In the face of the Howard Government's political attack on the ABC for showing left-wing and anti-American bias during the Iraq war Public opinion has defended public broadcasting (the ABC in Australia).
The grounds of the defence are that a public broadcaster should act as the watchdog of democracy. See here, here and here. Nothing unusual in that since that is pretty much how the ABC journalists understand the role of public broadcasting.
What is not mentioned is what kind of liberal democracy is being implied by the national broadcaster when it says that it is the watchdog for democracy. Democracy is taken as a given. It is assumed that since we all know what is meant by democracy so the defence centres on the watchdog role of discovering the truth. But truth for what purpose? To enhance public knowledge about the war and to inform public opinion so citizens can make judgements about the desirability of going to war. This then strengthens the institutions of liberal democracy.
Or so the argument runs.
So what sort of liberal democracy is being assumed here given the marked public cynicism about politicians and the political process? It is commonly one in which the public periodically votes for competing political parties at elections. This ensures the circulation of the political elite thereby ensuring the stability of the political institutions. There is no old-fashioned talk here of the public good or the public interest: what the strategists in the political parties do is match their policy packages (political product) with the self-interest preferences (hip pocket) of the different groups of individuals, and then calculate how the compromise between the many competing preferences will enable them to get their hands on the levers of power. Getting the hands on the levers of power and keeping them there is what the political game is all about. The democratic deficit arises from discouraging the active involvement of citizens in polity and encouraging the consumer privatisation of public life. It represents a denial of the political in liberal capitalist societies.
Lets call the above utilitarian argument for democracy based on interest group pluralism. Where does the ABC as watchdog fit into that impoverished view of the democratic process? It doesn't very easily. It can only do so if room is made for the forum; a forum that connects democratic sovereignty with liberal political institutions. A forum is implied by individual preferences being informed by good information, but there is nothing in this model to indicate how individual preferences are informed. There is nothing about the forum which is an integral part of the political.
Secondly, the utilitarian model displaces the political in favour of economics it, following J.S. Mill, basically distrusts democratic sovereignty. So it seeks to limit the broadening of democratic participation to ensure the ongoing rule of the elites. It is more liberal than democratic and so it highlights the deep tension between liberal and democracy in liberal democracy. Which side does the ABC presuppose? The liberal (its tacit cultural elitism) side or the democratic sovereignty side (equality)? The conservative culture of the ABC traditionally favoured the cultural elite guiding the masses and this has been undermined by the left liberalism of the 1968ers.
When the ABC is introduced it indicates that there is more to politics than the pursuit of self-interest. The ABC's charter talks about fostering national identity and cultural diversity. So we need a better model of democracy.
When the forum is introduced as an institution it places the emphasis on deliberation amongst citizens with deliberation presupposing the value truth as opposed to lies and spin. So we have a deliberative democracy with its idea of public reason coming through an exchange of reasons for why we should take this particular course of action (going to war) and not another course of action (not going to war). We have to sort this conflict out by coming to some sort of agreement or consensus because of the obligation of citizens to obey political authority.
This is the sort of liberal democracy that the public broadcaster as watchdog presupposes. The watchdog only makes sense when the process of journalists discovering the truth of the matter is connected to the deliberation of citizens with rights of free speech, the differnet values of public life, popular sovereignty (self-governing citizens). This introduces a public reason that acknowledges human passions and emotions in the formation of public opinion on matters of public concern. Often a public reason endeavours to displace, repress or eliminate the passions of political life, but the passions are the heart of the political. On this deliberative model of democracy the ABC in acting as a watchdog is facilitating the formation of democratic citizens. Hence there is more to politics than the pursuit of self-interest. For deliberative democrats people act politically not only in order to realize their interests: they are also motivated by moral or normative considerations, such as a search for the common good.
As a national broadcaster the ABC has a role of educating and shaping our political passions---nationality. This involves passion, creation of collective identities within the nation state and a political community. We then enter the realm of an 'us' (citizens) which sustains it identity by the demarcation of a 'them' (non-citizens, such as asylum seekers from Iraq or Afghanistan). The 'us–them' relationship is constitutive of collective national identities and it is constructed in terms of a friend–enemy relation.
This friend–enemy relation pushes the deliberative understanding of the political further to the margins of liberalism. In questioning the spin of the Howard Government a public broadcaster is acting to challenge the political consensus the spin is designed to achieve. This process of challenge foregrounds political power.---eg. the angry response of the Howard Government to the ABC's criticism of managing the war with Iraq. (What some commentators call payback.) This challenge and response tacitly highlights the political antagonism that exists in liberal political institutions as well as the pluralism of values. This makes us citizens very aware of political power that is inherent in our social relationships.
The attacks on the ABC and its responses indicate the way that politics is agonistic: it is structured on an 'us' and 'them' (friend/enemy) division. Often this is conflict is framed in terms of opponents needing to destroyed. In a deliberative democracy this friend/enemy antagonism is framed as opponents with different values and forms of life--ie., our political adversaries---whose views are deeply contested. We contest the views of our adversaries within the horizon of the shared, but contested, values of liberty and equality of liberal democracy. Political conflict as the agonistic dynamic of political force, resistance and contestation is held to be a normal and irradicable part of political life.
If political agonism encourages us to embrace the conflictual nature of politics then the Howard Government is trying to use its political power in Canberra to attain a cultural hegemony. The ABC resists. So we have confrontation.
You had better re-write that entry- I felt that I understood it on the first reading.
Posted by: Scott Wickstein on June 3, 2003 01:42 AM