledgeable. Factual errors are common because of obvious ignorance and the imperative to fill media space with endless babble.
I liked Glenn Mile best when he was the story. He definitely lacks punch when sober but it seems that he never misses a Press Club guest lunch. That’s above and beyond… However, it doesn’t generate the kind of stories that used to flow out of the non-members bar and the backbar of the John Curtin Hotel in Carlton.
True, but it’s also true that without the sort of funding they got for their investigation, and which is almost unknown now, it never would have happened. Investigative journalism is almost dead in this country - maybe 4 Corners is an exception, but even there, it’s now more likely to be done on the cheap.
The other side to Watergate was that it encouraged a sort of competition to dig up any old dirt that might provide a “smoking gun” - there’s a direct line from Watergate to Whitewater, Monica, and all the rest - and a good reason why all sorts of basically crap is dubbed a “Gate”. What we very rarely get is journalism that genuinely challenges or exposes the structural bases of power - just exposes which feed the partisan nastiness and crap.
The public gets the media it is prepared to pay for, and the media get the journalists they are prepared to continue to pay. The situation is no better and no worse than it has always been, but I suspect it seems worse for a couple of reasons. One being that the educated public upon which much of the so called ‘quality’ journalism suposedly dependend, has expanded exponentially to the point where a consistent view of what amounts to ‘quality’ in journalism, (as in much else-architecture anyone?) is almost impossible to define in a way which would reproduce the solid and sizeable audience for its product that supposedly existed in some time past.
The second issue is the continous 24 hour cycle, noted here and in many other places, and the growth in alternative sources for what people believe to be ‘news’. It is not clear to me that much of the dross produced by the MSM is much worse than that produced on many blogs, but neither source of ‘gossip’ is much worse that what passed for ‘News’ in the past. What about the Hearst stable of ‘quality’ newspapers and the standards of ‘journalism’ he deemed worth paying for?
The concern for ‘reliability’, ’seriousness’ and attention to matters deemed important by people who believe that they know what is ‘important’ has been constant since the 18th century opened up the affairs of state and business for profit and entertainment, and invented ‘newspapers’. The profession of journalism as such is an invention of mass literacy in the late 19th century, and concern for its ‘quality’ was as much anxiety over the incendiary effects that ‘bad quality’ versions of it might have, as it was over lack of fact checking and failure to take the affairs of state seriously.
All in all, I think Milne and his ilk are vastly over paid for their actual skills and qualifications, but I suspect that they are being paid for a proper attitude to real authority, and who am I to criticise the decisions of media moguls to reward people for the skills and aptitudes they require for the proper and effective running of their businesses?
There are many ways of informing. I thought the function of a free press was to get past the bullshit. Of course that’s only on paper. The media these days essentially does two things -
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1. Acts as a conduit for PR of various kinds.
2. Creates a debate environment which controls facts in a way that’s acceptable to the various vested interests: government, corporate, military.
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Hence the obvious fact that there was clear link between oil resources, certain firms and the US administration was savagely marginalized in the media which should’ve been asking that question. This is very basic conflict of interests. Elemental. But instead of vetting the question the press actually either avoided that aspect of the debate or savagely attacked anyone who might be so bold as to ask it as some kind of anti-social radical terrorist sympathizer. Even the anti-war press complied.
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The notion of the media as the ally of a free citizenry is a fanciful notion. The whole apparatus is one big spin machine.
The failure of the press to expose WMD destroyed my faith in the media. Hedley Thomas’s brave and meticulous dismantling of the case against Dr Haneef restored my faith. I suspect that over the years most journos haven’t been up to what admittedly must be a very tough job. Fortunately there have been just enough good ones to preserve the profession’s good name.
I heard Hedley Thomas speak at the New Matilda relaunch in Sydney last month. He’s left journalism now. His family were threatened, and his home subject to a drive by shooting a number of years ago when he was working on an investigative story. I gathered that the crap he copped over Haneef was the final straw.