The truth is out where? Honesty, media and politics

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.