Lovely tweep @Sue0606 just put an idea on my feed which is worthy of printing on a T-Shirt:
TWITTER HOLDS POLITICIANS TO ACCOUNT BECAUSE JOURNALISTS DON’T.
Does that resonate with you all? Because it sure resonates with me. A thread👇🏻
TWITTER HOLDS POLITICIANS TO ACCOUNT BECAUSE JOURNALISTS DON’T.
Does that resonate with you all? Because it sure resonates with me. A thread👇🏻
I’ve been noticing all week the little platitudes from journalists to Morrison, making sure their articles are careful to say he was of course entitled to a holiday with his lovely family. Every time I’ve read this a little firecracker has gone off in my brain. Let me explain.
The reason these statements are there is to remind Morrison and the rest of the political class - other journos and politicians, that they’re one of the ‘good guys’ who can be relied upon to keep their in-group culture collegiate, safe and secure. ‘No judgments from me!’
But hang on, if a journalist is refusing to judge a politician, they’re not doing their job! You can read that again if you like. If a journalist fails to honestly scrutinise the conduct of the PM, what are they doing there?
This cosy little relationship, where journos rush to show they’re insiders and friendly to other insiders, is broadly referred to as the problem of ‘access journalism’. Journos need to build relationships with politicians so they can access the information only they can provide.
The problem is, if journos feel the need to keep the politicians sweet by refusing to judge them, then the fourth estate crumbles. It is no longer a watchdog on the powerful, but instead is a friend. A sycophant even. That’s dangerous for various reasons.
First reason is obvious - when journos refuse to damage their cosy relationships with political leaders, they avoid reporting anything that could do that. They go soft. They placate. They say Morrison should have a holiday during a fire crisis and refuse to see it any other way.
Related to this is that they do what they’re told when asked. You all no doubt heard that the PM’s team asked journos not to report on his whereabouts in Hawaii. Luckily not all of them complied, but a large number of them did. This is very concerning. Transparency is important.
The next reason is not so obvious but is also a problem. When journos are trying to remain inside the access tent by refusing to adequately judge and therefore scrutinise politicians, they get really pissed off at people who refuse to play that game. You know where I’m going...
Yep, that’s right. That’s where the ‘everyone without a blue tick on twitter are trolls’ came from. We’re not in the tent. We don’t give a crap if Morrison can’t stand us. In fact, the more he can’t stand us, the better! We say what we see, unfiltered, and it gets a huge reaction
The other part of this story is that twitter has become a journalism critique machine. We see journalism is failing us and so we react. This isn’t a game - it’s our democracy at stake. We want the media to do better and when they don’t, we complain. For that we are called trolls.
Think of all the times when journos went soft, and twitter went hard. Barnaby’s baby. Watergate. Paladin. Angus Taylor. Grassgate. Hello World. QAnon PM’s mate. PM in Hawaii with his QAnon mate during a bushfire crisis. There are many such scandals barely covered in media.
You’re going to be surprised to hear this, but these scandals aren’t even the worst part. No, the worst part is the bigger picture. I’ve been on twitter for coming up 10 years. This entire time I’ve been tweeting about climate change. 10 long frustrating years.
During this time, the ‘go soft’ media were doing one of two things - either outright denying climate change (Murdoch) or treating it like a debate. By using ‘he said, she said’ template on climate change, journos have FAILED TO SCRUTINISE POLITICIANS OR HOLD THEM TO ACCOUNT.
That is why we have political leaders who have prospered from opposing climate action, who have made careers and won elections from it, and that is why Morrison is PM. He’s got there without scrutiny of what his climate inaction will mean for us people. Hello bushfires and smoke.
I study news media - including how sources are used and cultural and ideological impacts on media framing. What I have learned through this research is that when journalists fail to hold politicians to account for outcomes, politicians learn they can get away with anything.
Much like bringing up toddlers - they push boundaries until they’re told to stop. If they’re not told to stop, they learn really fast they can get away with anything. Liberals and Nationals were never criticised - held to account - on climate change, so here we are.
Once you see journalism through this frame like I do, and when you experience their resentment of tweeps like I have, you see the news media is broken in this country and most others. They don’t want to talk about this elephant in the room, so I’ll just keep pointing it out. End.
