Blogging academics Joshua Gans of Melbourne University and Andrew Leigh of ANU have conducted a study into ‘media slant’ in Australian political coverage:
Australian journalists are close to the centre of the political spectrum, but their editors are more likely to take a party line, according to new research from The Australian National University.
The study, conducted by ANU economist Professor Andrew Leigh from the Research School of Social Sciences and Melbourne Business School economist Professor Joshua Gans, used a number of different approaches to measure ‘media slant’ in newspapers, radio and television.
Professors Leigh and Gans used three approaches to test for media slant; reviewing media mentions of 100 public intellectuals, rating election stories and rating newspaper headlines. The researchers found that although most media outlets showed no significant slant in reporting, there were some notable exceptions.
“In terms of content, Australian journalists seem to be a centrist bunch”, said Professor Leigh. “Using the first approach, only one out of 27 news outlets had a significant slant. This is ABC Television News, which had a significant slant towards the Coalition in the period 1999-2007. All other outlets (including six ABC radio stations) were essentially centrist.
I can’t say that the findings about the pro-Coalition bias of the ABC television news are greatly surprising to me, though they seem to have ruffled someright wing feathers.
Almost a year after the former Dear Leader lost the election and his seat of Bennelong, the ABC is “heavily promoting” (something of an understatement) The Howard Years. Will we never be quit of this man? Personally, I intend to watch Good News Week. I’m sure this historical record will mainly be emblematic of the deep sense of self-satisfaction the various interviewees have, and their propensity to knife each other – all the froth and bubble that went on beneath the iron grip that Howard had on all of them. Does anyone care all that much now that it’s history? You tell me.
Meanwhile, the man himself is running out of places to hide. The US no longer offers such a congenial political climate for John Howard, although there’s still Fox News for him to appear on.
Tom Switzer, former op/editor of the Government Gazette and the Opposition Organ and subsaquently Nelson staffer is a panelist on tonight’s final instalment of the ABC’s Q&A. Switzer famously proclaimed that the right was now winning the Culture Wars. Let’s see if culture war logic stands up to questioning!
Ps: Media tart Peter Costello is also on, in close proximity to David Marr. Perhaps sales of teh book are disappointing? Can he revive them by starting another round of leadership rumours?
Image courtesy of Funkadelic at deviantart. Click through and click on full view for a higher res version.
Regular LP readers might recall that I’ve been emphasising for some time now research evidence which suggests that the “apathetic youth” narrative is nonsense. Just because no one’s marching in the street, doesn’t mean that nothing’s happening. Further evidence for that case comes from a literature review prepared for the Whitlam Institute by Philippa Colin – Young People Imagining a New Democracy [link to pdf]. Colin finds that engagement is migrating online, and that it’s much more likely to be issues or cause based than the “citizen oriented repertoires” of involvement in political parties. The review also suggests significant disengagement with the formal practices of citizenship coincides with idealism and engagement around issues and networks.
This report was discussed in the most stereotypical possible way on last week’s Q&A (where most of the panel wanted to diss blogging and those intertubes). Doing it justice might force us to answer the question of what’s wrong with our democracy, rather than squeeze it into the most tedious and condescending media frame of what’s wrong with teh yoof… In many ways, one could argue that disengagement from an unresponsive and elitist “democracy” is an eminently rational choice. That might be something the professionally cynical pundits and pollies might wish to ponder.
Judging by this news item in the Fairfax media, tonight’s Four Corners warts and all profile of Malcolm Turnbull sounds like a bucket load of fun.
In a profile on the shadow treasurer to air on the ABC’s Four Corners tonight, Mr Turnbull is identified as the insider who passed on secret notes indicating Mr Packer would publicly stick to the law but would privately exercise editorial control over Fairfax.
Timely because it comes slap bang in the middle of the run up to Peter The Ditherers biography launch and important questions about Liberal Party leadership issues and tensions arising from that event.
Fun prime time viewing for the whole family. Bring the popcorn and consider this an open thread if you’re watching tonight.
One of the rather egregious questions on last week’s Q&A asked the panel to comment on why there was no contemporary political fiction of the stature of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s. As with a lot of the queries posed on Q&A, it’s a bit of a silly one, but it did remind me that we discussed political fiction here at LP a while back, and to give folks the heads up that American speculative fiction writer and anthologist Jeff VanderMeer is blogging about political fiction at The Huffington Post.
[VanderMeer, along with regular guest bloggers, writes regularly at Ecstatic Days.]
Larvatus Prodeo is an Australian group blog which discusses politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
Muting a generation
mute a generation by ~funkadelic on deviantART
Image courtesy of Funkadelic at deviantart. Click through and click on full view for a higher res version.
Regular LP readers might recall that I’ve been emphasising for some time now research evidence which suggests that the “apathetic youth” narrative is nonsense. Just because no one’s marching in the street, doesn’t mean that nothing’s happening. Further evidence for that case comes from a literature review prepared for the Whitlam Institute by Philippa Colin – Young People Imagining a New Democracy [link to pdf]. Colin finds that engagement is migrating online, and that it’s much more likely to be issues or cause based than the “citizen oriented repertoires” of involvement in political parties. The review also suggests significant disengagement with the formal practices of citizenship coincides with idealism and engagement around issues and networks.
This report was discussed in the most stereotypical possible way on last week’s Q&A (where most of the panel wanted to diss blogging and those intertubes). Doing it justice might force us to answer the question of what’s wrong with our democracy, rather than squeeze it into the most tedious and condescending media frame of what’s wrong with teh yoof… In many ways, one could argue that disengagement from an unresponsive and elitist “democracy” is an eminently rational choice. That might be something the professionally cynical pundits and pollies might wish to ponder.