Some really interesting points made in a wide ranging
discussion, including the dumbing down of Australian politics and political
reporting, the narrowness and shallowness of political discourse and debate,
the 24 hour media cycle, lack of diversity in media outlets, the low coverage
(relative to history) that the media are giving to the election campaign, and
people’s disengagement from and apathy towards political debate. At the end of the discussion, the key question
remained unresolved; who was to blame - politicians, the media or possibly even
the public? Skeptikoi believes that the
dumbing down of politics can be traced to the lower attention span that people
have for political issues, which reflects a number of factors.
First, it is becoming increasingly difficult to analyse
public policy decisions, many of which affect us directly. Working hours have increased for most people
in recent decades and the world has become more complex as the pace of
technological advance continues to accelerate.
As a result, public policy has is ever more complex and hard for people
to easily digest and understand. Put
simply, most people have less time and inclination to engage in political
discourse.
Second, as Sally Young highlighted tonight, the competition for
‘eyeballs’ has increased. Communication and
media channels have become fragmented thanks to the internet, social media, and
developments in spectrum technology that has delivered digital TV channels. A related development has been an explosion
in the airtime devoted to sports for a sports mad nation. I can recall a time when only one game of VFL
- as it was known back – was televised per week. And that was a delayed broadcast, on Saturday
night anchored by Peter Landy. Today,
free to air offers no less than four games over a weekend, while Foxtel subscribers
can watch all eight games live. TV
coverage of other sports such as cricket (all three forms of the game), tennis
and soccer has also grown exponentially.
In short, sports coverage is helping to crowd out serious political discourse.
This then brings us to what was described tonight as the
gotcha moment and the focus on political personalities. Much was made in the media of Kevin Rudd’s apparent
abrupt and rude demeanour towards the freelance make-up artist in preparation for
Wednesday night’s debate. There was some
frustration that the media would focus scarce space and time to such a trivial
matter. But it is inevitable that the
media gravitates towards political personalities in the search for that gotcha
moment when the public is disengaged from the political debate because policy
detail is difficult to digest. Against
this backdrop, we tend to base our political judgements less on policy merit
and detail, and more on personal character and behaviour. After all, the gotcha moment is far easier
and less time consuming to observe, process and judge than wading through the details
of the mining tax, ETS or paid parent leave scheme.Isn’t it ironic that in the information age, politics and political reporting has been dumbed down? Explanations that assign blame to politicians, the media (or people’s apathy) are overly simplistic. Rather, Skeptikoi believes the answer lies in the growing complexity of the real world and public policy, less time (and attention) that people have to devote to political issues, and the fragmentation of communication and media channels. There is still a market for insightful and engaging political discourse and debate, but probably a shrinking one. If there is any consolation to the Australian public, it is that you are not alone; the dumbing down of politics in the information age represents a global phenomenon.
Just for the sake of it, I will (partly) disagree! I accept that the 24-hr news cycle and the need to provide content for the much higher number of news/info outlets encourages a lot of dross. But the main factor in my view is that Australia is still more-or-less living the Great Moderation.
ReplyDeleteIn the mid-late 80s, supply-side economic reforms were seen by both sides of politics as providing the solution for our problems, even though the strong growth we saw was mainly attributable to better demand-side policy (ie floating of the AUD, which made the RBA's job relatively easier). The micro reforms took, and were always going to take, many years to have their small positive effects.
Now, our problems are again largely demand-side, but there seems to be bipartisan agreement (and agreement in the media) that these demand-side problems are purely exogenous - ie the 'end of the mining boom' meme - and domestic policy can do little to resolve them. Nowadays, no one is buying that story (correctly) that, say, abolishing the carbon tax will make a big difference to growth. People would have bought that tripe in the '80s. And because the RBA's independence is now so sacrosanct, there is neither any criticism of the RBA regarding its recent poor performance nor debate about changing the RBA's target to NGDP. No wonder people aren't interested - no one has any real solutions and the media and public agree.
Raj, agree that the many distractions available today probably can't entirely explain the dumbing down of politics. I think you're right, governments haven't made the case for meaningful economic reforms. But I think the public doesn't have an appetite for such reforms; we are in still in the midst of a once in a century terms of trade boom. As the 1980s demonstrated, there's nothing like the spectre of becoming a banana republic to embolden the public, media and government for the urgency of structural reforms. Re: mon pol, I'm afraid that a quiet and complecent consensus has emerged. But that's a topic for another blog post.
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