Thread by @Vic_Rollison

The reporting of covid restrictions throughout pandemic - border closures, lockdowns, face masks - every covid health policy, has shown journalists are incapable of describing the ideological context behind decisions, while also ignoring their own ideological bias . A thread👇🏻

Firstly, there’s a reason journalists ignore ideological context when reporting political decision making. They’ve been taught/believe any mention of ideology is akin to taking an ideological position themselves. So they never go deep in their analysis, but instead are shallow.

Journalists have also been taught that to be objective and balanced, they just have to quote ‘both sides’ and public decides what they think is best. But quoting ‘open up’ versus ‘keep borders closed’ provides no context to these ideological views, so isn’t helpful to audience.

In fact, what journalism needs is far more context to inform audience. Crucial context when reporting contested ideas is explaining to audience WHY politicians are taking different positions - due to different values, moral outlooks, cultural positions - ideological world views.

Let’s use the example of debate about when borders should open. SA Liberal Premier Marshall has chosen to open when 80% of public are vaccinated. This is an ideological decision. Marshall is a Lib so naturally prioritises rights of individuals, ‘freedom’, wants less ‘regulation’.

Throughout the pandemic, most Liberals, including Scott Morrison, have had an obvious ideological preference for ‘living with covid’, putting the health onus on individuals, instead of seeing it has their responsibility to make collective decisions on behalf of the collective.

Whenever Berejiklian was urged to take collective action, when she was ideologically dragging her feet bringing in life saving restrictions, she would regularly say she didn’t want to ‘burden’ NSW public with health policies. Libs see govt regulation and restrictions as burden.

On the other hand, Labor politicians throughout pandemic have naturally lent towards collective action because that’s their natural ideological position. That’s their values - they see whole point of government is to use power to organise to collective to look after each other.

So, when WA, QLD and Victorian Premier, and NZ PM, are criticised for keeping borders closed, for opposing the ‘let’s live with covid’ argument, they are being criticised for taking collective action. Their decisions reveal ideology just as Liberals’ reveal theirs.

Once you see how deeply ideological covid decision making is, and how Liberals will always prioritise ‘free economy, let individuals decide’, while Labor prefers ‘it’s my job to make decisions to protect the collective’, it’s obvious journalists should be telling audience this.

One of news media’s most important jobs is facilitating a marketplace of ideas. When reporting covid restrictions, journalists should be transparent about ideas in this marketplace and describe the basis of those ideas so the audience can judge for themselves which they support.

Instead, ironically, what we get is most journalists letting their own ideological preference dictate judgements they make about the covid policies, and then giving a one-sided perspective of the health restrictions. This doesn’t let the audience decide, it’s deciding for them.

For instance, Leigh Sales has been consistently throughout pandemic opposed border closures and lockdowns. She has used her TV show to highlight only the negatives of these restrictions, which is of course an ideological decision, reflecting her own values, without balance.

Of course we expect Murdoch media to be biased, and it’s been obvious their coverage as usual is extremely ideological. The whole ‘Dictator Dan’ trope is an argument against a Labor premier’s collective action. Herald Sun hates Andrews’ health policies for ideological reasons.

Same goes for behaviour of journalists at Victorian media conferences. Do you notice how they NEVER applaud a policy to keep people safe from covid, but instead always heckle Andrews to justify why a new or increased restriction is needed? That’s ideological, revealing their bias

We saw same bias in a different form in NSW, where almost every journalist didn’t heckle Berejiklian about her reluctance to lockdown - that’s because they took the same ideological position as her - that restrictions are a bigger problem than the virus. Collective action is BAD.

So, in summary, by failing to describe the ideologies inherent in different covid positions, and by pretending ideology does not matter, journalists are actually letting their own ideological judgements impact on their reporting of covid, and it’s not fair on the audience. End.