Politicians, journalists using social media obscure real issues

Social media can be a trap for journalists and politicians, because it often fails to speak to voters and audiences as a whole, instead focusing on younger progressive segments.

In an era in which even conservative political leaders use Twitter and Facebook to parade their credentials as modern and “in touch with today” — as ­marketers say — this can be a real problem.

Think NSW Premier Mike Baird announcing on Facebook that he has decided to ban greyhound racing from July 1 next year. Not a politically astute way to destroy the economic wellbeing of thousands of his own voters.

Or worse, think about a prime minister — let’s say Malcolm Turnbull — who is under attack at the end of a two-month long ­election campaign on the back of a false but effective Medicare scare.

Once a PM would have arranged for Ray Martin to host a debate across all free-to-air television networks and the ABC on a Sunday night at 7.30 and he would have garotted the opposition ­leader responsible for the lie in front of millions of viewers.

Turnbull, ever the modern techno guy who was one of the original investors in OzEmail and sees opportunity everywhere in the modern world, opts instead for a Facebook debate.

In a quest to seem modern and relevant such strategies are a risk. Academic research has shown that in political terms social media skews left.

Twitter is the worst. I would call it little more than a left-wing echo chamber for various highly politicised activists, including many journalists. This is not surprising since it was actually invented as a way for pop stars to talk to their fans rather than to discuss serious issues.

It can be a danger for reporters when not used sensibly. Smart ­editors want reporters with large Twitter followings to use social media to market their stories, but they risk their own product’s credibility when they allow a journalist to embark on ideological battles on social media.

Who, for example, could follow Channel Ten’s Paul Bongiorno or Crikey’s Bernard Keane on ­Twitter and ever imagine they were impartial reporters? If you have never done so, Google their names with the word Twitter, call up their feeds and check for ­yourself.

Now for conservative politicians especially, the idea of speaking to a young, relentlessly left- wing and largely undereducated minority that throws blue language around on social media like confetti does not seem an effective strategy. Sure, sometimes you have to speak to your opponents. But more often than not politicians hope to speak to their supporters and especially their rusted-on voters: those considered “the base”.

So why do they do it? Often it’s their staffers who want to emulate the social media success of the Obama campaigns of 2008 and 2012. Modern political staffers get their juice from watching West Wing, whatever side they work for. And whether working for Labor or Liberal politicians, they are often way to the left of their bosses.

Paul Kelly called it out during the Gillard years when he wrote in Inquirer that most staffers in the Gillard government were not even Labor voters and overwhelmingly supported the Greens.

Twitter, a medium with a maximum of 140 characters, is not conducive to logical thought, deep research, reflection or independence of thought. It is really a place where activists cheer each other on, often in the foulest ­language or with the most naive affirmations of clearly partisan positions.

Take gay marriage, for instance. At my age most of my gay friends think the idea of applying conventional heterosexual marriage to the once strongly countercultural principals of Stonewall in 1973 is an appalling sellout. But try saying that on Twitter without a mass pile-on, a la Sonya Kruger.

Or try resisting the overwhelming push for animal rights on social media. Try saying the rights of humans trump the rights of greyhounds. Thousands of years of moral philosophy will be out the window in a second as ­people start referring to canine holocausts. Seriously. What could be more offensive in all of 21st ­century human discourse than comparing the most evil act in ­history to the culling of dogs?

Or try looking at what is said about reporters such as Miranda Devine who have looked at the Safe Schools program that was first unpicked by Paul Kelly in this paper and has been very well analysed by Mark Latham in The Daily Telegraph and on Sky News over several months.

Anyone who has read their Marx and Engels or the French Marxist 1960s philosopher Louis Althusser knows Latham is right when he says attacking gender and family is a central tenet of the neo-Marxist playbook.

The Safe Schools curriculum writer, outspoken self-described Marxist Roz Ward of Latrobe University, has taken an anti-bullying program most people would cheer, and loaded it with gender-challenging “queer theory”. She is treated on social media as some sort of hero, often by young journalists who simply cannot have taken the time to read the curriculum.

In politics and media facts still rule. Objective truth is achievable and our audiences largely do accept traditional notions of right and wrong.

Misreading their strongly held personal views is the path to political upheaval, rejecting progressive pieties (think ­Donald Trump, Pauline Hanson and Brexit) and media obscurity and irrelevance (think the SMH, The Age and The Guardian, where social media twitter storms often dominate news agendas).

Politicians need to represent the practical ideals of their parties. Conservative political leaders are not just managers of the economy. They stand for a set of values the electorate knows and understands. Same on the Labor side. These are their brand values and they should never be compromised to seem relevant to young voters.

And in media, wherever a ­reporter’s work is published, the values and standards of the ­profession must shine through to the audience. Journalists must be true to journalism on whatever platform they operate. Otherwise we are doing little more than ­leaving graffiti slogans on the dunny door.