“Never criticise the media.” It’s one of the cardinal rules of participation in public life. They’ll get you back, it is commonly believed. Yet sometimes the media so fail in their role that the rule has to be broken.
Media coverage of the Higgins by-election has been atrocious—to the extent that a vacuum can have that quality. The Age seems to have decided that the election is meaningless and should be ignored, although journalists were assigned to write about it. Perhaps Kelly O’Dwyer’s strategy of being the invisible candidate is working.
The Age’s opinion page takes the view that it is not the role of the newspaper to carry the opinions of those standing for office, a quaint view not shared by The Australian which seems interested in actually selling newspapers and will carry material that it believes its readers will want to read.
The national daily has devoted more space to Higgins than the Melbourne daily. Mind you, even The Age’s nugatory coverage beats that of The Stonnington Leader, the local rag that puts advertising revenue before any sense of civic responsibility or, for that matter, any regard for its readers’ interest in who represents them in federal parliament.
All this is a pity because something interesting is happening in Higgins. Over the last three weeks, Greens door-knockers and leafleters have noticed that voters are increasingly engaged and sympathetic. Labor voters are cranky about the party’s decision not to run a candidate. And the venal goings-on in Canberra over the ETS provide the perfect backdrop to highlight the Greens climate message. So the spirits of Greens campaigners rise by the day.
If we do manage to pull off the unexpected, the newspapers will undoubtedly report that the Greens ran a highly effective, under-the-radar campaign. Of course, the radars they will be referring to will be their own.
Posted by Clive Hamilton at 9:51 PM
