The Journalism Race that’s Failing a Nation
When it came to the Australian Federal Election earlier this year, all I had read in the newspapers was that the polls predicted Labor would beat Liberal. As someone whose political knowledge is fairly non-existent, I took it upon myself to search for both parties’ policies the day before voting.
In a democratic country, political journalists are supposed to circulate the most important information freely to ensure transparency for society. This way, citizens can make informed political decisions on all candidates running for their electorate. Yet, all I had read was that Labor was going to be victorious over Liberal.
As the Fourth Estate, these reporters should be educating their readers on political issues, not election standings. But as polling articles suit today's 24-hour news cycle and consumers frequently demand entertaining news about political rivalries, these adversarial stories are here to stay. Along with their presence comes citizens like me who are ill-informed on parties’ policies. As such, I believe these journalists and their audiences are failing to adhere to our democratic processes.
The media’s emphasis on polling and strategies has been criticised by Professor of Journalism Jay Rosen. This style of election coverage where journalists are portraying politics as a game to be fought by the two frontrunning teams is aptly called horse race journalism. Basically, this format focuses on how certain situations, such as internal campaign reorganisation, public gaffes or opposition developments, will impact a party’s chance in the polls.
From Rosen’s perspective, horse race journalism appears harmless. By presenting the latest data produced by independent polling organisations, citizens are always exposed to unbiased reporting. While this ensures the audience can form their own opinion, the requirement for journalists to remain impartial is the reason horse race articles are favoured over policies. By drawing citizens’ attention to a candidate’s winning strategy instead of informing the public on policies, qualifications or their stance on topical issues, our decision-making processes for voting become skewed.
As Professor of Political Communication Jesper Strömbäck ascertains it is this reliance on polling data which makes horse race journalism resemble sports coverage. The media’s tendency to focus on questions such as “who is ahead?” and “what’s their tactic to win?” suggests he’s not wrong. However, without the opportunity for society to read journalists’ scrutiny of parties’ policies, citizens cannot intelligently form their own political opinion.
Despite still being referred to as the media’s “toy department,” sports journalism has become a stepping stone to political journalism. If someone can report the statistics of an AFL game, surely they can report the odds of a campaign. With this attitude, readers of these reporters’ articles will be the ones losing the election, not the politicians.
Without an extensive education in political science, the conflation of sports and political journalism is promoting the growth of ill-informed citizens. Critics like American senior policy analyst Bruce Bartlett have called out these reporters and their employers who are fostering horse race journalism.
The key issue with this shift in company departments is that sports coverage does not require an in-depth understanding of national legislation or parties’ stances. Breezing over these issues by only reporting on less complex topics such as polling and strategies, oversimplifies politics. Media corporations fostering horse race journalism are hindering the public sphere and misleading citizens to inadvertently value speculative political reports.
These journalists are presenting society with an imbalanced focus on the state of play. If the few informative articles on policy proposals and government issues are being buried by horse race reporting, then how can citizens make informed political decisions?
So, at this point in the race, we as the betting spectators are inevitably on track to lose. The journalists are misleading us into believing the game is between two horses, Labor and Liberal. But at least we’ve heard about them.
In Australia, few other parties really get the time of day from journalists. I didn’t notice this until I was faced by the magnitude of the Senate electoral ballot paper earlier this year. At the voting booth, it was too late to research all the parties that didn’t get recognition from journalists.
This limited coverage by horse race reporters is not surprising as their overreliance on polling redirects citizens’ attention to the two leading party candidates. Thomas Patterson, the author of The 1976 Horserace, fears that this undermines citizens’ ability to make educated decisions during elections.
For the 2019 Australian Federal Election, a disproportionate amount of attention was spent on the competition between Bill Shorten and Scott Morrison. A discrepancy like this results in reporters dismissing their democratic duty of sharing information about all parties, major and minor. If journalists are remiss in communicating profiles on all the running parties, citizens will not be in a position to make an informed choice when casting their vote. Such behaviour by journalists disadvantages citizens’ political discourse.
As a key pillar of democracy, the media helps citizens formulate their opinions. However, horse race journalism seems to have the opposite effect. By reporting politics as a game and disregarding minor parties, journalists are failing to advocate diverse political viewpoints, trivialising the issues behind the game. We as citizens then neglect our democratic processes and cannot fulfil our right to an informed political opinion.
