Actual Results May Vary

EDIT: My family informed me on our holiday (quite forcefully in fact) that this post sounds like I’m saying Mike Rann did it. I am not, in fact, saying this. Really, I don’t think that he did it – the whole thing seems a bit strange (why has she come out with this now? And the chances of a premier having sex on his desk? Puh-lease). This post is, in fact, more concerned with the actions of the media in light of these accusations. I still stand by a secondary point to this article, which is that if it were true it would reflect poorly upon the Premier. I don’t think it is though, so instead it reflects poorly on Ms Chantelois. Further analysis of the “I don’t care so why should you” reaction in a later post.

Mike Rann, Premier of South Australia, has been accused by a married woman he knew through her work at Parliament House of using his position of power to pressure her into a sexual relationship (yeah, I know, it was a while ago: I’m a lazy blogger, so sue me). If true, these accusations are damning and do not cast our Premier’s decision-making capacity into a particularly favourable light.

“Premier Rann accused of affair with married woman” and “Premier Rann accused of using his position to pressure woman into relationship” are two openers to news stories that I can live with. This is information that’s referred to as being “in the public interest”. This was explained to me by my professional ethics lecturer (whose name escapes me at the moment) as information that enables us to be better citizens, by equipping us to make decisions furnished with the relevant facts. It’s in the best interests of the public to know what’s happening to the Economy, to know about parliamentary proceedings, to be aware of incidents of crime, to know what wars are being fought, and to know what sort of people their leaders are. Some of this is not at all interesting – go read hansard some time and you’ll know what I mean.

On the flip side, we have things that are interesting to members of the general public. Gossip magazines, fashion magazines, and paparazzi shots of supermodels with cellulite. Whilst I am quite aware that a number of people find these things interesting, they’re not exactly going to change the way we make decisions as citizens.

Publishing this sort of thing under the guise of “news” is not, by any means, a new phenomenon. In the 1800s, newspapers used to print scandalous social news such as “Mrs N found her husband in bed with the trollop youngest daugher of Lord Q and is now suing for divorce” or “Mr C-H discovered that his son is not, in fact, his son and will be facing Cpt W with pistols at dawn for his honour” under the pretence that (a) It was anonymised and (b) it was in the public interest to discuss the moral decay of society or whatever. Most of those who read the bloody papers knew exactly who was being referred to, and they knew about society’s moral decay anyway, so there wasn’t much point in the papers printing it. They did, though, because it sold.

Anyway, back to my point: the one exception to Australia’s trashy TV reporting (in my opinion) is the reporting from the Government broadcaster in Australia – the ABC. I have yet to see a sensationalist broadcast from the ABC (although I’ve not been around that long and often zone out in the news). I think this is because the ABC doesn’t have to think about market share: dear old Auntie’s news programs are just there to tell the news, not to worry about how much they can charge for advertising. SBS, despite the fact that it’s partially funded by advertising, used to be Government funded and I think the habit stuck.

What if we didn’t have commercial broadcasters though? For a start, there wouldn’t be any checks and balances on the government broadcaster any more. Yes, the ABC routinely mocks the government (I love the last five minutes of “The 7.30 Report” on a friday) but how would we know that they were telling the whole truth if there weren’t other news outlets telling us that same (albeit somewhat sensationalised) truth? So, ironically enough, it’s the sensationalised commercial news services that act as a check and balance to the “truthiness” of government broadcasting, just as government broadcasting’s lack of commercial considerations makes sure that our commercial broadcasters don’t sink entirely into the gutter.

So, kids, today we learnt that “Public Interest” and “Interesting to the Public” are two intersecting but not identical sets in a venn diagram, and we learnt that Australian TV current affairs coverage tends towards the trashy with the exceptions of some news bulletins and most of the ABC and SBS. Because I’m too lazy to bother covering newspaper coverage too, that’s your lot.

Posted on December 2nd, 2009 by Bosun McShiny
Filed under: Ethics, Journalism, Philosophising, Politics