Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

On the wrong side of the ABC’s ‘Cool Wall’

By Stephen Smith 

“The advanced societies of the future will not be governed by reason. They will be driven by irrationality, by competing systems of psychopathology.”
- J G Ballard

It is a mistake to overrate the intellectual capacity of the media as being capable of bias. Bias demands the rigour of imposed values. The sobering lesson when we look at much of today’s news coverage is the lack of intellect and values. In the place of bias, we find only the banal.

There is no highbrow or lowbrow culture. All that remains is a sea of banality and in the littoral zone, the odd jewel of social media. Stricken by boredom, corporatized media workers need an outlet. They find this in the psychopathology of celebrity; and based as it is on hype and hatred it takes two alternating forms.

Firstly, we find the elemental instinct of blood in the water – the feeding frenzy of the media pack. Secondly, you can’t miss the media’s gift for the culture of the sycophant.

The Australian Story (ABC TV) episode on Nicole Cornes  exposed the feeding frenzy at its most ugly. Nicole – a law student and columnist who is married to an AFL legend - was one of Kevin 07’s celebrity candidates. But from the start, Labor held her back by failing to give her adequate training. In the heavy media traffic, it seemed nothing could save her. She was humiliated simply because she was a woman. One print headline ran the “legally blonde” pun. Judging by Australian Story, we find that the ABC was one of the worst offenders.

An entrapment piece by Matthew Abraham on ABC Local Radio set off a misogynist ripple across the airwaves. A blatant lack of fairness crucified Cornes. It seems some celebrity gaffes are cooler than others are. While Peter Garrett was ‘politically inexperienced’, Cornes was just dumb - so said the media message. It did not help that Labor caste a cordon of minders around Garrett while Cornes was cut loose.

The final insult came from ABC TV’s Tony Jones on election night. With Nicole’s challenge falling short in what was a fairly safe Liberal seat, Jones made the bizarre remark that she had “lost her seat”. He called her tilt at Boothby “a disaster”. By convention, interviewers offer only condolences to defeated candidates - not abuse them live on air.

Ironically, in view of the cruel level of journalism exposed, the format of Australian Story allows the subject’s own story to unfold without intrusion. One of the voices heard in support of Nicole was from Senator Natasha Stott Despoja. She summed up the whole process by saying that Cornes’ treatment sends out a message to women; and it reveals the slim chances of fair treatment. In Cornes’ case, others had already written her script. As Stott Despoja put it, “I think a lot of people saw her shaped very early in this media construct”. The image of Nicole portrayed proved irreversible. The question remains; does the candidate have the power to change? The contest is stacked against you when the media is both opponent and umpire.

We have seen the beat up at work in Nicole’s story. Equally insidious is the leaning towards the sycophantic. Media groups such as the ABC operate by the equivalent of the Cool Wall from Top Gear (SBS TV). You know the one – where the jackass trio, with forced hilarity, paste pictures of cars on the ‘cool’ or ‘uncool’ side of the studio wall. In the newsroom, the ‘Cool Wall’ has a similar faddish bent. Those not in favour are mocked, humiliated or ignored. On the trendy side, the sycophantic machine runs into overdrive.

I saw this culture most at fault in the ABC’s Canberra studios during the Federal Election. A friend who was standing for the Democrats (= uncool) found out what it is like to be pasted on the margins. He rang an ABC producer who mistook his voice for that of the ACT Greens campaign manager. The ABC producer proceeded to fawn a greeting before realizing that it was someone else on the line. First, a tone of disappointment, then disinterest – slapped onto the wrong side of the Cool Wall. I hasten to add that the Greens are more than capable of running their own campaign on a level playing field. The slavish manner of the ABC, creating an impression of favouritism, only serves to corral the ‘cooler’ candidate into a latte set dead end. Beware the ABC kiss of death.

What do we learn from such cases? There is no longer a divide (if there ever was) between the popular or tabloid and so-called bastions of culture such as the ABC. We may even need to reverse our old perspectives. Thus, it takes a clever talent to ‘dumb down’ content to the level of the market. On the other hand, it is too easy for muppets to concoct highbrow culture.

There is no longer any high ground, only a flat featureless landscape broken by digital ones and zeros. Witness the erosion of credible news gathering and analysis in the story of Prince Harry’s tour of duty in Afghanistan. Here, we find New Idea magazine and the ABC News reading from the same page of sensationalism. It is war as heroic narrative. (A British Royal hasn’t died in battle for about 400 years!) The headline is the withdrawal of Harry from the war zone in Afghanistan. In the shadow of celebrity, the more gut wrenching story – the case for the withdrawal of ALL troops from Afghanistan - is lost.

Today, we hear much of progress that shifts print and broadcast content online. A deeper change is that of the failure of reason and with it the rise of a brand of psychopathology that seeks to either hype or humiliate its subjects. However, this power contains an ironic reversal in light of what were once ethics and standards. In journalism, we often say that the pen is mightier than the sword. In these times, those who live by this weapon also perish by it. For in seeking to humiliate others they only succeed in humiliating themselves.