The voice of the people

Media coverage

It does not help a fair election process when newspapers, television and radio focus almost entirely on the main parties: in Queensland this is the Labor Party, the Liberals and the Nationals. Greens were represented in 84 per cent of the electorates and 23 per cent of candidates were Greens, but they barely received a mention.

The media could lift its game. Following the 1998 Queensland state election I analysed the local Gold Coast daily newspaper’s coverage of the official two-week campaign.

A cadet reporter - but not political reporters or senior writers - was given space to tell readers why she intended to vote for the One Nation party in an article entitled, "Why I’ll vote for Pauline." The paper ran a feature story on “Raging, ravenous redheads” about people with red hair making good leaders, with a photograph of One Nation leader Pauline Hanson. On election day there was a third feature about One Nation. No other party was the subject of a general story of this kind.

Pauline Hanson was not a candidate on the Gold Coast nor for that matter anywhere in the state, but during the election period there were 30 photos of her in this newspaper (nine on the front page), compared with 22 of Nationals' leader Rob Borbidge, and 16 of the ALP’s Peter Beattie.

One Nation was only one of eight parties standing in local seats, was not expected to win any of them (it did not) but appeared in 22 per cent of news references, 30 per cent of headlines and 58 per cent of front page headlines.

With this coverage it was difficult to argue we had a truly free and fair election. But it is not only a Gold Coast problem, then or now. In the recent state election, there were 75 Greens candidates but it was rare for any to get a mention in the media. Rather than facilitate a fair, serious election, too many journalists tried to catch out one of the leaders on some trivial issue, as if it’s all a game. But for their part, candidates - which in reality means party leaders - also play games, not debating realities but putting forward whatever verbal tricks, facial expressions and play-acting their advertising gurus recommend.

The major parties are unlikely to favour proportional representation because they are likely to be faced with stronger opposition, but it would be in the interests of the people of the state.