The Need for Politics to Move Beyond Old Media

Politics moves quickly and in Australia it is no different. During the 2010 election campaign both major parties were duly criticized for political debate that was risk adverse, clichéd and underwhelming in terms of vision, substance and differentiation between the Labor and Liberal/National agendas.

The roundly criticised dumbing down of political discourse through the deployment of spin, slogan and other such PR derived techniques has now been seriously thrown askew with the proposed introduction of a carbon tax by the Gillard government.  It is difficult to think of a more complex and potentially divisive tax reform in recent history. The GST debate was divisive but as a tax it was relatively easy to explain.

In 2011 with a media cycle that creates its on hemisphere of debate and analysis often devoid of any real target audience beside sectional media and business interests, in what former Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner refers to as the Sideshow Syndrome, leaves very little room for modern day politicians to prosecute serious and well constructed public policy while at the same time appeasing the mainstream media’s unquenchable thirst for gaffes, sound bites and scandal.

Old media in particular has shifted away from reporting straight news to trying to generate its own news wind through opinion pieces and sparking drawing politicians on controversial topics of the day. Opinion is also being misconstrued as ‘analysis’.

The shift away from reporting has much to do with the instantaneous manner in which news is now spread across the globe. The access to world events as they unfold through the eyes of primary sources not only surpasses the reach of many old news media but also by the filters and vested interests installed by many media proprietors.

Twitter and social media have changed the way we access and consume news and the old media doesn’t like it. Therefore much of it is reduced to sniping at the sidelines, reporters talking to other reporters about the ins and outs of the days events. While the world of news gathering continues to evolve, the infrastructure, human and capital, of the old media remains in place and politicians therefore have continue to have to play within the same paradigm and the circus continues to go around and around from issue to issue.

News websites and the blogosphere, free from the shackles external and internal pressures offer a fresh and in many ways a more insightful and interactive community in which political discourse can occur. Obviously there is a ways to go before a tipping point is reached from old to new media but the tide has turned and the days where people are told what to think are limited.

The sooner that politicians and their parties are able to step outside the parameters of the 24 hour news cycle and realise there is a vibrant community of intelligent writers and/or bloggers that are able to engage in meaningful dialogue on policy issues of importance, the sooner political debate can return to the democratic values that any modern society in the 21^st century deserves.