Thu Dec 5

Many Australians do not like the way politics is reported. Here’s how it can improve

Written by Caroline Fisher, Associate Professor of Communication, University of Canberra

If you are reading this article, then you are likely to be part of a minority of Australians who are highly interested in politics and political news.

The Digital News Report: Australia 2024 ^[1] tells us that around one third of Australians are very interested in politics. They are more likely to be heavy news consumers who are willing to pay for it, and have higher trust in it.

In contrast, the opposite is true for most Australians who have moderate to low interest in politics. They are less interested in news about it, and are more likely to actively avoid it.

Given that people mainly learn about politics through the news media, the way it is reported ^[2] is very important. For many, political coverage is impenetrable. As the outgoing Director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen ^[3], put it,

Much of political journalism is the Beavis and Butthead of news — loved by a narrow and peculiar target audience, incomprehensible and off-putting to most other people.

Recent Australian research ^[4] made similar findings. Interviews with 60 voters highlighted that perceptions of political journalism were described as biased, full of conflict and complicated. Those perceptions also had an impact on how and if people sought information about who to vote for during the 2022 federal election. While low news consumers tended to be the most negative about politics and political reporting, heavy and moderate news users shared many criticisms.

Quoted below are comments that highlight key responses from the study.

Conflict

Interviewees understood that journalists liked to create conflict in their stories by portraying politicians in a negative light “because it’s a better news article or a better story, or they’re gonna get better coverage from it”. This meant the story was focused on who was going to win the election, rather than on policy substance.

Bias

There was a general perception that “a lot of the outlets have their own political leaning” and support whichever party suits their commercial interests.

Distrust

Distrust in both politics and the news clouded perceptions of election coverage. As one interviewee said,

Boy, there’s so much corruption in it. When you hear the news […] and then yes, they’re going to put their own spin on it […] it’s just a big, bloody vicious cycle.

Superficial

Other issues to emerge included too much focus on personalities and private lives and not enough on policy substance and election promises.

Complicated

Several people said they did not understand political reporting. Trying to decipher the political news required a lot of time and energy to stay on top of it:

I will watch it but it’s sort of it’s gone within 10 minutes because I don’t know anything building up to it.

I feel like politics is this huge area, and you have to spend so much time looking and listening and hearing and reading to understand everything that’s going on. And I just don’t have the time to do that. So, I think, it’s just really hard.

I’m trying to be interested in politics as much as I can […] I’ve read a few books on sort of how the system works, which I think has helped me contextualise some of the news […] it’s a conscious effort […] to care about it.

Even those people who do care about politics have plenty of criticism about the state of mainstream political news reporting. Political journalist Amy Remeikis recently asked her followers on the app Bluesky ^[5] if they had any suggestions about how to report politics differently. She has left the mainstream news media for the progressive think tank The Australia Institute, which is aiming to take a new approach to political journalism:

Playing with a few ideas of how to cover politics in Australia a bit differently. What would you like to see?

Her question garnered 519 responses from her highly engaged and politically interested followers. Many echoed sentiments found in our research, calling for greater fact checking of politicians, more coverage of minor parties and independents, more substance and less fluff.

But what about the bulk of Australians who aren’t very interested in political news and even avoid it? In fact its one of the top reasons for avoiding news ^[6]. How can we make political journalism more attractive to these people?

Here are a few more suggestions drawn from various sources of research and commentary:

less jargon
more background and context
less focus on who is winning or losing and more focus on what the country needs
less focus on internal politicking
less insider talk, with journalists talking to journalists
more engaging formats and styles
covering issues for diverse audiences, and not just appealing to highly educated men.

Given that voters need to be informed to participate in democracy and make a reasoned choice at the ballot box, political news avoidance is an important issue to address.

Increasing the proportion of people interested in political news – who are more likely to pay for it – also presents an opportunity for news organisations to do things differently.

The risk of not acting means voters will continue to turn to non mainstream news and information sources ^[7] that provide more diverse perspectives ^[8], and where they feel better represented.

The burden of improving the coverage of politics can’t all fall to journalists. It will also require changes in the way politics is conducted and the way journalists and politicians interact. Ultimately, urgent research is needed to find solutions that address the needs of the audience, the news media, politicians and democracy.