Thread by @CartwheelPrint

Why political coverage is broken abc.net.au/news/2011-08-3… From 2011 and as relevant as ever. ‘Promoting journalists as insiders in front of the outsiders, the viewers, the electorate… this is a clue to what's broken about political coverage in the US and Australia.’ #auspol 1.

‘Part of the problem is how often the Australian press reframes politics as entertainment, seizing on trivial episodes that amuse or titillate and then blowing them up until they start to seem important.’ 2.

‘The advantage of politics-as-entertainment is that the main characters, the politicians themselves, work for free! The media doesn't have to pay them because taxpayers do. The sets are provided by the Government, the plots by the party leaders, backbenchers and spin doctors.’ 3.

‘Politics as problem-solving or consensus-building would be more expensive to cover. Politics as entertainment is simply a low-cost alternative.’ Pretty much how reality TV came about, it’s cheaper.. 4.

‘The term "yarn" is often used by journalists in Australia to describe the sort of stories they love to cover, as in: "it's a good yarn." A yarn used to refer to stories that were semi-fictionalised to make them more entertaining.’ 5.

‘That echo is still there, but Australian journalists don't seem to realise this when they use the term “yarn” to describe their work.’ 6.

The author @jayrosen_nyu presents 3 impoverished and interrelated ideas that has too much influence in political coverage.

1. Politics as an inside game.

2. The cult of savviness.

3. The production of innocence.

7.

An example for idea 1 from The Australian, the headline was: ‘Labor looks at conscience vote to defuse same-sex marriage split.’ It told how insiders in the Labor Party were afraid that a divisive debate on same-sex marriage would "dominate media coverage" 8.

‘of the party conference, creating an impression that the Greens are dictating the agenda. "The last thing we need is for the big story of our conference being about same-sex marriage," a senior party source said. ‘We need it to be about a mainstream issue - a Labor issue’ 9.

‘..not an issue that it looks like Bob Brown thrust upon us.’

‘See what I mean? The insiders are worried about how their conference is going to "play" in the media. They are trying to make the story come out a certain way.’ 10.

‘But if today's media report about politics is about how the media will be reporting a political event tomorrow, there's obviously something circular in that. And this is how it begins to make sense to call the journalists "insiders". 11.

‘Everyone is engaged in the production of media narratives. Journalists and politicians are both "inside" the story-making machinery.’ Next is idea two. 12.

‘The cult of savviness -

When you watch political journalists on a roundtable program summing up the week and looking ahead, what they are usually performing for us is… their savviness.’ 13.

‘In politics, our journalists believe, it is better to be savvy than it is to be honest or correct on the facts. It's better to be savvy than it is to be just, good, fair, decent, strictly lawful, civilised, sincere, thoughtful or humane.‘ 14.

‘Savviness is that quality of being shrewd, practical, hyper-informed, perceptive, ironic, "with it," and unsentimental in all things political. And what is the truest mark of savviness? Winning, of course! Or knowing who the winners are.’ 15.

‘To the people inside it, savviness is not a cult. It is not a professional church or "belief system". They would probably reject my terms. But they would say that journalists need to be savvy observers because in politics the unsavvy are hapless, clueless, deluded, clownish,’ 16

‘..or in some cases extreme. The unsavvy get run over: easily. They get disappointed: needlessly. They get angry – fruitlessly - because they don't know how things really work.’ Sound familiar? 17.

‘The savvy believe that these disciplines afford them a special view of the arena, cured of excess sentiment, useless passion, ideological certitude and other defects of vision that players in the system routinely exhibit.’ 18.

‘The savvy don't say: I have a better argument than you. They say: I am closer to reality than you. Especially if you are active in politics yourself.’ 19.

‘What's so weird about savviness is that it tries to position us as insiders, invited to speculate along with journalists and other players on how the mass public will react to the latest manoeuvrings. But the public is us. We are the public.‘ 20.

‘But we are also the customers for the savviness product. Don't you see how strange that is?

Take the most generic "savviness question" there is. One journalist asks another: how will this play with the voters?’ 21.

‘Listening to that, how will this play with the voters, haven't you ever wanted to shout at your television set, "hey buddy, I'm a voter! Don't talk about me like I'm not in the room when I'm sitting right here watching you."’ 22.

‘In campaign coverage, for example, nothing is more common than candidate strategy: how Mitt Romney plans to capture the nomination by skipping the Iowa caucuses. Or: Julia Gillard's plan for taking Sydney's western suburbs. That's what fascinates the pros, the insiders.’ 23.

‘But think about it for moment: should we give our votes to the candidate with the best strategy for capturing our votes? Something is off there, or as I said earlier: circular. Misaligned.’ 24.

‘The production of innocence

By the production of innocence I mean ways of reporting the news that try to advertise or "prove" to us that the press is neutral in its descriptions, a non-partisan presenter of facts, a non-factor and non-actor in events.‘ 25.

‘Innocence means reporters are mere recorders, without stake or interest in the matter at hand. They aren't responsible for what happens, only for telling you about it. When you hear "don't shoot the messenger" you are hearing a journalist declare his or her innocence.’ 26.

‘The basic message is we're innocent because we're uninvolved. The genre known as ‘he said, she said’ journalism is perhaps the most familiar example. But so is horse-race journalism, in which the master narrative for covering an election is: who's ahead?‘ 27.

’Journalists will tend to favour descriptions of political life that are a) true, in that verifiable facts support the story; and b) convenient for the continuous production of their own innocence.’ 28.

‘Political journalism should help us get our bearings in a world of confusing claims and counter-claims. But instead we have savviness, nothing is more characteristic of the savvy style than statements like "in politics, perception is reality.”’ 29.

‘American journalist, Ron Suskind had an interaction with an aide to George W. Bush in 2004, he explained that journalists like Suskind think that judiciously studying politicians and politics will provide solutions.’ 30.

The aide explained that while political journalists are busy studying them they’re getting on with it, that they’re ‘history's actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."’ 31.

‘“When we act, we create our own reality" wasn't so much a boast as a taunt. It was an operative telling a journalist, "You don't count." We can create our own reality and you guys can't stop us.’ Sounds very familiar.. 32.

‘What is to be done: a thought experiment -

Imagine the entirety of the political reporting and commentary produced by the Washington bureau of the New York Times or the political staff of the ABC and plot it on a grid.’ 33.

‘On the left side of the page: appearances. On the right side: realities. On the top of the page: arguments. On the bottom: facts.

Appearances, realities, arguments and facts.’ 34.

’All political news should be divided into these categories, and journalists should organise their daily report into my four quadrants.’ 35.

‘Under appearances - the attempt to make things appear a certain way. All media stunts. Everything that fits under the management of impressions. Or politics as entertainment. The photo ops. The press releases issued in lieu of doing something.’ 36.

‘My suggestion is to report appearances as just that: mere appearances. Which would be a way of jeering at them, labelling them as not quite real. So the appearances section would be heavy on satire and simple quotation.’ 37.

‘Appearances, then, means downgrading or penalising politicians who deal in the fake, the trivial, the merely sensational. In other words: "Watch out or you'll wind up in the appearances column."’ I love this! 38.

‘Under realities we find everything that is actually about real problems, real solutions, real proposals, consequential plans and of course events that deserve the title: political events. But then there's my other axis. Arguments and facts. Both are important.’ 39.

‘Now imagine all of today's political news and commentary sorted into these four quadrants. This becomes the new portal to political news. Appearances and realities, arguments and facts.’ 40.

‘To render the political world that way, journalists would have to exercise their judgment about what is real and what is not. And this is exactly what would bring them into proper alignment with our needs as citizens.’ End.