HEAD TO HEAD
Peter Whitehead
Breaking story! Get your news here! Popular press depends upon sales for profits! Commercial TV channels and privately owned radio stations must rate to survive! Capitalist facticity [last seen in the lyric of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, sung by that working-class hero Dick van Dyke] determines that our media will be a mirror of those before it. They sit sufficiently gobsmacked to buy the products advertised during the breaks from the intellectually rigorous telejournalism, infotainment and bilge served up by 10, 9 and 7.
Another mirror you do not want to be looking into, my wife is reminded several times a week.
So, when an event very beyond our comprehension of every day horror is visited upon our nation, the fakirs of the media have no expressive capacity beyond the eleven for gravitas they have been tossing at stories of Rock Star Diet Disasters and the tragedies of being diddled in car deals by sharp slimey bastards. In attempting to feign genuine compassion, they are revealed as shallow vessels that never conveyed more than a modicum of confused misunderstanding. All these media impersonalities ever had was wells of Chicken Little panic to get us so anxious for the end of the story that we stay tuned to furphies.
It would be better not to mention the execrable Eddie McGuire but as a warning. He, to allay his discredit, can furrow his brow. The Botox that worked for presenting complacent puff pieces during our Greed Fuelled Boom – RIP – now prevents many of our popular on-air faces from expressing anything but supercilious self-satisfaction.
The cruel quirks of life-and-death horror inflicted upon the victims of bushland Victoria have shown Sydneysiders sooking over the decline of notional ‘super funds’ and the erosion of easy profits from stock trading rorts how shabby self-pity is. The Global Financial Crisis becomes the echo of a distant beat-up when we are confronted by footage of a man dealing with the loss of young children. There will always be inadequate messengers.
We must resist the urge to shoot, and try to decipher the message. Compassion is merely a starting point.
Andrew Woodhouse
Media (mee-dee-uh), def: noun, singular of medium [Latin, medius lit. middle], middle quality, intervening agency, spec. mass communications; radio, internet, TV, newspapers.
Media are The Great Intervenors, thrusting themselves between truth and fiction. They don’t just publish, but actually create news, thinking they’re as important as news itself.
Well I’ve got late-breaking news: editors’ biases are unimportant. I want real analysis instead. If I want your opinion I’ll call you.
News is now part-entertainment, part-fiction and part porno-flick, relying on titillation, arousal and excitement to engage us in orgies of compassion. It’s hollow and fallow, resting on a tripod of three laws.
Media law no.1: Don’t let truth ruin a story.
Coverage of appalling losses of lives in recent, atrocious bushfires is typical. Images of one water bottle-fed, ‘transsexual’ koala christened Sam, at first a he and later a she, gained world-wide coverage. Why’ Then we’re force-fed follow-ups on Samantha’s new boyfriend, Bob. Cute but kitsch.
This isn’t cynicism, it’s healthy scepticism.
Fire, police, ambulance crews, etc are all instant ‘heroes’. Of course their wonderful work helped save lives, but gods they are not. Cricketer Shane Warne, MADD ‘suffering from what I dub Media Attention Deficit Disorder ‘ listens to one boy cry, a front-page story. Didn’t Shane defect to England to send more text messages to other fake blondes’
Papers trumpet ‘Task force closes in on killer arsonist’ but their fine print says police are only ‘close to finalising investigations’. All this before a single interview, charge, arrest or jury verdict.
Media law 2: Find a prejudice and feed it.
‘Hell on earth’, ‘Fatal Fires’, ‘Victim’s last words’, ‘Pet dog rescues owner’, ‘We must never forget’, all clichéd headlines stoking emotion for manipulation and exploitation.
Media law 3: Blow up a bubble and then prick it.
True, we must never forget. Let’s not forget media quirks and crotchets can create outrageous fancy, they purloin power but relinquish responsibility, they’re completely commercial, and they love finding a fantasy then luring truth to it.
They’ve forgotten their prime obligation is to accuracy. If this is achieved, fairness follows. Lest we forget.
