The truth is out where? Honesty, media and politics

When “trust” and “honesty” become election themes we gain a compelling opportunity to discuss the general veracity of our political system, and the ways in which politicians are permitted to get away with lying. Unfortunately this discussion is always led by a holier-than-thou media: by media commentators who actually view themselves as being separate from politics.

But the media is a component of the political system - a sphere in which lies are perpetuated, opinion is extolled, images are emphasised, bias is manifest, and scandal and “media events” are most important.

Indeed, tabloid values imbue the media. Television conflates high and low cultures, blurs entertainment with politics, and facts with fiction. The Greens, it’s said, would force us all into vegetarianism and sell ecstasy to kids.

The ubiquity of television and reluctance of television viewers to look at the medium as more than a vehicle of entertainment has meant both politicians and journalists have had to alter the way they communicate with voters. Whether or not the worm appears on Channel 7 is significant, while for politicians there is an ever-increasing need to focus more on their images and personalities than on policy detail as sentiment continues to mean more than ideology. Politicians today perform for the cameras and attempt to engender a sense of trust in citizens. Honesty is not essential to a politician’s career, but being trusted is: “Trust me on the economy, even though I’ve been known to lie about certain things”.

And because politicians have become masterful at constructing images of integrity, journalists have had to find different angles from which to approach political news and hold politicians accountable. Journalists try to catch politicians unaware or provoke them into making off-the-cuff remarks. “Come on, Pete, admit that you’ll be Prime Minister before the end of a fourth term.” Such tactics undermine the print media’s history of quality journalism and the notion of the media as the fourth estate of democracy. The on-the-spot slip of the tongue is more important than attacking the promise not to introduce a GST, which, funnily enough, was introduced.

Even the most respected newspapers are now inclined to present analysis and opinion about how politicians are presenting themselves, instead of about what they are actually implementing. For instance, my paper of choice, The Age, never reports on a political story without placing beside it a piece of commentary by Michelle Grattan or Shaun Carney that pays homage to Howard’s Machiavellian skill (according to the media, this is something to be revered). The implementation of the GST we weren’t supposed to have becomes good politics, flawless tactics, but never what it is - a lie.

Moreover, not only has political reporting become a topic for interpretation but journalists are obsessed with personalities. It’s Mark versus John. Pete versus … hang, where is Simon Crean? Bob versus that guy from the Democrats. Broadsheets have adopted this approach in order to prevent their format becoming irrelevant; otherwise, all they would do is report what has already appeared on the television news the night before.

Consequently though, no publication is above reporting scandal and innuendo in this day and age, for these are the stories that focus on the individual. That Latham may or may not have had a buck’s night matters more than the stealth-like destruction of Medicare, and the fallacy of the advertising campaign telling us that Medicare has been strengthened. Media outlets clearly must believe that by exposing individuals they are going some way to ensure the political sphere is kept honest; but although major figures are scared of being caught in an extra-marital tryst, they’re certainly not scared of lying on policy.

As long as the media, in its present guise, continues to be the forum in which the debate about honesty in politics is played out, we won’t get honesty. That’s because such reliance is predicated on a simplistic notion of politics, which posits the media as outsiders looking in on the political process. The media, though, is inherently political. And there’s nothing new about this idea.

Consider the following. Citizens have never cast their vote based upon what they actually know about politics. They base their votes on what the media has chosen to tell them about politics and political figures. The picture that the media paints of politics is what politics is. If the media constructs politics so that:

• politics seems dishonest; and 
• politicians have to constantly respond to questions that imply dishonesty and lacking integrity;

then as far as the masses are concerned, it is dishonest and vice versa.

Indeed, in the past, when the media did not take literary licence with their reporting, and politicians were depicted as important, serious thinkers, as mostly well-intentioned people who had conflicting ideas about policy, the news values that permeated the media actually prevented the exposure of information that was either personal or populist in nature.

The masses believed that politicians were people with virtues to which everyone should aspire. With politics presented innuendo-free, people believed that it fitted snugly into the terms of left and right and that politicians simply served these dichotomous ideologies. Most people were consequently loyal to one political party or another and held the other in natural contempt. Essentially, citizens viewed politicians on their side as champions of the truth. That said, I don’t necessarily think this was an ideal scenario either. Interpretive and analytical journalism may in fact be a positive.

But what is problematic with the present climate is that while the media obsesses over petty issues, panders to populism, and presents politics as a dishonest profession, politicians such as Howard get away with telling real and significant lies. Surely the notion of Howard misleading the public on the children overboard issue - something that Robert Manne sees as so significant that Howard should resign - is much more important than Latham’s private life. Now while the defence may be that this story has only recently reared its head again and wasn’t an issue a couple of months ago, the reality is that Howard hasn’t had any integrity since the events of the previous election campaign (I’m being kind in not going back further). More fundamentally, he has misled the working people of this country to such an extent that they believe he has served their interests.

Around the beginning of the campaign Paul Kelly wrote that Australians need to hold politicians more accountable. But opinion shapers at Kelly’s level need to realise that the media is supposed to do that on behalf of Australians. That’s why they have access-all-areas passes and we don’t. Perhaps the media can start by telling working Australians what Howard has really done to them. If the media had been doing its job, Howard would’ve been pursued vigorously throughout this term of parliament so that he wouldn’t want to go on. But he hasn’t been. And instead of vilifying Simon Crean’s inability to get his message across, perhaps the media could’ve spoken about the man’s integrity, as they were more than willing to do when his time was up.

Nevertheless, with the media’s obsession with presenting politicians as “slippery suckers”, it may well be that the electorate is so used to politicians lying that they’re willing to let Howard off on this one. What implication does this have for society? My guess is, it’s dog-eat-dog, every-man-for himself, couched, somewhat confusingly, in egalitarian terms.