The Irony Party of Australia
Encephalatronicalogical Pamphlet
July 25th 2006
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The Dangerous Notion of Media Balance
Objectivity is an impossible aspiration for the newshound. But paradoxically it remains important to make the attempt - despite awareness the attempt is doomed to failure. The belief that one can briefly set aside one's axioms and bias in order to pen an objective factual account of some event or another is hopelessly naive. Nonetheless, this thankless task must be attempted if any comprehensible interpretation of conflict in foreign countries is to be had from correspondents or if the details of political circumstance are to be available to the viewing public unable to witness in person the turning of the wheel of State.
Balance is presented as another worthy aspiration for those preparing the events of the day for the consumption of the citizenry. But the presentation of all points of view is more easily said than done, and is not necessarily advisable. In accordance with the Australian political system, the Government, legitimately, represents its own interests at least as often as it does those of its constituents, while the ABC is directed through its charter to represent only the interests of the community. Therefore, it is reasonable that the ABC's general perspective is more compassionate and more aligned with community and individual concerns than the Government, which in the form of the Liberal Party, is a political party, and therefore of mingled and somewhat dubious and passionately self-serving intention.
Another possible problem with balance is that it's not an easy task to put all points of view equally. In the Australian media, for example, an issue the finds its way onto Lateline and the front pages of newspapers is then commented upon by various politicos and spokesmouths standing in front of cameras and microphones in courtyards and doorways at Parliament House. All day it snows paper in the offices of media outlets around the country as minor parties, lobby groups, umbrella organisations for industry and commerce submit their perspective in the form of a media release.
Then in the evening news comments from two or three politicians and maybe an expert are generally included in a story lasting up to two-and-a-half minutes. A senior minister and/or the Prime Minister are heard, perhaps with a grab from a press conference, or with a short piece of footage from the studio of one or another cheesy radio station. Next the Opposition Leader's comment is aired, the Leader appearing grumpier and more weary than his ten years in Opposition would alone attest. Occasionally, if sufficiently loony, it may be that the Greens are allowed a ten-second spot towards the back of the story. Sometimes a Business Council luminary or chief executive officer or irate union brain will be given voice.
The more balanced the news becomes in presenting the myriad, divergent, many-textured perspectives of all of the different two or three spokesmouths that can be squeezed into a two minute story on Indigenous disadvantage or conflict between Israel and neighbours, the more it appears that the superb balance achieved in an era of high technology and in the context of a sophisticated media industry highly integrated into the democratic processes of the modern liberal Western state, has become more than a little lopsided.
Two significant problems can be discerned with the carefully balanced news and current affairs engine that outputs the copy and pictures that grace our newspapers and television screens and pages we peruse online. The first is that, to paraphrase Orwell, looking from Opposition to Government, to lobbyist, we can scarcely tell any more which is which. Dour men in ties inform us of decisions concerning the removal of our taxes from those disadvantaged souls we had hoped to assist, and proudly announce to wealthy families and the delivery of large sums to unpalatable corporations. Meanwhile other men in ties explain why work hours are longer, food more expensive, sleep more difficult to come by, children abandoned to child-care, houses too costly...
The 'legitimate' 'familiar' voices are so similar, and so ubiquitous in the media that the Opposition no longer plays a role, other than to stand between the Government and the people defusing vital grievances by latching onto them for their own benefit. Ultimately, though, they are serving the incumbents in helping to creating an illusion of ongoing democratic debate. Unfortunately the Opposition steadfastly fails to recognise that it is taking up space that otherwise might have been taken by people asking hang on, aren't we being farmed here? Isn't that what this is? A farm? A people farm?
Instead, the Government is asked to respond to the Opposition's comment, and both the Opposition and the Government said Israel had a right to defend its territory against Hezbollah. Both the Opposition and the Government say the foundations of a healthy nation going forward are strong economic growth, high productivity, surplus budgets, the continued expansion of the resource sector.. in short there's very little to balance.
The first problem, then, is that all the voices heard in the media are so similar in their prefabricated consensus that despite their overt hostility, all parties appear to be contributing to the construction of a coherent and manufactured world view. The second problem is a fallacy that suggests that the interests that should be represented in public media, such as the ABC, are the same power interests that have naturally come dominate media landscapes and public places in Australia - corporate interests, the interests of the wealthy, the interests of the State. When in Australia in recent years the power elites began to clamour from their pulpits on the evening news, the editorials in their newspapers, and in prominent interviews on current affairs for greater representation of their views on the national publicly owned media network the ABC, a definite bias against the Government was identified by Senator Richard Alston and upheld by the Australian Broadcasting Authority (see here' for more on Alston's crusade, and this Mediawatch transcript on the release of the ABA's report') But in acquiescing, to some extent, to the Government's views the assumption was made - and not challenged- that the views represented IN the community are the same as the views OF the community. But this would only be the case if all media operated under a charter of public interest, and was not owned in the main by rapacious, talentless corporate sharks and blameless shareholders who feel in no way responsible.
Where, as in the case of the ABC, a charter governs the conduct of the organisation, the idea that the organisation should balance the ideas of the citizenry in general with, for example, the perspective of the Prime Minister, the Business Council of Australia, the AMA, Alan Jones, Piers Ackerman, Gerard Henderson and other ideologues of the right-wing think tanks, - power elites and their representatives to a man - is fatuous. While it might be supposed that the established institutions, the principle role of the public broadcaster is to reflect community sensibilities, and community opinion. In this regard it is antagonistic not to particular power interests but to the interests of the powerful in general. The ABC Charter, as it binds the broadcaster to the interests of the people, should confer the right to present a consensus that does not reflect the Government and other elites - to locate its own moral and ethical ground at some distance from any institution that has its own well-being, rather than the representation of nation and community, as its aim.
In short, if the ABC's charter calls for the reflection of a balance of community attitudes, it should not feel itself compelled to take seriously the attitude of a cheesy Texan who has moved to Australia for four years on a salary of fourt-teen milion a year at the head of one or another flagship Australian corporation. Or of the lunatic Government of the most powerful foreign country in the world. For example. This is not to suggest the importance of powerful individuals and lobby groups within and without the institutions of Government should be discounted, or set aside, or unheard. Nor is it true to say there are no fora for less powerful voices to be heard. But it can be argued an idea of balance that so significantly privileges these figures and institutions to the exclusion of almost all but the chatter of countless corporate minions,interrupted only by sugary missives to the commons from benevolent political luminaries and captains of industries, is less than ideal.
Beyond the acknowledged and unacknowledged filters that limit who is heard and how often, the idea of balance is rendered irrational by the refusal of media outlets to let all perspectives be heard. For example, those who believe stridently in the legitimisation of polygamy are rarely given a platform for their political position. Nor are those few Liberal extremists who believe children should be returned to the work force - that the free market should decide who pursues academic studies, rather than overly sentimental parents. Also denied a voice are cannibals, socialists, anarchists, self-flagellators, those arguing for the dissolution of work or money or Israel or the unnecessarily tall or the advertising of junk food during children's television programming. Common sense and decency might dictate that these extremists be suppressed. But an idea that all perspectives should be equally represented in the media in the interest of balance does not discount any of these views.
It might be said that the media censures only those points of view so reprehensible they have been made illegal in Australia and are universally condemned, or so ridiculous they have no place in sensible current affairs. But on regular occasions exceptions to these rules are made when the leaders of Australia and the United States, or the fanatical madmen of the Government of Israel are permitted free advocacy of murder and carnage on the nation's screens, or are allowed to explain at length why children should not be read stories that include single sex couples in the role of parents, or why it's imperative for reasons of productivity that old growth forests be destroyed, or why the Australian Government, which will not allow people to live outside the State, also refuses to provide the most basic commodities for people its citizens without their voluntary involvement in the ritual programmes of humiliation demonstrating their willingness to serve.
Once the conventions of the modern media are are taken into account, balance in the preparation of a news story for television or print today today appears largely a matter of taking a very short list of appropriate and legitimate sources, and cutting most of the names from the list, leaving only the most powerful and a few traditional but ineffectual 'antagonists' included for effect. The result is the balance of the differing perspectives of Tweedledee and Tweedledum - the balancing of the world views of up to two indistinguishable loons - parochial fools who have constructed their own private reality based on long-standing, fatuous and inessential arguments that represent the vestiges of ideological difference. Meanwhile, a kind of lip service is maintained to the facade of balance so essential to a democratic facade of long tradition.
Fortunately it's not difficult, with an Internet connexion, to avoid the kind of balance preferred nowadays on the public and commercial airwaves and in the print media of Australia. Instead, the discerning enthusiast of politics or geopolitical affairs can take a daily tour of competing polemics in 'blogs and journal articles on opinion pages made available online. The content of this Internet material can hardly be less 'factual' than the printed and television material that is its stylistic precursor. And it dispenses with a disingenuous pretence to an objective position. Instead the reader positions themselves by avoiding the kind of rabid, poisonous content they can't bear to read - whatever it is - and otherwise taking a range of views, not pre-packaged by any well meaning Aunty or inane commercial tool.
