Albanese wants to change the way politics is done. This means the way politics is reported will have to change too - The Conversation | Canada News Media
If politics really is to be done differently, as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has promised, then the way politics is reported will need to be done differently too.
This is because the media’s power to portray will determine how the electorate perceives whether change is happening.
It is a reciprocating process. The way politicians perform influences the media’s portrayal of them, and how the media portray politicians in turn influences political practice.
One benchmark for helping us assess whether the promised change materialises is provided by academic Judith Brett’s characterisation of the Morrison administration:
The blame shifting, the careless inattention, the failure to prepare, the blatant favouring of Coalition and marginal seats with government largesse, the focus on announcements with little follow-up, the absence of serious concern about corruption and integrity […]
But that benchmark takes into account only the performance of the politicians. What about the media?
The media do appear to be in the early stages of changing the way they report federal politics. But this change is tentative, patchy and uncertain.
For instance, the coverage of the government’s actions on foreign policy has on the whole been straightforward and informative. That was until someone in the media pack travelling with Albanese in Europe asked why the prime minister’s visit to Ukraine was not equivalent to Morrison’s holiday to Hawaii during the 2019 bushfires. Albanese slapped down the comparison as “offensive”.
The on-the-road media pack had a bad election campaign disfigured by exactly this kind of juvenile “gotcha” reporting. Clearly in some parts of the media, the atmosphere of anticipated change has not penetrated.
Some in the media are still struggling to adapt to the change of government. Lukas Coch/AAP
In other parts of the media it clearly has, but there is an undercurrent of tentativeness, understandably so. Politics done differently suggests politics with fewer culture wars, fewer scandals, more policy focus, more incrementalism.
Moreover, a good deal of ideological steam has gone out of the political discourse as issues such as religious freedom, Safe Schools and transgender discrimination have faded from view. Climate change is now accepted by enough mainstream politicians, and media, to make the remainder look like cranks.
There has also been a dramatic structural change in the composition of the parliament, with the crossbench now representing a powerful third force. How will the media adjust from two-horse politics, so the crossbench gets a voice commensurate with its level of representation?
All this implies the need for a shift in the priority given by the media to the various news values that turn content into news. Two of the most powerful news values, negativity and conflict, have been in plentiful supply since the collapse of the Rudd prime ministership in 2010.
Politics done differently, with a focus on policy formulation and implementation, makes the news values of impact and significance more salient. But this is not the stuff of clickbait, eyeballs, social media agitation and tabloid headlines.
This is a challenge at a time when every click and eyeball counts for a media industry still trying to recoup some of the devastating financial losses inflicted by the internet.
Will editors and news directors – and media proprietors – be up for the challenge? It is too soon to say. Conflict or negativity can always be manufactured, so there is no guarantee a more civilised and constructive political conversation will be reflected in more civilised and constructive coverage.
However, there are a few early signs of recognition in the media that change is in the air.
Author and freelance journalist Julie Szego seems to be onto it. In a column for The Age, she made the sardonic observation that Australian politics was suddenly boring. Once upon a time, she wrote, it was like the Danish TV drama Borgen, a world of cheap publicity stunts, the selling out of cherished principles, and morally bankrupt spin where a prime minister “creepily” washed a woman’s hair for a photo op. “But now it is all one big yawn.” Yet this was worth celebrating, she said, because it had produced a “background hum of steady-as-she-goes, the not un-genuine bid for consensus, the incremental steps toward something better”.
Covering the first sitting day of the 47th parliament, The Australian on its front page tried kicking life into the issue of construction union thuggery, based on a parliamentary question from a Liberal backbencher. But its editor-at-large, Paul Kelly, wrote reflectively on the need for competence in government and for Albanese to break the cycle of first-term failure.
Whether this ‘new style’ of politics holds remains to be seen – but the media must be able and willing to adapt. Mick Tsikas/AAP
Katharine Murphy, writing in The Guardian Australia, described the first day of the new parliament as conveying “a sense of a corner being turned”.
She noted that Scott Morrison was absent, preferring to attend a conference of conservative politicians in Tokyo. This was perhaps for the best, she added, since the style of politics he indulged in had been “repudiated in myriad ways”.
Whether this change in atmospherics illustrated by these examples of the newspaper coverage percolates into television news is an open question.
However, if change is to occur in how politics is portrayed to the public, the performance of television is crucial. This is because television news is still the most general source for Australian news consumers, with 66% saying they watch TV news and 42% saying it is their main source of news.
Television news is also the most formulaic of all professional mass media: tight scripts allied to footage that may or may not assist the viewer’s understanding, and grabs of people speaking, all compressed into short packages. There is little scope for reflecting anything except the most superficial elements of a story.
Even so, the wording of scripts, the way they are read, and the choice and juxtaposing of grabs do allow for change to be reflected.
Regardless of the medium, absorbing and implementing change like this takes effort, and the difficulty of breaking old habits should not be underestimated. Journalists and audiences alike are accustomed to established ways of telling stories, just as medieval minstrels and their audiences were. No departure from the established script is easily tolerated.
But if it turns out that tomorrow’s politics are indeed done differently, it would be a serious disservice to the public if the media overlaid on them the news template of yesterday.
WINNIPEG – The federal New Democrats have kept a longtime stronghold in the Elmwood-Transcona riding in Winnipeg.
The NDP’s Leila Dance won a close battle over Conservative candidate Colin Reynolds, and says the community has spoken in favour of priorities such as health care and the cost of living.
Elmwood-Transcona has elected a New Democrat in every election except one since the riding was formed in 1988.
The seat became open after three-term member of Parliament Daniel Blaikie resigned in March to take a job with the Manitoba government.
A political analyst the NDP is likely relieved to have kept the seat in what has been one of their strongest urban areas.
Christopher Adams, an adjunct professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba, says NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh worked hard to keep the seat in a tight race.
“He made a number of visits to Winnipeg, so if they had lost this riding it would have been disastrous for the NDP,” Adams said.
The strong Conservative showing should put wind in that party’s sails, Adams added, as their percentage of the popular vote in Elmwood-Transcona jumped sharply from the 2021 election.
“Even though the Conservatives lost this (byelection), they should walk away from it feeling pretty good.”
Dance told reporters Monday night she wants to focus on issues such as the cost of living while working in Ottawa.
“We used to be able to buy a cart of groceries for a hundred dollars and now it’s two small bags. That is something that will affect everyone in this riding,” Dance said.
Liberal candidate Ian MacIntyre placed a distant third,
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau say the Liberals have “all sorts of reflections” to make after losing a second stronghold in a byelection in Montreal Monday night.
His comments come as the Liberal cabinet gathers for its first regularly scheduled meeting of the fall sitting of Parliament, which began Monday.
Trudeau’s Liberals were hopeful they could retain the Montreal riding of LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, but those hopes were dashed after the Bloc Québécois won it in an extremely tight three-way race with the NDP.
Louis-Philippe Sauvé, an administrator at the Institute for Research in Contemporary Economics, beat Liberal candidate Laura Palestini by less than 250 votes. The NDP finished about 600 votes back of the winner.
It is the second time in three months that Trudeau’s party lost a stronghold in a byelection. In June, the Conservatives defeated the Liberals narrowly in Toronto-St. Paul’s.
The Liberals won every seat in Toronto and almost every seat on the Island of Montreal in the last election, and losing a seat in both places has laid bare just how low the party has fallen in the polls.
“Obviously, it would have been nicer to be able to win and hold (the Montreal riding), but there’s more work to do and we’re going to stay focused on doing it,” Trudeau told reporters ahead of this morning’s cabinet meeting.
When asked what went wrong for his party, Trudeau responded “I think there’s all sorts of reflections to take on that.”
In French, he would not say if this result puts his leadership in question, instead saying his team has lots of work to do.
Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet will hold a press conference this morning, but has already said the results are significant for his party.
“The victory is historic and all of Quebec will speak with a stronger voice in Ottawa,” Blanchet wrote on X, shortly after the winner was declared.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh and his party had hoped to ride to a win in Montreal on the popularity of their candidate, city councillor Craig Sauvé, and use it to further their goal of replacing the Liberals as the chief alternative to the Conservatives.
The NDP did hold on to a seat in Winnipeg in a tight race with the Conservatives, but the results in Elmwood-Transcona Monday were far tighter than in the last several elections. NDP candidate Leila Dance defeated Conservative Colin Reynolds by about 1,200 votes.
Singh called it a “big victory.”
“Our movement is growing — and we’re going to keep working for Canadians and building that movement to stop Conservative cuts before they start,” he said on social media.
“Big corporations have had their governments. It’s the people’s time.”
New Democrats recently pulled out of their political pact with the government in a bid to distance themselves from the Liberals, making the prospects of a snap election far more likely.
Trudeau attempted to calm his caucus at their fall retreat in Nanaimo, B.C, last week, and brought former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney on as an economic adviser in a bid to shore up some credibility with voters.
The latest byelection loss will put more pressure on him as leader, with many polls suggesting voter anger is more directed at Trudeau himself than at Liberal policies.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2024.
The New Democrats have declared a federal byelection victory in their Winnipeg stronghold riding of Elmwood—Transcona.
The NDP candidate Leila Dance told supporters in a tearful speech that even though the final results weren’t in, she expected she would see them in Ottawa.
With several polls still to be counted, Conservative candidate Colin Reynolds conceded defeat and told his volunteers that they should be proud of what the Conservatives accomplished in the campaign.
Political watchers had a keen eye on the results to see if the Tories could sway traditionally NDP voters on issues related to labour and affordability.
Meanwhile in the byelection race in the Montreal riding of LaSalle—Émard—Verdun the NDP, Liberals and Bloc Québécois remained locked in an extremely tight three-way race as the results trickled in slowly.
The Liberal stronghold riding had a record 91 names on the ballot, and the results aren’t expected until the early hours of the morning.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
