In this post-truth era, how do we fairly define today’s mainstream media (large mass news media), particularly the political news media—magazines, newspapers, radio, television, and social media that focus on the nexus between politics and life as we know it—and the news journalists, presenters, correspondents, and politico-elites that populate it?
Let us begin with a declaration: Politicians are the world’s biggest gossipers and are only outdone by their conspiratorial consociation with news journalists and presenters, the world’s second biggest gossipers.
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Indeed, it would be naïve to think that gossip was not heavily implicated in media and politics. Gossip is political, and politics is at the heart of every decision.
French Moroccan political journalist Marie Le Conte, in her 2019 book Haven’t You Heard: Gossip, Politics and Power, writes that gossip drives everything in politics: “like dark matter hiding in the universe in a form we do not quite understand, this mass of informal conventions, relationships and conversations shapes everything that happens”.
Dark matter does not reflect or emit light, making it almost impossible to observe. Likewise, gossip does not reflect or emit the truth, ensuring that we only get a glimpse of reality—the inferences, if we can connect the dots, designed to spice up a rumour or make it disappear.
The truth will only set you free if you do your own research
For gossip spreaders, outrageous claims via social media benefit from a kind of digital immunity, as off the cuff assertions and insults are given more than the usual latitude. In this way, social media is the proverbial medium for regrettable remarks: “Twitter [now X] made me do it.” “I can retract it, and all will be forgiven.” But only sometimes, as we have seen.
Alternatively, and more critically, social media has enabled and emboldened politico-elites to more efficiently and effectively manufacture an alternative reality. Repeating a falsity often enough will eventually make it true, known as the illusory truth effect.
Consider Trump’s shameless campaign to convince the American population that the US economy is in disrepair under Biden.
For instance. A Harris poll (for The Guardian) conducted in May 2024 found that 49 per cent of respondents thought US unemployment was at a 50-year high when it was near a 50-year low, and nearly three in five respondents said the country was in recession, though GDP has been growing, not shrinking. Convincing the voting public that something false is true is not so difficult.
Similarly, Dutton’s campaign for the top job is just as disingenuous. His claims to convince voters that going nuclear is a good idea are littered with obfuscations and falsities. For instance, his June 2024 assertion: “I can’t stand the thought that in a country with an abundance of national resources, we’re paying the highest electricity prices in the world”, is a falsity. We’re about mid-range. Suffice it to say that the truth will only set you free if you do your own research.
Politicos delight in the dark art of Machiavellianism
Surreptitiously spreading gossip is fundamental to a politician’s political arsenal and an assault on one’s sensibilities. It is no secret that politicos delight in the dark art of Machiavellianism to identify timely inflection points to strategically leak defamatory gossip, implicating documents, or select parts of a private conversation taken out of context.
Social media platforms are the quintessential co-conspirators as they are yet to be held to the same legal and moral standards as news media networks. Falsities, innuendo, personal slurs, cyberbullying, and demeaning gossipmongering are dispensed with gay abandon and nominal fear of prosecution.
The other place this brazenly ensues is in congressional or parliamentary debates where parliamentary privilege indemnifies offenders. Members of the United States Congress share similar rights to those of the British, Canadian, and Australian parliaments: they cannot be prosecuted for anything they say in the House of Commons or on the Senate floor.
Transgressors might be temporarily expelled or suspended, instructed to withdraw a statement, and, hopefully, there is an imaginary moral and ethical line they believe one should not breach.
However, in the fervour of lively debate, also known as a slanging match, that imaginary moral and ethical line is often dispensed with as an inconvenient impediment to demeaning the opposition.
Like war, the first fatality of politics is the truth
In more politically correct political verbiage, phrases like “the reality is”, “let’s be clear”, and “more important is” are hackneyed diversions from reality used to avoid answering a question, subvert the truth, and introduce a distraction by changing the subject.
Still, the temptation to throw in an acerbic snipe or choice piece of gossip about an opponent often proves too much. It is no substitute for reality, but it can bring the house down, prompting childish cheers and jeers from both sides of the aisle, which is considered obligatory in the course of robust political debate.
The ability to discredit and demean a political opponent is more prized than establishing a truth and articulating good policy. Like war, the first fatality of politics is the truth. To be more pointed about postmodern politics, it is mostly about mongering—encouraging a particular activity that causes trouble—which entails gossipmongering, rumourmongering, and fearmongering.
Warmongering is the ultimate distraction for a dispirited nation. Watching politics obsess over trivia interspersed with confected screams of outrage while the world burns is most dispiriting. Ideology overrides intelligence. Likewise, repeatedly coming to a crossroads and turning right in the face of oncoming traffic, believing that you will not eventually crash and burn, is a sure sign of insanity.
Warmongering, as a finale to fearmongering, offers a tactical interlude from the banality of gossipmongering. Albeit wary that those prone to confrontation are disposed to persecute the intelligentsia and contrive inquisitions like the anti-woke campaign. Inventing a new enemy to maintain the rage is a prerequisite to joining the right. Armed with division and denial, the right-leaning politico-media chips away at society’s moral resilience.
Moral distress displaces moral resilience as the price of moral integrity is reduced to the whims of a shadowy group’s political agenda. Precious time is lost through serial acts of attack and defence.
We are resigned to debating stereotypical prejudices rather than independently appealing to a fully functioning conscience that would see past the propaganda.
Is this all the English-speaking Western world can muster?
Humans were not born with a thirst for this kind of combativeness. Like values, it comes from the cues and prevailing norms of the people we encounter and the society in which we live. It is also shaped by the political milieu we are exposed to and our political leaders’ cues and prevailing norms.
Under a polarised atmosphere of passive oppression, society sinks into distress as the chant goes out: “Is this all the English-speaking Western world can muster?” Anthony Albanese versus Peter Dutton, Rishi Sunak versus Kier Starmer, Joe Biden versus Donald Trump. Some can’t tell the truth; others can’t remember it. Constantly having to choose between the lesser of two evils is an endorsement of mediocrity and no choice at all.
If people are forced to live under a combative political system and a mainstream media that is divisive and confrontational by default, driven by gossipmongering propagated on misinformation and disinformation as a condition of winning government, distrust and cynicism become normalised, perpetuating more of the same. Malevolence wins over benevolence, and the Orwellian dystopia we all fear is thus made real.
Neoliberalism has become a pseudonym for neo-miserabilism
Consider, for instance, the housing crisis conundrum, which is more or less repeatedly defined as a temporary technical problem of demand and supply: an iterative process based on the illusory truth effect.
As previously described, repeat it often enough, and it will stick. Yet the lack of affordable housing is a political problem—a struggle between ideologies and incomes, social classes and inequality. One side sees housing as a wealth-making mechanism, while the other sees it as a human right. They are poles apart.
Politicians sit on the fence, unwilling to alienate either group by adjusting policy for the greater good. Negative gearing, capital gains tax discounts, foreign investment rules, real estate as a vehicle for money laundering, NIMBYism, Airbnb, and land banking urgently need collective policy reform, not just superficial tweaking loaded with loopholes. Indeed, neoliberalism has become a pseudonym for neo-miserabilism.
As an indication of where Australians prefer to invest their money, the total value of residential dwellings in Australia in March 2024 was $10.72 trillion, an increase of $209.4 billion from the December quarter of 2023.
In comparison, the total market cap of all companies listed on the ASX in May 2024 was less than a quarter of this at only $2.67 trillion. Despite this, housing availability at an affordable price—anywhere—is at a historical low. Suffice it to say that housing is a public good and not a commodity to be treated and traded as such.
Whistleblowers and truth-tellers are the bane of our gossipmongering politicians
In her 2023 book Storytellers: Questions, Answers and the Craft of Journalism, Leigh Sales writes about the precariousness of factual reporting. When investigative journalists hear gossip or get a tip-off about incidents under investigation by police or even subject to Acts of Secrecy and considered off-limits, how do they dig further to verify and report the truth when they know it is in the public interest to do so?
Whistleblowers and truth-tellers are the bane of our gossipmongering politicians, as we have recently experienced with respect to David McBride and Richard Boyle, who have been persecuted for taking a moral and ethical stand against powers formerly entrusted to prevent corruption.
Likewise, the protracted prosecution of Julian Assange and his release after 14 years of persecution is an archetypal case in point. Are exposing war crimes not in the public interest, and immunity from prosecution via the Public Interest Disclosure (PID) Act extraneous?
As we move increasingly toward a digital, mobile, and social media ecosystem, the competition for attention grows more intense. Mobile devices, like smartphones, are becoming the norm for finding and accessing news.
While this is convenient for users, the rigours of a highly competitive digital regime and the demand for express content creation mean less original, professionally produced news on pressing and diverse issues, as one or two headline stories are rehashed and regurgitated to extend their use.
This parsimonious version of the news, controlled by a handful of news networks and techno-hegemons that vet and control the digital distribution of news items according to their preferences, means that policy intervention and regulation are more crucial than ever to prevent market failures that compromise independent, unbiased, high-quality news journalism as a public good.
Media mobsters like Rupert Murdoch and techno-hegemonists like Mark Zuckerberg control the narrative, and he who controls the narrative controls the crowd.
The way to deal with them [the media] is to flood the zone with shit
Further to the detriment of the mainstream media news as an essential public good, why do news organisations, without reservation, continue to broadcast the ravings of liars and lunatics?
Synchronised gossip campaigns across interconnected news and social networks masquerade as independent opinion pieces but are knowing and unknowing agents of an iterative process designed by duplicitous public relations professionals dealing in half-truths and downright lies.
Think of it as “garbage gossip” —a case of garbage in and garbage out and the epitome of moral bankruptcy — the dark art practised by the soon-to-be-jailed political strategist and former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, who, in January 2018, told Bloomberg Opinion columnist and author Michael Lewis: “The Democrats don’t matter, the real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”
Garbage gossip is the default medium for disinformation transmission and the modus operandi for fraudsters via the mainstream media. But how did news networks willingly become the handmaidens of malice and misinformation, intentionally and unintentionally amplifying absurdities well beyond reprieve?
As the American editor and journalist Martin Baron argues in his 2023 book Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos and the Washington Post, “‘objectivity is the impartial pursuit of the truth rather than the insipid defence of both sides of an argument”.
Much less subtle is journalist and lecturer at the University of Sheffield Jonathan Foster, who sums it up with an admonishment to his students: ‘If someone says it’s raining and another person says it’s dry, it’s not your job to quote them both. Your job is to look out of the fucking window and find out which is true.’
In short, don’t give voice to liars and lunatics and then obsequiously qualify it as representing a broad spectrum of views.