Pollies face a feeding frenzy

OUR politicians' media accessibility is usually, but not always, a positive.

IN the months between winning the presidential election and being inaugurated, Abraham Lincoln pretty much kept shtum.

He worked at putting his cabinet together and looked at ways of trying to keep the union together, but made few public comments, leaving his campaign speeches to speak for him.

Even given the deference incoming presidents must show the incumbent, it is hard to imagine such weighty, dignified silence today. Nowadays, as we are constantly reminded, politics is at the mercy of a 24-hour news cycle.

By international standards, Australian politicians have long been unusually accessible to the media. Certainly US presidents, European leaders and even British prime ministers never expose themselves to uncontrolled media conferences and serious media interviews as frequently as Australian leaders.

Here, despite our parched deserts and treacherous surf, the most dangerous place to stand, as journalists are wont to say, is between a politician and a camera.

And long may it be so. For all our justified cynicism about the process, the willingness of politicians to engage robustly with the public through the media, and vice versa, is one of our main mechanisms for accountability between elections.

So, is the 24-hour news cycle a new reality and is it having an impact? The glib answer, of course, is that news has always happened round the clock. Only our means of reporting it have changed. But given that telephones and radio have been with us for generations, the ability to cover breaking news all the time and across the globe is not entirely new.

What is new is the scope of that ability: its amplification, if you like, through satellite television, mobile phones and the internet.

When I began working as a journalist in the mid-1980s, when we were on assignment away from a capital city we'd stop at phone boxes and call the newsroom every few hours, lest we were needed elsewhere or there was any news we should know about. Then in the late 80s, when journalists had new mobile phones the size of a brick slung from their belts, I remember taking a call in a TV newsroom. It was from a colleague flying in a light aircraft near Woomera in the isolated north of South Australia.

Although thousands of metres above the desert, he was obviously within range of the Woomera mobile phone tower, and was able to inform me about pictures of Lake Eyre filling.

It was, pardon the pun, a watershed moment for me, as I realised how technology was breaking down obstacles to communication. No doubt the next time Lake Eyre fills, TV crews will broadcast live from its shores and Oprah Winfrey will take her audience on a fishing cruise.

In politics, this information accessibility has acted like a steroid.

A decade or so ago, a politician had a modicum of time between finding out what their opponent had said and being required to respond. In campaigns, journalists were assigned to cover a specific side of politics and competing events would come together in TV bulletins or in newspapers, and later that day or into the next each side would respond to the other's arguments.

Now, as one politician gives a news conference in, say, Cairns, it is likely broadcast live on SkyNews, with journalists tweeting each significant phrase. Journalists on the other side of the country can use these words to demand a response just moments later at, say, a media conference in Fremantle. All the while the cameras are rolling and the threat of "gotcha journalism" is waiting to syndicate any misstep.

Not so long ago, media management and, therefore, political tactics sat in a reasonably comfortable diurnal rhythm. The day's activities were focused on feeding stories or handling stories for the evening news, and then for the following day's newspapers. Morning radio was seen largely as an extension of the morning paper cycle, where you could respond to or expand on stories.

Politicians doing late-night interviews on ABC TV's Lateline would recognise they were falling into a news black hole beyond the newspaper deadlines, where their remarks would carry into the next day's news cycle only if they included a disastrous mistake.

All this has changed. The advent of 24-hour news television has had the greatest impact. But so has the competitiveness of breakfast TV and radio, and the emergence of internet news sites and tools such as Twitter.

Whereas radio was once content to discuss the issues contained in the morning papers, TV was focused on packaging for the evening news and newspapers were intent on developing a story that would still be alive the next morning, there is now a nonstop feeding frenzy.

Politicians can't leave a chair vacant on SkyNews or ABC News 24 for fear an opponent will fill the vacuum. Likewise the radio slots all need to be filled. Blogspots are taken up, along with online interviews with newspapers.

Lateline now feeds into breakfast TV and radio, which feeds into the morning panel shows, which provide fodder for question time, which is discussed live on air before the evening news, which in turn is discussed on the evening panel shows.

All the while newspaper websites are making their own scoops public lest they can't hold until morning, as well as keeping up with other developments, while working on something new for the morning. And if anyone says something wrong, it will be all across the Twittersphere and discussed live on air before you can say Media Watch.

To paraphrase Coleridge, there is politics, politics everywhere but not a moment to think.

Yet the politicians are lining up to expose themselves to a daily gamma ray bombardment on a range of issues old and new, serious and frivolous. For audiences, it is often politics as entertainment. But the politicians have signed up to this reality TV show and they can't cede ground to other contestants.

It is exhausting. And, yes, it is at least comforting that we all seem interested. Sometimes it is enlightening, sometimes a new idea springs forth and sometimes there are train wrecks. But sometimes, just sometimes, perhaps politicians would be better off keeping shtum.

Chris Kenny is a journalist, author and political adviser who served as chief of staff to former foreign minister Alexander Downer.