Book Review: Sideshow: Dumbing Down Democracy

This publication deals with the current role of the media. Lindsay Tanner argues that genuine public input into political debate is shrinking, and the notion that politicians are engaged in legitimate democratic decision-making that is fundamental to the nation’s future is being bartered away. Under siege from increasing commercial pressures and technological innovations, the media now focuses on entertainment with the result that there is now little tolerance for complex political, social and economic debate as entertainment is overwhelming politics. In turn, politicians and political parties are adapting their behaviour to suit the new rules to such an extent that the contest of ideas is being supplanted by the contest for laughs and trivia, with journalists searching for quirky and amusing news items capable of diverting or titillating its audience. We now have media distortion by ignorance, negligence and indolence, and as the tide of trivia, titillation and distortion keeps rising, the media act as producers, directors, and even scriptwriters. While the outward forms of our democracy remain in place, its quality is being undermined from within as one of its critical components, a free, fearless and informative media, is being turned into a carnival sideshow as media content must now be simple, stark, and either appealing or appalling.

Tanner argues that while the media was central to national politics when he first entered Parliament in 1991, it is now much more important to the modern politician. The creation of appearance is now far more important than is the generation of outcomes, and this produces deception and “the politics of the moment”. Winning today’s micro-argument is all important, and tomorrow can look after itself, thereby breeding a collective mentality of cynicism and manipulation. Policy initiatives are measured by their media impact, not by their effect, and the primary focus is on how politicians handle issues rather than the issues themselves. Our media is trapped in a downward spiral of trivia and sensation. Further, the diminishing seriousness of media coverage of politics has had the effect of causing governments to resort more to paid advertising to get their messages through to the voting public.

According to Tanner, media proprietors, editors, journalists, politicians, bureaucrats, and voters are all contributing to the degrading of democratic politics. The media is a critical component of our democracy because genuine democracy requires a reasonably informed electorate, but without the active participation of the media, that’s impossible. When the serious content of political decision-making fades from our media, democracy is undermined, and while the forms of democracy remain, the substance melts away. Consequently, our democratic process is presently at risk of returning to the patterns of the nineteenth century when very small elites totally dominated public decision-making, and formal wealth, income, and status barriers excluded the mass of the population. New barriers to participation built on ignorance and distraction are now emerging.

Tanner cites examples of some of the modern media’s tactics:

(a) Stories are deliberately distorted by the selective omission of information to make them more appealing;

(b) Politicians are given the opportunity to respond to damaging accusations close to the publication’s deadline, thereby making it difficult for the politician to refuse the allegations and thereby kill the story;

(c) The use of unflattering photographs to make or underline a point or to visually assassinate a person;

(d) Reporting an options paper in a manner that conveys the impression that the Government was taking the action in question rather than reporting it as one of a number of options being floated by the Government;

(e) The use of individual stories where the views of people who are not representative of the community are quoted as being representative; and

(f) The distortation of political coverage via story selection or non-selection.

Tanner acknowledges that while the underlying elements of “spin” have been part of the domestic process since ancient Greece, its significance is growing, and whereas it once reflected occasional embellishments and evasions, it now lies at the heart of our political process. He argues that the two key rules that now govern the practice of Australian politics are to look like you’re doing something and to not offend anyone who matters.

Tanner is pessimistic about the future of Australian politics. He argues that Australia deserves much better than the carefully scripted play-acting that now dominates our nation’s politics and that, not surprisingly, many Australians sense that there is something wrong with our political system. He argues that while there will always be a large number of people who think that our political system is failing, cynicism and despair about our democratic processes is growing. For example, the 2010 federal election campaign was a widely derided campaign that produced a result in which Australian effectively voted for “none of the above”. While compulsory voting masks the decline in engagement, other symptoms suggest that many people, now they have the choice, have “changed the channel”.

With almost 20 years as a member of the House of Representatives and a number of years as a Minister, Lindsay Tanner is well qualified to write about the “dumbing down” of democracy in Australia. While this book does not contain any shock revelations about the workings of the Rudd government or anecdotes from inside the cabinet room or attacks on Tanner’s colleagues, it does provide an illuminating insight into the workings and/or failings of Australia’s media and democracy and alerts us to the need to be very careful in assessing the information contained in our media. On the other hand, while Tanner outlines in depth what he perceives to be wrong with the modern media, he does not offer a great deal by way of solutions to the problem. He simply concludes that while we have no magic wand with which to solve the media sideshow problem, by acting individually and collectively we can somehow start to push back the forces of entertainment colonising our democracy, thereby preventing our democracy turning into a sham.