Too much commentary when objective news reporting works better

Everyone seems to have a forum these days for opinions on subjects that matter and many that do not.

The pre-eminence of opinion ­journ­alism is destroying both the profession and our politics.

Whether this is driven by social media or was always going to be the byproduct of fragmentation of the media marketplace hardly matters. People are seeking out commentary they agree with rather than deep and factual political news coverage. This is a pity, ­because never has the world needed old-fashioned journalistic ­scrutiny more than it does today.

But it is cheap to pay for a few opinionated commentators who bring their own support via a cheer squad on website feedback posts or endless talking heads television designed to reinforce the prejudices of their ­audiences. And newspapers have always had regular columns, like this weekly effort. I am really talking about reactive instant political punditry, often by people with little real ­expertise covering politics, and often on 24-hour free-to-air and pay-TV channels and ­increasingly inculcating our daily papers.

I nearly fell off my chair last Tuesday night when the PM Live host, the usually sharp Paul Murray, ­announced he was about to break a story that would shake con­servative politics. I thought Tony Abbott must have been ­offered a ministry in the Turnbull government. No, the earth was quaking because Cory Bernardi, a force of one federally, was merging with Family First, a force of one fed­erally (who in the end declined to dance with Cory) and two in South Australia. The story was a small single column on the bottom of page one of this newspaper, what it was worth.

No doubt the dedicated viewers watching the puffing of this minor development trusted their show enough to believe this really was big news. Such is the niche nature of audiences for opinion that most of the show’s viewers regard the little-known Bernardi as a star. After all, he appears on Sky News more than the Prime Minister or Opposition Leader.

The next morning, Miranda Devine produced an eminently sane piece about Abbott’s prospects of returning to the leadership (zero) and the need for Turnbull to offer him a job. The piece was absolutely correct and yet Devine was berated in comments online for writing the truth.

Her critics seemed to have missed an important paragraph in her piece. She quoted an Essential Poll, ­always loved by Turnbull’s conservative critics when it reports bad polling for the government, showing 37 per cent of Coalition voters think Turnbull is the best leader of the Liberal Party, 19 per cent Julie Bishop and 17 per cent “don’t know”. Just 15 per cent went for Abbott.

Yet if you believe some who trade in commentary in news­papers, on talkback radio and on pay-TV only a change to Abbott can save the government. I cannot for the life of me see why some journalists who claim to be friends of Abbott would wish this on him. He would be battered by the electorate and the history books would be as unkind to him as they will be to his predecessor, Kevin Rudd.

At the moment, history will ­record Abbott as the most successful opposition leader ever, and a PM who achieved a thumping victory for his party in 2013 before ­delivering on all his core election promises, apart from fixing the budget. A hostile Senate crossbench will be shamed for blocking his attempts at budget repair. History will confirm that removing him proved once and for all that knifing first term prime ministers is madness.

But he cannot come back. Rudd was by far the preferred Labor leader when he got his ­revenge on Julia Gillard. And he saved perhaps two dozen seats for his party. Abbott would almost certainly drag the Coalition vote down.

But people don’t want facts and truth anymore. They want things they can agree with. Same with the media choices of the progressive left, where the ABC and Fairfax, 16 years after the Tampa affair, still pump out dubious ­stories driven by asylum-seeker ­advocates.

ABC’s Insiders on Sunday, April 23, was a classic. Host Barrie Cassidy, who seems not to have given a Labor figure a tough interview for a decade, was in full flight in an interview with Immigration Minister Peter Dutton, who was quick to point out how much the situation at Manus Island had ­improved on his watch.

As I quote John Howard saying about journalist David Marr in my book, asylum-seeker campaigning by left-wing journalists only helps conservative governments.

What a deluded polity. Conservatives are desperate to believe the government can only win if it moves further right. And the left still cannot accept Rudd, ­Gillard and former treasurer Wayne Swan stuffed up Labor’s six years in ­office before 2013.

Maybe old media have misread the challenges of the digital age. After all, Google and Facebook still seem to believe they can build communities attractive to advertisers by posting news stories.

Maybe Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, who is having a degree of success as the relatively new publisher of The Washington Post, is demonstrating something publishers used to know: exclusive news and investigations create highly engaged, broad audiences.

What sort of audiences are ­likely to be driven by endless commentary? Well, on the right they are likely to be older, more often on fixed incomes and probably not the huge spenders traditional families with children are.

On the left they are more likely to be much younger, with a smaller stake in society because they are yet to buy property. Now that is a generalisation, but it is a general­isation informed by a quarter of a century of intense study of media demographics.

So a few facts for both media camps. The ramping up of Ber­nardi by the right is just as silly as was the ABC’s ramping of Clive Palmer in the first Abbott term. Bernardi is being boosted by core conservatives to hurt a ­Coalition PM. Palmer was being boosted by the ABC to hurt ­another Coalition PM. My enemy’s enemy is my friend: classic media strategising.

ABC’s Lateline on Wednesday brought some sense to the fracturing of the right, which is the mirror image of the Greens’ fracturing of Labor’s vote this past decade.

As The Australian’s political editor Dennis Shanahan and Menzies Research Centre director Nick Cater agreed, the Coalition vote that is peeling off to One ­Nation and other minor parties will ­return to the government via preferences, as the Greens vote ­returns to Labor. And conservatives using the techniques of literary deconstruction favoured by the academic far left to attribute political motives to deeply analytical work like that of The Australian’s editor-at-large Paul Kelly really should know better.

Genuine conservatives should avoid one-eyed barracking and get back to real interviewing, ­rather than hectoring opponents or giving free kicks and soft interviews to political friends. After all, this is behaviour they hate in the ABC. Good journalists are tough minded on all sides.

TV and radio news directors need to cut the pejoratives and loaded adjectives from their news bulletins and be rigid about excising comment from straight news, and newspaper editors ought to concentrate on breaking news. After all, electronic media have ­always followed the news lead provided each morning by the capital city daily papers.