{"id":7726,"date":"2010-10-11T00:00:39","date_gmt":"2010-10-10T22:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=7726"},"modified":"2010-10-08T12:41:09","modified_gmt":"2010-10-08T10:41:09","slug":"beyond-dualism-reporting-conflicts-in-the-post-electoral-mediascape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2010\/10\/beyond-dualism-reporting-conflicts-in-the-post-electoral-mediascape\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond Dualism: Reporting Conflicts in the Post-Electoral Mediascape"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cOn the one hand\u2026 on the other hand\u2026 in the end, only time will tell\u201d. The formula we imbibed with our morning coffee at BBC World, where I presented over a thousand half-hour television bulletins, was seen as the secret of a successful career.<\/p>\n

To \u2018hear both sides\u2019 is, of course, the surest way to avoid allegations of bias \u2013 but it elevates, to the status of convention, a way of reporting that divides the world around us into dyads: home and abroad (\u2018boat people\u2019); humanity against nature (Pakistan floods); us and them (\u2018the Taliban\u2019); Left against Right.<\/p>\n

The last of these intersects with another journalistic staple, the primacy of official sources. These conventions are artefacts of the historic transformation of news into a marketing proposition in consumer societies. The political pressure on public broadcasters, to offer journalism as all-things-to-all-people, is a close cousin of the imperative in commercial media, to avoid putting off potential consumers of all political views and none.<\/p>\n

If the news leads with, say, a statement by the Treasurer on the economy, it\u2019s a choice; but one that comes with a built-in alibi. There is only one Treasurer, after all, and, from the paper\u2019s or program\u2019s point of view, it\u2019s not \u2018our fault\u2019 that s\/he is the incumbent of that office. To choose, instead, to foreground the words or deeds of a trade union, think-tank or Professor, would immediately invite the objection: why this one, not that one?<\/p>\n

These conventions combine into a brand of reporting, here in Australia as elsewhere, that sometimes feels stultifying and is now at risk of dropping off the pace. Duels in the Canberra parliament feed off, and into, the dualistic template. The notoriously petty quality of the exchanges (\u2018he flicked me the finger!\u2019; \u2018he used a rude word, Mr Speaker!\u2019) are part of the same paradigm. Up to now, there has been an obvious \u2018objective correlative\u2019 for the he-said, she-said journalistic narrative: viewers (as voters) are all corralled, by virtue of Australia\u2019s electoral system, into supporting either one side, or the other.<\/p>\n

Or are they? At this year\u2019s federal election, the proportion of voters who followed former Labor leader Mark Latham\u2019s advice to post an \u2018informal\u2019 or spoilt ballot is reckoned to have nearly doubled, and minor parties are suddenly poised to wield a major influence, with the Greens, buoyed by a record 13% of the popular vote, now holding the balance of power in the Senate.<\/p>\n

It should be an opportunity for Australian journalism to take a new, sidelong view of what Pierre Bourdieu \u2013 one of the most influential thinkers in the social sciences \u2013 called the \u2018doxa\u2019: the set of assumptions and beliefs that remain, generally, unarticulated and (therefore) uncontested in public discourse.<\/p>\n

Journalism in mainstream media tends to be one of the chief props of this state of affairs, as issues that the front benches of the two main political parties find inconvenient to discuss simply slide off the edge of the news agenda.<\/p>\n

Recently, however, the strains have become more visible. The loss of Australian servicemen in Afghanistan tends to be met with solemn statements, by Ministers and their shadows, about the need to \u2018stay the course\u2019 until \u2018the mission is accomplished\u2019. At least now we are a little more likely to hear questions raised, about what \u2018the mission\u2019 consists of, and how likely it is that particular aspirations will be met. That narrows the gap between political opinion and public opinion, which has long since concluded, according to polling evidence, that what we might call the \u2018missionary position\u2019 \u2013 inscribed in official pronouncements \u2013 is at odds with the reality.<\/p>\n

The \u2018doxic space\u2019 conceals paradoxes, including other important questions about Australia\u2019s security, and place in the world, that were notable by their absence from coverage of the election. The country is advancing, surreptitiously but remorselessly, up the global league table of arms spenders towards the \u2018top ten\u2019, despite having no real military enemies \u2013 unless you count China, which is also our major trading partner and the biggest source of new Australian citizens. Perhaps the ultimate taboo subject is any fundamental discussion of our military alliance with the United States, where a struggle is now underway between the Pentagon and an incumbent President riding a wave of war-weariness that jeopardises future combat operations which, in turn, nourish the Military-Industrial Complex.<\/p>\n

Then there is the curious conspiracy of silence over the growing inequalities in Australian society, and a Labor party that seems content to connive in them: siphoning public funds into private schools and trimming tax rates for the well-off, while means-testing breaks and benefits to the detriment of middle incomes. Don\u2019t they know about the abundant research evidence showing more unequal societies to be less hospitable and more hostile places \u2013 more likely, surely, to vote on fear and greed, than hope and solidarity? Perhaps journalists should tell them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe media\u201d, Michael Schudson said, \u201care formally disconnected from other ruling agencies because they must attend as much to their own legitimation as to the legitimation of the capitalist system as a whole\u201d. In plain language, newspapers and news programs cannot afford to appear less well-informed, or more credulous, than their readers and audiences.<\/p>\n

So, Australia\u2019s electoral earthquake, puny as it was, could be a cue for a shake-up in the dreary dualism of reporting on public affairs. There is a premium on creativity to open up the doxa and find ways to focus on substantive questions, exemplified by the Sydney Morning Herald<\/em>\u2019s influential Earth Hour campaign: in its time, a way to raise to the agenda a subject of close concern to readers \u2013 namely, anthropogenic climate change \u2013 that the government of the day preferred to avoid.<\/p>\n

Of course, the opportunities for individual reporters, even editors, are circumscribed by a host of other factors beyond their control. In considering the possibilities for changing the way journalists report, we have to balance the scope for individual agency against the constraints imposed by the structures \u2013 practical, political, economic \u2013 within which they work.<\/p>\n

The new dispensation foregrounds the need for structural reform, too. We could begin by trying to make the public service provisions we already have, work properly. In common with other public broadcasters elsewhere, the influential Australian Broadcasting Corporation is sworn, in its Editorial Policies, to \u201cpresent principal relevant views on matters of importance\u201d, but this is trumped by a set of \u201cnews values\u201d, drawn up by managers to exempt them from inconvenient obligations to look beyond Minister Tweedle-dee and his shadow, Tweedle-dum:<\/p>\n