2013 Australian Federal Election Analysis
What does the media coverage of the 2013 Australian Federal Election tell us about Australian journalism?
Andrea Porcaro October 2013
This essay will examine the media coverage of the 2013 Australian Federal Election to evaluate the symbiotic relationship between Australian journalism and politics. The legitimacy of democracy and course modern politics finds itself at the mercy of print and broadcast media. This is largely due to the power of reporting and interpretation of political events which can shape public opinion and voting preferences. In a liberal democracy, efforts to overcome opinion, bias and misrepresentation in the media are regulated by industry standards and practice codes. Ideally, such systems should protect the general …show more content…
public from the exposure of poor journalism standards and instead result in accurate, objective news which aims to inform better voting choices. However, these rules are not always considered or adhered to by major news corporations. In any case, the value of media scrutiny means a better account of political reality. (McNair 2012, p.1)
The 2013 Australian Federal Election received mass attention from the vast majority of news-based media giants.
In general terms, the weeks leading up to a federal election changes the dynamics of print and broadcast media as they shift their focus towards the coverage of political parties and their leaders. In turn, citizens hoping for unbiased, accurate and comprehensive accounts of party policies and their respective politicians were left somewhat disappointed with the media coverage of the 2013 Australian Federal Election. The reasons for this argument will be systematically addressed in this essay.
The first noteworthy error made by the mainstream media (print, television and radio) involves the overarching narrative of the election which focussed on the Labor party and the Coalition. It is not the first time election media coverage was guilty of wearing the two-party blinkers. For decades,
Australian voters have had to decipher this misrepresentation for themselves. This practice of exclusion towards other parties is common, yet damaging to the possibility of unbiased political representation as voters form opinions through the lens of the media. Perhaps the media feel it is justified due to the use of polling statistics (which are often facilitated by media companies themselves) (Craig 2004, p.166). However, the emphasis of the two-party preference …show more content…
system exemplifies just one of the the critical errors made by Australian mass media corporations. In supporting democratic ideals, there is a stronger need for journalists and their respective media companies to capture a wider picture of parties and preferences. The shameful reality is that independents and candidates from minor parties accounted for only 5% of articles during the three
elections of the 2000s. This exclusion self-perpetuates the contest between Labor and the Coalition as minor parties don’t receive the media attention required to win public support (Young, 2012).
Furthermore, election reporting is obsessed with opinion polls rather than fact and policy making.
Media companies favor polls because they believe it represents public opinion (Graber et. al, p.
158). On the contrary, if voters oppose the policies of the Australian Liberal and Labor parties, the avenues for information regarding other parties are comparably minuscule. If people are not in the know, nor well versed on policy analysis, there is little hope for the wider public to decipher a clear image of Australian politics. As Street suggests, ‘the difference between what is true and what is fiction is not something which can be ‘seen’. It is something we learn and it is something which we are taught’ (2001, p. 41). Therefore, the media play a serious role in shaping the future of politics in
Australia as their messages have the potential to reach wide audiences, looking for trustworthy information. Secondly, political narratives in the public sphere often gloss over the important details of policy making in favor of ‘spin’ and entertainment. For example, when Tony Abbott, Kevin Rudd,
Christine Milne and Clive Palmer appeared on Big Brother to deliver their 2013 campaign message to the housemates, it was a magnet for major media companies. The Sydney Morning Herald, The
Herald Sun, and the Daily Telegraph ran articles about the event in great and similar detail. The story was bound to sell and attract attention, as each leader delivered more than just a political message; they revealed their personality. Palmer ranted about his political determination to restore
Australia to the lucky nation, while Rudd delivered a well-tempered account of Labor’s efforts should the country restore its faith in the party. The figure attracting the most attention was Abbott as he asked the housemates to vote for ‘the guy with the not so bad looking daughters’. His peculiar statement received a lot attention, fueling media interpretations of Abbott’s desperation for support.
Evident in the media coverage, this was a highly marketable story due to its entertainment value.
Newspaper radio and television have always relied on entertainment to add value to their content, but the problem lies in the lack of distinction between news and entertainment, personalities and issues leading to the saturation of public figure coverage likened to the dramatics of afternoon soaps. (Schultz 1998, p. 4) Furthermore, the journalists of the Big Brother related articles flocked to the event in the hope to win the attention of a younger audience whose interests are unlikely to concern politics. It was the opportune moment for party leaders to reveal simplistic summaries of their intended policies and promises. Sadly, this is exactly what the leaders succumbed to. Perhaps a deliberate strategy of the party leaders, their lack of transparency and simple policy attitudes were a common trait throughout the election campaign to appeal to simple-minded voters and follow the motto: under promise and over deliver.
Unfortunately, it appears any event is newsworthy to the Australian media if it involves a major party policy announcement or features the campaign theatrics of the party leader. Even if that event happens to take place in the Big Brother House. In a candid description of News Corporation,
Rupert Murdoch himself said “We are in the entertainment business” (Street 2001, p. 61). One only has to glance over a popular newspaper and its website to see the truth in Murdoch’s statement.
Similar to the Big Brother article is another written by Heath Aston titled “I Was Treated as a
Second Class Citizen”. The article was featured in The Age as part of the post election coverage.
The article sparked controversy surrounding the mis-treatment of Liberal candidate, Andrew
Nguyen. Mr Nguyen claimed a Liberal party campaign-coordinator removed him from important events during the lead up to the election and attributed these actions to racism and embarrassment of Mr Nguyen’s grasp of the English language. Aston disclosed in the article he was not able to speak with the co-ordinator in question, yet he ran the story despite having only one side to tell.
This article demonstrates the media’s desperation for political stories of high entertainment value, to create the sense of scandal and foul play among individuals partaking in the campaign.
Furthermore, Aston’s article circumvents good journalistic practice as he published his bias to the audience. This leaves readers questioning Aston’s motives for publishing a poorly informed, onesided article. Was it a desperate attempt to sell a negative image of the Liberal Party? Or perhaps
Aston took personal interest in Mr. Nguyen’s account of events. Despite the reasons, the choice to publish the story reflects the carelessness that is sometimes present in Australian journalism and highlights the need for diligence and better standards.
By extension of these points, the truth is almost impossible to communicate during election campaigns, as politicians fear the media will interpret their messages and comments and twist them to their advantage. ABC Lateline presenter Leigh Sales describes this fear as a syndrome present in politicians during election campaigns in these terms:
“Many of our politicians have a pervasive fear of saying anything that may hand ammunition to opponents. They have concluded that honest or direct answers are a risk generally nor worth taking.
The media is partly to blame for this, although politicians aren’t passive victims” (Tanner 2011, p.
95) Rather, politicians have adapted with the media in order to maintain their desired profile to stay ahead of the ‘horse race’.
The media can also be criticized for their extensive treatment of the election as the deciding time for voters. While it is important to cover the campaign in the interests of democratic process, the level of reporting saturates media outlets across the nation. This concentration on politicians and the parties they represent during the short election campaign follows the formal bureaucratic/ democratic hierarchy, according to Street. Furthermore, Street argues that news reporters ignore
processes in favor of personalities, not because of prejudices, but because the structure and organization of the media requires them to deal with events in a limited time frame under the demands of tight deadline (Street 2001, p.59). During the 2013 election coverage it is evident, especially during television interviews, that the media are confined within borders of entertainment as they aimed to sell controversial, interesting stories about people and events, rather than important public policy.
A contextualised account of the 2013 Australian Federal election also calls into question the role of the internet. In Young’s article “Media Reporting Of the Next Federal Election: What Can We
Expect?”, she predicted the 2013 election will be heralded ‘The Internet Election’. In hindsight, it can be argued she was correct. Social media played a prolific role during the election campaign, as voters engaged with Twitter and Facebook to follow the stories and feeds of politicians and parties.
Luckily for media giants such as The Age, The Herald Sun and the Australian, the internet has come to a slight rescue. They can defend their credibility with the discussion forums and opinion columns beside their online articles, which are open to the voices of the public, rather than reducing them to the opinion polls. While the beliefs of individuals posting such comments are not a reflection of the journalist’s professional opinion (or the media company), they offer readers an interesting distraction from the many plain, ‘dumbed down’ articles on offer by professional journalists. The
Internet is also arguably expected to improve the quality of the modern democratic process through its flow of information and news. (Craig 2004, p.89).
Perhaps the best of tasks for the media is the reporting of the election day, as articles are less pervasive and more informative about the happenings of the day. The 2013 Australian election saw many news teams venture to various electorates in Australia’s capital cities and rural towns to depict the landscape of Australian voting. Polls continued to dominate newspapers which used large, eyecatching graphics to display the leader of the ‘horse race’. Of course, for the media, the purpose of election-day coverage is to finally report news-worthy, and important events as anxiety rises amongst voters eager to learn the results. As expected, internet news websites of The Age and The
Herald Sun even provided readers with live updates as results were steadily released. In recent times, the improvement of technology has seen faster updates and more coverage, but is the content improving? Unfortunately the fast production of commercially driven news stories had led to a decline in content quality as stories are recycled and produced quickly to meed the demands of the
24/7 newsroom.
Many shortfalls of Australian journalism have been discussed in this essay thus far. It would be inconsiderate and unjust to criticize Australian journalism without an explanation of what constitutes ‘good election coverage’. For the sake of this argument, the term ‘good’ will be replaced
with ‘better’, as progress is the ideal and attainable outcome. Without doubt, journalism is intimately related to the course of political leadership in a nation.
Hence, the media are often blamed when misrepresentation in politics occurs. This is the first potential improvement of
Australian journalism. The incorporation of minor parties and the voices of voters would make a drastic change to the state of election coverage practices as we know them today. Wider inclusion of such political parties would dilute the two-party obsession and pay credit to the efforts of remaining participants, and in turn, educate and influence readers and viewers about the wider Australian political landscape. After all, if democracy is the system by which this country operates, it must be duly reflected in political media coverage. What the media should realize while they are publishing repetitive stories borrowed from one another, is the future of a nation is largely held in their hands.
The media cannot be simply reduced to innocent messengers. If each message was accurate, informative and unbiased, perhaps innocence could be assumed. But until then, and against the backdrop of this argument, the Australian media giants must reform political journalism to sell information rather than entertainment.
References
Geoffrey Craig, 2004. The Media, Politics and Public Life. First Edition. Allen & Unwin.
John Street, 2001. Mass Media, Politics and Democracy. First Edition Edition. Palgrave Macmillan.
Lindsey Tanner, ‘Politicians Fight Back’ Sideshow: Dumbing Down Democracy (Carlton North: Scribe
Publications 2011)
Sally Young, ‘Media Reporting Of the Next Federal Election: What Can We Expect?’
Sourced on September 29 2013, from: http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/
Research_and_Education/pops/pop58/c05
Doris A. Graber, 1998. The Politics of News the News of Politics, First Edition. CQ Press.
Julianne Schultz, 1998. Reviving the Fourth Estate: Democracy, Accountability and the Media (Reshaping
Australian Institutions). 1st Edition. Cambridge University Press.
Brian Mcnair, 2012. Journalism and Democracy: An Evaluation of the Political Public Sphere. 1st Edition,
Routledge
Andrea Porcaro October 2013
This essay will examine the media coverage of the 2013 Australian Federal Election to evaluate the symbiotic relationship between Australian journalism and politics. The legitimacy of democracy and course modern politics finds itself at the mercy of print and broadcast media. This is largely due to the power of reporting and interpretation of political events which can shape public opinion and voting preferences. In a liberal democracy, efforts to overcome opinion, bias and misrepresentation in the media are regulated by industry standards and practice codes. Ideally, such systems should protect the general …show more content…
public from the exposure of poor journalism standards and instead result in accurate, objective news which aims to inform better voting choices. However, these rules are not always considered or adhered to by major news corporations. In any case, the value of media scrutiny means a better account of political reality. (McNair 2012, p.1)
The 2013 Australian Federal Election received mass attention from the vast majority of news-based media giants.
In general terms, the weeks leading up to a federal election changes the dynamics of print and broadcast media as they shift their focus towards the coverage of political parties and their leaders. In turn, citizens hoping for unbiased, accurate and comprehensive accounts of party policies and their respective politicians were left somewhat disappointed with the media coverage of the 2013 Australian Federal Election. The reasons for this argument will be systematically addressed in this essay.
The first noteworthy error made by the mainstream media (print, television and radio) involves the overarching narrative of the election which focussed on the Labor party and the Coalition. It is not the first time election media coverage was guilty of wearing the two-party blinkers. For decades,
Australian voters have had to decipher this misrepresentation for themselves. This practice of exclusion towards other parties is common, yet damaging to the possibility of unbiased political representation as voters form opinions through the lens of the media. Perhaps the media feel it is justified due to the use of polling statistics (which are often facilitated by media companies themselves) (Craig 2004, p.166). However, the emphasis of the two-party preference …show more content…
system exemplifies just one of the the critical errors made by Australian mass media corporations. In supporting democratic ideals, there is a stronger need for journalists and their respective media companies to capture a wider picture of parties and preferences. The shameful reality is that independents and candidates from minor parties accounted for only 5% of articles during the three
elections of the 2000s. This exclusion self-perpetuates the contest between Labor and the Coalition as minor parties don’t receive the media attention required to win public support (Young, 2012).
Furthermore, election reporting is obsessed with opinion polls rather than fact and policy making.
Media companies favor polls because they believe it represents public opinion (Graber et. al, p.
158). On the contrary, if voters oppose the policies of the Australian Liberal and Labor parties, the avenues for information regarding other parties are comparably minuscule. If people are not in the know, nor well versed on policy analysis, there is little hope for the wider public to decipher a clear image of Australian politics. As Street suggests, ‘the difference between what is true and what is fiction is not something which can be ‘seen’. It is something we learn and it is something which we are taught’ (2001, p. 41). Therefore, the media play a serious role in shaping the future of politics in
Australia as their messages have the potential to reach wide audiences, looking for trustworthy information. Secondly, political narratives in the public sphere often gloss over the important details of policy making in favor of ‘spin’ and entertainment. For example, when Tony Abbott, Kevin Rudd,
Christine Milne and Clive Palmer appeared on Big Brother to deliver their 2013 campaign message to the housemates, it was a magnet for major media companies. The Sydney Morning Herald, The
Herald Sun, and the Daily Telegraph ran articles about the event in great and similar detail. The story was bound to sell and attract attention, as each leader delivered more than just a political message; they revealed their personality. Palmer ranted about his political determination to restore
Australia to the lucky nation, while Rudd delivered a well-tempered account of Labor’s efforts should the country restore its faith in the party. The figure attracting the most attention was Abbott as he asked the housemates to vote for ‘the guy with the not so bad looking daughters’. His peculiar statement received a lot attention, fueling media interpretations of Abbott’s desperation for support.
Evident in the media coverage, this was a highly marketable story due to its entertainment value.
Newspaper radio and television have always relied on entertainment to add value to their content, but the problem lies in the lack of distinction between news and entertainment, personalities and issues leading to the saturation of public figure coverage likened to the dramatics of afternoon soaps. (Schultz 1998, p. 4) Furthermore, the journalists of the Big Brother related articles flocked to the event in the hope to win the attention of a younger audience whose interests are unlikely to concern politics. It was the opportune moment for party leaders to reveal simplistic summaries of their intended policies and promises. Sadly, this is exactly what the leaders succumbed to. Perhaps a deliberate strategy of the party leaders, their lack of transparency and simple policy attitudes were a common trait throughout the election campaign to appeal to simple-minded voters and follow the motto: under promise and over deliver.
Unfortunately, it appears any event is newsworthy to the Australian media if it involves a major party policy announcement or features the campaign theatrics of the party leader. Even if that event happens to take place in the Big Brother House. In a candid description of News Corporation,
Rupert Murdoch himself said “We are in the entertainment business” (Street 2001, p. 61). One only has to glance over a popular newspaper and its website to see the truth in Murdoch’s statement.
Similar to the Big Brother article is another written by Heath Aston titled “I Was Treated as a
Second Class Citizen”. The article was featured in The Age as part of the post election coverage.
The article sparked controversy surrounding the mis-treatment of Liberal candidate, Andrew
Nguyen. Mr Nguyen claimed a Liberal party campaign-coordinator removed him from important events during the lead up to the election and attributed these actions to racism and embarrassment of Mr Nguyen’s grasp of the English language. Aston disclosed in the article he was not able to speak with the co-ordinator in question, yet he ran the story despite having only one side to tell.
This article demonstrates the media’s desperation for political stories of high entertainment value, to create the sense of scandal and foul play among individuals partaking in the campaign.
Furthermore, Aston’s article circumvents good journalistic practice as he published his bias to the audience. This leaves readers questioning Aston’s motives for publishing a poorly informed, onesided article. Was it a desperate attempt to sell a negative image of the Liberal Party? Or perhaps
Aston took personal interest in Mr. Nguyen’s account of events. Despite the reasons, the choice to publish the story reflects the carelessness that is sometimes present in Australian journalism and highlights the need for diligence and better standards.
By extension of these points, the truth is almost impossible to communicate during election campaigns, as politicians fear the media will interpret their messages and comments and twist them to their advantage. ABC Lateline presenter Leigh Sales describes this fear as a syndrome present in politicians during election campaigns in these terms:
“Many of our politicians have a pervasive fear of saying anything that may hand ammunition to opponents. They have concluded that honest or direct answers are a risk generally nor worth taking.
The media is partly to blame for this, although politicians aren’t passive victims” (Tanner 2011, p.
95) Rather, politicians have adapted with the media in order to maintain their desired profile to stay ahead of the ‘horse race’.
The media can also be criticized for their extensive treatment of the election as the deciding time for voters. While it is important to cover the campaign in the interests of democratic process, the level of reporting saturates media outlets across the nation. This concentration on politicians and the parties they represent during the short election campaign follows the formal bureaucratic/ democratic hierarchy, according to Street. Furthermore, Street argues that news reporters ignore
processes in favor of personalities, not because of prejudices, but because the structure and organization of the media requires them to deal with events in a limited time frame under the demands of tight deadline (Street 2001, p.59). During the 2013 election coverage it is evident, especially during television interviews, that the media are confined within borders of entertainment as they aimed to sell controversial, interesting stories about people and events, rather than important public policy.
A contextualised account of the 2013 Australian Federal election also calls into question the role of the internet. In Young’s article “Media Reporting Of the Next Federal Election: What Can We
Expect?”, she predicted the 2013 election will be heralded ‘The Internet Election’. In hindsight, it can be argued she was correct. Social media played a prolific role during the election campaign, as voters engaged with Twitter and Facebook to follow the stories and feeds of politicians and parties.
Luckily for media giants such as The Age, The Herald Sun and the Australian, the internet has come to a slight rescue. They can defend their credibility with the discussion forums and opinion columns beside their online articles, which are open to the voices of the public, rather than reducing them to the opinion polls. While the beliefs of individuals posting such comments are not a reflection of the journalist’s professional opinion (or the media company), they offer readers an interesting distraction from the many plain, ‘dumbed down’ articles on offer by professional journalists. The
Internet is also arguably expected to improve the quality of the modern democratic process through its flow of information and news. (Craig 2004, p.89).
Perhaps the best of tasks for the media is the reporting of the election day, as articles are less pervasive and more informative about the happenings of the day. The 2013 Australian election saw many news teams venture to various electorates in Australia’s capital cities and rural towns to depict the landscape of Australian voting. Polls continued to dominate newspapers which used large, eyecatching graphics to display the leader of the ‘horse race’. Of course, for the media, the purpose of election-day coverage is to finally report news-worthy, and important events as anxiety rises amongst voters eager to learn the results. As expected, internet news websites of The Age and The
Herald Sun even provided readers with live updates as results were steadily released. In recent times, the improvement of technology has seen faster updates and more coverage, but is the content improving? Unfortunately the fast production of commercially driven news stories had led to a decline in content quality as stories are recycled and produced quickly to meed the demands of the
24/7 newsroom.
Many shortfalls of Australian journalism have been discussed in this essay thus far. It would be inconsiderate and unjust to criticize Australian journalism without an explanation of what constitutes ‘good election coverage’. For the sake of this argument, the term ‘good’ will be replaced
with ‘better’, as progress is the ideal and attainable outcome. Without doubt, journalism is intimately related to the course of political leadership in a nation.
Hence, the media are often blamed when misrepresentation in politics occurs. This is the first potential improvement of
Australian journalism. The incorporation of minor parties and the voices of voters would make a drastic change to the state of election coverage practices as we know them today. Wider inclusion of such political parties would dilute the two-party obsession and pay credit to the efforts of remaining participants, and in turn, educate and influence readers and viewers about the wider Australian political landscape. After all, if democracy is the system by which this country operates, it must be duly reflected in political media coverage. What the media should realize while they are publishing repetitive stories borrowed from one another, is the future of a nation is largely held in their hands.
The media cannot be simply reduced to innocent messengers. If each message was accurate, informative and unbiased, perhaps innocence could be assumed. But until then, and against the backdrop of this argument, the Australian media giants must reform political journalism to sell information rather than entertainment.
References
Geoffrey Craig, 2004. The Media, Politics and Public Life. First Edition. Allen & Unwin.
John Street, 2001. Mass Media, Politics and Democracy. First Edition Edition. Palgrave Macmillan.
Lindsey Tanner, ‘Politicians Fight Back’ Sideshow: Dumbing Down Democracy (Carlton North: Scribe
Publications 2011)
Sally Young, ‘Media Reporting Of the Next Federal Election: What Can We Expect?’
Sourced on September 29 2013, from: http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/
Research_and_Education/pops/pop58/c05
Doris A. Graber, 1998. The Politics of News the News of Politics, First Edition. CQ Press.
Julianne Schultz, 1998. Reviving the Fourth Estate: Democracy, Accountability and the Media (Reshaping
Australian Institutions). 1st Edition. Cambridge University Press.
Brian Mcnair, 2012. Journalism and Democracy: An Evaluation of the Political Public Sphere. 1st Edition,
Routledge