Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Australian media and political bastardry - finally someone (John Menadue) in the know calls for a public enquiry!

A comment on Poll Bludger this morning went like this:

"Deb Cameron on ABC 702 has just had an interview with John Menadue re the bias of the Press during the campaign in which he served it up to the ABC and the rest of the media big time.

The interview will be posted on the ABC website under Mornings on 702 later this morning and she is asking for comments – it is really worth a listen. He is calling for a parliamentary inquiry into the behaviour of the press."

Menadue's earlier critique of the media in Melbourne recently can be found at the Centre for Policy development website.

This is overdue and much needed, before we are picking over the bloodied carcass of our body politic and wondering where we went wrong. The skewed opinion settings of the mainstream media have galled me for a long time. Narrow sectional interests get a helpful leg up in most areas of debate on public policy. We also get a diet of reactionary, simple minded drivel on asylum seekers, deficit financing, interest rates; a plethora of important areas of public policy are 'spun' through the lens of media celebrities who survive on a dumbed-down strategy of sound-bites, 'gotcha' moments and limpid sensationalism. Political analysis has been reduced to talk-show patter and info-tainment for a presumed audience with the concentration span of a distracted gnat.

Well, hey, many of us out here in listener land have maintained a healthy interest in the state of our body politic, and are frankly sick of the 'me me' crowd setting the media agenda. It is time for serious journalists to re-assert themselves. There are plenty of punters that will thank them for it....

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