Respected Commentator Waleed Aly at RCH

July 13, 2010

Here is Henry Drury's report of Waleed's speech.

Waleed Aly opened his remarks by explaining that in his life he had a fundamental conflict of interest.

He is both an academic at Monash University and a journalist in the media of all forms - radio, print and television and that basically journos and academics dislike each other intensely. His words, not your correspondent's.

In essence, academics are concerned with why is it happening; why do groups in society behave in the way they do; where is the pattern and go on to invent words and phrases to explain their findings.

'Human capital' for instance. Journalists as a broad generalisation are far more empirical. They are basically observers of the present and not much interested in the background. They report on what they can see, touch and/or taste and any philosophical thoughts about that will probably be edited out. Therein lies the conflict of interest.

Waleed then went on to explore the concept of how we are 'media drenched'. The daily dose of newspaper headlines, TV, radio, the internet both old and in its new forms of Facebook, U-tube, Twitter etc is immense and increasingly shallow in content.

We tend to get our news in the form of one-liners and sensationalised TV grabs in front of the location of yet another early morning police operation. The electronic media in its various forms is now a largely 24 hour operation and that means there is a huge amount of time that needs filling. What does this mean?

Very topically, Waleed called it the 'Kevin Rudd factor' where news bulletins were primarily reporting on the latest 'Newspoll' survey and politicians of course will react instantly to this 'perpetual scoreboard' of public opinion. Public opinion that is largely derived from the fact that to fill the available media space, conduct a poll and then talk about it.

We then moved on to the increasingly difficult problem of introducing genuine reform in government. Any reform of necessity will create 'winners and losers' and those who perceive that they will be the 'losers' such as the miners, have a very loud voice.

The recent proposed tax on the big miners led to an immense amount of media attention which mainly focussed on the fact that the miners are angry. More polls, more running for cover by the politicians and finally, exit Mr Rudd. On the other hand and by and large, the polling on 'Workchoices' showed Mr Howard the exit as 'Rudd outmedia'd Howard'.

So, have we reached the stage in politics where 'nothing much meaningful happens' as the media is watching (read polls) and it is all about media management? Grand announcements (climate change, insulation, computers in schools) and not much effective follow through for different reasons, thrills the journos and excites the academics , but the public are let down.

An amusing aside about politicians being totally managed to the nth degree by their own media advisors is, for instance, to never be photographed with an EXIT sign in the picture! That is very bad visual karma.

A question from the floor raised the matter of'headline' news reporting and the essential shallowness and dangers in that format. Waleed replied that with the exception of the ABC, the media in Australia is in business for profit and editorial decisions are made on what will sell this 'news' product today.

Tomorrow is another day.

A further comment from the floor was concerned about non-elected entities having so much power and influence on government but Waleed's response was that it was ever thus so whether it be the Unions, Big Business, the Church, the Press or whatever and fundamentally, politics is the art of the possible - your correspondent's interpretation.

This most thought provoking delivery and the following Q and A session could have gone on for much longer as being 'media drenched' is clearly something that deeply concerns us all and it will probably only get worse before there is any hope of it getting better.