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April 30, 2011
I have yet to read Lindsay Tanner's Sideshow: Dumbing down democracy. This text, from what I gather, describes contemporary politics in terms how the media and the politicians and even the electorate have caused the dumbing of down politics to a series of sound bites and robotic performances, where focus groups set the direction. Politics is a carnival sideshow.
In an interview with The Age Tanner says:
When I got into Parliament and throughout most of the '80s and into the '90s, right across the political spectrum, people were on about big issues, big ideas, big battles. That era seems to have passed and we have descended into this world of announceables and gimmicks and stunts and I really believe the two prevailing rules of political behaviour now are: one, look like you're doing something; and, two, don't offend anyone who matters.So you end up in this kind of faux politics, where basically people are pretending, or they're actually acting out roles in many areas and the content of the challenge is sidestepped because the price that would be paid for tackling a serious challenge is just too high...
Tanner's central thesis is that the media-politician relationship has become a damaging vicious circle: the media turns politics into entertainment, the politicians, knowing what's good for them, give in kind, and the results are public cynicism and often bad decisions. Politics defaults to politics as a sport and it has drifted into a really tawdry, low-rent space.
His argument is that political habits have been modified and attuned to a changing media environment, and that the gotcha mentality (with its loaded questions) results in politicians always being backed into corners where they play it safe and defensive to avoid the media talk of gaffes, splits, person x attacks person y etc. So they are forced to play the media's game.
In conversation with Andrew Jaspan Tanner says that the media are the oxygen of politics and politicians, without that oxygen politicians die, they do not exist. Politicians have a very limited choice in the new media landscape:
Politicians live or die by access to those media, but the terms on which they get access are not within their control and therefore inevitably they make choices, and some try to shape how it works more than others and inevitably they make choices designed to maximize their appearance in that media and their positive image in that media.
This media dumbing down is why politicians behave the way they do. Politicians are unavoidably captive to the media because without the media they don’t exist and nobody knows who they are and what they’re on about.
The political is ceasing to be about the content of big issues and big arguments and different points of view about the future of the country, and it is becoming this game where you have this toxic interaction between media and politicians.It's an accurate account, even if a little light on the way the politicians have acted to hollow the political over and above their response to media as entertainment.
The Canberra Press Gallery, who just want Tanner to do a kiss and tell, ain't going to like the criticism but they will find it harder to dismiss Tanner than Latham.
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It's good to see this problem getting a decent airing, although as Grogs Gamut points out, most of the media are treating the story as just another gotcha. And Grog rightly points out that a lot of political journalists don't know the difference between policy and politics.
Apparently Tanner refers to a couple of bloggers for good policy reporting. If politicians are so sick of stupid media, isn't it time they made better use of bloggers? If they really wanted decent policy reporting, shouldn't they be engaging with people who are actually interested?