Disgruntlement with the state of political reporting and message management on both sides of the aisle appears to be widespread at the moment. Both Nicholas Gruen at Club Troppo and Mark Bahnisch at Larvatus Prodeo have written posts today about absurdities they noticed in today’s news. I have posted my own observations of this morning’s Insiders as comments in both of those threads, but will reproduce them here. Regarding the proclamation-rebuttal structure that most political coverage takes:
Watching Insiders (with this morning being a prime example) gives a clear snapshot of this stupid process in action. The entire show is built around these principles:
- Barrie tries to get the guest to respond to something their political opponent has said and/or tries to get them to say something that will kick off the ping-pong game for the week to come.
- The panel watch a clip of one pollie and comment on it, and then they watch a corresponding clip from the other side of the chamber and comment on it.
- Even when pointing out the nonsensical and trivial, the triviality needs to come in point and counter-point form (e.g., this morning it was Peter Garrett with TV energy ratings followed by Greg Hunt skydiving).
At the moment, nobody seems to be willing to rise above this crap – Labor, the Liberals, and the media are equally complicit in driving this inane style of discourse.
Apart from the fact that it means our leaders are sending their time talking about very little, another key problem with this approach of duelling soundbites is that it minimises the role of the minor parties and independents. You can’t fit a third party into the framework unless one of the two major parties refuses to play.
And regarding the tendency for claims by the punditocracy to become accepted wisdom and then established fact:
Same kind of thing happened on ‘Insiders’ this morning – you had Julie Bishop and the pundits talking about the disregard Rudd has shown to Japan and the great offence he has caused. At some stage, one of the bobbleheads actually asked whether anyone had confirmed with the Japanese that they were offended – Piers Akerman replied that he had just been talking to a Japanese speaker and could confirm that it was a big flamin’ deal. One of the most preposterous conversations I have seen, even within this context of increasingly preposterous discourse. (and BTW, the Heiner affair is going to become a big deal on the federal stage in the next couple of weeks)
The traditional media and the major political parties are stuck in a recursive loop. Anyone got a circuit-breaker?
