Stephen Harrington Thesis - QUT ePrints [PDF]

PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE BEYOND JOURNALISM: INFOTAINMENT, SATIRE AND AUSTRALIAN TELEVISION

STEPHEN HARRINGTON BCI(Media&Comm), BCI(Hons)(MediaSt)

Submitted April, 2009 For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Creative Industries Faculty Queensland University of Technology, Australia

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STATEMENT OF ORIGINAL AUTHORSHIP

The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet requirements for an award at this or any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference is made.

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Stephen Matthew Harrington

Date:

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ABSTRACT

This thesis examines the changing relationships between television, politics, audiences and the public sphere. Premised on the notion that mediated politics is now understood “in new ways by new voices” (Jones, 2005: 4), and appropriating what McNair (2003) calls a “chaos theory” of journalism sociology, this thesis explores how two different contemporary Australian political television programs (Sunrise and The Chaser’s War on Everything) are viewed, understood, and used by audiences. In analysing these programs from textual, industry and audience perspectives, this thesis argues that journalism has been largely thought about in overly simplistic binary terms which have failed to reflect the reality of audiences’ news consumption patterns. The findings of this thesis suggest that both ‘soft’ infotainment (Sunrise) and ‘frivolous’ satire (The Chaser’s War on Everything) are used by audiences in intricate ways as sources of political information, and thus these TV programs (and those like them) should be seen as legitimate and valuable forms of public knowledge production. It therefore might be more worthwhile for scholars to think about, research and teach journalism in the plural: as a series of complementary or antagonistic journalisms, rather than as a single coherent entity.

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KEYWORDS

News Journalism Television Politics Public Sphere Media Audiences Breakfast Television Satire Cultural Chaos Intertextuality Televisual Sphere Sunrise The Chaser The Daily Show Media Ethnography

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................19 Hypothesis................................................................................................................22 Audience Research: A Realist Perspective ..............................................................26 Structure...................................................................................................................30 Notes ........................................................................................................................34

CHAPTER 1: POLITICS, ‘OLD’ NEWS, CHAOS AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE ..................35 Tabloidisation and the ‘Narrative of Decline’ .........................................................36 The Power of the Popular ........................................................................................41 News We Can Use? .................................................................................................45 Cultural Chaos .........................................................................................................47 Conclusion ...............................................................................................................51 Notes ........................................................................................................................57

CHAPTER 2: ‘NEW’ NEWS, ‘FAKE’ NEWS, AUDIENCES AND PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE ..59 ‘New’ News .............................................................................................................61 ‘New’ Audiences .....................................................................................................65 Textual Hybridity: Meaningful Pleasure .................................................................68 Making it Matter ......................................................................................................70 Youth and Hybridity ................................................................................................73 ‘Fake’ News? ...........................................................................................................76 ‘Fake’ News as The Anti-FOX ................................................................................79 Partisan?...................................................................................................................85 Fifth Estate? .............................................................................................................88 Audiences for New Political Television ..................................................................92

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Conclusion ...............................................................................................................93 Notes ........................................................................................................................96

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODS.............................................................................97 Participant Recruitment and Participation ...............................................................98 Data Collection and Analysis.................................................................................104 Conclusion: Managing Qualitative Research.........................................................105 Notes ......................................................................................................................109

CHAPTER 4: ‘RECIPROCAL’ JOURNALISM: SUNRISE, ORDINARINESS,

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BREAKFAST TELEVISION...........................................................................................111 What is Sunrise? ....................................................................................................112 Breakfast Time.......................................................................................................118 “Real people have Nicknames”: The Hosts ...........................................................127 Listening to (and Harnessing) ‘The Family’..........................................................142 Conclusion .............................................................................................................149 Notes ......................................................................................................................152

CHAPTER 5: SUNRISE

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PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE: NEWSTAINMENT, POLITICS

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THE ‘TELEVISUAL’ SPHERE.......................................................................................155

Tabloid? .................................................................................................................156 Genre......................................................................................................................160 ‘Dumbing Down’? .................................................................................................163 Depth of News .......................................................................................................170 The Televisual Sphere............................................................................................176 Conclusion .............................................................................................................187 Notes ......................................................................................................................189

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CHAPTER 6: PUSH IT TO

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LIMITS: POLITICAL SATIRE, CULTURAL SATIRE AND

THE CHASER’S WAR ...................................................................................................191 Waging war on Everything… ................................................................................193 Pushing It: Stunts ...................................................................................................197 Genre......................................................................................................................204 Political Satire........................................................................................................209 ‘It’s about Culture’.................................................................................................218 Conclusion .............................................................................................................232 Notes ......................................................................................................................234

CHAPTER 7: CHASING REPORTERS: MEDIA SATIRE, INTERTEXTUALITY AND PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE .............................................................................................................237 Media Satire ...........................................................................................................238 Media Satire and Commercial TV .........................................................................243 Critical Intertextuality............................................................................................247 Dissecting the Tabloid ...........................................................................................252 When ‘Old’ meets ‘New’.......................................................................................260 Media Sceptics .......................................................................................................268 Conclusion: Willingness to Apathy? .....................................................................275 Notes ......................................................................................................................281

CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................283 Understanding Chaos: From Journalism to Journalisms .......................................288 Teaching Chaos: The Challenge for Journalism Education...................................295 Researching Chaos: The Time for Ethnography? ..................................................302 Notes ......................................................................................................................310

APPENDIX A...............................................................................................................311 APPENDIX B ...............................................................................................................313 9

REFERENCES ..............................................................................................................315 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..............................................................................................354

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

ABC

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Australian Broadcasting Corporation

APEC

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Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation

ACA

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A Current Affair

CNN

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Cable News Network

NBC

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National Broadcasting Company

PI

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Politically Incorrect

SBS

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Special Broadcasting Service

TDS

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The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

TT

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Today Tonight

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PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED WORKS BY THE CANDIDATE INTEGRATED INTO THIS THESIS

Harrington, S. (2005) 'The ‘Democracy of Conversation': The Panel and the Public Sphere', Media International Australia incorporating Culture and Policy no. 116, pp. 75-87.

Harrington, S. (2008) 'Future-Proofing Journalism: Youthful Tastes and the Challenge for the Academy', Continuum, vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 395-407.

Harrington, S. (2008) 'Popular News in the Twenty-First Century: Time for a New Critical Approach?' Journalism: Theory Practice and Criticism, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 266-284.

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To Jason, without whom I would be totally lost. To Eddie, without whom I would be completely empty. To Rebecca, without whom I would be absolutely nothing.

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The conventions under which journalism operates are rooted in historic and practical circumstance, but unlike medicine or engineering or other professions, they are not governed by immutable rules of biology or physics or other mandates of nature; journalism’s conventions are only tangentially governed by the laws of man. – Davis “Buzz” Merritt (1998: 17)

News is culture. To develop this notion consistently, the questions would not be whether we have more or less news but what kind of news we have. – Michael Schudson (1998: 32)

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INTRODUCTION

On Thursday 6 September 2007, what appeared to be a motorcade carrying Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was waved though a police security checkpoint established in Sydney’s central business district to safeguard delegates attending the annual meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). The main passenger in this convoy was, in fact, Osama bin Laden, leader of the terrorist network Al Qaeda and world’s most-wanted person. After passing another police officer – who did not check anyone’s identification – the convoy found itself only meters away from the InterContinental Hotel, which was hosting US President George W. Bush during his stay in Australia. The motorcade – as police soon realised after Bin Laden jumped out and asked why he had not been invited to the APEC conference – was a fake: an elaborate hoax executed for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) television show The Chaser’s War on Everything. 1

Fortunately for authorities, the motorcade contained a group of satirists (comedian Chas Licciardello was dressed as Osama Bin Laden), not an Al Qaeda sleeper-cell. However, the stunt called into question the millions of dollars spent to ensure nobody

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entered the APEC meeting’s “red zone” without appropriate security clearance (Casey, 2007c). To some, especially New South Wales Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione and Police Minister David Campbell, this was an irresponsible, embarrassing prank – of which they did not “see a funny side at all” (in Kirby & Stanley, 2007) – because it exposed a “potentially dangerous flaw” in the security operation designed to protect some of the world’s most important political and economic leaders ('Just as Well They Were Only Joking,' 2007; Casey, 2007b). APEC organisers were forced to defend their operation and explain how a team of comedians had slipped past what had been touted as Australia’s largest-ever security operation (Powell, 2007b; Wright, 2007), and henceforth overshadow Australia’s “chance to shine on the world stage” (Conway, 2007). Eleven members of the Chaser production team (including two of its stars, Chas Licciardello and Julian Morrow) were arrested and charged over the incident, and at one stage faced a potential jail sentence of up to six months. These charges were dropped in April 2008 (Baker, 2008).

The Australian public, however, viewed this event quite differently to authorities. Almost 90 per cent of respondents to an online poll conducted by the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper found the incident humorous, not irresponsible (Gibson & Baker, 2007). One newspaper commentator went so far as to call The Chaser’s supposedly ‘reckless’ actions “perhaps the greatest piece of political commentary ever seen in Australia” (Fine, 2007). News of the faux motorcade’s stunning success 2 in passing through security where others – including a senior member of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) (Powell, 2007a) – had failed, quickly spread around the world (Balogh, 2007; Gibson & Baker, 2007). Journalists covering the APEC summit – during which time Sydney residents were given an extra public holiday to

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help ease disruption caused by security efforts (Conway, 2007) – then began vigorously questioning the real value of the multi-million dollar, taxpayer-funded operation:

Despite spending more than $250million (or about $10 million [per] arrest) on steel fences, concrete barriers, [a] water cannon, thousands of armed police, repressive laws granting extensive new powers to public authorities to detain citizens and who knows what else, there were giant holes in a security envelope cracked by pranksters, attracting widespread media attention here and overseas.

We once looked to a free press to check the actions and puncture the puffed-up pretensions of those in power, both public officials and corporate mandarins. Today, the powerful threaten the Chaser team with jail time rather than offer it kudos for revealing the charade that passed for security at last week's APEC conference. (Burgess, 2007)

Perhaps more than any other event of 2007, this example is a sign of the times. When a group of comedians challenge authority in a way that not only covers news, but also sees them become news themselves, such an occurrence is further proof that when it comes to the media, politics and news, we are now truly “in a field without fences” (Hebdige, 1988: 81). 3

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HYPOTHESIS

[T]here may be more than one way or one television genre to inform citizens about politics… the notion that only programmes formally labelled as ‘informational’ should be regarded as legitimate outlets for civic communication is unsustainable. Of course, whether all such programmes actually do stimulate and inform their audience members, or whether some are perniciously seductive… are still largely unexplored empirical questions. (Blumler, 1999: 243)

This thesis examines the contemporary relationship between politics, 4 television, audiences and the public sphere. Journalism has played, and will continue to play, a significant role in this relationship, but it is not an exclusive one. In an era when, for instance, TV personality Andrew Denton, who rose to prominence in Australia largely through comedic performances, receives one of Australia’s most prestigious journalism awards (see, for example, Casimir, 2004), when journalists get criticised for being entertaining, entertainers (as seen in the APEC example above) are making and discussing news, and ‘ordinary’ citizens with an Internet connection, basic IT skills and modest writing abilities are increasingly being seen as an important part of public discourse (Heim, 2004; Anderson, 2005: 101-24; Wall, 2005; Bruns & Jacobs, 2006), news is more difficult to define than ever (see Hartley, 1999b; Deuze, 2005). So too then is the practice (journalism) that for the most part underpins it, and the social, cultural and political functions it is supposed to serve (see Meyer, 2003; Schudson, 1998).

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Journalism is considered “the most important textual system in the world” (Hartley, 1995: 20), and “a job that is crucial to society” (Cunningham, 2003: 31). However, journalism also has “no essence” (Hartley, 1996: 33). Unlike the legal professions, for instance, there is “nothing that unites all the things that may be associated with the term journalism except the term itself” (Hartley, 1995: 20), and anyone with a desire to be a journalist can “pick up a pen, grab a pad, and go” (Bishop, 2004: 31). Journalists themselves have often engaged in professional “boundary maintenance” (Bishop, 2004: 31), promoting a culture of professionalisation in an attempt to exclude ‘outsiders’ (Deuze, 2005). To some degree these attempts have been successful, in spite of the larger public debates about the (principally) web-based ‘citizen journalism’ movement that have further eroded the perceived divide between journalists and the rest of society (see Gillmor, 2006; Bowman & Willis, 2003). The difficulty in articulating journalism’s boundaries has gone hand-in-hand with a similar struggle over the practice’s ideals and purpose. If any ‘ideal’ is ever articulated, it is usually defined historically, looking back 5 to a form that once existed (either in reality or fantasy), often combined with the assumption there was once a “‘brained up’ era when the media played a more positive role in fostering informed debate, a knowledgeable public and a healthy democratic system” (Thomas, 2004: 469).

Although it may simply be a symptom of the fact journalism is still seen to serve a “vital democratic function” (Schudson, 1998: 33), the tendency to view journalism as a profession, rather than an act or practice, narrows the ways scholars might understand it, and works to exclude the supposedly ‘unqualified’ from producing public knowledge. The result of these forces is a more modernist, generic definition of news, what counts as valid forms of news, and who is qualified to pass this on to

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others. News – both object and genre – has become inextricably linked to an idealised conception of journalism:

[T]he conception of journalism which [many theorists] promote… is a very narrow one and accounts for only a small portion of that which in a practical, empirical sense constitutes contemporary journalism… The discourses, in other words, are increasingly unsuccessful in accounting for journalism as a whole by only referring to and legitimating only one particular form. (Dahlgren, 1992: 7)

The starting premise for this thesis then, is that television is a major conduit for public knowledge, which plays a role in supporting the contemporary public sphere (Hartley, 1992; 1996) and can offer deeper insight into the political world, however broadly defined. In a time of “cultural chaos” (McNair, 2006), establishing false distinctions between the programs that enable public knowledge and those that do not is now futile, and therefore we can no longer continue to characterise television news in the way many previous studies have. While traditional forms of TV news have often been perceived as “a natural genre for the nurturing of the public sphere” (Gray, 2008: 133), these texts can no longer lay sole claim to enabling citizenship. If the “nightly sense-making of events is [now] processed in new ways by new voices” (Jones, 2005: 4), then the time has come for a better empirical understanding of this transformation and its various implications (McNair, 2000a: 209).

This thesis examines two television programs which are examples of genres that have previously been written off in popular discourse as either ‘trivial’ (breakfast television: Sunrise), or as ‘mere’ entertainment (satire: The Chaser). It investigates

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how viewers relate to both programs, and what effect, if any, each has on public knowledge. The thesis pays attention to the diversity of informational programming on television – its different forms, genres, and permutations – and explores what this trend (typified by The Chaser’s APEC stunt) means for citizens’ understanding of and engagement with politics and the public sphere. Specifically, it argues that journalism has been largely thought about in overly simplistic binary terms which now fail to reflect the media’s state of “cultural chaos” (McNair, 2006), and audiences’ news consumption patterns. The ‘newstainment’ program Sunrise has successfully forged a very strong reciprocal relationship with its viewers, and forces us to re-consider this popular television news form in terms of how it positions its audience in relation to politics. Likewise, political satire – such as that employed in The Chaser’s War on Everything – has the potential to provide an alternative perspective on politics, culture and the media, and may play an important role in the way viewers understand, view, and engage with the public sphere. This thesis demonstrates that audiences ‘use’ both programs as sources of news in sophisticated ways, and both should therefore be seen as legitimate and valuable forms of public knowledge production that throw into question the way that journalism has traditionally been theorised, taught and researched.

To investigate its central hypothesis, this thesis adopts what Jones (2006: 370) calls a “cultural approach to the study of mediated citizenship”, which emphasises the plurality of political media, and that the interplay of various news forms creates an aggregate picture through which citizens “make sense of the world”:

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A cultural approach foregrounds the ways in which popular media shape public experiences with and dispositions toward politics, including our civic values and democratic imaginations. To do so is to recognize that this shaping occurs through many different media forms (beyond news) that offer a variety of meanings, each with the potential for multiple means of individual and communal interaction (beyond information acquisition). (Jones, 2006: 379)

While this cultural approach to the relationship between media and politics has been examined extensively in relation to US television, this thesis is among the first studies to adopt an explicitly Australian perspective on these matters, which is especially important given that, as discussed later in this thesis, “transgressive” news formats have a fairly proud history in this country (Turner, 1989). Although many other scholars have previously acknowledged journalism as a larger cultural practice than the core of the profession often recognises (see, for example, Baym, 2005; Carpignano et al., 1993; Hartley, 1996; Jones, 2005; Katz, 1992; Mano, 2007; Turner, 1996c; 2005), few studies have attempted to qualitatively understand how audiences use these ‘emergent’ forms (Williams, 1977: 121) of political media – or what Jones (2005) refers to as “new political television” – as a means of keeping informed in their daily lives.

AUDIENCE RESEARCH: A REALIST PERSPECTIVE

In order to assess the relationship between viewers and “new political television” (Jones, 2005) in Australia, this thesis uses qualitative audience research as its primary

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research method. It will use group discussions and individual interviews with Sunrise and Chaser audience members in order to adopt a critical paradigm that attempts to combine journalism’s desire for a politically aware and informed citizenry without necessarily insisting that we should be adhering to journalism’s various doctrines. The thesis also mobilises qualitative audience research in order to employ cultural studies’ emphasis on collective consumption, meaning-making and polysemy without simply lauding something popular based on an assumption of ‘democratisation’; in a sense, taking cultural studies’ postmodern optimism, and rejecting journalism’s positivism. In this context, the use of qualitative audience research in this thesis is an attempt to re-engage to some degree with notions of media power that were, in fact, vital considerations throughout cultural studies’ formative years (Morley, 1997: 137). The thesis attempts to avoid simply using theories of the ‘active audience’ to produce what Morley (1997: 121) calls “an improperly romanticized image of the media consumer”, which may have allowed cultural analysts to almost entirely dismiss media hegemony and any possibility that audiences can be influenced and affected by imbalances in cultural power.

While Stuart Hall’s (1980) encoding/decoding model, and the subsequent investigations which explored the theory – in particular the seminal Nationwide studies (see Morley & Brunsdon, 1999; Morley, 1980) – have been vital in dismissing the idea that all audiences interpret media texts in the same way (Morley, 1997: 124), it may also have blinded some cultural studies theorists to still important questions of media influence (Madianou, 2005: 45). In its desire to avoid at all costs the elitist paradigm that “only sees popular culture as imposed by commercial interests on a gullible and dopey mass” (McGuigan, 1992), cultural analysts may also have failed to

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pay attention to the instances when the media has in fact abused its power and failed citizens in the process. Although there are undoubtedly many critical and discerning media consumers who readily interpret texts in a reflexive or ironic manner, it is problematic to extend the logic to the point where we assume ‘oppositional’ reading strategies and subversion of intended meaning are “a model for ‘decoding’ in general” (Morley, 1996: 290).

What could be interpreted as a fanatical tendency towards redemptive readings of popular media may have created an inverted version of the elitist paradigm, whereby judgements about the political ‘value’ of news texts are abandoned in favour of a celebration of apparent ‘consumer sovereignty’ (see Morley, 1997; McGuigan, 1997). Thus we have seen a drift into a populist textualism that, according to McGuigan (1992: 72), reduces “television study to a kind of subjective idealism, focused more or less exclusively on ‘popular readings’, which are applauded with no evident reservations at all, never countenancing the possibility that popular reading could be anything other than ‘progressive’”. While cultural studies has played an enormous role in re-thinking media ‘effects’, and what many once assumed was a lack of power on the audience’s behalf when it came to textual interpretation (the so-called ‘hypodermic needle’ or ‘silver bullet’ hypothesis), it may have also allowed itself too much freedom, and thus been too keen to excuse the many flaws that tend to plague popular news forms.

The FOX News Network is possibly the most contentious and heavily scrutinised news source in the world at the moment, with most people believing it is either an effective and necessary counterweight to widespread liberal bias in the media (see, for

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instance, Anderson, 2005), or that it symbolises everything that is wrong with contemporary journalism. While it speaks of its “Fair and Balanced” approach, Robert Greenwald’s 2004 film Outfoxed alternatively claims the network has taken journalistic ethics to the bottom of the priority list, choosing to promote a right-wing agenda in order to deliberately manipulate public opinion. FOX News’ popularity suggests that citizens may be looking for something new in the world of TV news, but many still believe it is “the Scylla and Charybdis around which our Odyssean voyage must steer clear” (Gray, 2006a). So although FOX is the most popular cable news network in the United States, that does not mean it should necessarily be held up as an example of journalistic excellence because it somehow empowers the average American citizen. Gripsrud (2000: 291) sums up the argument nicely by pointing out: “The fact that public decapitations used to be popular spectacles is not a good reason to reintroduce them.”

Cultural studies’ insistence on relativity and subjectivity means any attempt to defend values and (necessary) standards – or indeed dare to contemplate FOX’s potential negative ‘effects’ – is, unfortunately, often seen as some kind of elitist value judgement on mass culture and the people who keenly consume it. Although cultural studies has made enormous steps in our understanding of popular forms of news and the public sphere, it may also have fallen into the trap of blindly celebrating all popular culture in the name of consumer sovereignty and empowerment. Without advocating (snobbish) cultural elitism, it is possible that cultural studies may have ended up generating a kind of cultural populism, which is “the binary product of cultural elitism and fatally so, forever tied to it through opposition, directly reversing its values” (McGuigan, 1997: 139). Such ‘slack relativism’ (see Morley, 1997) should

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have no place in critiques of political journalism, especially when that profession has so often presented itself as a vital component in the nourishment of a healthy democracy (Beecher, 2005; McKnight, 1997; McNair, 2000b; Tiffen, 1994; Schultz, 1998: 15; Gripsrud, 1999: 37), and because the profession still claims (and is usually awarded) privileged status within western societies. If the news really is “not just another business” (Schultz, 1998), then it ought to be undertaken with a different set of priorities in mind, “whether in a given instance anyone out there is listening or not” (Schudson, 1998: 33). Inversely, any analysis of news sources that do not employ traditional journalistic methods should not also fall into the same trap. Rather than celebrating infotainment and satire for making political matters popular, good scholarship should aim to undertake a genuine interrogation of how these shows foster politically awareness, and whether or not they do so in an effective and/or productive manner.

STRUCTURE

This thesis is divided into two parts. The first part examines how contemporary journalism’s intersection with the public has largely been understood in academic terms, and examines some previous audience research into popular news programming.

Chapter 1 is a review of the key critical approaches to news and journalism from the late-20th Century to today, particularly in relation to notions of “tabloidisation”. It argues the previous debates about popular news forms have been important in

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recognising their significance, but have generally adopted crude binary taxonomies (e.g. ‘tabloid’, ‘broadsheet’) which may have limited our understanding of the way in which news circulates in the public sphere. It instead advocates a more nuanced, viewer/audience-centric critical paradigm for scholarly critiques of popular news formats.

Chapter 2 outlines the main theoretical claims surrounding ‘new’, alternative approaches to journalism. Using the ‘fake’ news program The Daily Show as an important international reference point, it examines some of the unorthodox ways in which news has previously been presented both in Australia and elsewhere in the world. This chapter also offers an overview of several previous qualitative studies relating to the issue, but ultimately argues more research needs to be conducted to understand these many different ‘new’ news forms, particularly from an Australian perspective.

Chapter 3 outlines the qualitative research methods employed for this study. It discusses the benefits and drawbacks of various methodological approaches, details those who were involved in the study and how they were recruited. This chapter also argues that too many scholars have been reluctant to conduct research with audiences for fear of methodological limitations.

The second part of this thesis is based on a close examination of two different Australian political television programs.

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Sunrise is Australia’s most-watched breakfast news program. Wieten and Pantti (2005: 21) note that: “Breakfast television is commonly assumed to be one of the more recent stages in the popularization of the television news genre, and…[is] symptomatic of the commercialization of television as a whole”. This claim certainly rings true in relation to Sunrise. In fact, this program is an excellent case study for investigating the state of the contemporary news media, as it neatly encapsulates many of the pressing concerns surrounding the current state of the media and journalism; namely, questions regarding commercialisation, tabloidisation and the hybridisation of news and entertainment. Breakfast TV itself is also “a specific programme type and viewing context… [that] has received relatively little attention from media researchers” (Wieten & Pantti, 2005: 21). And, of the scant amount of attention paid specifically to breakfast TV news, almost none of it involves audience research. This is a significant oversight when we consider that Sunrise’s ability to connect with its audience is central to its success. Chapter 4 will examine this bond, how Sunrise manages to achieve it, and its embodiment of what I call a ‘reciprocal’ approach to journalism – that is, its textual openness, which is quite unlike most traditional forms of TV news. Chapter 5 will then go on to examine Sunrise’s approach to news more closely, and analyse the program as a part of what Baym (2007a) has called the “televisual sphere”. It will argue Sunrise is not simply a hypercommercial form of audience-centric news, but presents a more palatable picture of the political world that hybridises news and entertainment.

The Chaser’s War on Everything is a night-time comedy and satire program which screened on Australia’s public broadcaster, the ABC, in 2006 and 2007. It generated much controversy in its short lifespan (see Dennehy, 2007; Dubecki, 2007; Harris,

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2007a; Kirby & Stanley, 2007; McLean, 2007; Wright, 2007), but also drew much praise for its satirising of, and commentary on, Australian politics. Its popularity and impact on Australian popular culture make it an excellent case study to examine the role of comedy and satire in news coverage, as well as its potential limitations. Chapter 6 will analyse The Chaser’s approach to political and cultural satire in detail, in particular it potential “public value” (Costera Meijer, 2001), and examines what value this satire has in viewers’ lives. Chapter 7 will then examine The Chaser’s media satire in the War on Everything, and will argue this aspect of the program should be considered a form of “critical intertextuality” (Gray, 2006b), which acts not as a traditional news program would in informing the public with new information, but as a text which can inform our understanding of news which already exists within the public sphere. The show’s ability to engage in a humorous analysis of news events (and sources) plays an important role in citizen knowledge, but questions remain as to whether or not it promotes a form of scepticism that leads to active citizenship.

The conclusion of this thesis will look further into how the findings of this study can be interpreted, arguing that it might be more worthwhile for scholars to think about, research and teach journalism in the plural – or a series of journalisms – audiences for which might be more usefully researched in the future through the use of ethnographic techniques.

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NOTES

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A full clip of this stunt is available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdnAaQ0n5-8.

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It seemed also that the proponents of the prank were as surprised as anyone else that they had passed

security with such ease. The ABC’s legal advisors gave their permission for the prank to go ahead, because they operated under the assumption “they would be stopped at the first checkpoint” (Casey, 2007b). 3

I would like to acknowledge Debra Spitulnik’s (2002: 351) use of this quote, wherein I first

discovered it. 4

In suggesting that this thesis relates to political journalism, I realise that this word can be interpreted

in many different ways within cultural studies (McKee, 2004: 203). Thus it is important to note that in this thesis, I wish to employ the term in its most liberal sense. I am not solely concerned with journalism that reports on “what parliamentary politicians do, resulting in legislation” (McKee, 2005: 184), but that which does (or at least purports to) inform the public about matters of cultural or political importance (as opposed to, for example, travel or business journalism). 5

The investigation of (and ramifications from) the Watergate scandal by Washington Post reporters

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in the early 1970s is often seen as a high water mark in the history of journalism. However, even this may have been viewed as just another ethical dark stain on the profession’s reputation had it not resulted in the downfall of Richard Nixon (see Hirst & Patching, 2005: 121-25).

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CHAPTER 1

POLITICS, ‘OLD’ NEWS, CHAOS AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE

This chapter is a review of the key critical approaches to news and journalism from the late-20th Century to today, particularly in relation to notions of “tabloidisation”. While these previous debates have been important in recognising the significance of popular news forms, this chapter argues the debates have generally adopted crude binary taxonomies which may have limited our understanding of the way in which news circulates in the public sphere. Generally speaking, these arguments have fallen into one of two categories. There are those who chart a so-called ‘narrative of decline’ in the recent history of journalism (for example, Franklin, 1997), or what Hallin (1994: 170) calls “The passing of the 'high modernism' of American journalism”. On the other hand there are those who have re-thought the merits of popular news forms (such as Lumby, 1999a), and pointed out that there was never actually a high-point in the journalism—democracy relationship in first place (including McNair, 2000a). This chapter will argue, however, that each perspective may have been devoted to overly narrow considerations of journalism, and therefore neither has sufficiently accounted for the state of “cultural chaos” (McNair, 2006) in which the media now finds itself.

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TABLOIDISATION AND THE ‘NARRATIVE OF DECLINE’

One of the chief claims about journalism is that it is an important cog in the democratic machine, because it can help to keep the world informed, and play the role of society’s “score-keepers” (Conley, 1997: ix). Journalists are therefore supposed to strive to serve the “vigilant citizen who must be properly informed” (McGuigan, 1998: 98) in order to make “informed choices” (Winch, 1997: 114). News is considered an indispensable part of society because it is seen as the only way in which ‘good’ citizens facilitate their participation in the political public sphere (Moy et al., 2005: 111). Debate has of course raged about the success or failure of news to successfully undertake this service, with much of the recent enquiry into journalism’s social functions revolving around loosely-defined terms such as ‘tabloid’ and ‘broadsheet’ journalism, or ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ news (for example, Franklin, 1997; Langer, 1998; Lumby, 1999a; Sparks & Tulloch, 2000; Turner, 1999b).

There is some conjecture about the origins of the term ‘tabloid’. One dominant theory is that it is a rip-off from a medicine name of the late-19th century (a neologism combining tablet and alkaloid), because tabloid newspapers (A3 size), at half the size of broadsheets (A2), were thought of as “a small, concentrated, effective pill, containing all news needs within one handy package” (Ornebring & Jonsson, 2004: 287; see also Gripsrud, 2008: 37). The major selling point of tabloid-sized newspapers was that handiness, which made them far easier to read on public transport than more bulky A2 sized broadsheets. 1 This change in size – alongside dramatically improving literacy levels – caused a major shift in readership, with the working classes suddenly

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becoming a major part of the reading public (Ornebring & Jonsson, 2004). Being designed, quite literally, for ‘the masses’ has meant tabloid media forms are bound up in the following series of binary distinctions which persist to this day:

Tabloid Popular Soft Trash Personal Private Popular Culture Emotional Lay Knowledge Celebrity Consumer Trivial Feminine Profit Micro-politics Wants

: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :

Broadsheet Quality Hard Value Political Public High Culture Rational Expert Knowledge Intellectual Citizen Serious Masculine Service Macro-politics Needs

FIGURE 1: POPULAR VS 'QUALITY' NEWS BINARIES

Through these binary 2 discourses, anything on the left of Figure 1 (above) is derided, and anything on the right is seen as desirable, personalisation is equated with trashiness, and popularity instantly linked to triviality. Even though the term ‘tabloid’ bears no material relation to news media in the world of broadcasting – being derived from the realm of newspapers – the meaning of the word tabloid has shifted to denote any popular form of journalism; “a portmanteau description for what is regarded as the trivialisation of media content in general” (Turner, 2004: 76).

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The main criticism of tabloidisation as a phenomenon is that it has seen many news programs’ primary focus turn away from informing audiences to entertaining them instead, and place what have traditionally been seen as ‘private’ or personal issues in the public arena (Machin & Papatheoderou, 2002: 36; Wark, 1997; Manga, 2003: 144; Lumby & O'Neil, 1994; Turner, 1999b; Costera Meijer, 2001). Doing so is a deeply problematic concept to some people, because it is seen as failing to service the public sphere, which is premised upon the widespread availability of “relevant information affecting the public good” (Curran, 1996: 83, emphasis added). Indeed, according to journalism’s own ideology (e.g. the ‘fourth estate’), facilitating public knowledge, empowering citizens, and increasing their ability to contribute to the public sphere is the exclusive role of news programming (Moy et al., 2005: 111; McGuigan, 1998: 98). These contrasts perhaps account for why the term ‘tabloid’ is almost never described as “‘good’ in any traditional sense of the word” (Dahlgren, 1992: 18) and is synonymous with journalism’s ‘darker’ side (e.g. the discourses of immorality when it comes to the “paparazzi”, 3 or connotations of ‘sleazy’ journalism). So, this tabloidisation “infection” (Pieper, 2000) which some have suggested occurred over the last two decades (or thereabouts) has seen these traditional forms of ‘quality’ news play an increasingly marginal role within the media sphere (see also Hallin, 1994).

An extension of these concerns over ‘tabloidisation’ is that the only way a citizen can legitimately engage with the public sphere is through the consumption of ‘hard’ political journalism untainted by the scourge of populism. Objective, “[r]ational analysis and thorough, dispassionate investigation” (MacDonald, 2000: 251) – the hallmark of what is sometimes termed ‘hard’ or ‘high-modern’ journalism (see Hallin, 1994: 170) – is the standard of reportage the public should engage with. However,

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many have perceived a wider movement in news programming towards the dramatic, “lurid”, entertaining and spectacular (Meyer, 2003: 12), or what has been called a “cacophony of the glamorous, the trivial and the melodramatic” (Machin & Papatheoderou, 2002: 41). The key result of the trend is that rather than holding governments accountable for their actions (i.e. as a check and balance on power), or increasing the public’s understanding of matters in “ways that enable citizens to understand and to act” (Schudson, 1998: 30-31), the news now has no (or very little) more public value than other more explicit forms of entertainment. This is what many critics (such as Herman, 1998) believe has seriously damaged the state of public discourse. “The logic of art… and entertainment… which frequently rely on the [ir]rational, the deeply affective, and the emotional”, notes Gray (2008: 133), seem therefore entirely incompatible with Habermas’ (1989; 2004) conception of a rational and serious space for collective debate.

Emblematic of tabloid news’ populist strategies, Australian current affairs programs A Current Affair and Today Tonight square-off every weeknight at 6.30pm, seeking the biggest slice of the audience pie with tales of hyper-bureaucratic local councils, petty family or neighbourhood disputes, celebrity gossip and rip-off merchants. 4 The regular deployment of such emotionally-charged topics often leads to the conclusion that ‘infotainment’ trivialises news and current affairs, and supposedly does little to inform audiences about issues such as politics (Hallin, 1994: 177; Cunningham & Miller, 1994: 44; Machin & Papatheoderou, 2002; McKee, 2002). For instance, the Australian public has been treated to stories about how to increase one’s chances of winning the lottery, towns ‘held ransom’ by gangs of juvenile offenders (and why police are powerless to stop them), making the most of coupon savings, political

39

correctness gone mad, why heartless politicians have abandoned common sense, 5 and the apparently ongoing investigation into ‘Butter Vs Margarine’. On 20 July 2004, A Current Affair’s then host, Ray Martin, could even be heard uttering the phrase: “Coming up next, how your pet can make you rich.” The real concern about instances like these is not so much that public attention is being diverted towards stories which arguably have minimal consequences for society at large, but that their coverage is still overlayed with discourses of self-importance. A Current Affair’s slogan for some time in 2005 was “No fear, No favour”, demonstrating a hypocrisy in “disavowing but nonetheless performing tabloidisation” (Turner, 2005: 52).

Roberts (2004: 21) argues programs like A Current Affair cherish “stories such as ‘Helping Pensioner Pat’” because “the opportunity to ‘act’ or empathise within the community, and ‘respond’ to a real tragedy” is often just “a cathartic outlet for those who feel helpless, or even disinclined to do anything on a larger social or world scale”. By moving into this extremely personal and emotional sphere, tabloid news programs can easily arouse an emotional response such as anger or empathy, yet do not demand anything more from their viewers as citizens because they are given few indications about how to play a role in resolving the issue. The problem is that the programs which thrive on these stories regularly ignore the more complex causes of problems (which may challenge conventional social structures), and instead look for a simplified narrative in which, all too often, an ‘ordinary Aussie’ is the innocent victim of a powerful person or organisation’s lack of compassion. Turner has termed shows like Today Tonight and A Current Affair “junk news”: “like ‘junk food’, it looks like news, is sold like news, but it is an unhealthy component of the news diet” (Turner, 1996b: 41; see also Hargreaves, 2005: 2).

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THE POWER OF THE POPULAR

Kovach and Rosenstiel (2001: 3) claim that one of the fundamental roles of journalism as a profession is “to make the significant interesting and relevant”. While attempts to maximise audiences for news programs have been seen as a direct subversion of the role journalism is supposed to serve, this can alternatively be interpreted as an attempt to popularise the television genre at the heart of the public sphere (Lumby & O'Neil, 1994; Hartley, 1996; Machin & Papatheoderou, 2002; McKee, 2002; Shattuc, 1997; Bek, 2004). The often massive appeal 6 of tabloid news has lead to suggestions that popular news forms represent a process of democratisation; putting news back into the hands of ‘the people’, which helps create “a new, more open and more egalitarian public sphere” (Lumby, 1999a: 38). Celebrating the “ordinary as much as the distinguished” (Machin & Papatheoderou, 2002: 46), and setting up “personal experience as a legitimate form of knowledge” (p. 47), these often maligned, but nevertheless popular, versions of news have been used by some as proof that “emotionalism, sensation and simplification are not necessarily opposed to serving the public good” (Ornebring & Jonsson, 2004: 284). Often articulated alongside discourses of femininism (van Zoonen, 1991; Lumby, 1999a; Hartley, 1996), tabloidisation has been seen by many as a useful response to the demands of the audience, who are more than capable of deciding what news is important to them, as opposed to the implicit ‘hard’ news stance which is a far more paternalistic position implying there can be one type of journalism that can sufficiently speak to (and for) the entire population.

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One of the key ways tabloid news has been re-thought has been in relation to its ability to make often obscure topics relevant by linking them to personal perspectives. Despite the fact news has been conventionally defined as that which “occurs in the public sphere” (Fiske, 1987: 287), and personal issues are meanwhile seen as inherently trivial (both being linked to discourses of popular news), Machin and Papatheoderou (2002: 47-48) point out that “abstract claims can become relevant and ring true only if authenticated through an individual’s own life experiences”. 7 Tabloid news is therefore more comprehensible to audiences because it covers stories that bear a much greater resemblance to their lived experiences, and because it covers them in a vernacular that better resonates with ‘ordinary’ citizens (see Lewis, 1991: 152; Crigler & Jensen, 1991: 189). 8 More broadly, we can suggest that the distinctions between tabloid news and ‘hard’ news are very much like those between the private and public sphere. Livingstone (1996: 260) notes, “traditionally, the public sphere has valued discourses that are abstract rather than narrative, scientific rather than conversational, logical and disinterested rather than emotional, generalized rather than particular.”

Catharine Lumby has explored the outdated division between the mythologised ‘political man’ and ‘private woman’ – particularly in her book Gotcha (1999a) – and how this is tied to notions of tabloidisation (Lumby, 1999b, for instance). She, like Langer (1998) and McKee (2005: 47), has suggested that although tabloidisation is often the target of derision, the distictions between it and so-called ‘hard’ news are more perceived than real. She argues many of the binaries relating to tabloidisation (listed in Figure 1, on page 37) – like most distinctions between ‘high’ and popular cultural forms – are “terms which are based more in prejudice than in contemporary

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reality” (Lumby, 1999a: 16-17). She also notes that tabloid media have allowed feminised private-sphere issues a place in public consciousness, rather than regularly ignoring them or passing them off as unworthy. This would undoubtedly be seen as a democratic strength for the postmodern public sphere and avoids the notion that the exposition of private issues is necessarily dealing with the trivial (Turner, 2000b; Fiske, 1987; Bondebjerg, 1996). Lumby (1999a: 17) makes the significant assertion that “apparently banal stories about celebrities and ordinary people who have extraordinary experiences often intersect with deeper social and political issues and frame these issues in a way many people find easier to digest”.

For instance, when Australian pop-star Kylie Minogue was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005, many could have scoffed at the large amount of time local mainstream news and current affairs programs devoted to the subject. However, the story’s impact was two-fold, because it sparked an important public debate about the minimum age for government-funded mammography in Australia (someone of Minogue’s age would have been too young to qualify for the free breast-screening program), and saw the public’s interest turn significantly towards a traditionally private affliction, resulting in a spike in the number of women of all ages receiving mammograms (see 'The Gain from Kylie's Pain,' 2005; Robotham, 2005a; 2005b, for some indication of the extent of this debate). Here a classically tabloid story – rooted in the private life of a celebrity – started something with important implications for the wider Australian community.

Compared with the more traditional ‘serious’ news programs which privilege stories about elites, national and world politics and similar themes, tabloid

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television news offers a world which is much more anchored within the horizons of everyday life and its universe of experience. There is an immediacy and sense of proximity in tabloid news which distinguishes it from traditional news. This more readily facilitates identification and involvement. Even foreign news items are often given this slant: we see the war in Bosnia and the untold suffering it causes as a profound and cruel disruption of the lives of ordinary people, with the fates of actual individuals providing the ‘hook’ for many news items. This concreteness would seemingly promote response more readily than stories using more abstract representation. (Dahlgren, 1995: 61)

Rather than viewing tabloid news’ links between the private and public spheres – traditionally feminine and masculine domains respectively (Hartley, 1992; van Zoonen, 1991) – as a sign of ‘trivialisation’, this can alternatively be perceived as a popularising and democratising force, promoting social and cultural inclusion. This is contrasted with the idealised public sphere of the Enlightenment which has often been criticised for its exclusion of both women and the less-educated (McGuigan, 1998). It has even been suggested that a handful of people watching an in-depth news program is worse than a large number consuming a popular/tabloid text because it will only serve to increase a pre-existing knowledge divide between citizens (Hallin, 1994: 180; Fiske, 1989a: 192). Moreover, Hartley (1992) argues the distinctions between the public and private spheres have become so blurred, that the idea of gendering them either way no longer seems like a logical exercise. Perhaps it is just that “individual people are easier to identify – and to identify with – than structures, forces or institutions” (Hartley, 1982: 78), and thus focussing on private issues can be a sensemaking practice of contextualisation. In fact, concepts such as femininity, lay

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knowledge, the ‘personal’ and the ‘popular’ may be merely applied from elitist standpoints to ‘trash’ the worth of tabloid news, in much the same way almost all popular culture tends to be looked down upon (Hartley, 1996). It is likely too that ‘tabloid’ stories are simply driven by audience viewing patterns, because a free market will tend to err towards providing for the needs of consumers, rather than forcing content upon them (Curran, 1996: 91).

NEWS WE CAN USE?

Of the few qualitative audience studies specifically relating to popular journalism, Bird’s (2003b) analysis is a classic affirmation of many of the arguments discussed thus far in this chapter. Her research aimed to better understand the way in which viewers perceive news (comparing tabloid forms with a more ‘serious’ version of TV news), how they define it, and “what they do with it” (Bird, 2003b: 65). The findings of this study are, in fact, more nuanced than simply mapping the public’s seemingly rabid desire for spectacle and excitement. Instead, Bird found viewers became most concerned with news issues which related to their own lives. Central to the study was analysing how news stories derived some of their relevance to viewers when they took on “a life of their own outside the immediate context of the newspaper or television broadcast” (Bird, 2003b: 68). This appeared less likely to happen with ‘hard’ news, even amongst those who felt being informed was an important virtue (p. 69).

Confirming many of the pre-existing arguments about tabloidism (e.g. its pathos and salacious nature), Bird discovered that people found it difficult to discuss hard news,

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unless it intersected directly with their individual interests. Although hard news programs often take a moral high-ground because they deal in the issues deemed to have the greatest public importance, clearly they still struggle to explain to audiences why they the topics they cover are important in the first place. Ultimately, Bird suggests “[f]rom an audience point of view, the best stories are those that leave room for speculation [and] for debate” (Bird, 2003b: 73), which help “bind people together, and [give] them common topics of conversation in a world in which common ties are getting fewer and fewer” (Bird, 2003b: 79). Her final proposal is that journalism should find ways of presenting its information more interestingly and effectively, and – in what is perhaps the most crucial recommendation of all – show audiences “the connections between their lives” (i.e. the micro) “and the larger social and political world” (the macro) (Bird, 2003b: 83-84).

In their report for the Australia's Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), Ang et al. (2006) examined the way in which young Australians from culturally diverse backgrounds felt the news media encouraged “meaningful engagement with social issues”. Based on a total participant pool of 137 people aged between 16 and 40, the study – which aimed to examine the role of the media in participants’ lives – found young people felt particularly cynical, even angry, towards the news media in Australia. While suggesting young Australians are quite critical media consumers when it comes to news, many still had reservations about the possibility they would be “sucked in” by tabloid reportage (Ang et al., 2006: 57). The focus group participants were very critical of trivial media content, however they simultaneously bemoaned the fact that the news, which was seen to place too much emphasis on negative stories, too often seemed “distant” and failed “to engage with issues in a way that connected

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with their everyday lives” (Ang et al., 2006: 58). Countering these findings, however, the study found there still existed an acknowledgement of the value and purpose of news and current affairs, and these viewers appropriated a range of sources available to them, including the Internet and discussion with friends and family (Ang et al., 2006: 61-64). Such a finding offers further support for the “cultural approach to the study of mediated citizenship” (Jones, 2006), because it shows audiences deal with a range of different genres and media in their daily lives, often simultaneously. Therefore, a broader understanding of the relationship between news, politics and citizens – one not so narrowly focused on the different sub-genres of traditional news – is required.

CULTURAL CHAOS

A key paradigm to explore at this point is what McNair (2003; 2006) calls a “chaos theory” of journalism sociology, which has much to offer in coming to grips with the complexities of the media in the 21st Century, primarily because it acknowledges that “journalism is not immune from the eruption of the postmodern” (Carey, 1997: 329). One of McNair’s (2006: 1) central claims is that ‘the news’ within the wider media sphere was for a long time relatively small and isolated, and was easy to ‘define’ as newspapers, and the daily newscasts of the free-to-air television networks and a handful of radio stations. However, we are now living in a state of media “chaos” (although McNair is actually concerned with journalistic chaos, much more specifically), given the exponential increase in the number of news media forms available. In an era of 24 hour cable news, online media streaming, blogs, vlogs and

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transnational satellite broadcasters (pan-Arab media network Al Jazeera, for example), journalism (like other forms of communication) now operates in an almost completely unpredictable environment. 9 Although a system of ‘control’ is still greatly desired by political elites (McNair, 2006: 4) – hence the seemingly endless amounts of money used by governments for public relations exercises – this goal is becoming ever more difficult to achieve:

Not only is there more news and journalism, but it circulates further and at much greater speed than ever before. The speed of news flow has increased, reducing the gap between an event's happening, its being noted and reported, analysed, discussed and acted upon. This acceleration is a function of the combined technologies of cable, computer and satellite, and of the highly networked nature of a global media environment, in which online journalists and bloggers who post an article or an item in one part of the world immediately become part of a globally accessible system, their postings indexed, linked, signposted for others, rapidly becoming part of the common conversation of millions. (McNair, 2006: 2)

McNair outlines three main reasons why the once ordered and predictable system of the news has now given rise to “a zone of dynamic ideological competition rather than static control” (McNair, 2003: 551). The first is technical evolution, with the Internet being a key driver of the shift from control to chaos, massively increasing the spread and speed of information, making it difficult, if not impossible, to control. A recent example of how the dynamics of digital media have massively diminished the ability of powerful people/organisations to control the flow of information was seen when

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the Australian TV crime drama Underbelly was prohibited from being shown in the state of Victoria because it had the potential to prejudice a criminal trial taking place there (Casey, 2008; Tullberg, 2008). This attempt at control was completely undermined by the speed of information flow on the Internet, with Victorian residents still able to view episodes of the program only minutes after they had been aired by downloading them (albeit illegally) online via peer-to-peer networks (Rout & Meade, 2008; Moses, 2008). Similarly, censorship, which is perhaps the most explicit and widespread regime of media control, is now rendered largely meaningless, given how incredibly easy it is for anyone with an Internet connection to access prohibited materials, because the nation-state can no longer adequately police information crossing its borders electronically (McNair, 2006: 9). 10

The second trend which has given rise to media chaos is “the collapse of social deference towards elites in every walk of life” (McNair, 2003: 551). Like Daniel C. Hallin (1994: 172; see also Blumler, 1997: 397; Conboy, 2002: 129), who argues there was a “collapse of political consensus” at the conclusion of the Cold War, McNair (2006: 9) believes that “ideological dissolution” of the “great structuring bipolarity” of the 20th Century” (socialism versus capitalism) is a key part of this phenomenon of chaos (McNair, 2006: 75). With journalists left “rudderless” after the fall of the Berlin wall (McNair, 2006: 82), there has been a widening of what Hallin (1994: 54) once called the “sphere of legitimate controversy”, and a greater enthusiasm on behalf of journalists to test – and risk the consequences of overstepping – its limits, because fewer things remain ‘out of bounds’. To illustrate his point, McNair points out President John F. Kennedy’s sexual exploits – much like Franklin D. Roosevelt’s leg braces (see Hallin, 1994: 173) – were “an open secret to the

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political journalists of the time”, and yet were not reported to the public (McNair, 2006: 11). In the late 1990s, the thought that Bill Clinton’s indiscretions should be known only to the President and the White House press corps is almost unconscionable (see Williams & Delli Carpini, 2000).

Finally, McNair suggests hyper-competitiveness at a time of economic uncertainty has further increased journalists’ willingness to provide new, powerful and “cutting edge” news no matter who (or what authority) is implicated along the way (McNair, 2003: 550-51). Even though (as discussed earlier in this chapter) commercial imperatives have regularly been blamed for the steady degradation of the ‘quality’ news media, the increased pressure for journalists to prove their worth in the face of economic rationalism and corporate conglomeration has forced them to adopt a constantly adversarial mode, and be far less reticent to break a politically controversial news story:

Speed of information flow, the proliferation of journalistic reportage and commentary, the need to fill all that print and broadcast journalism with words and pictures makes journalistic culture into an (for all practical purposes) infinitely complex sphere, where anything can happen and nothing is certain (which, of course, is precisely why public relations exists). (McNair, 2003: 552)

The cumulative effect of these political, social and technological changes is that far more information affecting the public good is being made known to the public. Thus McNair (2006) argues, contrary to those who fastidiously ascribe to the often fatalistic

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“control paradigm” (McNair, 2006: 3), chaos as a phenomenon is actually beneficial (and not destructive) for democracy. An example of the impact this chaos has had on political elites can be found in the execution of Saddam Hussein in December 2006. Although US and Iraqi political leaders were at pains to suggest the former dictator’s life was extinguished with great dignity, the presence of someone at the event with a video-equipped mobile phone presented a very different, although far more accurate, version of events. The ease and speed with which that video was able to spread – via the free video-sharing website YouTube – meant that millions of people around the globe knew that the former dictator was in fact verbally abused by onlookers until the moment of his death. Powerful political actors – particularly those from the US who had gone to so much effort to claim that the criminal trial itself was fair and legitimate, and the Iraqis who were responsible for the execution process – were almost entirely powerless to control the spread of this damaging information. 11 Not only were these people then put under greater scrutiny for the event itself and the subsequent ‘cover-up’, but it began a more wide-ranging public debate about the ethics of lethal capital punishment. BBC reporter Nik Gowing (in ABC, 2007a) even uses the incident to highlight what he calls a “new transparency” which has been forced by the ubiquity of digital communication technologies.

CONCLUSION

Contemporary journalism plays a large and multidimensional role in the public sphere and the generation of public knowledge. Particularly at a time of media “chaos”, it is a far more complex role than the terms ‘tabloid’ and ‘broadsheet’ can adequately

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capture. I would like to finish this chapter then by arguing that the often simplistic debates about popular news forms in which these terms have been used excessively are very much out of date, and would like to make an attempt to find some theoretical common-ground amidst the arguments, and a critical paradigm that can sit much more comfortably with cultural chaos. The existing accounts of popular news rightly query the notion that all news should be entirely straight-laced and macro-political, but perhaps go too far in that regard and do not always account for the political and economic forces which give rise to FOX, for example, and which can have a detrimental effect on key domains of public knowledge (see Cunningham, 2003; 2005; Miller, 2007).

While the arguments made by cultural studies academics in this chapter have played a very important part in fully coming to grips with the important role of popular media within the public sphere, John Fiske (1992: 49), for example, passes off any possible faults with tabloid news, rather than engage with them, by assuming 12 that “the last thing that tabloid journalism produces is a believing subject”, and undertakes what can therefore be seen as a blind celebration of potential ‘democratisation’. While tabloid media forms are not necessarily bad in and of themselves, this does not mean commercial pressures in an ever-fragmenting television market have not caused quantifiable decreases in areas such as editorial independence, funding for investigative reportage, and attention towards stories which cost more money to produce than is likely to return in the form of advertising dollars (see Miller, 2007). While audiences do still have a choice in what they want to watch, and can still opt to watch ‘hard’ news if they so choose, Justin Lewis (2006: 307-08) points out this does not mean we should “blame popular taste for the failings of a media system rather

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than the system itself… [W]hile the system is responsive to demand, those demands come not just from audiences but advertisers… and are subject to measures of profitability which may work against the notion of public interest.”

Just because something is popular (and apparently ‘democratised’) does not excuse it from the role which it was created to serve in the first place, especially when that role is afforded privileged status within the industry and society more generally. Treating the media in general (e.g. drama or lifestyle programming) as “just another business” (see Schultz, 1994) is completely logical, but because journalism is venerated, and those who practise it wish to be granted special status within society, it cannot then excuse itself from the role it is expected to serve in return. No matter what arguments are invoked, news programming – as “a high-status television genre” (Fiske, 1987: 281) – should never be allowed to entirely escape its requirement to still “disseminate knowledge that the people may not wish to know and may find little pleasure or relevance in knowing” (Fiske, 1989a: 149). So, Hirst et al. (1995: 97) rightly pose the very simple, yet very important question: when it comes to the profession that serves citizens and the public sphere, “[w]hen is entertainment too much?”

Although movements in the last 20 years to acknowledge the value of popular forms of news have been an invaluable step towards genuinely reconsidering the most effective way of undertaking the practice of journalism, the argument that the news agenda “has been trivialized in [many ways], with more attention to stories like celebrity trials and beached whales” (Hallin, 1994: 177) should still be of concern, and should not be too quickly dismissed on account of a potentially over-inflated perception of the audience’s powers of textual resistance. There needs to be a point,

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then, at which we recognise a middle-ground between the overly pessimistic and overly celebratory accounts of modern news, and also begin to flesh-out the important differences between genuinely democratic and merely demotic news forms. In fact, this is perhaps the key criticism that can be levelled at many of those who have celebrated ‘tabloidisation’ and its prospective benefits for media consumers: popularity does not necessarily equal democratisation. On a purely theoretical level, there exists a great deal of potential in “popularising politics” (Turner, 2005: 28), but it is important to not forget that there are caveats to consider when the theory is put into practice.

While this chapter has outlined two of the dominant approaches to popular journalism in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, it is important to note that neither is inherently incorrect, or wrong. Each has its merits, but given the state of “chaos” in which the news media now finds itself (McNair, 2006), neither paradigm has adequately accounted for the increasingly complex role of news and journalism in the public sphere nor have they reflected the fact the profession lacks a tangible, definable group of practitioners or set of practices (Deuze, 2005; Hartley, 1995; Bovée, 1999: 37). This would suggest that these debates have in fact been too narrow in their view about what counts as legitimate forms of news production and failed to notice the significant changes in journalism over the last two decades. Knowledge, argues Cottle (2001: 76), “is no longer a gift carefully wrapped by experts”, and yet rather than having a more dynamic, inclusive and culturally progressive understanding of the role of journalism, the prevailing consensus within many academic debates is that the profession is an exclusive one, even in spite of the fact that it is nearly impossible to

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define it and account for all its forms (Bishop, 2004). A critical paradigm that can fully understand the role of popular news in the 21st Century is now needed:

If we impose an ideal type of communication… one inevitably sees any departure from this also as a crisis. If, however, we see democracy as pluralized, as marked by new kinds of communities of identity, as a system in which the traditional public-private divide does not apply… then we will be able to countenance a plurality of communication media and modes in which such a diverse set of exchanges will occur. We will be open to the notion that ethical discourse can be present in many different kinds and genres of media texts and in many different forms of media organization. We will no longer privilege ‘high modern journalism,’ but nor will we mindlessly worship populist media. We will need a much more nuanced account of the connection between (various forms of) citizenship and the media… (Jacka, 2003: 183)

As a way of overcoming some of the inadequacies found in the previous critiques of popular news and to find a critical perspective to frame the remainder of this thesis, it may be timely to revisit an argument made by John Fiske, who suggests a slightly different approach to popular news. While it is not new as such, in the present media environment it does seem to make a lot of sense. “We should not criticize [popular news] for ‘pandering’ to entertainment”, Fiske (1989a: 193, original emphasis) suggests, “but rather [we] should evaluate how entertaining it is, and what information it makes entertaining.” Ultimately, this is the critical paradigm that could well satisfy both the modern and postmodern conceptions of citizens, journalism and the public

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sphere: what information? More generally, considerations of popular journalism may need to start thinking less about who (or what) is producing the information, and think more in terms of the ends that may/may not be achieved as a result. No form of news should be passed off merely because it is entertaining – or indeed emotional, feminine, personal, sensational, and so on (including many of those features listed on the left-hand side of Figure 1, on page 37) – or because it does not conform to the key textual features of high-modernist journalism, but evaluated on what information is being conveyed in this way. In this way we can acknowledge what popular news offers, but still be wary when such opportunities are wasted on thinly disguised advertorials about yet another type of diet pill.

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NOTES

1

Even today the same still applies – when Brisbane broadsheet The Courier Mail (that city’s only daily

newspaper) announced it would be changing to a tabloid size in late 2005, editors cited the demands of commuters as the biggest reason behind the change (Lehmann, 2005), and the re-sized paper was heavily marketed as allowing readers to “Go Anywhere”. 2

Partially derived from Hartley (1996: 27) and Winch (1997: 21). See also Costera Meijer (2001: 190).

3

Such as, for example, those of Fitzsimmons (2007).

4

This is a modus operandi John Doyle (best known to Australians for his sports comedy persona of

Roy Slaven) describes as “Same old foot in the same old door philosophy, same mock outrage at feuding neighbours and total dependence on losers, or sad losers, or violent losers, or losers ripped off by shonky gold tooth rat type losers” (Doyle, 2005). 5

When a lack of so-called ‘bureaucratic red-tape’ ends up in tragedy or failure, this is also covered in

negative tones (e.g. “how the government failed this family”). 6

As of late 2008, Today Tonight, the Seven Network program often criticised for its employment of

tabloid tactics is quite regularly the highest rating current affairs show in Australia. 7

McCall and Wittner (in Barnhurst, 1998: 216) likewise suggest that “Life histories deepen the critique

of existing knowledge”. 8

Although Dahlgren has talked about personalisation of abstract topics, he has also noted the

possibility of what he calls “empathy weariness” (1995: 61). 9

Blumler (2001: 205) also identified this phenomenon as part of what he calls the ‘Third Age’ of

political communication, which “provides more channels, chances, and incentives to tailor political communication to particular identities, conditions and tastes.” 10

China’s oppressive regime of media censorship, which came under particularly intense scrutiny

before and after the 2008 Beijing Olympics, does remain a significant caveat to this argument. 11

Then-Presidential hopeful Barack Obama was caught off-guard in a similar vein in April 2008. At a

fundraising event he was recorded by a blogger (who later contributed the story to The Huffington Post) suggesting that Pennsylvanians cling to guns and religion as a way of soothing their personal grievances, all the while believing there were no members of ‘the media’ present. 12

As John Fiske was a devout textualist, he offers little or no empirical evidence to support this

argument.

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CHAPTER 2

‘NEW’ NEWS, ‘FAKE’ NEWS, AUDIENCES AND PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE

In the 2004 edition of Time magazine’s annual issue dedicated to the world’s 100 most-influential people, Todd Gitlin (2004) wrote a glowing tribute to German philosopher Jürgen Habermas. Amidst his praise, Gitlin suggested Habermas’ arguments about the public sphere had “transformed media studies into a hardheaded discipline”. One year later, in April 2005, Tom Brokaw – NBC’s much revered news anchor of over 20 years – wrote about another person the magazine was featuring for that year’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people (Brokaw, 2005). On the subject of the 2004 US Presidential election coverage, Brokaw (2005) suggested that, when it came to politics, this person was “far more effective than most of the selfimportant critics”. He also went on to call him “the citizens’ surrogate” – perhaps for many a succinct definition of who and what a journalist is – for his ability to highlight the growingly obvious disconnection between election politics and “the realities of life for ordinary voters” (Brokaw, 2005). The person in question is Jon Stewart, host of the US late-night ‘fake’ news comedy program The Daily Show, and someone who

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seriously challenges our contemporary understandings of Habermas’ (1989) public sphere.

That Brokaw – one of America’s most respected TV journalists – openly and publicly acknowledged the political significance of Jon Stewart and the program he hosts may be just another gambit in a considerable body of significant public debate over the standards and form of what we call ‘news’ and its role in society. While I do not suggest that Time magazine is the absolute yardstick by which we should measure public opinion, or a precise gauge of how important certain people are, clearly the esteem in which Jon Stewart is held indicates that the power of the popular is beginning to be acknowledged by those who have for so long denied the possibility of audience enjoyment as a part of enacting citizenship. Jon Stewart is, however, just one of many who harness the power of the popular; he is not the only “voice for democratic ideals and the noble place of citizenship, helped along by the sound of laughter” (Brokaw, 2005).

This chapter outlines the main theoretical claims surrounding ‘new’, alternative approaches to journalism and public information. It examines some of the unorthodox ways in which news has previously been presented both in Australia and elsewhere in the world, and will offer an overview of several previous qualitative studies relating to the issue. Using The Daily Show as an important international touchstone, this chapter will argue that unconventional news forms can not only can be seen as new varieties of journalism, but may in fact approach journalism in ways that more successfully inform and connect with citizens. Other media genres – to varying degrees devoid of what is usually acknowledged as traditional journalism – may not always be perceived

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as news when judged by popular wisdom, but can be a positive response to the demands of audiences, and do have much significance in the public sphere. The chapter makes a case central to this thesis; namely, that there are forms of journalism and public information that can be aggressively democratic and entertaining, which “don’t always open up where educated liberals expect to find them” (Lumby, 1999b) and that these may serve as an important step in reinvigorating news’ “historical charge to inform the citizenry” (Barnhurst, 1998: 202).

‘NEW’ NEWS

A public with information available to it is not an informed public. Even a public with information in its head is not necessarily a public with the motivation or frame of reference or capacity to act in a democracy. There is a difference between the ‘informational citizen,’ saturated with bits and bytes of information, and the informed citizen, the person who has not only information but a point of view and preferences with which to make sense of it. (Schudson, 1998: 30)

Although the debate about tabloid news discussed in the previous chapter has been very important, the terms of the debate are simply not adequate in accounting for the reality of ‘chaotic’ knowledge production in the 21st Century. Indeed, the debate set out through the course of that chapter was been mainly concerned with what we might call ‘old’ news, and obscured the vision of many scholars who have therefore neglected the (perhaps misnamed) category of ‘new’ news – a form of television

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programming that may deal with macro politics in a way that better connects with viewers at the micro level, thus blurring the binaries that tend to surround debates over contemporary news’ political and social functions. Many critics – notably Lumby (1999a), Hartley (1996), Winch (1997) and Langer (1998) – have rightly pointed out that there are many more similarities than differences between tabloid and broadsheet forms of news, meaning it may be time to move beyond these binaries, and into the 21st Century: a time when news can, literally, be produced by anyone. If it is indeed true that the public sphere is now breaking into ‘sphericules’ (Gitlin, 1998), perhaps the same is happening to the texts which help to nourish it. Hybrid news texts which blur traditional conceptions of news, entertainment, fact and fiction may provide a significant way of strengthening people’s understanding of important issues; a textual fluidity that “need not necessarily signal the demise of the public sphere (and may well point to its renewal)” (Dahlgren, 1992: 18). As Hartley (1999b: 20) notes:

News is itself a form of commercial entertainment, and people take their news where they can find it, which in any case is less and less on the front page of newspapers. Historically, daily newspapers are losing readers to other forms of media consumption, especially television; and news as such is becoming more porous to other generic forms of entertainment…

The increased propensity for popular media forms to perform the function traditionally assigned to the news genre has previously been accounted for by the term ‘new’ news. ‘New’ news might best be described as those texts which have shed what Dahlgren (1992: 18) calls journalism’s “confining skin of official discourses”, and one of its first articulations comes from Jon Katz:

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In place of the Old News, something dramatic is evolving, a new culture of information, a hybrid New News – dazzling, adolescent, irresponsible, fearless, frightening and powerful. The New News is a heady concoction, part Hollywood film and TV movie, part pop music and pop art, mixed with popular culture and celebrity magazines, tabloid telecasts, cable and home video. (Katz, 1992: 33)

Katz’s approach here is, at a very basic level, an early attempt to free up the definition of ‘news’ and point out that public sphere discourse does exist in other media forms and genres. Although in this work Katz (1992) focussed more heavily on media forms other than television, such as popular music and films (which are, in themselves not ‘new’), Katz’s main contribution to the debates outlined in this thesis was to be one of the first people to acknowledge there are a range of television programs that are not ‘the news’ in a generic sense but nevertheless deal with ‘politics’ and other newsworthy issues within the public sphere (see also Glynn, 2000; Coleman, 2008). In fact, it has been suggested this “diversification of television journalism both within the mainstream… and scattered unevenly throughout the television schedule” has brought “us closer than ever to some sort of messy representation of the complexities of the contemporary world” (Holland, 2001: 92); especially so, Jones argues, in regards to politics:

In a single given day, a citizen might engage in all of the following activities that offer a mediated relationship to the conventional political arena through differing texts about politics: read a newspaper in the morning over breakfast,

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watch a morning news show while getting dressed, listen to talk radio in the car while driving to work, read politically charged emails, scan a news magazine in the office lobby, hear a political protest song in the car, see a political advertisement on a billboard on the way home, watch a political drama on DVD during the evening hours, then turn to a satirical faux television news show while getting ready for bed, only to retire for the evening by reading a political biography. (Jones, 2006: 373)

In a recent example, the release of former US Vice-President Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth (and the subsequent Live Earth worldwide concert series) served as a catalyst for a significant, large-scale debate in Australia about the realities of global warming, and also saw Gore awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. That a former politician was able to discuss global warming in a compelling way that saw people take the issue seriously is further evidence that informational communication as a whole is now “infinitely complex” (McNair, 2003: 552), and – more importantly – covers an expanding set of repertoires. Texts such as An Inconvenient Truth do two things which were once considered mutually exclusive: genuinely inform citizens about ‘serious’ issues within the political economy in a popular and engaging fashion (giving people what they want and need?). These texts have fallen outside (or between) the traditional distinctions of ‘tabloid’ and ‘broadsheet’ or indeed ‘high’ and ‘low’

journalism,

representing

a

trend

towards

“creativity”

in

political

communication, rather than bowing entirely to “commerce” (see Deuze, 2007: 58).

Mainstream journalism frequently checkmates itself. In worshipping balance over truth, objectivity over point of view, moderation over diversity and

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credibility over creativity, the Old News gives consumers a clear choice. Consumers can have a balanced discussion, with every side of an issue neutralizing the other, or they can turn to [‘New’ News] offering colorful, distinctive, often flawed but frequently powerful visions of their truth. (Katz, 1992: 40)

These forms of ‘new’ news are significant because they can convey political information in very powerful ways, and can therefore be more efficient in the creation of public knowledge, by showing that citizenly activity can sometimes be a desirable and a pleasurable activity.

‘NEW’ AUDIENCES

One form of television programming which falls neatly into this category of ‘new’ news is the talk show genre. Shows like Oprah and Ricki Lake are perfect examples where issues which would traditionally be seen as belonging to the ‘private’ sphere are discussed and debated outside of traditional journalistic constraints. Shattuc (1997: 86) points out that while The Phil Donahue Show and others like it 1 are often held up as evidence of the decay of ‘rational’ media culture, they are actually one of the few ‘public’ spaces where “average” Americans see issues discussed that are “central to their political lives”. Issues such as racism, sexuality and domestic politics are core topics of debate which may have much more everyday relevance to most Americans than, for instance, matters of foreign policy:

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No other TV genre – not news, prime time drama, or soap opera – generates more ongoing social controversy than daytime talk shows… They test the demarcation between entertainment as they mix political issues and personal drama. Further, they use ordinary people to stage social issues that are infrequently discussed elsewhere on television: homosexuality, familial conflict, sexual relations, and racial divisions. (Shattuc, 1997: 87)

In the mid-1990s, Shattuc (1997) investigated the American talk-show genre in detail, surveying audiences about their perceptions of these programs, as a way of better understanding a largely stereotyped and denigrated group of viewers. The study surveyed audience members from the general public in the form of a questionnaire (answered by 79 women and 32 men), aiming to uncover how these shows are understood and used by viewers in their lives. A major finding was that for these people, their favourite talk-shows blurred boundaries relating to news and entertainment. Although viewers regularly saw the shows as trashy, sleazy or mindless entertainment, they also were very discerning, and saw the potential for some of them to also be serious, political and tasteful. This contrast was most vividly seen between Jerry Springer-type shows and the more ‘compassionate’ variety characterised by Oprah (Shattuc, 1997: 175). The participants in Schattuc’s study also noted how the shows often covered both private, salacious issues (e.g. extra-marital relations) and important public sphere issues such as domestic violence and racism (Shattuc, 1997). Sometimes, the coverage of these issues was more relevant than others, especially so if viewers themselves have had experience in the matters at hand.

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A more recent study by Manga (2003) involved qualitative research (interviews were the primary research method) with female viewers of daytime TV talk-shows, and was primarily concerned with how viewers understood the shows and defined what counts as a legitimate forum for public discourse. Like Shattuc’s work, the first major finding of this study was how adept the audience was at distinguishing between ‘entertaining’ and ‘serious’ parts of the shows. Audiences made a deliberate, sophisticated attempt to discern carefully what exactly was important content in these programs, with a general measure being the degree to which the discussion was relevant to their everyday lives (Manga, 2003: 104). Furthermore, the notion of ‘serious’ was generally defined by the good the shows did; that is, their positive effects on the guests, audience or viewers (Manga, 2003: 104).

Another key finding of Manga’s research was the viewers’ common “concern for authenticity” (Manga, 2003: 105). If the viewers were going to invest their emotional energy into understanding what a particular audience member or guest had experienced, they were always very careful to ensure they would only do so if they felt the person had genuinely gone through the things they claimed. Acutely aware of the way in which the shows could be constructed for a particular purpose (i.e. for ‘spectacle’, and therefore higher viewing figures), the women involved in this study were keen to distinguish between what was a legitimate concern, and what was simply ‘put on’ for the cameras. Manga (2003: 135) notes the participants defined legitimacy in remarkably similar terms to those in Shattuc’s study, but the definitions were applied in different ways by the viewers. This meant some might have seen an issue on Maury Povich as being relevant to their lives, more than just entertainment and therefore ‘legitimate’, while others may have seen the same story as lacking relevance

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to their own lives and therefore, saw it as not ‘serious’. Overall, viewers still acknowledged talk shows as hybrid media forms; a kind of entertainment that had very real potential for offering valuable insights into matter relevant to the ‘private’ sphere. One participant in the study even believed the Jerry Springer program should be considered as more than entertainment because it exposed viewers to, in her words, “all avenues of life” (Manga, 2003: 131).

TEXTUAL HYBRIDITY: MEANINGFUL PLEASURE

[T]he movement from purity to hybridity opens up possibilities rather than closes them down. (Turner, 1994: 139)

Although the concept of ‘new’ news can be criticised as simply being a mix of entertainment and information – or putting ‘sugar on the pill’ – many have suggested such shows should instead be examined in terms of their hybridity, the way they ‘play’ with the news genre, and with the boundaries of news and entertainment, to create more compelling or entertaining forms of journalism. ‘New’ news texts are generically ‘untidy’, in that they seem to almost entirely transgress the classical binary definitions of journalism (see Sternberg, 1995), and blend an assortment of generic elements in a range of different ways. Indeed, several scholars have argued comedy programs and other forms of political satire may hold more power in informing citizens because of their ability to popularise the abstract discourse of parliamentary (or ‘macro’) politics (Fiske, 1989b; 1989a) in particular. In fact, Buckingham (2000: 34) points out that linking macro and micro politics is a “central educational issue”.

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One person who regularly hybridises news and entertainment is Michael Moore, who, through the media of film, television and best-selling books, has managed to make critiques of serious political issues entertaining, perhaps because he is not bound by journalist convention. Turner (2005: 89-90) notes that “Moore… uses [tabloid tactics and spectacular stunts] primarily against the strong and the powerful; almost uniformly his targets are big companies or institutions and elite individuals.” In embracing hybridity, Moore is “producing a form of news and current affairs that is socially interrogative and progressive, relevant to people’s everyday lives and enjoyable, therefore increasing the possibility that it will be actively watched” (Sternberg, 1995: 43). As Fiske (1989a: 193) notes:

It is broadcast news that needs to be popular, that needs to balance popular tastes and pleasures with educational, socially responsible criteria. The main function of broadcast news, then, should not be to disseminate information considered to be socially necessary, but rather to make such information popular – which means to make it matter, to encourage it to be taken up within micro-level cultures.

Consider, therefore, when Michael Moore encouraged possible 2000 US Presidential candidates to jump into a “mobile mosh pit” to crowd-surf on a collection of young American voters, with the consenting candidate winning the endorsement of his program, The Awful Truth. The over-riding sense of self-importance of those candidates who refused a simple, humorous request spoke volumes about their political priorities, and the seriousness with which they operate. Republican nominee

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Alan Keyes was the only candidate willing to participate. Later criticised by his fellow Presidential hopefuls because the heavy rock music he crowd-surfed to was by Rage Against the Machine – a supposedly ‘anti-family’ and pro-police-killing band 2 – the event highlighted the enormous credibility gap that seems to exist between many young people and their potential political representatives. The Awful Truth then tracked the unexpected success of Keyes following that incident, illustrating such events are not always worthless media stunts, but can represent a legitimate overlap of politics and popular culture. Clearly then, laying claim to being a ‘serious’ news text is no longer – if indeed it has ever been – a pre-requisite for generating a high level of social and cultural impact.

MAKING IT MATTER

Journalists across the world have for many years run stories with the intention of exposing the unhealthy nature of fast food, mostly with no detrimental effect on corporations such as McDonalds who seemingly continue to sell as much product as they ever did. In the documentary film Supersize Me, however, Morgan Spurlock ignored any sense of objectivity or ‘detachment’ to dramatically demonstrate in a highly personal fashion, the consequences of a McDonalds-only diet. Rather than scientifically testing Big Macs and telling the audience in a quasi-parental tone exactly how much fat, salt, sugar or questionable meat may be present in that product, the film tried a different and far more entertaining approach, and thus its message resonated with the public. Although the film was a stunt, and one that deliberately overplayed the health risks associated with fast food, McDonalds’ Australian CEO

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nevertheless appeared in a face-saving commercial to mitigate some of the image-loss the company was faced with after such an exercise. 3 McDonalds genuinely appeared to be concerned about its credibility thanks to Supersize Me and the power of popular culture, not the power of neutrality or objectivity. This case, like that of Michael Moore, indicates that creating imaginary boundaries between entertainment and information ignores the possibility that popular culture can play a powerful role in politics (and vice-versa), and that public information can be presented in a compelling fashion (Gray, 2008: 131-55).

By replacing journalism’s never-ending search for truth, objectivity and balance, with more exciting narratives, identification with ‘ordinary’ people and a more open version of ‘truth’ (through the presentation of multiple and conflicting opinions), hybrid news texts such as those produced by people like Spurlock and Moore seem to be providing their audiences with information in a stimulating and powerful fashion. They are informing audiences via popular means, but have rejected traditional journalistic styles (both tabloid and broadsheet). They may carry less strictly-factual information, but in not adhering to the often alienating ideals of objectivity, balance or strict timeliness, ‘new’ news may make a fuller contribution to the public sphere by operating in a fashion which connects with audiences far better than ‘old’ news. They help in some small way to make (the often abstract) realm of politics more understandable, particularly for those who would otherwise pay little attention to it, especially, young people.

Nearly every major investigation into young people and mainstream news over the past 10 years has foreseen a bleak future (see, amongst others, Lumby, 2002: 327-28;

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Barnhurst, 1998; Feldman, 2007; Sternberg, 1998). In its 2006 annual report, the Project for Excellence in Journalism (2006) reported declining audience across almost all the major news forms in the United States, particularly amongst younger audiences for newspapers and network television. The report argues that “[t]he underlying problems of network news continue without apparent interruption”, and while the “audience for news continues to skew old… advertisers remain preoccupied with the young” (2006). For newspapers, the report states that in 2006, “executives at best hoped only to slow the bleeding” of audiences away from their products.

While popular opinion suggests younger audiences are gravitating towards online news sources, the Project for Excellence in Journalism study found there had not been sufficient youth audience increases in online and subscription television consumption (with these figures remaining mostly steady) to account for the recent losses suffered by newspapers and network news (Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2006). Circulation figures indicating a downturn in younger readership naturally cause much fear among print media journalists, who know full well that they need to continually win over new, younger readers to regenerate their audience and keep their operations afloat (Barnhurst, 1998: 203). 4

Concerns amongst older generations about their younger counterparts’ political knowledge are not new – often giving the impression they are merely a springboard to “lament… the apparent decline of democracy, ‘civic virtue’ and ‘social capital’” (Buckingham, 1999: 171). However, there have been arguments that serial disengagement from news might begin moving upwards through demographic cohorts (see Costera Meijer, 2007: 96). This is a problem because if young people are not

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staying informed, the future of enlightened, civil democracy is (or will soon be) in peril. Others have questioned, however, whether young people are disengaging from news, or if the reverse is actually the case; that the news is the one disengaging from young people. Katz (1993), among others, has noted that given the amount of time devoted to negative stories about young people in the ‘old’ news, it is not surprising they are disengaging from it and gravitating toward ‘new’ news; that “[t]heir rejection of ‘the news’ might be a reaction to big journalism's rejection of them” (Schechter, 2003). As a result, Turner (2001: 56) even suggests younger audiences “might be permanently lost to television news. They have simply found other sources, and the future of the industry has been gambled away”. The bigger question that needs asking here is where does ‘new’ news fit into this framework? Do hybrid news texts fill the gap between young people’s simultaneous dislike of ‘hard’ news which is boring, and ‘soft’ news which regularly demonises them?

YOUTH AND HYBRIDITY

Because they have been depicted as “a generation that rejects news” (Sternberg, 2002: 308), most audience studies of young demographics have focussed on hybrid political media and their potential to renew youth audiences’ interest in traditional domains of politics. Sternberg’s (2004) study into youth responses to television news and current affairs is one such example. His work looked at the way in which The Times – a ‘transgressive’, hybridised form of ‘youth’ news from the mid-1990s – was read by different audience groups ranging in age from 16-25 years, in comparison to traditional forms of current affairs (Sternberg, 2004: 278-353). The value of this

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research is that it provides a very detailed account of how alternative forms of current affairs programming are read by audiences. It suggests The Times’ use of editing, overall style and mode of presentation represented an exciting potential for youth engagement, but was certainly not a magic solution to the problem of younger audiences’ declining interest in mainstream forms of news and current affairs.

Sternberg’s study is similar to work undertaken by Buckingham (2000), which examined young people, news and politics, highlighting the way in which younger audiences often rejected traditional news forms (Buckingham, 2000: 59-99). One finding of Buckingham’s which dovetails with Sternberg’s research into The Times, along with the Connecting Diversity study (Ang et al., 2006), was that young people generally saw traditional news as “repetitive and lacking in entertainment value”, but were also highly sceptical of populist or tabloid approaches (Buckingham, 2000: 65). Costera Meijer (2007) has noted other previous studies into young people’s perceptions of news have also tended to produce similarly contradictory findings, showing young people either distrust news because it has become popularised and overly sensational, or that the news media should actually be more entertaining, and make more of an attempt to “touch on the lives and experience of young people” (Costera Meijer, 2007: 99).

While the news genre has often been perceived as particularly foreign to young people (as per the previous studies), Sternberg’s study found The Times provided “a more stimulating and engaging opportunity for exploring issues that are relevant to their everyday lives” (Sternberg, 2004: 318). This potential was not altogether unproblematic, in that many young people (of high-school age) in the study were well

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aware the program was specifically designed to target their demographic. The Times’ overwrought, patronising attempts to appeal to a youth market were very quickly picked up in negative terms by the very group which was supposed to be its core audience. 5 The responses from participants in that study also indicated some were concerned that the program’s departure from journalistic conventions was somehow dangerous for those who might be “duped by the show’s sensationalism” (Sternberg, 2004: 314), but was still celebrated by others for its ability to make the news more interesting.

Another study which uncovered similar findings was qualitative research into The Panel – an Australian ‘new’ news program which was a casual discussion of the week’s news events. Research into the The Panel as a discursive form of youth news suggested viewers not only saw it as an ‘information’ program, but participants in the study said because that information was presented in a casual and friendly manner, they would be more likely to use it in their own interpersonal discussions. Because the program appropriates an open and discursive format and lauds the voice of those not identified as ‘experts’ (Harrington, 2008), youth audiences for the program found it far more palatable and enjoyable to watch than ‘old’ television news, which was deemed much more ‘stiff’ and formal. The findings of that study suggested The Panel might have played a greater role in the public sphere than some news texts because it did not shy away from opinion and subjective discussion. Its powerful blend of entertaining and informative elements were packaged in a way which encouraged audience engagement (Harrington, 2005). Rather than presenting another news bulletin, its mediatised discussion of news effectively stimulated debate at a microsocial level for viewers.

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‘FAKE’ NEWS?

I once heard the linguist and political writer Noam Chomsky say that if you want proof that the American people aren’t stupid, just turn on any sports talk radio show and listen to the incredible retention of facts. It is amazing – and it’s proof that the American mind is alive and well. It just isn’t challenged with anything interesting or exciting. Our challenge, Chomsky said, was to find a way to make politics as gripping and engaging as sports. When we do that, watch how Americans will do nothing but talk about who did what to whom at the WTO. (Moore, 2001: 86)

Of all of the programs existing within the broader trend of media chaos, the one that has perhaps garnered the most attention and interest is The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (TDS). As mentioned earlier in this chapter, this ‘fake’ news program – which Jones (2005) places in a category he calls “new political television” – is a vivid illustration of the way in which the rules of journalism can and are being broken, and is receiving an enormous amount of public and academic attention at the moment because of it, particularly in regards to the political power of its host Jon Stewart (Jones, 2005; Baym, 2005; 2007a; Feldman, 2007; Greppi, 2005; Grossman, 2004; Love, 2007; Walker, 2004, for example). As Baym (2005: 273) notes:

The Daily Show represents an important experiment in journalism, one that contains much significance for the ongoing redefinition of news… The blending

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of news and satire confronts a system of political communication that largely has degenerated into soundbites and spin with critical inquiry… Lying just beneath or perhaps imbricated within the laughter is quite a serious demand for fact, accountability, and reason in political discourse.

Baym’s conclusion here suggests that, contrary to the thoughts of US journalist Bob Schieffer (in Coorey, 2004), the genre to which The Daily Show belongs may not simply be television’s version of the political cartoon. While some dismiss the significance of such a program on the premise that politics has often before crossed into the domain of popular culture, Baym (2007a) contends The Daily Show, and programs like it, are becoming an ever more central “node” within mainstream political discourse in the United States. They are, quite possibly, representative of a far larger shift, where entertainment is becoming even more firmly entrenched within the political system, rather acting as something which merely pokes fun from a distance. With guests on the program from only the last couple of years including Pakistan’s former leader General Pervez Musharraf, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan, Bolivian President Evo Morales, and former US presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, one can hardly continue to argue that the show is ‘mere’ entertainment.

Like many others before him, Gettings (2007) has noted that although TDS calls itself ‘fake’ news, the program merely blurs the dichotomy between truth and fiction. Where fiction is employed, it is deliberate – although “without any intention to deceive the audience” (Gettings, 2007: 18) – and is often used as a humorous cover for its strong desire to root out the ever-elusive ‘truth’. Its use of untruths is merely a

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side-note to the essence of the overall narrative; ‘fake’ news, then, is quite distinct from fictional news. In fact, a recent study concluded that, with the substantial amount of time it devotes to politics, The Daily Show is “as substantive as ‘real news’” (Bangeman, 2006), while a Pew Research Centre study found viewers of The Daily Show are among the most politically- and culturally-aware American citizens (Pew Research Centre, 2007: 2; Seelye, 2007). 6

FIGURE 2: JON STEWART ON THE DAILY SHOW

Baym (2005) argues one of the most significant textual features of The Daily Show is what he describes as “discursive integration”. Far more than simply blurring the lines between information and entertainment – which is an oversimplified description of hybridity – this phenomenon represents “a wider and deeper implosion of discursive styles and standards” (Baym, 2007b: 361). Baym (2005: 262) describes discursive integration as “a way of speaking about, understanding, and acting within the world defined by the permeability of form and the fluidity of content”. In essence, this is the incorporation of discursive freedom enabling the show’s host or guests to provide a critical/rational inflection on what they see as absurdity in the news. It is the ability to talk ‘back to’ the soundbites and spin which are so often reported without question in

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contemporary media culture. Indeed, TDS sets up quite a sophisticated relationship between Stewart’s position as anchor, the cynical public intellectual (see MacMullan, 2007) – and his team of ‘on location’ correspondents who parody many ‘real’ news reporters, by pretending to buy into the ‘spin’ that politicians want them to report.

‘FAKE’ NEWS AS THE ANTI-FOX

Although The Daily Show has existed in some form or another for over ten years, it has enjoyed particular success during the very period that ‘real’ political journalism (in the USA at least) has struggled through what many have seen as a post-9/11 crisis of professional credibility (see, for example, Zelizer & Allan, 2002: 69-116; McChesney, 2003). This is arguably no coincidence. 7 In the face of, for instance, legislation that ironically cuts back on civil freedoms to help ensure freedom (e.g. ‘The Patriot Act’) many journalists have seemed afraid to engage in a debate about the validity of these actions, fearing they might suffer the recriminations of higher authorities who have the power to shut off their supply of privileged inside information (which risks their employment), or further entrench the – now largely discredited (see Alterman, 2003) – myth (propagated by, for example, Anderson, 2005) that the news media has a liberal bias, and, in failing to meet its self-imposed standards of objectivity, is therefore not worthy of the public’s trust.

As seen in Chapter 1, McNair claims that since the end of the Cold War, the theoretical “sphere of legitimate controversy” (Hallin, 1994: 54) has opened up considerably, and journalists have been in a much better position to push its limits.

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While that may be true, the events of 9/11 could arguably be seen as a violent re-birth of the political consensus that McNair (2006: 9) claims had died, thus re-narrowing the limits of public debate quite severely. Since the war on terror first began, politicians and the media have often returned to a very modernist ‘grand narrative’ and an ‘us’ (i.e. USA/good) versus ‘them’ (i.e. terrorists/bad) mentality. Indeed, the Bush administration has been very quick to short circuit rational debate and proper enquiry (Baym, 2007b) by using “if you’re not with us, you’re against us” rhetoric (see Miller, 2007: 123; Dempsey, 2007) 8 , thus painting any criticism of its motives and methods (including illegal public wiretaps) as ‘unpatriotic’. We still see echoes of this today when hard-line neoconservatives lambast those who openly discuss the merits of withdrawing troops from Iraq for supposedly ‘emboldening’ or ‘giving comfort to’ a loosely defined ‘enemy’, and accuse them of cowardice for wishing to ‘cut and run’.

The degree to which freedom of public expression was oppressed was put on display when artists such as Bruce Springsteen and R.E.M. were criticised heavily for performing on the Vote for Change tour, openly promoting a vote against George W. Bush in the 2004 election. These groups (perhaps because they fitted a more acceptable stereotype of rebellious entertainers) did at least fare much better than The Dixie Chicks, whose music was subject to a boycott by country music radio stations across the United States (supplemented by anonymous death threats), because – in the midst of a 2003 London concert – lead singer Natalie Mains expressed embarrassment that the band hailed from Texas, also the home of the then-President. While there was never any direct, state-sponsored rebuttal of their actions, the political climate of the time and the vehement attempts to oppress and deny their right to free speech were

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captured poignantly in the documentary film Shut up and Sing, in which a protester outside one of their concerts claimed: “If you support The Dixie Chicks, you’re supporting communism. You’re supporting traitors.” Given this unashamed public castigation of dissenters, it is perhaps understandable that journalists have likewise been fearful of vigorously questioning those in high offices for fear of being labelled ‘un-American’. Long-time CBS news anchor Dan Rather captured this general mood of oppression very succinctly in mid-2002 when he observed:

It is an obscene comparison ... but you know there was a time in South Africa that people would put flaming tyres around people's necks if they dissented. And in some ways the fear is that you will be necklaced here, you will have a flaming tyre of lack of patriotism put around your neck… Now it is that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions. (in Engel, 2002)

Toby Miller (2007: 79-111) provides a very comprehensive critique of the US media’s response to these pressures during the ‘War on Terror’, particularly the time between 9/11 and the outbreak of war in Iraq. He points out that in the wake of the largest terrorist attacks Americans had ever seen, rational analysis of the events and in-depth historically-informed dissection of US foreign policy were replaced by “brash and faulty reportage” and shallow commentary, peppered with militarism, patriotism and nationalism (Miller, 2007: 81-82). Again, the FOX News Network was at the forefront of this sentiment, as its anchors and reporters showed a great degree of ignorance of the reasons behind the US invasion of Iraq and a cavalier attitude towards civilian deaths and injuries. Writer Michael Wolff, for example, was called

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“unpatriotic” by FOX News for doing nothing more than openly questioning the practice of embedding journalists in the military (Miller, 2007: 88).

[FOX] Anchors and reporters openly chided antiwar voices and abandoned any pretence of neutrality and objectivity. Despite the obvious violations of journalistic integrity, FOX received high ratings, and disturbingly other channels took steps to emulate FOX. (Kumar, 2006: 52)

This approach to news is even more disturbing when we consider a recent study that found FOX’s viewers tended to be among the least knowledgeable and politicallyaware citizens (Pew Research Centre, 2007). An even bigger and more troubling issue at play here, though, is the degree to which the press and the White House were in an almost symbiotic relationship with one another, each working to mutual benefit, with journalists feeling proud that they were doing their ‘duty’ by acting as de facto mouthpieces of the Bush Administration (Miller, 2007: 79-88), completely contradicting any notion of an independent ‘fourth estate’.

At the very time ‘real’ news was failing its public in this way, however, Americans increasingly began turning to ‘fake’ news for a more balanced view of the world and what its military was doing on the other side of it (Hamm, 2008: 168). Because “greater restriction often produces greater creativity in finding ways to circumvent such restriction” (Gray, 2006b: 115), The Daily Show has served to provide a kind of critical engagement with the very arguments and questions ‘real’ journalists shied away from en masse; an antidote to the FOX ethos, if you will. The Daily Show’s claims to ‘fake-ness’ – its operation under the auspices of late-night comedy –

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actually frees it from the political constraints discussed above (by Dan Rather), and thus is not mandated to operate within the aforementioned narrowed boundaries of the “sphere of legitimate controversy” (Hallin, 1994: 54). The mobilisation of the term ‘fake’ news can therefore be seen as a cloak, shielding Stewart and the rest of the TDS team from the kind of accusations that can so quickly de-legitimise ‘old’ political television programs which stake their reputations on providing balanced, objective coverage.

Jones (2007b) argues that by operating under a different set of rules (again, because it is a ‘fake’ news program), TDS can operate in a way that analyses the process of politics, rather than political ‘events’ per se, and therefore does not simply report “the message that political campaigns want them to report, circulating the rhetoric and slogans without intensive scrutiny or criticism” (Jones, 2007b: 137). TDS has become an essential part of the political sphere (Baym, 2007a), thanks mainly to its “ability to expose and satirise political rhetoric” (Dempsey, 2007: 131), in a way that sees it emerge unscathed because its words are always “cloaked in the jester’s jests” (Jones, 2005: 116). Although we could alternatively interpret Stewart as playing the role of ‘straight’ man to his correspondents’ ‘fool’, Jones’ equation of Jon Stewart to a Court Jester is very telling. As a metaphorical Court Jester, it is he who “gets to play the fool by using the words of those in power against them, revealing ‘truth’ by a simple reformulation of their statements” (Jones, 2005: 113). Gray discusses the notion of ‘the fool’ in a historical context, noting:

The fool’s speech mocks the king’s and highlights its errors, comfortable assumptions and rhetoric, and in doing so becomes the rogue (parodic) member

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of the royal (generic) family… In contrasting its own more playful, selfconscious language with the seemingly natural, taken-for-granted language of the king, and in commenting specifically on the king’s statements, the fool can chip away at the king’s authority and circulate counter-hegemonic discourses that challenge the form and content of the king’s authority. (Gray, 2006b: 11)

Because it has managed to be so successful in providing a check and balance on power at the same time journalism has struggled to undertake the same task, Feldman (2007) has recently argued The Daily Show should in fact be thought of as a “critical incident” – that is, a chance for journalists to “attend to and re-evaluate the rules and assumptions that dictate their professional practice” (Feldman, 2007: 411). It has attracted so much attention from those within the media industry because, as a comedy program that is more able to play with the conventions of the profession, it has shone a very critical light on the restrictions those (often redundant) conventions can impose (Feldman, 2007: 413).

Even if TDS might be seen as nothing more than a news show with a liberal bias masquerading as a ‘fake’ news program – operating simply “against the grain” (Baym, 2005: 265) – objectivity is not an innate requirement for all those who wish to inform the public (Schudson, 1978: 3-11; 2001). Rather it has evolved to become something journalists cling to as part of a constructed “moral philosophy” (Schudson, 1978: 8). As Rob Corddry, one of TDS’s correspondents (in Lavery, 2005) once joked: “Facts [about] Iraq have an anti-Bush agenda”, reminding the audience that, despite the recent arguments of some politicians, there is a big difference between criticism and bias. 9 Jon Stewart (in Fretts, 2003) has pointed out himself that the show

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is “passionately opposed to bullshit” which even makes him wonder, “[i]s that liberal or conservative?”

PARTISAN?

Although Zinser (2007: 52) believes The Daily Show is playing to its “home crowd” of left-leaning intellectuals (in much the same way as Rush Limbaugh plays to his home crowd of social conservatives), one of The Daily Show’s biggest contributions to a debate over the ‘rules’ of contemporary journalism is its rejection of argument as the primary mode of political engagement. Polarisation of political discourse may be a typical mode of journalistic framing because by simply relying on “‘official’ pronouncements from both sides [of an issue], journalists can lay claim to objectivity” (Dolan, 2005: 393; see also McKnight, 2001: 55; Merritt, 1998: 26-28). So, instead of relying on a political figure to provide counter-argument (no matter how illogical they or the original comments may be), “discursive integration” (Baym, 2005) allows the possibility of swiftly rejecting the ‘spin’, manoeuvring, and sleights of hand that have become such a dominant feature of contemporary politics. Polarity may therefore be a problematic by-product of the two journalistic requirements of brevity and objectivity working hand in hand to the detriment of rational, multi-dimensional debate (rather than audience excitement from a war of words between two factions). Harry Shearer – famous for his work on The Simpsons, This is Spinal Tap and his long-running US radio program Le Show – describes this tendency:

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So much of what goes on in television is taking the flow of daily events and pushing it into an ideological funnel, so that left-wingers get the left-wing drift and right-wingers get the right-wing drift, and [they can both say] ‘Ahhh, it all makes sense’. (Shearer, 2004)

While Shearer’s statement is a criticism of journalism, it also inversely signals the unoccupied space hybrid news programs are seeking to fill; a space which abandons the outmoded conceptions of ‘left’ and ‘right’, instead allowing people to see political arguments on their own terms. Though Zelizer (1997) suggests journalism’s role is to act as an “interpretative community”, ideological funnelling may actually be a dangerous form of over-simplification. It may only be a result of brevity that news issues are framed in an argumentative sense, with a decreasing average story length claimed to be symptomatic of tabloidisation (Franklin, 1997). However, because journalism usually spends its time reporting on the “passionate extremes” (Jon Stewart, in Jones, 2005: 119), it may very well be responsible for creating the false impression (see Fiorina et al., 2005) that American citizens are in the grips of “culture wars” (Gitlin, 1995). Because when “we see someone as bearing a label we don't like, we stop listening” (Tannen, 1998: 36), continually pushing political discourse into this ‘ideological funnel’ (that Shearer describes, above) can quickly portray politics and everyday life as a series of arguments, from which citizens are more likely to disengage (Merritt, 1998: 26-28; Evans & Sternberg, 2000; Sternberg, 2004). If most people do not hold strongly partisan views on most issues (Fiorina et al., 2005), this emphasis on conflict and tension may be pushing citizens away from politics because, as Jon Stewart himself points out:

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Washington views the world bicamerally, as though the world is Republican and Democrat, or liberal and conservative, where the rest of us sit on the outside and just think, ‘Holy shit, these can’t be the only two options!’ (Jon Stewart, on The Daily Show, 24/1/2006).

Painting the world in black and white may fail to engage an audience with useful discussion because many viewers could simply pass off political discourse as a pointscoring exercise. If “most people are not stuck at either extreme on most issues” (Merritt, 1998: 27), then journalists largely fail to represent true public opinion. Although conflict is a standard news value (Conley, 1997: 58), it makes for “passive recipients of the news, rather than aggressive analyzers and explainers of it” (Cunningham, 2003: 25; Overholser, 2004). This is because “[p]eople are alienated from politics when they perceive it to be excessively disputatious and argumentative” (Gimpel et al., 2003: 166).

In his now legendary appearance on the CNN program Crossfire on 15 October 2004 (see, amongst others, Sotos, 2007: 35; Barad, 2007: 71), Jon Stewart undertook a remarkable attack on what he called that program’s “partisan hackery”. 10 He urged the two hosts, Paul Begala (from the left) and Tucker Carlson (from the right) to “stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America.” He suggested directly to the hosts that calling Crossfire a ‘debate’ show would be “like saying pro wrestling is a show about athletic competition”, and that they were instead just “doing theatre”. The two co-hosts we so shocked to think that a program which (in its own words), “[r]educes everything… to left, right, black, white… and have [each side] fight it out” could be criticised for its lack of political integrity and value (Crossfire, 15/10/2004). Stewart, however, was

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adamant that the program was uncivilised and therefore did not achieve any serious political outcomes.

In contrast to ‘debate’ shows like Crossfire, TDS can represent the “disenfranchised centre” (Jon Stewart, in Jones, 2005: 115) via a humorous critique of the seriousness with which both ends of the political spectrum conduct themselves. For a neat example, Pigliucci (2007) examines The Daily Show’s four-part evolution special (called “Evolution Schmevolution”) which aired in September 2005, pointing out that the program actually did not take sides on the matter, but instead spent more time highlighting a larger problem that “in one camp we have an army of anti-intellectuals who distrust science, and in the other a small elite band of intellectuals who largely think it beneath them to explain to the general public what they're doing and why” (Pigliucci, 2007: 200).

FIFTH ESTATE?

Programs like TDS which repackage and reframe already existing news and information in creative ways – taking content and ‘remediating’ 11 it with humorous and discursive elements for the purpose of media critique (McKain, 2005) may also be seen as part of a wider trend toward media redaction. Hartley (2004: 136) argues redaction – “the creative editorial practice of bringing existing materials together to make new texts and meanings” – is both “the art form of the age”, and a “method for representing meanings sourced to consumers” in an information age where consumers are awash with meaning and available knowledge like never before. Although

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journalists engage in the practice of redaction in some form or another in their daily activities (e.g. selecting quotes from speeches into a newspaper or television report), we are now seeing a proliferation of intertextual redaction of the news media, particularly with online news indexing sites such as Digg.com or Google News (see Cohn, 2007). 12 Intertextual redaction as a form of satire is, of course, potentially problematic, as there exists a real possibility that items can be out of context for the sole purpose of comedy. However, The Daily Show’s redaction of political news has been seen as no more lacking in context than the redacted information that exists on CNN, for instance (Jones, 2007b: 143). Indeed, in showing events which the mainstream media chooses to ignore on the basis that they are not newsworthy, it actually gives viewers a perspective on those events which can help them to better understand politics.

The Daily Show does still produce original news, of course – such as when a guest comes on to the program – but it more often draws on the vast amount of pre-existing news content in creative ways to form a new and essentially different textual product which is often focussed on the political sphere, and/or the media’s often problematic role in it. This subjective, fluid redaction of journalism allows the show an ability to quickly, humorously and, therefore, powerfully illustrate how public opinion is shaped by spin and by those in positions of power, showing the viewer “that there’s a guy behind the curtain pulling levers” (Jon Stewart, in Jones, 2005: 109). Jones points out that whereas most news programs will report on political ‘stunts’ (like carefully planned photo ops, ‘secret’ internal leaks, heavily focus-grouped rhetoric), The Daily Show instead devotes much more of its time to deconstructing the reasons why these stunts were executed, and thus the “greater truths” that drive political actions (Jones,

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2007b: 142). It is perhaps what McNair (2006: 64) had in mind when he heralded the possibilities of a kind of “deconstructive, meta-discursive journalism which scrutinises planned processes of media management in ways that are good for democracy”.

Sotos (2007) suggests that because ‘fake’ news is in a position to offer this “metaview” of mediated politics, and in one sense supervises the fourth estate, it could in fact be considered as a fifth estate. Looking to Jon Stewart’s appearance on Crossfire and (ex-TDS correspondent) Stephen Colbert’s role hosting the 2006 White House Correspondents’ Dinner – where he openly joked about how the press was failing the American public (see Peterson, 2008) – as examples of open critique of the mainstream news, Sotos claims that because “fake news provides a philosophical inoculation against the mindless onslaught of soundbites and pandering entertainment; we become critical consumers, if not more responsible citizens” (Sotos, 2007: 36).

The possibilities these new forms of journalism open up by helping to foster a kind of media literacy are perhaps one reason why McNair (2003: 552) celebrates the modern chaos of the news media (discussed in the introduction) “as a democratizing force, demystifying established power and laying bare its excesses”. It could actually be argued, however, that TDS is quite cynical of McNair’s vision of chaos, because it is highly critical of the way that 24 hour cable news networks tend to be “sensationalistic, inclined to copy each other, prone to overexposing news stories, and desperate to manufacture news” (Gettings, 2007: 24), all because they have so much airtime that needs to be filled by something, or, more accurately, anything.

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Examined as forms of critical satire undertaking the process of redaction, we can begin to see what unorthodox, subjective, discursive forms of factual television can offer audiences; at least beyond simply thinking of them as alternative sources of ‘information’. At a time when society is argued to be flooded with information and yet simultaneously less politically-aware than ever (see Beecher, 2005), 13 these forms of journalism may give audiences the necessary perspective, frame of reference and the motivation to act on the vast amount of information that already exists in the public sphere. They can pick out for citizens the relevant pieces of news from amongst the chaos that best help them to understand the state of play and ‘what’s going on’ in the often confusing world of politics. They can fill in the many gaps that traditional treatments of news leave behind, and “color [sic] around a news event by offering new structures of thinking about that event” (Gray, 2006a). Stephens argues news organisations must provide citizens with these important frameworks of understanding in order to maintain relevance in a world where news can be freely gleaned from the web at any time, at the user’s discretion:

… [T]he extra value our quality news organizations can and must regularly add is analysis: thoughtful, incisive attempts to divine the significance of events – insights, not just information. What is required – if journalism is to move beyond selling cheap, widely available [on the web], staler-than-your-muffin news – is, to choose a not very journalistic-sounding word, wisdom. (Stephens, 2007: 35, emphasis added)

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AUDIENCES FOR NEW POLITICAL TELEVISION

One of the few empirical investigations of “new political television” is Jones’ (2005) study into audience responses to Politically Incorrect (PI), a now-defunct political chat show hosted by Bill Maher, which screened on America’s ABC. This program, like The Panel, was a political chat show with many similarities to The Daily Show. Jones’ methodology for this study was particularly interesting, in that he informally interviewed people either waiting in line to be audience members for the taping of an episode of PI, or those wishing to be part of the program itself as a “citizen panellist” (Jones, 2005: 168). Jones also examined online discussion groups surrounding the show as a way of understanding its audience’s use of the program as a catalyst for real-life political talk. Once again, like Sternberg’s (2004) study, Jones found PI’s blend of news and entertainment was an interesting and powerful combination for viewers, though in this case, with viewers of all ages, not only young people.

Of the many themes running through Jones’ research, one of the most prominent is that PI gave viewers a sense of accessibility because the show is, like The Panel, centred mostly around ‘ordinary’ people, and not political pundits (Jones, 2005: 175). Politically Incorrect seems to force its audience into meaningful, critical thinking about the topics raised by the show, making them join the political debate, either through conversations or by imagining oneself involved in the on-screen exchanges between political pundits (Jones, 2005: 170-71). One respondent in particular liked the program because she believed it “kind of forces people to take a side, one way or the other” (p. 170), rather than remaining entirely neutral. Such a finding (on-screen talk sparking real-life debate) bears much similarity to the previous research into The

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Panel, which found the way in which that program presented news was more conducive to active audience positions (Harrington, 2005).

CONCLUSION

This chapter has outlined much of the critical thinking about forms of factual television which transgress the boundaries of conventional journalism, discussed what other theorists have seen as their potential strengths, pointing out in the process that the incorporation of entertaining or discursive elements does not always detract from a text’s public sphere potential. Indeed, ‘new’ or hybrid news’ reworking of generic expectations may actually be an important step towards re-engaging the public with matters worthy of public attention. The question remains, however, to what degree do the various ways of understanding these shows’ social functions discussed in this chapter hold up to empirical scrutiny? If the media environment is now defined by chaos, and public information is often being produced by those not identified as journalists, the main question then becomes, ‘what are the potential consequences of this shift for audiences?’

One of the ironies in this debate about alternative forms of news and journalism is that – even like mainstream forms (see Bird, 2003b: 65; Ruddock, 2001: 30) – they are under-researched from an audience perspective, despite some of the important attempts to readdress this issue discussed in this chapter. Any potential or ‘power’ inherent within their journalistic approach has gone largely untested with those who actually watch them. The way in which audiences think about or ‘use’ these programs

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has remained largely unexplored, with most of the arguments relying on either informed textual perspectives, or flagging audience numbers for ‘old’ news to argue their point (Katz, 1992, being a classic example here). For all the claims that have been made about The Daily Show, there appears to be no study which incorporates the voice of anyone other than an academic or media expert. Amidst his celebration of Jon Stewart interviews on The Daily Show’s, even Baym (2007a: 113) admits “the way that different kinds of audiences make sense of and utilize them remains in need of empirical investigation”.

Because many of the “new political television” (Jones, 2005) shows discussed in this chapter tend, by and large, to cater for niche markets, such niches and the programs they gather around are important and need further exploration. Textual analysis (and explorations of the social and political conditions in which they are produced) has given us some indication of the spectrum of contemporary news forms, but have not painted a complete picture of the way they are used by audiences. The studies of Jones (2005), Sternberg (2004), Bird (2003b), Shattuc (1997), Manga (2003) – and even some of my own research (Harrington, 2005) – have uncovered some detail about how audiences use television programs other than ‘the news’ to connect themselves with the public sphere. However, very little of the contemporary news spectrum has been accounted for from an audience perspective, especially within the Australian context.

The studies into audience responses to popular news forms discussed in this chapter have provided us with some understanding of how they function when “inserted into the everyday lives of readers” (Fiske, 1989a: 3), but the scale and diversity of

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contemporary forms of journalism means that much remains to be uncovered. A small number of textual analyses have told us much about how, for instance, The Daily Show operates (e.g. Baym, 2005; Jones, 2005; Holt, 2007), but very little research has been conducted in an Australian context, or in terms of seeking the opinion of viewers. To ignore audience perspectives and treat their real experiences in purely abstract or theoretical terms is to run the risk of media and cultural studies “becoming an inner circle of theorists endlessly discussing themselves and the impossibility of discussing anything else” (Bird, 1992: 257). Audiences are not a simple group with simple interpretations of media texts, but have complex ways of viewing, negotiating and understanding what they watch (Gunter, 2000). The rest of this thesis therefore attempts to address these shortcomings by undertaking primary research into two quite different Australian forms of political television: Sunrise and The Chaser’s War on Everything.

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NOTES

1

Shattuc (1997) suggests that of all these shows, Oprah has had the largest effect on American popular

culture. 2

Although the band was criticised for supposedly promoting violence, their politically-driven lyrics are

heavily focussed on social justice, and are strongly critical of corruption and corporate greed. An interesting side-note is that the video clips for their songs Sleep Now in the Fire and Testify were directed by Michael Moore. 3

Since then, McDonalds has also made a series of changes to their menu to include salads and “lighter

options”. 4

Newspapers worldwide have typically responded to this ever looming crisis by ‘spicing up’ their

medium in regards to layout, images, and an overall change to a tabloid size (Raeymaeckers, 2004; Morton, 2005). The ‘News-Lite’, free commuter newspaper phenomenon is also a part of this trend. 5

This overly concerted effort to appear youthful is in direct opposition to common links between youth

and a continual search for authenticity. This is also one of Buckingham’s (2000) findings. 6

While these figures find a correlation, they do not establish causation. It may be that people with

higher levels of political knowledge are drawn to the show, rather than the show creating ‘smarter’ citizens. 7

A related argument not pursued here is that comedy can also provide an easier way for people to

initially discuss upsetting or confronting issues. While there was a period shortly after 9/11 where laughter was seen as taboo (that it was ‘too soon’ or disrespectful), Achter (2008) argues that comedy shows and, in particular, satirical newspaper The Onion were at the forefront of helping citizens to understand and re-think the terror attacks in a wider political and social context. 8

These attempts to make journalists submit to direct political pressure are not new, nor are they

exclusive to one side of the political divide. In fact, almost the exact same language was being used during the Cold War, and perhaps reached a zenith during the Cuban Missile Crisis, during/after which a senior official in the Kennedy administration told the Washington press corps, “Look, you are either for us, or against us…” (Alterman, 2004: 136). 9

McNair (2006: 43) also points out that “Claims of bias are usually interpretative, subjective,

decontextualised readings of what news is telling us, superimposing the already formed opinions of the critic on the presumed intentions of the journalist.” 10

A

transcript

of

this

episode

can

be

found

at:

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0410/15/cf.01.html. 11

Most news blogging does much the same thing in terms of repackaging and interpreting already

existing news stories, rather than actually creating them (Turner, 2005: 138-39). 12

The rapidly increasing use of YouTube as a source for TV journalists may also be part of this trend.

13

See Rose (2001) and/or Meyrowitz (1985: 164) for a compelling counter-argument to this assertion.

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CHAPTER 3

RESEARCH METHODS

…Now that people have such unprecedented access to information about politics, what do they do with it? (McNair, 2000b: 179)

This thesis argues that news has been largely thought about in overly simple terms which no longer accurately reflect the ever fragmenting and expanding repertoire of journalistic practices, and that TV ‘infotainment’ and satire programs which do not fit into rigid journalistic binaries can play an important role in audiences’ understanding of politics. In order to investigate the accuracy of this hypothesis more fully, this thesis undertakes a closer examination of two different Australian television programs, Sunrise and The Chaser’s War on Everything based largely on qualitative audience research which is ‘triangulated’ with textual analysis and interviews with industry professionals involved in the shows’ production (see Nightingale, 1996: 11213; Turner, 1996a: 150). As discussed at the conclusion of the previous chapter, ‘the audience’ is often invoked in the various debates about contemporary news, and so it seems logical that audiences themselves are also given a voice in such discussions. Rather than making observations in a haze of “ever-more-abstract theoretical 97

narcissism” (Bird, 1992: 250), it is the aim of this study to examine existing theory in relation to Sunrise and The Chaser’s War on Everything, grounded by an empirical understanding of audience readings of the shows.

PARTICIPANT RECRUITMENT AND PARTICIPATION

The main audience research method used in this thesis is interviewing – either through focus groups, or with individuals. This technique is an “excellent [way] of eliciting people’s discursive repertoires for making sense of their media experiences” (Schrøder et al., 2003: 151), and is a comfortable and reliable qualitative tool since each participant “controls the manner in which they wish to express themselves” (Morrison, 1998: 171). Participants for the study were recruited using the ‘snowball’ technique (Schrøder et al., 2003: 151), in which the researcher distributes a call for participants within pre-existing social networks. The idea here is that those people will pass the information on via their own social networks, thus casting the participant net widely with minimal effort. For the research presented in the subsequent chapters of this thesis, an email – one of the least invasive and most easily distributed methods of communication – containing details of the project was sent to family, friends and associates, who were in turn encouraged to pass that on to other people who may have been interested in taking part in the research project. Respondents were then asked either to participate in individual interviews, or to gather a group of friends/associates and form a focus group session.

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In the case of the research in chapters 4 and 5 which discuss the Seven Network’s breakfast news show Sunrise, the ‘snowball’ method was used to recruit people on a ‘household’ basis. Where the person initially approached to take part in the study lived with other people who also watched Sunrise (be they family or housemates), these people were also invited to take part in the interview. As each episode of Sunrise runs for three hours, the participants in the Sunrise research needed to be fairly familiar with the show in the first place. They did not have to be ‘fans’ of the show necessarily, merely familiar with its content. One participant, for instance, participated in the interview with her housemate because although she had recently stopped watching the show (because it annoyed her), she was still able to comment freely on it. The reason for this is that Sunrise interviewees were not able to be shown any stimulus material, as it would have required three hours to provide a proper ‘feel’ of the show’s various segments. Editing an episode down to a more manageable size was one option, but it was more important for participants to have some knowledge of the range of programming elements that exists in the show across an entire weekly cycle, and for them to be able to recount their own daily routines as they revolved around this Sunrise. In this part of the study, there were a total of six interviews, which were conducted with between one and four people (see Table 1, page 103).

For chapters 6 and 7, which analyse the satirical variety show The Chaser’s War on Everything, I conducted four focus groups, with between four and six participants in each. Each focus group comprised a person originally approached for the study, and a small group who were invited to the session by this initial respondent. During the focus group interviews, a then-recent episode of the program was screened, followed

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by a semi-structured group interview to investigate how these people talked about, described and understood the show.

A further benefit to the snowball recruitment method was that the attendees generally knew one another in some way prior to the research taking place, and the interviews were conducted in the home of at least one person taking part (and in some cases, all participants in the group). The only exception to this rule were the two individual interviewees, who, because they were not recruiting other participants, both decided for the sake of convenience to do the interview at or near their workplace.

Although strangers are commonly used for focus group research, the research design of the study deliberately avoided this trend. Indeed, prominent Australian social researcher Hugh Mackay (1993: 36) asks: “Why bring a collection of strangers together when what you want is a group?” By using groups of people who already know one another – which was the case here – the intention was to increase the chance that the process would be a pleasant and enjoyable experience, and therefore more likely to produce authentic or natural conversation (Morrison, 2003: 116). Because audiences “place their own interpretations on media content that are influenced by the social communities to which they belong or with which they identify” (Gunter, 2000: 45), it seems only natural to use participants who are already acquaintances (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000: 8). Although the participants’ experience in a research situation such as this is never entirely ‘natural’ (Hansen et al., 1998: 263), like Hobson (1982: 107, original emphasis) I suspect knowing they were going to be asked about the programs “seemed to sharpen the awareness with which they watched [them]”.

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There is some conjecture about the ‘ideal’ number of participants that should participate in a focus group. Some (such as Morgan, 1997: 42; Stewart & Shamdasani, 1990: 57; Greenbaum, 1988: 38) suggest as many as 10 or 12, because larger numbers are needed to ensure conversation flows freely, and helps ensure participants do not feel as though they are being closely ‘interrogated’. On the other hand, smaller group numbers remain easier to manage from a moderator’s perspective, and can illicit more detailed responses by ensuring participants still feel like an important part of the research. As Hansen et al. (1998: 270) note, “[t]he larger the group, the more [likely] it is that less vocal and less confident participants will be marginalised and will tend to hide behind the more articulate members.” Working with a smaller number of people therefore helps keep participants comfortable, and allows a researcher to more fully flesh out their thoughts and attitudes towards the text under investigation. In the end, because the research was conducted in ‘casual’ venues (e.g. a participant’s home) to keep participants as comfortable with the process as possible, this study used smaller focus groups of 4-5 people each. This choice follows recommendations that the researcher should be the only foreign element in the study, and that all participants should be made to feel comfortable and relaxed, both with one another and with the setting (Mackay, 1993: 36).

In the course of the recruitment, I used what Morrison (1998: 200) calls “purposive sampling”, by roughly screening participants as they volunteered to ensure that, when put together, they generally represented a range of demographic criteria – particularly a balance of genders and ages. This participant pool could be described as an exploratory convenience sample rather than a complete embodiment of the ‘audience’

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they represent (even if that is only a discursive construct) in terms of demographic themes. The study was designed in a way which tried to ensure each program had a range of respondents that would fit the assumed audience for each program. For chapters 6 and 7, the recruitment focussed predominantly on younger interviewees, who more closely match the audience demographics for The Chaser’s War on Everything. In the case of Sunrise, the aim was to find participants with a mix of domestic situations, on account of the highly domestic nature of the program’s viewing context. While it made the recruitment a little more difficult (with numerous people turned away because they did not fit a required demographic ‘gap’), it was a more efficient process, and meant participants for the Sunrise research lived in a range of domestic environments, including single-person households, share-houses and nuclear families (with children of varying ages).

When dealing with the snowball method of participant recruitment there does exists a series of issues surrounding representativeness, and specifically the tendency for social networks to be quite insular (that is, for people to associate with those who share demographic features or attitudes). While this is an issue, in many ways it is unavoidable with a research project that neither rewards participants for their time, nor employs a team of research assistants to seek out a fully representative sample. With the greatest of respect to the participants involved in this project, I argue because they are all ‘ordinary’ people, the findings of this research project give us an insight into the way ‘ordinary’ viewers perceive the two shows under scrutiny.

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GROUP NO. i Sunrise (S)

1 2

N=13 M=7, F=6

3 4 5 6

The Chaser (C) 1 N=19 M=13, F=6 2

3

4

NAME ii

GENDER

AGE iii

Haley Ben* Gary Damon Tom Donald Terri* Loraine Michelle* Anita Dominic Shaun Kristie* Richard* Nathan Dan Brian Michael Sharna Claire* Sanjay Joseph Nat Jacques Talia* Callum Thomas Tim* Janice Mario Maggie Baley

F M M M M M F F F F M M F M M M M M F F M M F M F M M M F M F M

24 N.S. 41 18 17 52 57 N.S. 25 N.S. N.S. 46 47 19 N.S. 18 18 18 20 20 N.S. 26 22 N.S. N.S. N.S. 27 N.S. N.S. 36 45 N.S.

TABLE 1: AUDIENCE RESEARCH PARTICIPANT LIST

i

Where audience transcripts are quoted in this thesis, the subsequent citation indicates the group code and page number from which the passage is derived (and which are contained in Appendix B). ii * Denotes the person in the group initially approached by interviewer. iii N.S. = Not Supplied

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DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS

In total, 32 participants were involved in the audience study, ranging in age from 18 to 57. 1 All of the focus groups and interviews were semi-structured (ranging in length from 25 to 80 minutes), so as to allow the participants a great deal of freedom in the direction of the conversation, and to allow for the possibility that there were aspects of the programs not considered when the questions for the interviews were written. Most of all, I tried to ensure the research participants felt very relaxed with the process, and tried at all times to remind participants (and give the impression to them, even through body language) that their views were not ‘wrong’, or that my research was trying in any way to achieve a certain outcome. To do this, formalities were strictly kept to a minimum at all times, and there were many deliberate (but subtle) attempts to foster an atmosphere of openness to any view that was being expressed – and to indicate that all insights were inherently valuable.

After the interviews and focus groups were completed, each one was transcribed in its entirety from an audio recording (which amounted to over 330 pages of raw data, located in Appendix B). The analysis of this data assessed participants’ feelings towards the given program by focussed on “how they talk[ed] about it” (Buckingham, 2000: 62). Unlike some qualitative research, the aim of this project was not to undertake a quasi-psychological interrogation of “hidden deep meanings” when analysing the participants’ responses (McKee, 2006: 525), but to examine the transcripts as a text to be analysed like any other. In addition to this audience research, I also managed to secure interviews with key members of the production teams of Sunrise and The Chaser’s War on Everything. In total, I conducted five of

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these ‘industry’ interviews (with 6 people in total), which provided further evidence for – and a different perspective on – the research. 2 These interviews were a very important step towards better analysing the shows in question and understanding how their producers think about their audience. In particular, they addressed the issue of agency: who the text was created by, the audience it was created for, and the purpose it is set up to serve (Selby & Cowdery, 1995).

CONCLUSION: MANAGING QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

Of course, conducting qualitative audience research can be plagued by some common issues. The three main problems that tend to occur are: making broad generalisations based on an unrepresentative audience sample; respondents giving information that does not accurately reflect their attitudes or opinions (either influenced by the ‘subtext’ of questions, or by saying what they think the researcher wants them to); researchers’ data analysis being guided by their own pre-existing hypotheses (Schrøder, 1999: 52); or over-identification with participants – what Berger (2000: 161) calls “going native”. Accepting such dangers, however, and remaining methodologically aware throughout the entire research process, can be an effective way to best manage them. I strongly argue that it is far better to conduct a study that has limits and acknowledges them, than to be gripped by “a paralysing (if vertiginously thrilling) trance of ‘epistemological nervousness’” (Morley, 1997: 136) and never undertake any empirical research whatsoever. While I do acknowledge, for example, the at-times constructivist nature of researching audiences as though they were a “unified aggregate of similarly endowed individuals” (Radway, 1988: 360)

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who are ‘out there’ to be studied, it is important to push past these ontological debates. While Hartley argues that conceptions of audiences are mere “invisible fictions” (Hartley, 1987; see also Bertrand & Hughes, 2005: 55; Allor, in Bird, 1992: 250), Morley (1997: 124) offers a much more useful alternative, proposing that: “it is possible to recognize the necessarily constructivist dimensions of any research process without claiming that audiences exist only discursively”. It is possible, therefore, for audience research to be “rooted in real experience without being slavishly positivist” (Bird, 1992: 253). While the media is now the central constituent forum for the public sphere, interpersonal debate can open up in moments of citizenly interaction, and hence it was vital for this study to try and capture as effectively as possible how programs such as Sunrise and The Chaser’s War on Everything might affect these ‘real world’ discussions:

If we think in terms of the ‘space’ in which ‘public sphering’ gets done, we can readily see that while the media constitute much of this space (as discursive, semiotic space), the space of the public sphere is – and must be – larger than that of media representations. It must also include sociocultural interaction. This dimension takes us into the realm of people's encounters and discussions with each other, with their collective sense-making and their cultural practices. (Dahlgren, 1995: 18)

Although we can never ‘know’ the audience for any form of broadcasting entirely, we can still find people who exist within that group at some point, and seek out a great deal of insight into how and why they choose to watch these shows, and what they think when they do so. Instead of ‘othering’ the audience to a point that borders on an

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intra-cultural form of “orientalism” (Said, 1985; see also Morley, 1997), we need to encourage real engagement with audience members:

Even as we acknowledge the importance of global and national economic and political forces in constructing mediascapes in which we live, we don't all need to become political economists. The ‘on the ground’ perspective… is still crucial, and offers a dimension that no other approach can duplicate… we should not be abandoning the goal of understanding real people, living real lives in which media play an ever-increasing, if certainly problematic role. (Bird, 2003b: 190)

Finally, it is important to realise this research – as it is qualitative rather than quantitative – aims to be broad in its scope, rather than especially deep. McKee (2003: 3) points out that “[y]ou can know in detail how a small number of people watch a programme; or you can know in a more abstract way how lots of people watch. But you really can’t know both at once.” Because this thesis examines how audiences watch and understand the two programs under investigation, then a smaller but much finer grained study is required. That is, this thesis does not take a scientific approach seeking “total knowledge” (Ang, 1996: 43), but instead aims to better understand the role of each program in the lives of viewers and the public sphere. It aims to provide a snapshot of the landscape being viewed: giving an important indication of the possible range of interpretations and responses, even if it is impossible to fully quantify how representative those responses are (Schrøder, 1999: 45). Whereas logic might dictate that interviewing a larger number of people would produce ‘better’ or more generalisable results, there often comes a point during the process of qualitative

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research where the time, cost and effort of conducting further interviews far outweigh any potential benefit. In fact, the data generated for both programs quickly approached ‘saturation’, which is the point at which “the moderator can accurately predict what will be said next in a group… and the point at which additional data collection no longer generates new understanding” (Morgan, 1997: 43). While this research does not (and cannot) necessarily present a perfectly ‘clear’ picture of the audiences for Sunrise and The Chaser’s War on Everything, as the following four chapters demonstrate, it does still give a very good indication of the way audiences think about, understand and ‘use’ both programs to facilitate knowledge and relate to the public sphere.

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NOTES

1

Within the research, two people worked within the Australian media industry (and had degrees in the

field), while one other person had completed media-related units in a university degree, although none of these participants were people who had initially approached, or been approached by, me. This itself is a limitation of the snowball method, because it becomes difficult to screen out these ‘unique’ cases in advance. 2

These industry interviews (conducted on 11 August 2006, in Sydney, Australia) have been treated as

primary data in this thesis. Quotes from these interviews are denoted by the use of bold interviewee names at the start of an indented paragraph.

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CHAPTER 4

‘RECIPROCAL’ JOURNALISM: SUNRISE, ORDINARINESS, AND BREAKFAST TELEVISION

Of all the programs which were part of the Seven Network’s ascension to free-to-air television ratings leadership in Australia in 2007, Sunrise is one of the most fascinating. Initially an unsuccessful thorn in the side of the network, Sunrise has grown to become one of the biggest success stories in television in recent years. As one media commentator notes, it has “transformed breakfast television” (Meade, 2007d: 13) in Australia. Screening in a timeslot was once considered of fairly low importance, Sunrise has shown not only that news – and, more specifically, morning television news – can be very lucrative from a commercial perspective, but also that when it is presented in a certain way it can have a very close and powerful connection with its audience.

Fiske (1989a: 187) has argued that “our normal evaluation of news concentrates on its operation at the macro and mid-levels of our culture, and ignores the conditions under which it is read at the micro levels.” Neglecting this is problematic, because we fail to

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have a real appreciation of how news is ‘used’ in everyday life. This chapter examines Sunrise at this ‘micro’ level, paying particular attention to the numerous ways in which it has established a very strong relationship with its audience. By constructing itself in a way that suits audience routines, creating an enjoyable, personable viewing atmosphere, and by fostering an ongoing dialogue with viewers of the program, Sunrise operates in a very different fashion to traditional television newscasts. Although the program’s approach to its audience has often been read as a cynical and coldly commercial attempt to lure viewers, this chapter argues that Sunrise should be considered as a form of what I call ‘reciprocal’ journalism, which involves the free (increasingly disintermediated) interplay of news, opinions and emotion between text and audience.

WHAT IS SUNRISE?

Sunrise is Australia’s most-watched breakfast television program. Running for three hours every weekday between 6-9am (and from 7:30-10am on Sundays in its Weekend iteration), Sunrise would be best described for an international audience as similar to NBC’s Today show in the United States. Where that program played an extremely significant role in defining the morning television genre globally (Wieten & Pantti, 2005; Feuer, 1983), Sunrise has played a central role in the genre’s reinvigoration in Australia. On weekdays, the show is hosted by Melissa Doyle and David Koch (who are far more well-known by their nicknames ‘Mel’ and ‘Kochie’), joined intermittently by newsreader Natalie Barr, sports presenter Mark Beretta, and a roving weather presenter. 1 Structured primarily around half-hourly news reports,

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Sunrise encompasses an enormous variety in the topics and issues it deals with. 2 To get a sense of the show’s incorporation of news and entertainment and its broad range of topics, on 19 March 2007 viewers were treated (amongst many other things) to politics, finance and sport news, an interview with a local mayor discussing smoking bans, a discussion/review of Sony’s (newly released) Playstation 3, a ‘Joke of the Day’, and an interview with pop star Darren Hayes about his forthcoming album.

FIGURE 3: MELISSA DOYLE AND DAVID KOCH

Sunrise, a program which has now become “a programming juggernaut… [and] redrawn the map of Australian commercial television” (Price, 2006), did not seem destined for success from the outset. Perhaps mainly due to the fact the timeslot was not seen as a lucrative one for networks and advertisers, it was largely ignored. For the most part, the Nine Network’s Today program competed with cartoon shows on the ABC and the youth-oriented Ten Network for a very small viewing audience. The long-running Today show was apparently fulfilling the morning audience’s needs, with Seven’s various attempts at capturing a share of the market (trying to replicate Today’s success by imitating it) were unsuccessful. The executive producer of

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Sunrise, Adam Boland, suggests none of the earlier versions of the show (that he himself worked on) properly understood the timeslot, and as such, television “was off the radar” for most people at breakfast time. However, the show’s failings also provided an opportunity to implement major changes:

Adam Boland: We then put together a plan for the Sunrise you see now… We pitched it to management and said, ‘What have you got to lose? It’s going to cost you nothing, we’re not winning, we’re being annihilated in the slot, give us a chance…’

Rather than continuing to imitate Today in order to prise away its loyal core viewers, Boland and his colleagues instead tried to offer something different. He believed there was potential to win audiences in the timeslot; the key though was finding a way to lure them to the television at that time of day:

Adam Boland: And people always used to say, ‘Hey, there’s no point competing for breakfast because everyone wants to listen to the radio’… Right, well so let’s just give up? You know, it’s just ridiculous. People were still at home, they’re still getting in the shower, they’re still having their breakfast. They were doing all that with the radio on because there was nothing on the television to appeal to them.

Boland cites two major alterations to the early version of Sunrise as being responsible for its ratings upsurge and cultural impact. The most important alteration was to ‘inject’ personality into the format (more on this later in the chapter), while the other

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key factor was to incorporate a level of viewer interactivity into the show – the inspiration for which came from radio, an industry in which Boland had worked previously:

Adam Boland: We wanted to combine radio with television… [so] the second thing we did was start listening to the other normal people – the viewers. Again, it came from radio, the AM talkback logic. Really, AM talkback’s content is viewers [sic] just picking up the phone and they talk to them. So, again, a pretty simple formula. So we combined the FM formula of personality with the AM formula of listener, or viewer, interaction and we get Sunrise… put a couple of cameras on and away we go.

Boland’s comments here do recognise that, perhaps above all, the feature that sets Sunrise apart from its competitors – and other news variety shows – is its intense focus on a reciprocal audience relationship (perhaps by tapping into the existing radio audience), on which it has built much of its success. After these fundamental changes had been made to the show’s format, the show experienced its ratings upsurge, and Sunrise began to whittle away the long-held lead of its chief competitor, the Nine Network’s Today 3 show. In 2003, soon after Sunrise was re-developed from its original (unsuccessful) state to its current form, Today averaged 267 000 viewers per day, with Sunrise well behind on 192 800 (Warneke, 2005). By mid-2004 the lead changed, and in 2007 Sunrise had an average audience of 343 000 people – 50 percent more than Today (at 210 600 viewers), which was once considered almost untouchable in the Australian breakfast television hierarchy (Meade, 2007c).

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What makes Seven’s move to the status of Australia’s highest rating network so remarkable is the fact that in 2004 the network risked ranking third (and last) amongst Australia’s free-to-air commercial television networks had it not broadcast the Athens Olympics. 4 This dramatic turnaround is made even more significant when one considers the standings of Australia’s three commercial TV networks had remained almost completely static in the 25 years prior to this change. In his best-selling book Who Killed Channel 9?, former Nine executive Gerald Stone (2007: 97-108) argues that because Sunrise’s success came against a mainstay of Nine’s news and current affairs stronghold, it played a big role in psychologically unsettling the leading network and therefore can take much credit in Seven’s eventual ascendency to the position of most-watched television network in Australia:

Seven, of course, had drawn blood before with a win here and there in the entertainment schedule, a compelling drama or popular game show. What made this onslaught all the more disconcerting was that it was coming from an entirely unexpected direction – a head-on challenge to Nine's supremacy in current affairs. (Stone, 2007: 101)

Adam Boland does not take credit for the entire network’s recent success, but does acknowledge Sunrise’s popularity began at the start of Seven’s ratings surge between 2004 and 2007:

Adam Boland: We were a good news story when there weren’t many at this network. It was a tough time at this place… but we rated – we were the first that did. We can’t take responsibility for the rest of the line-up working… but

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Sunrise did invigorate breakfast, there’s no doubt about that. I think breakfast [for TV] is, in many ways, now a prime-time in the same way that breakfast is a prime-time on radio: that’s where they make their money… The most profitable show on the NBC network is the NBC Today show. There are clear reasons for that [and] it’s the same [with Sunrise]. We’re not yet the most profitable show on Seven, but we’re in the top five, and for an off-peak show that’s pretty impressive. So we will continue to be a vital show within the network’s stable for that very reason.

Although the show has been a major success for the Seven network, that achievement has not come without a fair share of condemnation. Much of this disapproval has centred on the program’s hosts, who have been a focal point of the show’s impact on Australian popular culture and therefore a symbol of the show’s popularity. Their status has lead to suggestions the show has caused a “Kochification of morning news” (Price, 2006) which implies several programs have tried to imitate various parts of the Sunrise formula. 5 Once it began losing the ratings battle, Today attempted to follow Sunrise’s lead by making a series of rushed format changes in an effort to stem some of the losses, focussing particularly on making several changes to on-air personalities in a short space of time (Meade, 2007b; Idato, 2006). In 2007, Today recruited Weekend Sunrise’s co-presenter Lisa Wilkinson as a permanent replacement for Jessica Rowe, who had departed Nine acrimoniously after a single, unsuccessful year at the network (Vallejo, 2007). 6 Although the show’s recent success can be attributed to more than its hosts, that Koch and Doyle have become so central in debates about the program seems to be a reflection of their ability to connect with viewers (as will be discussed later in this chapter).

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BREAKFAST TIME

One of Sunrise’s biggest challenges as a breakfast television program is for it to strike a balance between “structuring and sustaining household routines” (Wieten & Pantti, 2005: 22) and trying to fit around these routines. In many ways morning television as a timeslot is influenced by many more external pressures than viewing in other time periods – in particular, post-dinner prime time. A very strong characteristic of mornings in general are the time pressures: this is a point in the day that is “hurried, pressured, even frantic” (Dickinson et al., 2001: 246), and there is an overriding sense that where tasks and chores need completing, “there is no time to intersperse them with a pause or with doing anything else than that deemed necessary to getting up and getting out” (Dickinson et al., 2001: 246). Gauntlett and Hill, who researched television audiences extensively through the use of questionnaire-diaries, note this by saying: “Breakfast time is usually very busy for most diarists, and if they do watch TV, it is only for brief periods, or used as background noise whilst other chores are being done” (Gauntlett & Hill, 1999: 24). Sunrise co-presenter David Koch acknowledges that, from a viewer’s perspective, the show often operates within an environment of domestic chaos:

David Koch: Our market is the breakfast market. That market is a madhouse at that time of the morning – people are time poor, they have very set routines in terms of getting ready for work, or getting the kids off to school or whatever. And we’re grateful if they tune in for 20 minutes.

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Even though television viewing in general has often been seen as “a casual experience rather than an intensive one” (Ellis, 1992: 161-62), TV viewing in the morning is considered as an ephemeral experience perhaps moreso than at any other time of day. For those viewers who have either a full-time job or other activities to attend to, it is fair to assume morning TV viewing is more of a voluntary “moment by moment” (Ellis, 1992: 163) distraction than a crucial activity. Rather than having limitless ‘relaxation time’ to watch television, the audience at that time has a range of routines – “planned repetitions” (Feuer, 1983: 16) – that must be completed in order to get somewhere else or start doing something else (Dickinson et al., 2001: 244-46).

Though television as a whole is faced with the fact that viewing is mostly casual and intermittent, in the case of morning TV this is a much more fundamental thing. Media use in the morning is blended into a household members’ particular style of getting up and getting out... breakfast television has consciously adopted the role of structuring and sustaining household routines, in order to become part of them. (Wieten & Pantti, 2005: 22)

Although Feuer (1983: 16) argues breakfast television globally is “constructed around the most extreme fragmentation”, close scrutiny would suggest it is inappropriate to consider Sunrise in these terms. In his examination of the music channel MTV, Andrew Goodwin (1992: 134-38) has argued although some people had seen MTV (particularly in its very early days) as a quintessentially ‘postmodern’ text with no discernable beginning or end – Hartley (1989: 148), for instance, once described the channel as “nothing but continuity” – it did in fact have a series of discrete

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programming blocks featuring different music genres. Because the whole product is composed of myriad small pieces, it might be tempting to see Sunrise also as an unstructured, fragmented text, but it does actually follow a very consistent daily format. It may therefore be more useful to consider the show as highly segmented, while keeping to a set schedule, with numerous items occurring at quite regular (and therefore expected) times each day or week.

While the show is highly segmented, many of the show’s segments are structured and timed to fit the assumed audience routines at different times throughout the three hours the show is on air. Wieten and Pantti (2005: 28) suggest “what time [various segments] will be broadcast is not so much dictated by the logic of the programme, as by the assumed diaries of the viewers”. This means Sunrise is able to instil a sense of structure or routine in its format, in the hope that the audience might also build their own routines around viewing the show. An example of this is that ‘Mel and Kochie’ tend to spend most of the first two hours in a more formal desk-bound position in the studio, presenting shorter segments. Indeed, the entire first hour of the show is much more news and business-focussed, presumably catering for early-rising, earlydeparting professionals, whereas in the final hour of the program the presenters spend more time on the studio’s couch and tend to feature celebrity interviews and more casual discussions. A likely explanation for this is actually a possibly sexist assumption that many of the viewers may have left for work, and the (largely female) audience left over then has a larger amount of free time.

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Interviewees Damon and Haley provided responses quite typical of the way viewers in this study said their main focus in the morning was not the TV, but the process of getting other things done:

Damon: I would say that [Sunrise] just complements… I think it, say, complements a routine rather than being the reason for it. (S3: 58)

Haley: [Y]ou’re not attentive – you’re not that attentive in the morning. ‘Cos you’re getting ready for work, and you’re half-asleep and you’re doing other things and running around, running after kids, and making coffee and all that kind of stuff. (S1: 31)

Participants noted Sunrise was not something that acted as a distraction from their morning routine, but that it had become a part of this routine. Many, such as Tom, believed Sunrise had successfully become structured into their morning rituals:

Tom: … When I was still at school, I’d get up, walk out, turn the TV on and, you know, make breakfast and eat breakfast while I was watching Sunrise. And sometimes I would just sit down for 5 minutes after I’d woken up – I couldn’t really be bothered making breakfast yet – but, yeah, I’d just get up and put the TV on and watch Sunrise while I was doing everything else. But it wasn’t really like [I was] getting up to watch Sunrise, or Sunrise [was] the central focus of the morning… it was just part of the routine.

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(S3: 54-55)

While Sunrise was effectively built into the morning routines of most of the participants, in some instances it was also seen to help structure these routines by serving as a reference point for other activity:

Anita: The TV’s just going, and you just do what you do while it’s going. Michelle: And you’ll come in when you hear he’s about to talk about sport… Anita: No, I come in for the Hollywood gossip. Michelle: And then you’ll come back out and go, ‘Oh, they’re on the news again, it must be 7:30 – I have to go to work’. It’s a good timing mechanism. Anita: Yeah, and the little clock [at the bottom of the screen showing the time]… (S5: 18-19)

The following exchange between Donald and his son Tom is indicative of the routines the morning audience has to work around – and programs such as Sunrise have to work with as best they can:

Donald: See, one of the hard things about a show like that is actually, because it’s breakfast [time], you don’t sit around and watch it. You know, in a sense, you don’t sit around and watch it for an hour like you watch another show, like you might even watch… something on the ABC…, so in fact it’s hard to get a sense of, like, how much real content there is in it. Tom: Yeah, because you normally only see, like, half-an-hour…

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Donald: You turn it on, and you go get the paper outside, you go to the toilet, you go and make your toast, and, you know, you sit down, you watch something or other, and you go have a shower and come back… most people, unless they’re at home on holidays, or retired or something, probably don’t know what actually is covered over an hour, let alone the three hours [that] the program is on. (S3: 15)

Donald makes a very important point here, which is that there would be very few people who are able to watch Sunrise in its entirety each morning, given that it runs in a three hours timeslot. During many of the interviews for this research project, respondents tried to claim they might not make for ‘good’ or ‘ideal’ participants because they only watched bits of the show each morning. Loraine (who noted the only time she had actually sat down and watched the show for an extended period was when she was home from work sick) was one person who very strongly emphasised this point. The following response from Michelle was also quite typical of the way in which viewers described the way they watched Sunrise around (and while) doing other things:

Michelle: See, I suppose I think… mine is more a viewing in passing. Like, we’ll have the TV on here and I’ll go into the bathroom and I’ll come out and put my toast on and I’ll catch something. And then I’ll go in and, you know, do something else and I’ll come out and then I’ll stand here [in the lounge] with my bowl of cereal and toast and get a bit more of it then… I suppose I probably listen more than I watch.

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(S5: 18)

Michelle’s final point is also particularly important. Like several other participants, she noted they were still able to listen to the show (and to what was happening on it) while not being in the immediate presence of the television. This means Sunrise’s segmentation allows people to see the segments they wanted to watch, while at the same time still performing their daily routines:

Loraine: I’ll just switch it on… and I’ll have breakky and I might just stand there and watch it while I’m having breakfast, and, you know… when you’re on your own you don’t close doors – you can sort of hear things happening, and it might just [be] something and you’ll think, ‘Oh, what’s that about?’ (S4: 6-7)

Shaun: And they keep it moving. It’s variety: a bit of this, a bit of that. (S6: 6)

Ben: I kind of like wandering in and out of it… (S1: 31)

The layout or structure of the home was also cited in these discussions as a major factor which facilitated this viewing mode. In many cases it allowed the TV to be listened to, due simply to the proximity of bedrooms and kitchen to the TV/loungeroom. A combined lounge-dining space in the home meant participants found it more natural to watch TV in the morning. However, the physical proximity of the TV

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relative to the bedrooms was also a factor in participants being able to watch Sunrise while getting ready for work:

Anita: But also, my dad… worked in politics and media – so he would always of a morning have the news going… like, as in the radio. So we could never have the TV [on], you know… because you would have to go downstairs… it was like a completely different house… Whereas now we eat breakfast in front of the TV, we don’t sit at the table… It’s all one [area]… … Michelle: Yeah, I found, obviously, when you’re a young adult the place you live [in] is generally smaller. The kitchen and TV is generally [in] the same area. [At] Mum and Dad’s house, the TV room is the TV room, which is one end of the house… Where here [in our townhouse] you can do two things at once – you have your breakfast and watch the TV. (S5: 5)

The fact the show is often only listened to (reminiscent of Boland’s arguments about the show being like ‘radio on TV’) was pointed out very clearly in late April 2007 when the show began playing a unique chime sound immediately before the start of the news headlines at the top and bottom of every hour. Obviously the show’s producers understand while many audience members do have the TV switched on, it is not given their undivided attention. This sound signals to viewers (who may still be listening from another room in the house) that something they might be keen to watch is about to be shown. Indeed, if the show helps to structure audience routines, this sound may also act as an ‘alarm’ for viewers.

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Because its viewers seem to be in an almost constant state of movement in the morning, Sunrise’s segmented character may actually be a key part of its success. The program’s various segments allow people with a very wide range of interests to ‘cherry-pick’ the programming elements they wish to view:

Loraine: Like, if something’s there that’s not really interesting [to] me, I’ll just walk away. (S4: 9)

Shaun: Well, you’re not sitting there absorbing it, you’re walking around getting ready – so it’s the sort of thing you can walk in and out of the whole time. (S6: 4)

Because it constantly informs viewers of the upcoming segments, viewers can continue with their necessary morning routines when something is on that they do not like, and then know when to return to the TV when there is something they do like. This may explain why – as shown in Chapter 5 – the participants were able to give quite varied (and in some cases conflicting) reasons for watching Sunrise – that is, it allows people to choose what they want to take from the show, which may be anything from stock market updates to the latest gossip from Hollywood. The news ticker, for example, which shows headlines running across the bottom of the screen, also works in much the same way, because it allows people to still catch the main news headlines should they be unable to view the television for the half-hourly news

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bulletin. The entire structure of the program therefore recognises the viewing context very well – in a sense working with, rather than against, the domestic chaos that characterises the breakfast timeslot, and is an important part of the text—audience relationship.

Dominic: It is a time thing. When you’re getting ready for work you don’t have time to sit there and absorb it all… Anita: No, but on the odd occasion something has come up and I have [watched it intensely]. Michelle: … Or I’ll stand long enough to see the little things scroll across the bottom [of the screen]… (S5: 20)

“REAL PEOPLE HAVE NICKNAMES”: THE HOSTS

It seems that looks and age... have a different meaning in breakfast television and are less important than likeability and normalcy. (Wieten & Pantti, 2005: 30)

Earlier in this chapter, I noted Sunrise’s Executive Producer Adam Boland saw two important changes to the show which turned it from an unsuccessful morning program to the TV “cult” it has become today (Price, 2006). One change was the introduction of interactivity into the format, the other change was an ‘injection of personality’:

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Adam Boland: In its previous form, the presenters were straight-jacket presenters. They essentially read an autocue and said ‘good morning’ and ‘goodbye’, [and] that was it. With this show, clearly, we’ve put people into it… these five guys here who, essentially, don’t rely on an autocue. In fact, they’re usually better when they’re not reading an autocue, and that’s the point... So that was point one, and it was the most significant difference, and now everyone’s trying to do it. It was about putting personalities on the TV who were normal people with normal lives, who normal viewers could relate to. It seems so simple, but, for whatever reason, had not been done on TV.

Adam Boland notes the reason the hosts were selected was because they all “had other hobbies”, and were not just ‘TV people’ using the show as a way of furthering their individual careers. In some ways they may also have had the advantage of being the ratings losers, as this inadvertently gave them “time to make mistakes and develop into a team” (Beck, 2006). Blundell (2006) suggests Koch and Doyle are “the plainest talkers in the presenting game [in Australian TV]. There is no artifice, no wit, just the conversational range of two bright middle-class people with young children at a suburban barbecue.” The normality of the hosts therefore plays a very large role in the show’s appeal:

David Koch: The biggest comment we get is, ‘Oh, we love watching the show because you’re all so normal’. Well that’s a terrible indictment on the rest of television: we’re so ‘out there’ because we’re normal. Television is so manufactured… [but] people want to relate to other human beings.

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FIGURE 4: ‘MEL AND KOCHIE’ IN A MORE RELAXED MODE

Due to their ‘normality’ and playfulness, 7 the hosts were seen by participants in this study as an important factor in the appeal of the program:

Damon: Well… they’re casual. You’ll watch, like, Kochie and Mel and Nat talking to each other, and they talk like they’re just having dinner or something, so it’s a very casual feel. (S3: 5)

Ben: It seems like you’re watching just two average people who just happened to stumble into a studio almost. Which is one of the things I kind of like about it. They’re not dressy… they’re not… Haley: It’s not formal. Ben: Yeah, using common language… any minute you expect one of them to just pull out a can [of beer]… (S1: 32-33)

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FIGURE 5: TASTING KATE RITCHIE’S MEATBALLS 8

The sense of casualness that Sunrise has been able to create was placed in direct contrast to the kind of bond that most news programs have with their audience:

Tom: I think it’s a good thing, because, like I said, with lots of people you sort of see them as… like Kay McGrath 9 on TV as this big famous… newsreader, [but] then you see people like Mel and Kochie who, because they’re so personal and informal, and reveal a lot more about themselves than most people do. You know, they talk about their families casually, and their lives, where they’ve come from and what they’ve done in the past. They’re all really casual about revealing that information. (S3: 24)

Sunrise’s ‘casual’ approach to news has been so successful that it has leeched into other news programming on the Seven network, with various presenters adopting a less formal on-screen presence. Peter Meakin, head of news and current affairs at the

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network, has indicated (in Price, 2006) that since Sunrise’s success “[t]here’s been a fair bit of emphasis on presentation and writing, which makes the bulletin and journalist more accessible to the audience”. The intention of this adjustment is probably to make the audience feel more comfortable watching the presenters by having them look, sound and act in a casual fashion.

The presenters’ sense of fun, and comfort with their roles, usually comes through most strongly in the moments between different segments, where they have the opportunity to talk freely about their thoughts on the news. As the following excerpt shows, these moments often see all four main presenters break very heavily from a formal ‘straightjacket’ style, here talking about the very large diamond necklace that Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, had worn at a recent event in Uganda:

Melissa Doyle: I can’t get over how much bling she packed on to go to Uganda. Natalie Barr: She needs a chiropractor after that… Melissa Doyle: (Laughing) David Koch: I know… Natalie Barr: … she’d put her neck out. Melissa Doyle: I wonder if they had bodyguards.... well, they do anyway, don’t they? But just for the bling…! David Koch: And also, in the, sort of, darkest Africa, you know, they’d eat you for those diamonds, wouldn’t they? [Others laugh with embarrassment] Well, there are still cannibals in the jungles of Africa. Mark Beretta: Oh, gee… Natalie Barr: (Laughing) Somebody stop him now.

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Melissa Doyle: (Jokingly) The comments made by David Koch are his and his alone! It’s ten-past-eight on Sunrise. (Weather intro) Monique Wright: You cannot go to me after that! Melissa Doyle: (Leaning over in a fit of laughter) Well, you’re not staying with us! Monique Wright: Wow! David Koch: (Laughing) Well, on the Geographic… on the… National Geographic Channel… Melissa Doyle: Oh, shoosh! (Tries to stop Koch talking by putting a hand over his mouth) Monique Wright: There are few less-PC things you could possibly say, so we’ll try and save everybody there [by continuing with the weather]… (Sunrise, 26/11/2007)

While Koch’s comments in the above incident are actually quite racist, the entire exchange reveals two important things. The first is none of the hosts are reluctant to share their thoughts and views (even if they may occasionally be culturally inappropriate), and second, there exists a real comfort with the ‘liveness’ of the show. These ‘unscripted’ moments reveal Koch and Doyle as ordinary people who sometimes say the wrong thing, but can still laugh at their own mistakes. Co-host Melissa Doyle thinks this ‘realness’ is at the core of Sunrise’s success:

Melissa Doyle: I just think we’re real. It’s a real show. We cover things that people are interested in and we’re real people. We talk about ourselves, we talk

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about our family, we don’t pretend to be anything we’re not, we cover the news, we give people information, we have a bit of a laugh, we start the morning with a smile… we don’t think that we are second to anyone out there as for being able to cover the news and big events, and I just think we do it in a natural, real way.

Perhaps the strongest indicator of ordinariness in the show and the ‘familiar’ nature of the hosts is seen in their frequent use of nicknames when addressing each other. Even the introductory voice-over for the show appropriates the less rigid style by telling viewers: “This is Sunrise. Now here’s your hosts: Kochie and Mel” (Sunrise, 19/4/2007). Rather than talking about newsreader Natalie Barr, for instance, the hosts will instead refer to her as ‘Nat’. Whereas television newsreaders have historically been defined by their lack of visible personality – that they are mere ‘talking heads’ – on Sunrise we see the news team as ‘real’ people who are ‘like us’. They “come across to their audiences as nothing special and, precisely, as ‘part of life’” (Moores, 2005: 76).

Tom: It helps create the friendly family environment. Terri: Well, we all have… Real Australians have nicknames. (S3: 20)

The friendship between Koch, Doyle (‘Mel and Kochie’) and the rest of the Sunrise team is marketed very successfully in the show’s slogan, ‘Waking up with Friends’, which could very well be a neat description of the show generally and the hosts’ continual attempts to present themselves as friends, or even members of the wider

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audience family. In fact, an argument could be made that the show’s presenters themselves represent a televised pseudo-family. Feuer (1983: 19-20) notes Good Morning America is set up to deliberately mimic a nuclear family: “It does not take a psychoanalytic reading to see that members of the show’s family are meant as an ideal family for us… with a daddy and (various) mommies, brothers and sisters…” On Sunrise, ‘Mel’ and ‘Kochie’ can easily be seen as the surrogate mother and father of the ‘Sunrise Family’. This might explain why the actual spouses of the two are almost never seen on the show (with Doyle following this rule especially carefully). 10 To hear about the presenters’ actual romantic and/or spousal relationships would seem to break family ‘rules’ and constitute what could be seen as a kind of semiotic or textual ‘infidelity’.

The hosts’ children, on the other hand, are another matter altogether. In fact, a major event of 2006 was David Koch’s story about climbing Mt Kilimanjaro with his daughter Bree. And, after another mountain climbing adventure, Bree was actually a guest on the show in January 2007. The hosts’ image may also be a major reason why they are often represented in the popular media as model parents – so much so that Koch was named Australian Father of the Year in 2007 (see 'It's a Big Thing Being Dad: Koch,' 2007; Jones, 2007a). We are provided with enough information to know these are good ‘family’ people, but only insofar as it helps to bring us, the viewers, closer into the (official) Sunrise family.

The emphasis the show places on familiarity would also explain why the core ‘family’ almost never changes, and when it does, much is made of the event and the subsequent introduction of the new family member. When long-time weather

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presenter Grant Denyer left the program at the end of 2006, a lot of importance was given to his farewell as though he were a sibling departing home for the first time. That his replacement (Monique Wright) had regularly reported for the show in the past, and was therefore already well-known to the Sunrise audience, again shows the emphasis the show places on close emotional connections with the hosts.

The importance of the hosts in the audience’s enjoyment of the program became quite evident when participants discussed why they chose to watch Sunrise instead of Today. Almost every participant said the Today show team were not as likeable, not as authentic and did not appear to be as comfortable in their roles as Koch and Doyle:

Ben: I’ve flicked over to [Today] a few times, and it seems a lot more stagnant. I mean, it’s not as… I don’t even know how to describe it. What word describes it…? It’s just… Haley: …It’s just dull. Ben: It is. It’s just very dulled down, and not as… I guess they don’t touch on as much of the topics. (S1: 9)

Loraine: [Today] just seemed a bit false, like they were trying too hard. Yeah, like, ‘Oh, we’ve got to smile now’, you know, and ‘We have to be polite’. You know, it was just that sort of feeling that I got. Whereas the others, you know, with the Sunrise group, they just seemed, like, if Kochie will say something, you’ll just see Mel raise her eyebrows and say, ‘Oh, yeah, right, get a life’ type of thing. Whereas the other [show]… I just thought they were a bit false.

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(S4: 11)

If the Sunrise team can be seen as a kind of mediated family, that is not to say, that we as viewers are not also part of that family unit. In fact, anyone can literally become part of an extended blood-line by (freely) joining the ‘Sunrise Family’. Each week members of the ‘Sunrise Family’ receive an email which promotes the show, and provides news about the on-air family as though they were actual relatives. Apparently written by one of the hosts (see Figure 6, below), the emails are very casual and personal, and go so far as to provide quite mundane medical updates on an ill host (e.g. “[Mel]'s on a dose of antibiotics and reckons she'll be back on deck by Monday”).

Adam Boland: The ‘Sunrise Family’ now has 160 000 members across Australia, and [is] continuing to grow, and it just shows how powerful the brand is. But it also shows how much people wanted a show like Sunrise to relate to and to represent them. Television is an awfully powerful medium if used correctly, and for whatever reason TV wasn’t reaching out to people.

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Hi Stephen, Well here I am stuck at Brekky Central because four of the roads near our building have been shut for Dick Cheney!

One of our viewers actually missed his plane to Hobart because of the city congestion. I know the Vice President's an important bloke, but should it really mean gridlock for our biggest city? Anyway, I'm not going anywhere - so it gives me time to write to you! You may have been expecting a newsletter from Mel this week, but she's still a bit under the weather.

We thought something was wrong when we hopped off a plane from Melbourne on Monday afternoon. Mel started shouting at us! I hadn't said anything to offend her (for a change) - so we guessed her hearing was all over the shop.

Turns out, her sinus problems were causing chaos with her ears. She's on a dose of antibiotics and reckons she'll be back on deck by Monday. … We've got two big announcements to make. The first is a thing called Brekky With Beretts. He'll be travelling to all 16 AFL clubs during the season to read Sunrise sport from their home grounds. We'll get players and supporters down and put on a free brekky for everyone. You're the first to know about that - so lookout for dates once the season gets underway.

You're also the first to know about Lights Off Australia. We'll be announcing this on Monday's show in conjunction with the Australian Conservation Foundation. We want the first Wednesday of every month to be our lights off night. It's really simple. When you leave work on the first Wednesday of every month, we want you to simply turn your workplace lights off… We want to start changing habits - so we think this is an easy way to start. … Well, have a great weekend and don't forget Nelson's interview with Nicholas Cage on Weekend Sunrise.

I'm off to take on a Vice Presidential motorcade!

Cheers,

Kochie

FIGURE 6: ‘SUNRISE FAMILY’ NEWSLETTER (23/2/2007)

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Rogge and Jensen (1988: 91) suggest that “[t]he media form a part of the family system, a part many can no longer imagine living without… [They] provide remedies for loneliness; they are used to create ‘good’ feelings, and to define human relationships.” Likewise, Silverstone (1994: 40) claims:

Television becomes… a member of the family in a metaphorical sense but also in a literal sense insofar as it is integrated into the daily pattern of domestic social relations, and insofar as it is the focus of emotional or cognitive energy, releasing or containing tension for example, or providing comfort or a sense of security.

These arguments certainly have much truth in the case of some participants. Loriane, who lives by herself, acknowledged she watches Sunrise in order to have some sort of connection with other people, meaning she sees Sunrise and its hosts as a kind of surrogate family when there is not one present in the household:

Loraine: I think being in a unit… being on my own, not talking to anybody, like, sometimes I don’t speak to a soul from the time I get home in the afternoon – if I don’t speak on the phone – to when I come back to work the next morning, you know, if I’m at home. So it’s sort of like that… yeah, they’re [on Sunrise] laughing and joking and, you know, talking and you’re catching up on sort of news, and… whereas I used to just put the radio on… I think that way [watching Sunrise] I can actually see [them], you know.

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(S4: 2)

Dickinson, et al. (2001: 249) note that during breakfast time, families may be together, but each member has their “own trajectory, passing alongside others”, their own “space, time, and activity.” This may therefore explain in some measure, the comfort in familiarity Sunrise can offer their viewers, even when they are a domestic part of a family unit themselves. For example, Terri, who lives with her husband and two teenage children, suggested she enjoys Sunrise because she feels a quasi-social connection with the hosts, claiming: “I suppose for me… I just enjoy their company. I actually enjoy their company” (S3: 45). Haley, an interviewee, even recalled Melissa Doyle’s 2003 pregnancy, and felt a connection to her because she was able to follow the development of the co-host’s family.

Haley: I liked following [Mel’s] pregnancy, and her having a little kid – all that kind of stuff. That’s very cute. Ben: …and with Nat as well, they’d start sharing baby stories... [laughter] Haley: I didn’t love it that much, but you know, it was a familiar thing. Because you’d be watching that progress every day. (S1: 21)

All of these comments therefore lend weight to the suggestion that “Television in its liveness, its immediacy, its reality, can create families where none exist” (Feuer, 1983: 20).

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While almost all participants did like the hosts to varying degrees, some had suspicions their ‘ordinariness’ was a calculated effect, or, as Shaun claims, that they were playing ‘characters’:

Shaun: Like the ‘Sunrise Family’… you know, they go on with it so much it gets a bit schmaltzy, and I find that gets up your nose, but I still find their characters more engaging than the opposition station so that’s why we stick with it. (S6: 7)

Tom: I don’t really think it’s fake. It’s… Terri: Contrived? Rather than… Tom: It’s… Damon: It’s all an advertising ploy to me. Tom: Yeah, exactly. Pulling out some [high-school] English here, 11 it’s like, if you look at it seriously and try to deconstruct it, you can tell that they’re doing it to try and position the audience to accept a particular ideology. (S3: 23)

Of all the participants, brothers Tom and Damon most strongly adopted discourses of what Dahlgren (1988: 294) calls ‘media awareness’, or ‘media demystification’, as they were at pains to show heightened “awareness of televisual production elements.... characterized by both a critical-intellectual posture as well as one of a ‘show-biz fan’.” While this itself may be related to their younger age (and perhaps too a covert sibling rivalry), what makes Tom’s comments above even more interesting is the

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contradiction 12 that, despite his claim to be able see their ‘real’ purpose, he still appreciates Sunrise’s attempts to connect with the audience:

Tom: One of the biggest ones is ‘Waking up with Friends’, which they repeat, like, any time they come back or go to a commercial – and I think it’s part of them trying to be inclusive, and include you, as [though] you’re part of the show, as opposed to, ‘We’re the show, and you’re watching us’. So it’s… Interviewer: And you think that works? Tom: Yeah, I think that works a lot because, like, it doesn’t alienate the people, and it makes them feel like they’re doing something, or they’re part of it, as opposed to sitting back and not doing anything. (S3: 25-26)

While Sunrise’s emphasis on discourses of ‘family’ may still easily be seen as a cynical marketing ploy (and therefore an attempt to increase ratings), Melissa Doyle quite often seems to experience a genuine family-like bond when meeting fans of the show outside the studio each morning:

Melissa Doyle: Here [at the studio] we’ve got people visiting us because they see us as part of their family… there was a lady I was chatting to this morning, who has come to Sydney for her husband to have an operation, and she just said, ‘Oh, I’ve gotta come say G’day while I’m in town.’ It’s like, if you went to Melbourne you go visit your cousins. And I mean that’s incredibly flattering, more than anything that they see us as part of their family that they want to come and say G’day to.

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An incident which neatly sums up the way the show is perceived by viewers was the treatment it received while covering the 2006 Beaconsfield mine collapse – a massive news event which saw the death of one miner, but the miraculous rescue of two others who were trapped for two weeks. Adam Boland recalls the welcoming attitude toward the Sunrise crew among the tiny Tasmanian community, suggesting that – unlike many journalists – it has earned a great deal of respect from the general public:

Adam Boland: When the media arrived in [Beaconsfield] they copped a lot of flak: they were seen as being invasive. When Sunrise walked into town it was like, you know, this ‘halo’ effect. And it was completely different. People were making us scones and cakes, whereas the rest of the media they were throwing apples at. Really, people don’t see us as the media, they see us as Sunrise, and Sunrise is a family which they’re a part of.

LISTENING TO (AND HARNESSING) ‘THE FAMILY’

The final aspect of Sunrise to be discussed in this chapter is its disintermediation: its attempts to remove or lower (either physically or discursively) the many barriers between the show, its hosts and the audience. An important part of the sense of open exchange Sunrise has created with its audience, and a highly symbolic representation of the text—audience relationship, is its location of broadcast. The glass-walled studio – or ‘Breakky Central’ as it is often referred to – on Martin Place, literally in the ‘heart’ of Sydney’s central business district, is a very significant addition to

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Australian television. Certainly the idea of inviting viewers to come to the set of a TV show is not new – and the concept seems to be something of a hallmark of breakfast television worldwide – but it is a new concept in this country. Sunrise quite literally allows any person on the street to see or be a part of the program, thereby stripping away another layer of ‘mediation’ and further closing down the sense that it is an inauthentic or ‘constructed’ text. Here viewers can see that the hosts of Sunrise are still ‘normal’ people outside of the confines of the broadcast. Adam Boland argues the most significant aspect of the ‘Breakky Central’ studio is that it has taken the ‘openness’ of the show to another level:

Adam Boland: Well, first of all, there are no secrets. A lot of what you see on television is not all that ‘real’, you know, ‘the magic of television’ and all that… here is so real. It’s a fishbowl studio – there’s no hiding. The mic[rophone]s are live, on the commercial breaks the screens [outside] show exactly what’s happening for the audience, so they can come down and from 6 ‘til 9 they can see every single bit of us, so there’s no faking it… There’s no better way [for] our guys to represent our viewers than being able to know exactly what our viewers want to say. So we need to be able to put them in contact constantly – and this is a terrific place to do it.

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FIGURE 7: MOVIE REVIEWER JONO COLEMAN, WITH VIEWERS IN THE BACKGROUND

In many ways Sunrise’s location does act as a metaphor for the program’s physical proximity to Australians’ everyday lives in the same way the discourse of ‘Waking up with Friends’ does. We can see the chaos of everyday city life in the background of the program (see Figure 8, below) in the same way the program is a constant background to the daily lives of viewers. This contrasted very vividly with Today, which for some time was broadcasting from what appeared to be the top floor of a Sydney skyscraper, thus giving the possible impression that they, unlike Sunrise, were ‘above’ the people.

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FIGURE 8: NATALIE BARR AND DAVID KOCH ‘ON THE PLAZA’

FIGURE 9: SEVEN'S MARTIN PLACE STUDIOS (‘BREAKKY CENTRAL’)

David Koch sees the studio’s location as another way to enhance the show’s bond with its audience, thereby better understanding what viewers want and need:

David Koch: The biggest problem with news and current affairs is that journos never meet a viewer, or a reader, or a listener. They’re in this ivory tower and they walk into work, and they don’t even relate to their mum and dad, or brother and sister, as viewers. They walk into work and think, ‘I must be a journo, I do it this way, and I talk to people this way’. And, ‘Ohhh, [I] can’t talk to the great

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unwashed.’ You know, how arrogant is that? Our view is that this is your show… [We] talk to people, sign autographs, have photos [after every show], because, why not? It’s their show, they take ownership of it, we work for them, they’re our customers, so why shouldn’t we meet a customer and make them feel welcome and make them feel valued? And that’s what we do.

FIGURE 10: THE LIVE SUNRISE AUDIENCE

Koch’s strong statement here is significant because it highlights the emphasis the show places on its viewers: an audience orientation that seems to permeate everything the show does. That the discourse of ‘customers’ is invoked here by one of the show’s hosts suggests very strongly the repositioning of the audience from a ‘market’ – a group of people who are ‘out there’ to be targeted and exploited for maximum ratings – to that of consumers – a group of people who have needs that should be satisfied.

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Melissa Doyle: But it’s also really important for us: at the end of the show we go outside and we hang around and we do photos and autographs and stuff, and to meet the people you’re doing the show for, and have them say, ‘Oh gee, can you follow this up for me?’ or ‘I love it when you guys do that’, or whatever. I mean, we’re doing the show for them, we’re not doing it for anyone else, so it’s lovely to actually meet them, and most television shows don’t have that luxury. You [normally] sit in a little dark studio and the only interaction you have with your viewers is when the ratings go up or down.

Doyle’s response here is also significant because it speaks not so much of Sunrise’s effectives in communicating with viewers, but its ability to listen to, hear from and communicate with them as well. Although Sunrise’s presence at ‘Breakky Central’ can be a way for the program’s hosts to be ‘on show’ for another audience, its attempts to disintermediate text and audience has also been used as a way of facilitating a two-way exchange of news and views. In the program itself, these strong undertones of reciprocity show through in the constant soliciting of viewer feedback. Koch and Doyle very regularly ask viewers to ‘Hit the Soapbox’ – an electronic form on their website – to vocalise their thoughts on daily topics, so that they can read out some opinions on air later in the show. There is also much encouragement for the viewers to make the most of the ‘ROSwall’ (‘ROS’ = ‘Responses Of Sunrisers’ 13 ): a whiteboard on which viewer queries (about almost anything they wish to know) are noted, for later answering by an expert or someone who has looked into the issue in detail. These efforts give the viewers a sense that the Sunrise team are ‘there’ for them, not just for the sake of the advertisers:

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Adam Boland: We get around 8000 emails a day on the soapbox. They keep coming through at the rate of about 10 a minute right up until about 10 o’clock at night… it’s just… people, when they feel like they’ve got something on their mind, they think, ‘Oh, I must tell Sunrise’ and they get on. It’s bizarre but it works, and it’s terrific. You can come in here on the weekend and just have a look though [them] and think, ‘That’s what’s on people’s minds today’.

As we can see in the following excerpt, the sense the program wishes to convey is that it acts as a voice for its viewers, representing them 14 in wider political contexts:

David Koch: [At the Sunrise website] click on the ‘People Power’ icon. You can then tell us the major issue for you at this year’s election. We’ll then reveal the top five issues as voted by you, before pinning down our [politicians] on both sides of the fence… to make sure you get the answers you need. It’s an important election, so we’ll do all we can to make sure you’re properly informed, without all the usual spin… Melissa Doyle: And that’s the stuff that families care about, you know. It’s all well and good to say, ‘The economy’s great’, and all of that is good, but, you know, people have got sick kids that can’t get into hospital, and they’ve got elderly parents, and they’ve got real issues. David Koch: You set the political agenda. Don’t let it get set by the politicians. Come on, give us your suggestions. (Sunrise, 17/5/2007)

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By engaging the audience in an ongoing process of feedback, the program has in some instances leveraged the existing relationship with its ‘family’ by using them as news scouts. Here is the point then that Sunrise’s efforts to foster such a close relationship with its audience pay off, because they are, in a sense, “harnessing the hive” (Herz, 2005) to create a televisual form of ‘citizen’ journalism. The example of Beaconsfield that Adam Boland referred to earlier in this chapter is a telling one. The mine collapse and subsequent rescue of miners Todd Russell and Brent Webb was amongst the biggest news stories in Australia during 2006. Not only was Sunrise nominated for a 2007 Logie Award 15 for its coverage of the event, but the show was able to cover it in great detail 16 thanks to its existing relationship with viewers:

David Koch: We broke every major development in Beaconsfield. No radio station did, no other TV station did, no newspaper. And do you know why we broke it? Because our viewers were on the rescue teams… We break news all the time, and we do it because we have an army of viewers out there who are passionate about our show, who don’t treat us like ‘the media’; you know, we’re part of the family, and we’re really proud of that.

CONCLUSION

This chapter has argued Sunrise may be a case of mainstream commercial television that works, simply because it knows its audience, and communicates to (and with) them very effectively. At a time when ratings success stories on Australian television are becoming more and more infrequent, Sunrise not only bucks this trend, but

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succeeds amidst the even more pervasive audience losses felt by television news programs. Sunrise’s ratings are far from enormous (to have a little over 400 000 viewers in a day would be fairly typical, whereas Seven’s nightly news could expect over 1 million), but it certainly punches well above its weight in terms of wider community awareness, the industry ‘buzz’ it has generated, and its agenda-setting potential. It is not so much the raw viewing figures – quantitative statistics – that best account for the show’s important place in the Australian media sphere, but the quality of the relationship Sunrise has with its viewers. More startling, though, is that this success is a result of a very simple formula: understand the audience, and develop the product to meet their needs. As David Koch explains:

David Koch: … [Y]ou develop a product for a market, and I think that’s the big thing for us, and we take notice of our customers, and we do it in a way that they want. Why shouldn’t we?

In fact, the research presented in this chapter suggests Sunrise should be considered an example of ‘reciprocal’ journalism, because of the way it understands its audience, listens to them very carefully, and incorporates them into the program. Unlike most news shows on television, it is an open text; almost the televisual equivalent of finding out about the world from a ‘friend’ over dinner, rather than getting it from a journalist. At a time when the notion of ‘citizen’ journalism has become a buzz-word in journalism studies, Sunrise’s understanding of (and use of) its audience may be an example of broadcast journalism taking up some of the principles of user-generated content, adopting a semi-dialogical, rather than monological, approach to news production (albeit still ‘vertical’ in its orientation). It is ordinary, 17 but this is a vital

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reason for its proficiency in connecting with ‘ordinary’ Australians. That the show could be considered somehow extraordinary for taking this approach may well be a sad indictment of many journalists’ inability to understand, connect with and effectively communicate with the public they claim to serve. If the “measure of journalists’ success is their relationship with their audience” (Windschuttle, 1998c: 41), then Sunrise is indeed a very successful form of journalism.

As will be argued in the next chapter, although an intensely audience-centric approach to news production has typically been seen as having a necessarily detrimental effect on the substance of the news being presented (as per the arguments regarding tabloidization outlined in Chapter 1), this is not necessarily the case with Sunrise. In fact, Sunrise uses the relationship it has with its audience to help provide the news they are interested in, not necessarily ‘light’ or ‘tabloid’ topics. Just because the Sunrise viewing experience is generally not an intensive one does not mean it is not a worthwhile form of journalism, nor does it mean it is not important to understand the way in which viewers ‘use’ the show to get or stay informed.

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NOTES

1

During 2008 former Today show weatherman Monte Dwyer was the show’s roving reporter, he only

posted videos to the Sunrise website in lieu of live satellite broadcasts. Throughout 2007, Monique Wright travelled across Australia in the ‘Sunrise Winnebago’ reporting the weather live from a series of towns around the country. Before her, Grant Denyer did much the same from 2004 to 2006. Breakfast radio host Fifi Box took over this role in 2009. 2

The show also has a core group of regular guests, specialising in everything from parenting to

‘gadgets’, and cooking to films. 3

Not to be confused with its American namesake.

4

Immediately prior to this 2004 event, the total share of viewing among the commercial networks for

the year-to-date was 29.3% for Nine, 24.8% for Seven, and 24.5% for Ten (OzTAM, 2004). By the end of 2007, this had shifted dramatically, to 29.9% for Seven, 26% Nine and 23.5% for Ten (OzTAM, 2007). 5

The Ten network program 9AM, for instance, is another program which has attempted to replicate the

on-screen relationship that has characterised Sunrise, with hosts Kim Watkins and David Reyne both appropriating a more causal presentation style, and light-hearted banter. 6

Initially, Rowe went on maternity leave, and later left the network, but not before an affidavit by the

former head of News and Current Affairs Mark Llewellyn stated that then-CEO Eddie McGuire had spoken in a private meeting of his desire to “Bone” (i.e. fire) her (Stone, 2007: 250). Since this time, Rowe has been employed by Seven, and has occasionally filled-in for Natalie Barr as Sunrise’s newsreader. 7

Their willingness to be playful was shown when they actually participated in a sketch for The

Chaser’s War on Everything, in which Chris Taylor appeared to propose a divorce to his wife live on Sunrise. Although the clip was actually a setup with the Sunrise hosts and crew, because it appeared to Chaser viewers that he had used the phrase “get the fuck out of my life” on live national television, it became a viral YouTube hit (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyPHkJMlD0Q). 8

Kate Ritchie is an Australian actress, who is most famous for playing the role of Sally Fletcher on the

Seven soap Home and Away for 20 years. In an interview on Sunrise she had boasted of her ‘special’ meatball recipe, and here Koch and Doyle are testing it out. 9

A long-time Brisbane news presenter.

10

While David Koch does talk about his wife with some regularity, it is certainly not the sort of

regularity that would characterise discussion between two good friends. 11

Introductory media studies is taught as part of the English curriculum in Queensland.

12

There is an interesting disjunction here between how Tom says the show is trying to position him,

and his acceptance of it, demonstrating that high school media education may teach a way of speaking about the media that is fundamentally disconnected from their everyday lives as audience members. It may imply to students that the media is to be feared and kept at a distance, even if this is not how students themselves view and relate to it.

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13

Naming a white board the ‘ROSwall’ is also a coded reference to former federal Minister for Sport

Ros Kelly, who resigned her position after revealing that important decisions relating to the allocation of sports funding were decided while a team gathered around a white board in her office. 14

In the final instalment of the ABC’s 2008 political documentary The Howard Years, Joe Hockey

recounted feeling out of touch with the Australian public when, as a member of a party whose leader still opposed ratifying the Kyoto Agreement, he would appear on that show in the face of over half a million signatures to Sunrise’s ‘Cool the Globe’ online petition. He stated: “it was pretty clear something was happening, but I think we lost our touch on the environment at that point” (The Howard Years, 8/12/2008). 15

Australian Television’s equivalent of the Emmy Awards.

16

As the freed miners were being driven slowly away from the site past the media, Todd Russell

invited David Koch into his ambulance, and presented him with his identity tag as a memento. After being criticised for his (supposedly intrusive) actions, Today later ran a promotion stating that they were not just ‘Ambulance Chasers’. 17

Like Bonner (2003), I use the term “ordinary” without any intended sense of disrespect.

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CHAPTER 5

SUNRISE

AND

PUBLIC

KNOWLEDGE:

NEWSTAINMENT,

POLITICS AND THE ‘TELEVISUAL’ SPHERE

David Koch: We’re communicators. We’re meant to communicate the news that people find interesting and want to take an interest in.

In its fairly short life, Sunrise has been an object of regular controversy. In particular, it has been criticised in its role as a news program – that it has ‘dumbed down’ its presentation, and that it trades heavily on news as a commodity. The undertone of these claims is that it has bowed to commercial imperatives by turning ‘tabloid’, is no longer fulfilling its role as a news source, and its viewers are thus not adequately informed about matters of public importance. This chapter explores Sunrise as a form of news, looking specifically at whether or not its ‘reciprocal’ journalism is successful in facilitating viewer knowledge regarding the public sphere. It will argue that although Sunrise has commonly been seen as a “fluffy, informal approach to news presentation” (Price, 2006), as a form of ‘newstainment’ it actually blurs the

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traditional conceptions of ‘light’ and ‘hard’, ‘tabloid’ and ‘broadsheet’ news explored in Chapter 1.

This chapter will therefore argue that while Sunrise has, like other breakfast television shows, been dismissed as ‘trivial’, its less rigid and more casual style of news presentation may increase the possibility of engaging viewers in a way that more traditional journalistic forms have often failed. By hybridising and reworking the boundaries of ‘serious’ news and ‘light’ entertainment, Sunrise has actually had considerable and lasting impact on the recent history of Australian politics. Those who criticise the show for being less formal or heavily commercialised may be judging the show via criteria which are no longer applicable to the realities of news in the 21st Century. This mainstream show facilitates knowledge in a unconventional manner, and therefore should be considered a part of what Baym (2007a) has termed the “televisual sphere”: a hybrid discursive style of political discourse, incorporating both “postmodern stylistics” and “rational-critical dialogue” (Baym, 2007a: 93).

TABLOID?

Whereas news was literally the thing television networks once gave away out of a sense of service, 1 many have argued that since the 1980s in particular, the market has dictated what is newsworthy (Bromley, 1998: 26), and thus there has been a steady decline in the standards of contemporary journalism. In his book Newszak, Franklin (1997) examines what he sees as shifts in the editorial practices of contemporary news media. He claims that many of the characteristics of tabloidisation represent a major

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retreat from the kind of journalism which serves society and dutiful citizens; that the news media are simply too often “concerned to report stories which interest the public than stories which are in the public interest” (Franklin, 1997: 4). Franklin looks at the way in which news is presented as just another form of entertainment, examining the connection between the declining quality of news and modern newsroom cultures and ownership patterns. One of Franklin’s main arguments is that while tabloid news forms were apparently once simply a sideshow to quality journalism, commercial imperatives have seen this mindset become the norm rather than the exception. In the end, the concerns over tabloidisation reveal an old distinction, that: “[u]ltimately, information is judged to provide ‘good’ television and entertainment ‘bad’” (Fiske, 1989a: 185).

Even though there have been numerous scholars quick to point out that many newspapers of past centuries treasured a sea monster tale or openly gossiped over the sexual dealings of townspeople (Lumby, 1999b; Glynn, 2000; Winch, 1997: 5-7), Franklin is one of the many who argue the proliferation of popular news is a particularly recent phenomenon (see also Hallin, 1994: 170-80; Bromley, 1998). As Franklin (1997: 4) points out: “Since the late 1980s the pressures on news media to win viewers and readers in an increasingly competitive market have generated revised editorial ambitions. News media have increasingly become part of the entertainment industry.” Now the idea that news can also make money has fully taken hold in the domain of television, 2 many have argued the pursuit of profit means media outlets have turned away from their original mission of quality journalism (a badge of honour in many ways) and focus instead on circulation or ratings figures to thereby

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continually increase profits for investors who are typically concerned only with financial imperatives (Meyer, 2003: 12; Hallin, 1994: 176).

Although the generic suggestion that things used to be of higher quality is often used to critique everything from pop music to motor cars, some theorists (Hallin, 1994; Hirst et al., 1995; Bromley, 1998) have argued (albeit supported by inconclusive 3 empirical evidence) the past two decades in particular have seen the phenomenon of ‘tabloidisation’ take a stranglehold over television. As McKee (2005) outlines in his book The Public Sphere, the widely held perception is news (like the media generally) is now trivialised, commercialised and turned into a spectacle to the detriment of the genuine engagement and empowerment of citizens.

These criticisms are the very same ones directed towards Sunrise. The locus of these debates has surrounded commercialisation, which is particularly noticeable in Sunrise’s incorporation of sponsorship, which implies that it is merely ‘chasing’ an audience through entertainment to generate more revenue from this advertising. Coffee brand Nescafé and airline Jetstar are mentioned on a periodic basis, Berocca Performance has sponsored the weather segment, and every competition the show runs is a promotion for a product or service. The ABC’s Media Watch 4 has highlighted the show’s commercial agreements on two occasions: once pointing out that the Sunrise ‘Gadget Guy’ Pete Blasina is effectively advertising the products he supposedly ‘reviews’, and, on another occasion, exposed the fact that watchmaker Rado had supplied products to sports presenter Mark Beretta without fully disclosing the extent of the relationship. This level of cross-promotion does raise a question as to whether its commercial activities may interfere with the show in its potential capacity

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as a reliable, impartial and ‘complete’ news source. The worry is that by embedding advertising to such a degree, the show might in some way be beholden to its commercial interests, and viewers, in the words of Mark Crispin Miller (in Gray, 2008: 138), will learn “only to consume”.

FIGURE 11: SOME EXAMPLES OF SUNRISE’S INCORPORATION OF ADVERTISING

Public criticism of Sunrise’s priorities may well have reached an apogee when the show was deemed to have insulted war veterans by allegedly attempting to schedule a dawn memorial service from Vietnam – commemorating the war in that country – an hour early so it could screen live on Sunrise on ANZAC Day 5 in 2007. The perception was that the show had judged its own broadcasting requirements as being more important than the important symbolism of the ceremony. The incident was so highly-publicised that it saw politicians Kevin Rudd and Joe Hockey end their longstanding relationship with the program, and it almost ended Adam Boland’s tenure as Executive Producer of the show (see Meade, 2007d). It is important to note, however, all of these criticisms have not hurt the show’s popularity in any major way. Indeed, in the previous chapter, David Koch argued Sunrise’s intense relationship with its audience is a key part of the program’s success. He believed the various aspects that were argued in the previous chapter as being evidence of ‘reciprocal’ journalism, were

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not a sign the show was ‘pandering’ – or operating strictly “by the numbers” (Gitlin, 1994: 47) – but was taking notice of the needs and desires of its ‘customers’.

GENRE

Adam Boland openly acknowledges Sunrise’s intention to entertain its audience, describing its format as ‘newstainment’:

Adam Boland: It’s a clumsy term that a lot of people hate, but I love it, because, essentially, we’ve merged news with entertainment, and [are] extraordinarily proud to have done so. I mean, the reality is that people can be informed and entertained at the same time [and] it’s arrogant to suggest otherwise.

The show’s quite coherent ‘packaging’ of such a multi-faceted, highly segmented product, and its ability to generate a sense of continuity out of the various pieces (Wieten & Pantti, 2005: 35) – perhaps creating what Raymond Williams (1975) famously labelled ‘flow’ – may have been the reason why the participants in this study appeared to have some difficulty describing the program in generic terms. Some of the participants had trouble discussing the show in terms of its ‘genre’, perhaps because of its infusion of multiple genres:

Haley: Ahhhh, it’s a bit ‘current-affairs-y’ I guess. 6 (S1: 5)

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Tom: It sort of doesn’t fit into a genre. It sort of, like, takes a bit of a news program, and takes a bit of a lifestyle program, and, you know, grabs all of [this] other sub-genre stuff… (S3: 7)

Ben: I would say it was just a typical morning show, like any other. (S1: 5)

One of the more interesting findings to come out of this research was that participants said they watched the show for very different reasons. Perhaps because it is a heavily segmented form of ‘newstainment’, many said they watched the show for its news coverage, while on the other hand several participants said their sole reason for watching it was to be entertained. This would suggest the show’s mix of various topics is not spoiling its ‘purity’, but is a real enticement for people with varied interests to watch the program:

Gary: Oh, personally, I watch it for the news. Then, obviously, they have some sort of entertainment value… (S2: 5)

Donald: If I do watch it, I’m usually trying to catch the news headlines and maybe the weather. (S3: 44)

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Michelle: I would say I watch it, firstly, for the news aspect. But yeah, they are personable characters, I suppose. I particularly liked the weather guy, 7 ‘cos he was hot… (S5: 7)

Shaun: I think it would be more to be entertained. (S6: 13)

Many of the interviewees also noted the show’s hybridity by acknowledging there were various elements which they liked to certain degrees. Haley, for instance, stated she enjoys the program because of its combination of entertainment segments and its degree of news presentation (not either of the two on its own):

Haley: Well, it works for me because when I do first get up I think that is when the entertainment things are [on]. And that’s when I’m the least… conscious. And so hearing about entertainment works. And as you sort of gain more consciousness you want the news, and the more, you know, intellectual subjects… and the more practical things, like the weather. (S1: 26-27)

Some people even said they just watched the show ‘because it was on’, which indicates the degree to which it has been built into viewers’ daily lives. Anita, for instance, felt it was just normal to have the TV on in the morning, and Sunrise was the best available choice:

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Anita: It’s just a good time of the morning… Like, it’s the better one on at that time…. And I used to [watch] it for the entertainment section. (S5: 9)

‘DUMBING DOWN’?

Whereas Adam Boland (in Chapter 4) sees Sunrise as television’s equivalent of morning radio, co-presenter David Koch thinks of the show’s mix of news and entertainment as similar to a ‘news-heavy’ newspaper:

David Koch: Mischa Barton is on the front page of [today’s issue of] The Australian. So you have the news section, you have the weather as we do all the time, and then you get on to the features… ‘Strewth’ is the gossip column… you know: ‘A hard-hitting newspaper having a gossip column? That’s not news!’ But this is Australia’s flagship national newspaper. That is what you call packaging a product up for readers, and we do exactly the same. 8

As mentioned at the start of this chapter, two common criticisms of Sunrise surround its commodification of news; that it either presents ‘tabloid’ news, or that it treats ‘serious’ news in a superficial manner. On 2 May 2007, for example, the hosts spent several minutes speaking to the winner of the previous night’s finale of Dancing With the Stars (Australian singer Kate Ceberano) 9 – an interview which was partially replayed during a news bulletin later in the program. Likewise, in his first interview with Sunrise (on 31/7/2007), the new Premier of Victoria John Brumby was asked not

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so much about his policies, but about personal matters such as whether he was “a wine or a beer man”, and how many burners he had on his barbecue.

These cases are just a few of many that have engaged with classic private sphere issues. In another example, on 16 August 2007 the hosts interviewed a gay teenage couple, talking about their experiences of ‘coming out’ at such a young age, offering advice for those viewers who might be faced with a similar situation. Although such instances might be interpreted as further proof of Sunrise’s tabloid style, it may simply be a case of this program framing larger social and political issues through a lens of the individual. Although the private sphere has been perennially considered the exclusive domain of ‘soft’ news (see Hartley, 1996: 145; Manga, 2003: 140-44), personal stories of everyday people 10 can often be a means of understanding the micro-level impact of meta-level political forces. Electoral participation in the form of voting is perhaps the ultimate democratic act (the ‘political’), but one that is only possible through the actions of individuals (the ‘personal’). Even Habermas recognised that “it was the development of private identities with private opinions within the literary public sphere that underpinned the development of the public sphere and of public opinion” (Garnham, 2007: 212).

Because journalists have “tended to work with rather narrow conceptions of what is political” (Connell, 1991: 242), any shift of focus away from institutional politics has been seen as a retreat from the weighty. 11 And yet politics, as Van Zoonen (2005: 5) points out, is also “a ‘field’ that exists independently from its practitioners, and… accommodates the continuous struggle about power relations in society”. Perhaps a product of post-modernism itself, many have argued the public sphere too has

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fragmented into smaller and smaller spheres or ‘sphericules’ (Barker, 1999; Gitlin, 1998), not linked by physical space or traditional conceptualisations of politics (for example, the state), but by social movements, sub-cultures and similar belief systems which allow people to engage in what Hartley (1999a) calls “DIY [do-it-yourself] citizenship” (see also McKee, 2002). This has led to the suggestion the presence of private sphere issues in the public sphere better reflects the fact people participate in unique and complex forms of citizenship (Holland, 2001).

David Koch: If there’s one comment that gets under our skin, it is this so-called ‘dumbing down’ of news. Now, everyone in the media is meant to be a communicator, and we present the news in a way that touches people and is understood by people [so] they don’t glaze over, and make it real. And the Lebanon one is a classic example – we cover what’s happening: the line from the UN, the line from the Israelis, the line from the USA, and everyone’s bombarded with that… and then we have our viewer telling us what it’s really like to be a human being there. Not Koffi Anann sitting in New York, or a CNN [reporter who’s] just walked out of the Hilton, this is one of them: a real person [saying] how they’re feeling hiding under their bed and hearing bombs go ‘round. Now for us, that’s our way of doing it, and, I think, an incredibly powerful way – that’s a really approachable way.

Adam Boland (in Stone, 2007: 100) acknowledges when its comes to news, the show’s main priority is to provide what viewers are interested in, stating: “Our agenda [is] firmly driven by what we think our viewers will like, not what the Canberra [press] gallery perceives as exciting.” Co-host Melissa Doyle, who is a former

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Canberra press gallery journalist, likewise claims the show prioritises news in terms of a natural curiosity:

Melissa Doyle: You might have a dinner party, and you’ll talk about [the foiled terror plot] in London at the moment, and then over dessert you might go, ‘Oh my God, no one’s seen Tom Cruise’s baby yet’. And that doesn’t mean the lines are blurred or softened, I mean, I personally pride ourselves on our coverage of news.

Whereas some have suggested Sunrise’s news coverage is merely a side-note to its entertainment priorities, the empirical research conducted for this thesis suggests it may have achieved a balance of these elements that is well suited to the audience. Most people in the study stated while Sunrise was not so much a thorough or ‘complete’ news source, this was not an issue to them. A strong theme coming through in the participants’ discourses was that their main use for the news segments in the program (and what they were looking for in a news show at that time of the day) was as a quick way of catching up with what has been happening, rather than an in-depth news source to satisfy their full range of interests:

Haley: No, it’s really not [my core source of news]. It’ll give you the highlights. And I’ll get my ‘real’ news by looking at everything: from the Internet, or word of mouth… (S1: 30)

Michelle: You just feel like you know what’s going on, I suppose. (S5: 10)

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Loraine: I think [it’s] … a light way of keeping [up]… ‘cos… I don’t seem to get time to read the paper, so that just touches on the ‘what’s happening’ around the country. (S4: 3)

Dominic: It’s not detailed. ‘Cos I work at a newspaper… I get detailed news from the newspaper, [but] in the morning it’s good to wake up and know what’s happened. (S5: 10)

Anita: Well, they don’t go in depth really, but they do what they need to do for the morning, which is to give you a snapshot of the main events. And then if you want more in-depth [news] then you will buy a [news]paper, or you will watch the news that evening if you want to find out more. Because you don’t have time to sit there and listen to in-depth stories, and you just want to [have] a brief [understanding]… (S5: 28-29)

Shaun: See, I’ll look at [news]papers at work sometimes, or I’ll catch news in the afternoon, and… I’ll usually have ABC radio on in the car, so I guess I rely on that for information…. [Sunrise is] not the most thorough news coverage you’d ever come across, but I guess that I get that in the car from listening to ABC radio or looking at a [news]paper somewhere. (S6: 13-14)

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Ben: I would say [it offers] general news highlights… but definitely I would get more local news from there. The thing is that I don’t read any local news [web]sites… pretty much the only local news I get is from Google News, 12 because that realises I’m in Australia and gives me Australian news. And it’s sad, but that’s the only source I get Australian news from on a regular basis. And, the local news I usually get from Sunrise, and, once again, I will go and look for other sources as well… (S1: 29)

Many of the participants stated they mainly wanted the program to get them up to speed with any major news stories that may have broken while they were asleep.

Michelle: I rarely catch night-time news because I’ve got things on after work. So, yeah, I suppose Sunrise is the ‘radar’, and if something comes up that is of interest, then that’s when I will get on and check it on the Internet at work, because that’s probably my next resource. (S5: 34)

Anita: Like… it’s enough to say ‘These are the main things that are happening at the moment’. (S5: 11)

Several of the above comments point to the fact the show operates in an intertextual media environment, offering a relatively brief summary of what is happening.

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However, it also allows – and often encourages – viewers to either follow-up on this information in another source or wait for it to be covered in more detail on the program outside of the half-hourly news segments. This certainly lends weight to Jones’ (2006) arguments for a cultural approach to the study of mediated citizenship, which foregrounds the plurality of political communication resources in viewers’ lives. It is quite apparent in this research that audiences do not perceive the news they view in isolation, but as merely one text in a series of interconnected news-gathering activities. These may include doing further research on a certain topic, or merely supplementing the Sunrise perspective with a range of others across the TV schedule.

Donald was one participant who saw Sunrise as just one very small, often fleeting, part of his main news sources, the newspaper and the local ABC radio station:

Donald: See, I don’t actually listen to the radio out [in the lounge], I read the paper. But [I do listen to the radio] when I go to the shower, because it’s normally around news time – so I get the quarter-to-8 news. ‘Cos I’m showering around… Terri: Don is a man of pattern. Donald: Well, yes, I prefer to be. Normally I leave [home at] about 8. So I’m normally out of here a bit later than Terri, so I don’t actually listen – if you’re asking about media – I don’t actually listen… I read the paper, and I like to do that in silence – old-fashioned silence. But, I mean, sometimes the TV is on, either because I’ve left it on or someone else has left it on… (S3: 66)

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Perhaps then a better way of considering Sunrise and its domestic ‘place’ would be that it is a reflection of interests, and finding out about the major news stories breaking around the world plays a part in the overall range of activities. People, afterall, “don’t turn from freedom-loving, fact-seeking members of the public when reading or watching the news into fantasy-loving, thrill-seeking consumers when they become the audience for commercial entertainment” (Hartley, 1999b: 20).

Ben: I know that if they pushed the news further and longer and did all sorts with it, I’m pretty sure that the viewership would decline… I don’t think it’s the main reason why people actually tune-in. I understand their reasons for keeping it that small to be honest. But I mean, there’s only so much that you can do, especially on a morning show, and I think… a lot of it isn’t too bad. (S1: 30)

Michelle: Yeah. You get the crux of the news, but it’s not, like, intense or anything. If I really… wanted to know everything about what’s going on in the world, I’d watch SBS news or ABC news when I get home at night. (S5: 12)

DEPTH OF NEWS

Several interviewees in this study used the word ‘light’ to describe Sunrise’s news coverage. It seems, however, this term may have actually been employed mainly as a way of describing its more approachable and more casual format (as per arguments in

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the previous chapter), rather than a way of understanding the standard of its news content. As we can see from the following exchanges between Anita and her housemate Michelle, and between Shaun and his wife Kristie, there was some confusion between the delivery style of the news, and its substance:

Anita: It’s quite easy-going and lightweight really. Like, it’s not a very serious news show. Michelle: It’s not serious, yet they cover pretty good issues. I know in recent times they’ve been really big on the whole energy efficiency, global warming and stuff like that. Anita: That’s true. Michelle: But they do… like they did a thing on [Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee] David Hicks the other morning. (S5: 8)

Shaun: It’s a little bit like a radio breakfast show… it’s all light-hearted laughs – nothing’s too serious. Kristie: Although they do have their serious moments. Shaun: Yeah, true. (S6: 4)

Implicit in both of the above discussions is, arguably, a difficulty for these participants in reconciling the seemingly conflicting priorities of ‘substantial’ news and entertainment. The problem the viewers appear to face is describing the show’s news coverage in a way that does not simply replicate binary definitions (e.g.

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soft/hard) that have come to be so common in debates over ‘tabloidisation’ in the late 20th and early 21st centuries (outlined at the start of Chapter 1), and may be real evidence that these terms hinder a better understanding of contemporary forms of news and journalism. That is, because Sunrise eschews many of these simplistic divisions, participants found it very hard to articulate a singular conception of the program that would be familiar to them. While it is personal and audience-focussed (as David Koch argues earlier in this chapter), these particular participants recognise Sunrise’s end product as quite different to the supposedly audience-focussed ‘tabloid’ news and current affairs like A Current Affair and Today Tonight. In fact there have been numerous cases where serious political and social issues have been covered in quite some depth. This combination may also explain Executive Producer Adam Boland’s suggestions that the show has far greater appeal to younger viewers as a news show than traditional TV news and current affairs:

Adam Boland: [Sunrise] gets written about a lot but I think people miss the point. I think the fact that other programs are so interested is not just because we rate to so well, but because of who is watching. We’re actually attracting younger demographics back to news. So, for that to happen, news organisations, news bosses are saying, ‘Hmmm… that’s exactly the audience we need to sustain our product… can we start using elements of Sunrise?’

Indeed, for every textual feature that could be used to argue the case that Sunrise diminishes the quality and substance of news discourse (as per the arguments outlined at the start of this chapter), there is likely to be an example of how the show actually engages with major political or social issues in a way that audiences are likely to find

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more comprehensible. Mark Riley’s 13 ‘Riley Diary’ on the Weekend version of the program, for instance, is a lengthy and often very detailed analysis of the week’s political events, but attempts to present traditionally complex or ‘boring’ issues in an entertaining or more digestible way. It is quite possible this approach to ‘high’ politics is what has singled Sunrise out for so much attack, because these criticisms levelled at the program are framed by outdated ways of understanding the relationship between the media and public knowledge.

Many of Sunrise’s ‘serious’ moments come via its Foreign Affairs Editor, Dr Keith Suter, who appears regularly on the program to talk in-depth about matters of foreign policy, terrorism or geopolitics from a more down-to-earth perspective. The following excerpt comes from 19 April 2007, where Dr Suter provided some historical and political context of gun control in the in US, following the Virginia Tech massacre:

Keith Suter: … The [USA’s] Bill of Rights… are the rights an American has against their own government. And, so, one of those rights – number two – is the ‘Right to bear arms’. Now, the actual wording is a little ambiguous, ‘cos there’s a reference to having a militia… you need to have a good militia, therefore everybody needs a gun at home, so everyone can be called up instantly to oppose people who invade – they were still worried about the British and the French and the Spanish – or to be able to put down Indians or to be able to put down slaves. So it’s written right into the American Constitution, and you basically can’t amend the constitution. A few years ago they tried to amend the constitution to say women were equal [to] men – the ERA: ‘Equal Rights Amendment’ – and it failed.

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Melissa Doyle: Wow. With the guns, how easy is it for people to actually get them? I mean, I guess this boy that conducted this shooting, he had a history of mental illness, he’d had a lot of troubles before, he’s a university student, and he’s got this massive amount of weaponry. Keith Suter: Yeah, but he had no criminal record… Melissa Doyle: Is it easy for anybody to get [guns]? Keith Suter: No, no, he was fine – he was perfectly eligible. He had no criminal record, he was legally in the United States and he was an adult, so he met the basic criteria. They had no police record against him, he had no history of felony…

FIGURE 12: DR KEITH SUTER, SUNRISE FOREIGN AFFAIRS EDITOR

Melissa Doyle: So, anyone can pretty much go and [get] whatever weapon they want? Keith Suter: Yeah! Providing you’re legally in the United States, and you don’t have a police record… and you’re, obviously, an adult. David Koch: And it won’t affect the Presidential campaign or anything…?

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Keith Suter: No, it won’t come up next year. No mainstream candidate will ever take on the gun lobby in the United States – it’s just too powerful. Melissa Doyle: Thank goodness our thinking is so very different. Keith Suter: Let me just say… [Prime Minister] John Howard, when he speaks to George [W.] Bush on this issue, is very strong on gun control. And I’m often critical of John Howard, but when it comes to gun control he’s very good, and he’s willing to defy the Americans on this issue. Because Australia is leading the campaign against small arms, America is a major obstacle, and Mr Howard has raised this a number of times with the President. David Koch: Oh, good on him – let’s hope he does it again. And it’s amazing because across the border in Canada, they don’t have a problem with guns at all, do they…? Keith Suter: No. David Koch: …even though they share a border, they’ve got gun control. Keith, thank you for that. (Sunrise, 19/4/2007)

What stands out in this discussion is, firstly, the degree of informality in the proceedings, evidenced by the natural or conversational approach to the questioning and the lack of complex language being used. The second very noticeable aspect of this excerpt is the lengthy context and informed analysis Dr Suter offers for the viewer which would otherwise not feature in an ordinary news story, particularly in a one or two minute news story comprising part of a nightly bulletin. As one participant in the audience interviews points out, the interviews on Sunrise (like the example

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above) are most often used to further flesh-out the issues on the news agenda and can help to de-construct or interpret abstract concepts:

Tom: One of the things I’ve always noticed about the interviews and stuff is often they’re used to complement the news. So, like, one of the news articles might be about the war in Iraq, and then they’ll get a political guy in to talk about the political position that the government’s in, and why they’re in Iraq, and what they’re doing there, and why it would be good or bad for them to pull out and all that kind of stuff… (S3: 51)

Shaun: Even the international-affairs fellow [Dr Suter] they get on: he’s very geared towards the common man, you know. Kristie: Yes, he is. And it’s very easy to understand. They keep it short but you know what’s going on. And I find – because I’m not into that, but I do like to know what’s going on in the world – I find they just gear it at my level: it’s not too serious, or too above my head. (S6: 6)

THE TELEVISUAL SPHERE

Further to the concept of “discursive integration” (see Chapter 2), Baym (2007a) has argued that, in its nightly interview segment, The Daily Show could be seen to be enacting a (possibly new) model of political interview that blends celebrity chat show

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aesthetics – “commercial spectacle focused on personality and style” – with the hallmarks of a modernist, critical journalistic interview – a “reasoned exchange of information and argument” (Baym, 2007a: 99). Arguing against, for example, Neil Postman’s (1986) determinist critique of television and the public sphere – which posits that the medium has heralded the “dissolution of public discourse” (Postman, 1986: 5) because it favours emotion, style, immediacy and the visceral, over and above meaning, reason, thought and dialogue – Baym (2007a: 95) instead suggests it is better to think of interviews on TDS as part of a “televisual sphere”. He describes this space as “an intermediary notion between Habermas’ modernist ideal of a rational-critical public sphere and a postmodern conception of the image-based public screen” (Baym, 2007a: 95).

It may be instructive to consider Sunrise in the same light. Its mix of informed discussion and light banter, ‘high’ politics with popular culture suggests this program is focussed on entertaining, but that does not mean it does not simultaneously enlighten viewers. For example, Sesame Street character Elmo was a guest on the program on Thursday July 17 2008, and the very next morning, in the very same chair, sat Nobel Peace Prize-winner and President of East Timor, José Ramos-Horta, discussing his country and his own political future. So while Sunrise may be a “blend of personal chat, information and showbiz” (Beck, 2006), it can be – and often is – highly political. Like The Daily Show, its “blending of postmodern stylistics and a modernist belief in reasoned discourse has much to teach us about the changing nature of the mediated public sphere and emerging possibilities for the practice of political discourse” (Baym, 2007a: 94-95).

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FIGURE 13: SUNRISE GUESTS, ELMO AND JOSÉ RAMOS-HORTA

To demonstrate this argument even further, I would like to draw attention to the nowdefunct segment called ‘The Big Guns of Politics’, which received much praise from participants in this research. This segment was especially noteworthy for the fact the political careers of its participants seemed to ride on the coat-tails of Sunrise’s success. It arguably played an important role in turning Joe Hockey from a junior minister to a senior minister of the Cabinet in the former Howard Government, and Kevin Rudd from a shadow minister to the Opposition Leader, and later to the position of Prime Minister. This may in part be because the nature of the segment enabled them to “circumvent the usual political channels and get [their] message… direct to a mainstream audience” ('Anzac Proves Sunrise Wake-up for Rudd,' 2007). Being enthusiastically associated with the Sunrise program (and, by extension, its much-loved hosts) may have also helped each to be perceived as ‘ordinary’, rather than just “another boring politician” (Macken, 2007). Through its more light-hearted and casual style, Sunrise helped these politicians construct a media image with which audiences can more readily identify. On this program, Hockey and Rudd had the opportunity to communicate their message to an audience that may otherwise not be interested in political matters with an increased possibility of “affective identification” (see Baym, 2007b: 366). In reality, this image of Sunrise as a fun, fresh face in the

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world of Australian television may have rubbed off on Rudd and Hockey and helped their individual careers considerably.

Kevin Rudd’s immediately strong performance in opinion polls after becoming leader of the opposition in late 2006 was in part attributed to voters being familiar with him through Sunrise ('Sun Rises over a Career or Two,' 2007), thus appearing as a fresh (but still recognisable) face compared to the older incumbent Prime Minister. Rudd has continued to embrace the power of popular media in his campaigning style, including the use of Facebook and MySpace to boost his appeal among younger voters. He was criticised heavily by some political pundits for also appearing on the night-time comedy/talk-show Rove on 18 November 2007 (less than one week out from the 2007 federal election, which saw him elected Prime Minister) after declining a request to appear on the ABC’s political program Insiders that same morning (Maiden, 2007). While responding to the criticism that being interviewed on these programs (like Sunrise) and music-oriented FM radio stations was a way of “dodging the tough questions” (Butterly, 2007), Rudd responded by saying: “Guess what? There’s a whole bunch of people out there… who don't watch Insiders but do listen to FM radio. And my job as the alternative prime minister is to communicate with the entire country” ('Rudd Gatecrashes Toddler's Birthday Party,' 2007). Likewise, when Joe Hockey was promoted to the position of Minister for Workplace Relations in 2007 (therefore taking over responsibility for the very unpopular ‘Workchoices’ legislation 14 ), Prime Minister Howard justified his decision by saying the Sunrise regular “was chosen to bring a softer edge to the industrial relations hard-sell” (Coorey, 2007; see also Lewis, 2007; Stafford, 2007).

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FIGURE 14: THE ‘BIG GUNS OF POLITICS’: JOE HOCKEY (TOP) AND KEVIN RUDD

Shaun and Kristie were two research participants who showed an awareness of the effect the show has had on the careers of its two ‘Big Guns’:

Kristie: I think that they have a lot of power. Like, I think, the fact that Kevin Rudd and Joe Hockey have been on that show and are now in very [high positions]… it brings those people into your living room, so we’ve gotten to know… something about them as [people]. So I don’t think it’s hurt their popularity – the politicians they’ve had on that show – I think… Shaun: No, they’ve really benefited from it I think. Kristie: I think it’s really in that respect, it’s quite powerful. Shaun: Well, it worked well for both, it worked well both ways. It was this sort of symbiotic relationship, you know, they both fed off each other… (S6: 8-9)

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The ability to conceptualise the ‘Big Guns of Politics’ within the “televisual sphere” (Baym, 2007a) shows through in the following example from 23 March 2007. Engaging in “a hybrid mode of publicity and political discourse” (Baym, 2007a: 94), the then-Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd and Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations Joe Hockey discuss Australia’s controversial new industrial relations laws (‘Workchoices’) and Labor’s proposed plan for a new high-speed broadband network in Australia:

Joe Hockey: By the next election nearly one million Australians would have signed up to Australian Workplace Agreements, and Kevin says he’s going to tear them up. How is that good for the economy? Kevin Rudd: Well, we are going to get rid of them for the simple reason that they don’t get the balance between fairness and flexibility right. We understand what it takes to grow a business, and we know that employers out there require flexibility, but this balance has gone completely wrong… we’ve got a mining boom out there – virtually a one-off event in 50 years – a huge mining boom which is bringing a huge amount of capital into the country, turbocharging the economy out of the mining boom. But let me tell you, [when we] return to normal economic circumstances, people in workplaces are going to experience this up-front and cold – as some are already experiencing. Joe Hockey: (Smiling) OK, OK, OK, I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll send to Kochie, as an independent arbiter, the employment numbers in the mining industry compared with other industries, because it’s one of the smallest areas of employment.

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David Koch: OK. Alright, you send me your figures, Kevin, you send me yours, and we’ll get them checked out by somebody. Kevin Rudd: Sure. Happy to do that. Joe Hockey: Yeah! Melissa Doyle: OK, happy to do that. Next one… Kevin, I want to talk to you about our proposed broadband boost – I think most people… out there would be saying, ‘Great, get something done’, but why raid the ‘Future Fund’ to pay for it when the government’s got a huge surplus? Kevin Rudd: Well, what we’re doing with this plan is, first of all, creating a high-speed national broadband network and it’s not cheap. It’s going to cost, in terms of a government investment, up to 4.7 billion dollars, and we’ll do it in partnership, then, with the private sector. The question you raise is, ‘How is it funded?’ Two billion dollars of that comes from the government’s existing communications fund, the remaining 2.7 [billion] we’re proposing to take from the existing government holding in Telstra, down to about 17 percent… David Koch: Yeah, no argument. But let’s explain to everyone what the ‘Future Fund’ is. Both parties, both Labor and Coalition are guilty of creating this big black hole where you basically haven’t put enough away for the superannuation of public servants. Now, if a company director did that they’d go to jail, but a whole series of governments do it. So the ‘Future Fund’ is trying to fill that black hole so that public servants have enough super in it. Kevin, why would you raid that? Because, you know, we would then start to think, ‘How many more times are you going to raid the Future Fund?’ This is superannuation liabilities for public servants – 2.7 billion is

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four months worth of budget surplus – why raid public servants’ super funds? Kevin Rudd: Well, firstly, when it comes to governments putting money aside for the future needs of superannuation for public servants, [Treasurer] Costello hasn’t invented something new here… state governments in Queensland – Labor and Liberal – for decades have been doing this. David Koch: Yeah … [a] red herring, forget it! Kevin Rudd: No, it’s not a red herring… David Koch: It is. Kevin Rudd: I’m just saying it’s not an innovation on the part of the Federal Government. … Melissa Doyle: Joe? Joe Hockey: Well, any money you spend out of the Future Fund today, our kids and out grandchildren have to pay for tomorrow. So I have no dispute with Kevin about the broadband initiative: I think it’s good, but we are running surpluses, we are allocating money to this at the moment. If Kevin thinks we should allocate more money, well, OK, pay for it now, but don’t raid the kids’ money box. I mean, that is very important: it is money that we are putting aside to pay for today’s debts, and you just don’t raid that fund. David Koch: No it’s not. No it’s not. … Kevin Rudd: We’re in continuing consultation with the telecommunications industry about the need to build this thing, and about the conditions which might be necessary for that to happen.

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Joe Hockey: Show me the money! Show me the money!! Kevin Rudd: (Laughing) We have Joe. I’m glad you support our initiative. … David Koch: Hang on, Kevin, you’re showing us the look. Yesterday while you were in Sydney helping [New South Wales Premier] Morris Iemma’s [re-election] campaign you really looked pretty spiffy in your new outfit for the technology centre – you looked like George Jetson there. …

FIGURE 15: KEVIN RUDD: FASHION VICTIM?

Melissa Doyle: … shower cap, goggles, blue coat – Hmmm mmm! Kevin Rudd: It’s a really good look. Can I just say, I’d rather do that than wear a pair of Speedos any day. (Laughing) If that’s the option Joe… I mean, I think Joe and I have a bi-partisan ticket here: this… federal election will be a Speedos-free zone. Melissa Doyle: (Laughing) Good to know! David Koch: We have seen both of you in a river in New Guinea [and] we don’t want either of you in Speedos. 15

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(Sunrise, 23/3/2007)

As is apparent from the above transcript, the purpose of the segment is not to let the two politicians argue and ‘fight-it-out’ (Crossfire style), but for each of them to air their opinions in a more relaxed and informal way. It is therefore quite reminiscent of the style of political interviews featuring on The Daily Show, in that it is a hybrid form of political discussion which further blurs the boundaries of ‘publicity’ and ‘serious interviewing’ by blending in-depth analysis, a semi-combative interviewing style (e.g. Koch’s rebuttal of several comments) with personal jokes (the discussion about Kevin Rudd’s outfit during a publicity visit) and pop-culture references (Hockey’s “Show me the money!”). It demonstrates “political discourse can be both serious and fun – at the same time silly and important – and perhaps may be more democratically useful for it” (Baym, 2007a: 112). Evidence for this comes from the many viewers who said they did enjoy ‘The Big Guns of Politics’ because it was simultaneously enjoyable and understandable:

Tom: Normally when they do it, it’s sort of in, like, the informal [mood] that Sunrise is in… But it’s like a conversation, or even an argument, and that gets a lot more people in, because they see the political side and so it’s sort of semiintellectual… but it’s still like just friendly, you know, part of the ‘Sunrise Family’. (S3: 17)

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Terri: It’s the Aussie way of doing things. You know, I suppose when I say ‘the Aussie way’, it’s probably the stereotypical way of doing things: we’re fairly – theoretically – laid back. You know, we like to have a chat… Damon: We do take the piss out of each other but we don’t really mean it… (S3: 18)

Kristie: I did like the two [‘Big Guns of Politics’]… ‘cos I’m not really into politics at all, but it aims at a level that you can understand. (S6: 6)

Gary: … probably the best one they have is the ‘All-Stars’, when they’ve got Kevin Rudd and Joe Hockey talking about either side of politics. And now channel Nine [has] copied that. Interviewer: … Why is it you like it? … Gary: Well, it’s good because they get some sort of social comment going. And they have… people talking about different points of view. So you have different points of view coming up, like, it at least gives you some sort of opening or some sort of reason why other people do things. So you get an interaction [with] other people’s points of view, which is good. (S2: 8-9)

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CONCLUSION

If the traditional binaries of ‘popular’ and ‘quality’ news have left us with the assumption the public has a choice only between boring news of substance, and trivial news that is interesting to watch (Fiske, 1989a: 185), then Sunrise demonstrates it is counter-productive to set up such simplistic binaries. A shift towards popular news programming may indeed be a result of news organisations’ more concerted efforts to satisfy the audience’s pre-existing tastes, and not the industry’s attempt to create a market for a more easily (and therefore cheaply) produced journalistic product (effectively a chicken—egg argument). If a journalist produces a product that subsequently fails to reach an audience or readership, then it serves little purpose and is unlikely to make a profit at a time of heightened commercial pressures, where many media outlets seem at the mercy of investors oriented towards short-term success (Meyer, 2003: 12). TV news requires an audience in order to exist, rather than simply being the charitable loss-making arm of a larger media outlet. Sunrise shows us, therefore, that entertainment should not be dismissed as somehow incompatible with the (admittedly abstract) goals of journalism in the 21st Century.

Sunrise seems to genuinely understand what its ‘customers’ want – showing very clearly that presenting news the audience is interested in does not necessarily equate to blanket coverage of topics such as ‘rip-off merchants’ or ‘revolutionary plastic surgery techniques’. In fact, the program has produced more than its fair share of substantial news and rigorous political discourse (like that seen in the ‘Big Guns of Politics’). So while it is a highly personal form of news, and extremely audience-

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focussed, the end product is a style that mixes the various topics viewers may be interested in at any given time. Almost all of the main criticisms of the show (that it is ‘light’, inconsequential news) have very little purchase, given that its particular style of ‘reciprocal’ journalism (discussed in Chapter 4) has enabled it to connect very successfully with its audience and provide news they are interested in. Sunrise’s ‘casual’ approach, which was outlined in the previous chapter, is not in itself a reflection of the program’s ability to help nourish the public sphere and therefore increase public knowledge about ‘real’ politics. In some respects, then, the show has a purpose we are very familiar with (i.e. high ratings/audience impact). It hybridises traditional considerations of serious/light, personal/political and ‘old’/’new’ news in a way that achieves an arguably quite constructive result. Sunrise should not be considered a universal model for newscasting, but it throws into question the way in which we have traditionally understood journalism and as such is a program whose success should be understood, accepted, and, to some extent, admired.

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NOTES

1

Its importance is still invoked by networks when they wish to point out their relevance to society (see

Fiske, 1987: 281). 2

60 Minutes is noted as the program that first destroyed the once-conventional wisdom that news and

current affairs could not also be profitable (see Miller, 2007: 19). 3

Franklin (1997), for instance, uses measures such as average story length in nightly newscasts to

make his claim. 4

A long-running program which markets itself as “Australia’s leading forum for media analysis and

comment” (ABC, 2008). 5

ANZAC Day is Australia’s equivalent of Memorial Day (derived from ‘Australia and New Zealand

Army Corps’), which is a much-revered public holiday in that country. 6

Haley was using this term to suggest the show is mostly concerned with current affairs, not because it

bears textual similarities to Nine’s A Current Affair. 7

Michelle is referring here to Grant Denyer.

8

An interesting aside to Koch’s analogy here is that two of the participants in the study actually

referred to the different parts of Sunrise as ‘articles’, rather than as segments, for example. 9

This interview was effectively the final chapter of an ongoing cross-promotion between the two Seven

Network programs. 10

‘Everyday People’ was also the name of a semi-regular segment hosted by Monique Wright, that

focussed on everyday individuals with extraordinary, tragic or ‘heart warming’ life stories. 11

The phrase made famous by second-wave feminism, “the personal is political” (see Heywood, 1998:

243, for instance), certainly rings true here and neatly sums up the changing thoughts about popular news’ more intimate iterations, and its links to femininity. 12

Because Google News actually compiles stories from other news sites, Ben’s admission that he only

gets his news from that site would suggest he gets local news from various online news sites. 13

The Seven network’s chief political correspondent.

14

A piece of legislation that sought the deregulation of the labour market and severely cut back on the

collective bargaining power of workers. 15

This joke makes reference to the 2007 New South Wales election campaign, during which time

Opposition Leader Peter Debnam was mocked publicly for wearing tight-fitting swimming clothes during several publicity appearances at beach locations. Koch’s latter comment about having seen Hockey and Rudd in a New Guinea river refers to the fact that they and Koch were a part of an expedition along the Kokoda Track (a WWII memorial site) which was documented in time for the ANZAC day service broadcast from there in 2006. At one point, Rudd and Hockey were filmed bathing in a river wearing only minimal clothing.

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CHAPTER 6

PUSH IT TO THE LIMITS: POLITICAL SATIRE, CULTURAL SATIRE AND THE CHASER’S WAR

Hey guys just letting you know what a bloody great job you did on ‘The Chaser Decides’!

I'm only 15 years old and have no interest what so ever in politics, but when I watched your show for the first time… I almost pissed myself laughing! I was inspired by your work and you made the election so much more interesting. You even helped me out in school during my History lesson… when our teacher was talking about the election and asking us questions. I was the only one answering them… thanks guys!

My friends thought I was weird to watch the show and my parents didn't even think I understood what was going on. But I understood everything and didn't care what they thought… you educated me in the best way possible with a sense of humour and intelligence.

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I am so dissappointed that the show is over and I have downloaded all the past episodes! I can't wait till the next election… … Love Elaine… You have inspired me…

– Submission 1 to The Chaser Decides’ website (ABC, 2007c)

In the late 1990s, a group of friends, most of whom met at university – Charles Firth, Julian Morrow, Craig Reucassel, Chas Licciardello, Andrew Hansen, Dominic Knight and (later) Chris Taylor – began to write and produce a satirical newspaper called The Chaser. The name itself is quite telling. A ‘chaser’ is the name given to a more palatable drink, taken after a drinking a stronger (usually alcoholic) beverage, and is an accurate reflection of the team’s ‘lighter’, humorous take on Australian politics. That is, they are ‘chasing’ heavy politics with laughter and humour – or are indeed ‘chasing’ a laugh. After making their TV debut in a show called The Election Chaser, which revolved around the 2001 Australian federal election, the team has been involved in a number of programs including the cable news satire program CNNNN (which stood for Chaser NoN-stop News Network) in 2002 and 2003, 2 The Chaser Decides during and after the 2004 federal election, and a series of eight five-minute news parodies called the Chaser News Alert (2005). In 2006 the Chaser team turned their attention toward a much longer-running, more traditional comedy show called The Chaser’s War on Everything. The two series of this show have the team’s most successful efforts to date.

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Although, the team has become arguably Australia’s most renowned (and certainly most notorious) political satirists, in The Chaser’s War on Everything they have employed three different types of satire: political satire, cultural satire, and media satire. This chapter explores The Chaser’s political and cultural satire in detail, discusses what value this satire has in viewers’ lives, and shows that each has quite different possibilities for the public sphere. It argues the program’s approach can deconstruct political actions in new and valuable ways that aid its audience’s understanding, but the movement of The Chaser’s War on Everything towards cultural satire can be seen as somewhat problematic. Much of this show may be, in Chaser team member Julian Morrow’s own words, “cynical, shallow, unethical, poorly-put-together crap”, 3 however, there are moments within The Chaser’s War on Everything that can boost public knowledge about contemporary politics and culture more broadly.

WAGING WAR ON EVERYTHING…

The War on Everything 4 is the longest-running series ever produced by The Chaser team, and also the most successful. It centres mostly around five members of the group: Julian Morrow, Chas Licciardello, Chris Taylor, Andrew Hansen and Craig Reucassel. Throughout its first season in 2006, it screened at 10pm Friday nights on the ABC, and, after gradually building an audience throughout the year, had over 800 000 viewers for the final episode that season (Dyer, 2007). This is a significant figure, considering the late timeslot, the day (Friday nights are not known for high viewing

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numbers) and the fact that the show would primarily appeal to younger audiences: a demographic where the ABC has often struggled.

After moving to 9pm Wednesday for 2007, the show proved even more popular, and sustained a weekly audience around 40-50% higher than the year before (Meade, 2007a). This increase can likely be attributed to the show being placed in the schedule immediately after the popular music quiz show Spicks and Specks (which has a very similar demographic appeal) and because it filled the timeslot made vacant by the cancellation of the comedy talk-show The Glass House. On 12 September 2007 – the episode which showed the footage from the APEC stunt mentioned in the introduction to this thesis – the show’s popularity reached an all time high. That highly-anticipated episode was watched by 2.24 million people 5 – 52 percent of whom were under 40 years of age (Casellas, 2007) – across five Australian capital cities (Harris, 2007b; Shoebridge, 2007). It was the public broadcaster’s third most-watched program since electronic TV ratings system were introduced in 1991 (Idato, 2007; Casey & Lawrence, 2007) and, at the time, the second most-watched program on Australian television in 2007. 6 The stunt’s success even raised the possibility there might be a reedited version of the show created for international markets (Casey, 2007a) or that the team might shoot a pilot for a show based in the United States (Devlin et al., 2008).

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FIGURE 16: THE CHASER TEAM, ON SET

There are two factors which have contributed significantly to the popularity of the War on Everything and The Chaser’s newfound public status. The first of these factors is the length of its run each year – each season has comprised 26 half-hour episodes, compared, for example, to a run of just four in the case of The Chaser Decides – thereby providing the time and the opportunity to grow its audience beyond its already existing fan base. This growth has likely been compounded by the attention the show has drawn from other sections of the Australian media (during and after the APEC stunt in particular, discussed in the introduction to this thesis), thus promoting it to an audience who might not normally watch the ABC. The second major factor in this achievement has probably been the different format adopted for this particular series, which has moved the team away from a satirical format to a more traditional genre of television. The War on Everything is more of a standard sketch comedy/variety show with a substantial ‘live’ component, where CNNNN (and their other work) was a parody of cable news channels with a much larger emphasis on prerecorded comedy sketches. Executive producer – and one of the show’s main stars – Julian Morrow notes the show’s format is not ground-breaking at all. Instead, he describes the War on Everything as a ‘variety show’:

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Julian Morrow: I mean, I have described it as a satirical ‘anti-variety’ show, which is basically code for saying, ‘Well, we’re a little bit pretentious and up ourselves, so we don’t actually want to call it a variety show.’ But it’s obviously a variety show. I mean, as a format, it’s just us and a collection of things we happen to have done this week in regular segments. I mean, if you described it in the abstract, you could be watching Hey, Hey it’s Saturday, you know, and that’s fine. It’s just the Chaser sensibility in a variety show format, and that’s actually quite liberating and relaxing compared to… say, CNNNN… And that means that you can do a silly slapstick thing, followed by going up to a CEO, followed by a song, followed by a really ‘worthy’, boring piece of satire.

Morrow’s argument here points to the freedom the War on Everything allows, because it does not require the various segments to share a satirical edge. Whereas every sketch or report in CNNNN had to fit logically into a send-up of a cable news format, the War On Everything does not have the same boundaries or limitations. While obviously very liberating for the show’s producers who have to generate 13 hours of television comedy each year, the most noticeable effect of the War on Everything’s longer lifespan and different format is its far less political character. The Chaser as a team may be renowned for their role as political satirists, yet the War on Everything has been its least political creation, and has nevertheless generated the most controversy. While immensely successful with the Australian public, this newfound popularity has been a result of their moving away from what they earned their reputations doing – a shift Julian Morrow believes has been caused by two pressures:

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Julian Morrow: We’ve done 26 episodes [in 2006], which is more TV in one year than we’ve done in the previous four years, and there’s only so much politics that even people who like politics can take. Secondly, the absolute touchstone for what we do is whether it’s funny… I mean, I like being able to do a piece about the Prime Minister or foreign affairs and then follow it immediately with a fart joke. It is actually about entertainment and fun and, I suppose, bringing a spirit of entertainment and fun to politics, which people shouldn’t confuse [with] not taking politics seriously.

As difficult as it is to summarise the hundreds of different things The Chaser’s War on Everything has done in its short life, its ‘variety’ of segments can be classified according to a rough 7 taxonomy. The show can be divided into three different forms of satire: political satire; cultural satire and media satire. This chapter will focus on political and cultural satire. Prior to this analysis, however, it is important to understand that this taxonomy is framed by the team’s regular deployment of ‘stunts’.

PUSHING IT: STUNTS

If there is a single thing that could define The Chaser’s ‘sensibility’, it would be their propensity for unannounced, face-to-face confrontations with famous political or media figures. These stunts are often used in an the attempt to make people, politicians, public figures or brands (in the case of their ‘Ad Road Test’) look awkward, confused, annoyed or outraged. More often than not, the stunts will have some kind of social or cultural value. Even back as far as the lead-up to the Iraq war,

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the team caused controversy by publishing the home phone number of Prime Minister John Howard on the front page of their newspaper in retaliation for deciding Australia would join the ‘Coalition of the Willing’. The team felt Howard had not properly listened to the hundreds of thousands of Australians who had publically marched in protest against the invasion, so panned a headline that read: “Howard ignores the people – so call him at home on (02) 9922 6189” (see Deitz, 2006). 8

One more recent example of this Chaser style was when Julian Morrow roamed the streets of Sydney posing as an army conscription officer. Here he picked ordinary Australians to board a truck (labelled “Cannon Fodder”, supposedly bound for Baghdad because normal recruiting methods “weren’t working”) and continued to point out along the way both the futility of the Australian forces’ role in Iraq and the generally dismal state of the armed services in this country (The Chaser’s War on Everything, 1/9/2006). Another example of their stunts was when the team booked tickets on a Virgin Blue flight under the names Al Kyder and Terry Wrist, and secretly recorded the two names being paged over a loudspeaker to alert them of their boarding requirements. Here was a humorous illustration of the fact that one requires no form of identification in order to board a domestic flight in Australia, which seems counter-intuitive in an ‘age of terror’. On another occasion Chas Licciardello tested the degree of racial profiling at major Australian landmarks, where he found someone dressed “as a crude Arab cliché” was stopped by security from filming a home video of the Sydney Harbour Bridge after just a few minutes, yet someone dressed as an American tourist was able to do the same thing without attracting any attention from security whatsoever (The Chaser’s War on Everything, 23/6/2006).

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In the following example, Julian Morrow offers passersby a free ‘Gullibility Test’ outside a Scientology centre in Sydney’s CBD:

Andrew Hansen: Normally if you want to join [Scientology], you have to take one of those free personality tests. Julian Morrow: Yeah, that’s right. You often see them in the street, and they have this strange machine which is called an ‘E-Meter’. Andrew Hansen: It’s technical, and [it sounds] weird, and we thought there might just be a better way of recruiting people to Scientology.

FIGURE 17: GULLIBILITY TESTING

(Video) Julian Morrow: We’re just conducting a ‘Gullibility Test’, and you’re doing very well already, so, well done. I’m just going to read you a few statements, and you don’t have to actually believe them, but if you could believe them, just give us a ‘Yes’, OK? … Scientology lets you attain several different states of existence in just one lifetime. Woman: No. Man: I could… 199

Julian Morrow: Could you believe it’s a coincidence that a famous science fiction writer also invented a completely true religion involving aliens and spacecraft? Man: It’s a tough one… (Smiling) Look, I could believe anything – give me a couple of drinks. Julian Morrow: That’s what we’re looking for – excellent. Could you believe that, right now, dead people’s souls are flying around and clinging to you, and that’s what’s causing everything that goes wrong in your life? Woman: (Laughing) Totally. (The Chaser’s War on Everything, 28/4/2006)

One of the first stunts performed for this show was when Chas Licciardello arrived at the popular Big Day Out music festival with a variety of raw meats stuffed into his pants to test the effectiveness of sniffer dogs being used by police at the event to uncover drug possession (Licciardello, 2006). He was taken into custody very briefly and later released without charge. A later prank which generated considerable publicity in the popular press was when Licciardello was arrested and charged for “Offensive Conduct”, after selling fake ‘branded’ weapons (including rubber knives and knuckle dusters) in team colours outside a home match of the Bulldogs Rugby League Club. This particular club, which draws much support from the strongly multicultural south-western Sydney population, had been involved in several violent clashes with rival fans in the years prior. This event prompted police to state that they were “not amused” (Weaver, 2006), and the Premier of New South Wales to denounce the stunt as “grossly irresponsible behaviour” (The Chaser’s War on

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Everything, 21/7/2006), further reinforcing the Chaser team’s image of troublemakers in the eyes of authorities.

These stunts bear many similarities to the kind of ‘walk-ins’ made famous by Michael Moore in his TV show The Awful Truth and his political documentaries. The difference in this case is that The Chaser conduct them in a far more ironic and playful manner, as opposed to Moore’s much more serious confrontational style. Rather than, for instance, arriving unannounced at a sporting goods retailer to demand they stop selling the ammunition that has killed many young Americans (as seen in Moore’s film Bowling for Columbine), the Chaser crew utilise a similar approach but one loaded with irony and humour. As we can see by the following example in which Julian Morrow approaches (the very well salaried) Macquarie Bank CEO Alan Moss at a press conference, the Chaser style is rather more playful than Michael Moore:

FIGURE 18: ALAN MOSS MEETS THE CHASER

Julian Morrow: Can I congratulate you Mr Moss on earning 21 million dollars last year… we’ve actually worked that out as a daily rate [of $58 000 per day], and I’m just wondering whether you’d be willing to swap your job with Kate

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here who earns the average wage? She’d just like your job, just for one day. Is that OK? Kate: And if it could be like an annual day off, that would be great, ‘cos then I wouldn’t have to work at all. … Julian Morrow: Even just a lunch break Mr Moss? I mean, you could get a return trip to London for that. Business Class! (The Chaser’s War on Everything, 21/7/2006)

In many ways, conducting stunts with a degree of humour (and humility) may better hide the real intentions of the stunt, therefore luring people into them more readily. If Julian Morrow had earned himself a reputation for aggressive confrontation, then he may not have even been allowed into the press conference, or been allowed to ask his questions in full. In much the same way as The Daily Show hides behind its selfdefinition of ‘fake’ news, and operates under the cloak of comedy, The Chaser’s political criticism (which has the potential to be perceived as bias) is hidden in the form of good-natured pranks. These stunts can verge on public nuisance (and illegality, as per the APEC incident), but – as will be argued later in this chapter – this agitation can be an illuminating form of political or social commentary.

Julian Morrow: Like, we did something in our very first pilot which involved subverting – if you wanted to use that expression – the form of a press conference by presenting [Opposition Leader Kim] Beazley with food and kinda taking the piss out of the… whether Beazley’s got ‘ticker’ idea. 9 The main reason we did it was because we thought it was funny. And, look, it’s such a

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serious game and people take it so seriously that maybe it is subversive to treat it as if it’s a ripe subject for humour.

Apart from these public ‘stunts’, the second thing that could very easily define The Chaser’s War on Everything is the fact the team have continually made attempts to push the limits of social acceptability. An incident that earned them a significant amount of negative media attention (see Beisler, 2007; Korn, 2007; McLean, 2007) was broadcast on 17 October 2007 when Andrew Hansen sang ‘The Eulogy Song’, which made negative statements about numerous dead celebrities, pointing out the tendency for people to receive unanimously positive public eulogies upon their death. In the song (the lyrics of which were written by Chris Taylor) Hansen, for example, called former Australian talkback radio star Stan Zemanek, who had died only months before from a brain tumour, “a racist jock, a fatso xenophobic cock, whose views were more malignant than his brain” (The Chaser’s War on Everything, 17/10/2007). Responding to media interest after their APEC security breach charges were dropped by authorities in April 2008, Julian Morrow – who was that stunt’s chief “architect” (Ricketson, 2008) – stated “The Chaser has always worked out where the line is by walking over it” (in Duck, 2008). One focus group participant, Janice, talked about an incident where she thought a stunt had gone too far, which would imply the ‘public outcry’ over some of their activities is often more than just media moralising:

Janice: …I think they’ve started to overstep the mark. And, umm, I think they’ve gone a little wild … They’ve done it a couple of times of late and I’ve found them a little offensive, and I actually turned them off one night. There was

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a major concert on and they wheeled jukeboxes out and stopped the concert – it was a symphony orchestra. Maggie: Oh, yeah, yeah yeah! Janice: And I found that really offensive and I turned the television off, because I just thought that [it] overstepped the mark – you know, people had paid money for this concert and people had practised and rehearsed, and I just thought that was way over the mark. (C4: 3)

GENRE

The focus group respondents in this study did use a range of terms and descriptors for the show’s content, but the discourses generally tended to state that although it is, in essence, a comedy/variety show, it does have some ‘edge’ that sets it apart from other entertainment forms:

Joseph: It’s like Jackass for people with tertiary educations. (C2: 18)

Callum: But that’s what the whole show is about too, it’s about chasing the issues that are in today’s society, basically. That’s why they call it The Chaser, yeah? … I regard it as pretty much a light comedy, but it does [cover] issues that are relevant to Australians, not overseas bullshit. (C3: 2-3)

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Jacques: It’s not a current affairs show, but they generally talk about what’s been on Today Tonight and A Current Affair. (C3: 22)

Maggie: Well, they’re not commenting on the news. In one sense, they’re actually taking a news item and then creating comedy out of it, rather than it being a commentary. (C4: 10)

Claire: I think I can’t imagine anyone watching it as their source of news – as a primary source. I think you watch it as light relief, late-night television, and appreciate that its focus is on issues of the media and news stories. But I couldn’t imagine anyone going, ‘Oh, it’s Friday, tonight’s Chaser night, I’m going to find out what’s going on in the world’. Like, as a source of true, factual, unbiased information, it’s not your first port of call. (C2: 10)

Michael: It’s a lot more tightly summarised… it takes a lot of concentration to sit through the 7:30 Report, whereas [The Chaser will] just sum it up pretty quickly so you can get it, and it’s funny, and you actually want to pay attention, instead of [just] sitting there. (C1: 6)

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Most of the participants did also acknowledge the show’s hybridity, and felt its comedic value did not entirely preclude it from having some informational or educative function. There was a very strong sense The Chaser’s War on Everything was not ‘news’, but that it did something with news:

Dan: I mean, it is kind of informing you, but it’s mainly for comedy. (C1: 11)

Brian: It helps you understand issues by mocking them. (C1: 4)

Janice: I think a lot of it is political satire. It’s got a lot of that in it. (C4: 17)

Michael: I’d say it does [deal with current affairs], yeah. Because it sort of puts it in understandable terms that are funny. (C1: 4)

Nat: … I come away having learned something, even though it’s presented in a trivial way and a humorous way. (C3: 2)

All of these comments seem to endorse Craig Reucassel’s comment that the show’s trade in more traditional comedy does often have underlying political intention, or a relationship of some kind to the public sphere:

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Craig Reucassel: I think it’s a comedy show which, I think, occasionally has satirical elements… it’s probably a ‘half-a-current-affairs-comedy show’, so in that sense it deals with current affairs so it’s topical. … Often what we’re doing is taking a current-affairs thing and… making a joke out of it.

As can be seen in the following discussion, there was some difficulty in fully describing The Chaser’s humour, which illustrates the struggle to adequately assess the nature of its hybridity. When I asked the groups who it would appeal to most, their responses often suggested it was a “higher class” of comedy:

Interviewer: Who is [The Chaser] for? Dan: Yeah, more intellectuals. Michael: Yeah, smart people who know a bit of what’s going on in the news, but [who] need some light relaxation. Like, not everyone wants to sit through the 7:30 [Report] with Kerry [O’Brien]. … Nathan: It’s not informative, really, they’re just using that as comedy. Dan: But it’s not a slapstick comedy… Nathan: No, that’s right. Michael: Yeah, it’s a higher class. Dan: Intelligent. (C1: 33-34)

Nat: But its educational as well as being entertaining.

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Thomas: Yeah, it is educational and entertaining at the same time. (C3: 5)

Maggie: I think broadly, though, perhaps what this is about is [the] role and the need for political satire to help us make sense of what’s actually happening out there. I think someone else was leading onto this earlier… that the mainstream media is so shut down these days that the range of news and views is so limited that – good gracious – we are actually dependent on the likes of [The] Chaser and Crikey! 10 to actually get an alternative view. Now that actually says something pretty sad about our media in general, I think. (C4: 6-7)

Baley, on the other hand, offered a far simpler assessment of the show’s stars:

Baley: They’re just a bunch of uni students piss-farting around. But probably a little bit more sophisticated… (C4: 15)

Maggie also suggested the program’s hybrid nature meant it could appeal to people on numerous levels:

Maggie: [The] Chaser can be seen as schoolboy pap, but there is a thread – or two or three – of deeper social commentary, and I think it’s those different levels or layers to it that you can tap into, [if] you can or wish to. You can just

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enjoy the toilet humour, or you can really think that’s a really pithy comment on our current culture, you know. (C4: 21-22)

POLITICAL SATIRE

The Chaser team has long been known for its political satire, and although there is arguably much less of this in the War on Everything, this remains a hallmark of the team’s television work. A good example was Craig Reucassel’s segment interpreting the passage of legislation through the Australian senate as a soccer ball being kicked for a penalty goal with independent senators acting as the goalkeepers. Or, on another occasion, Reucassel confronted Japan’s ambassador to Australia and asked, “To further strengthen relationships between Australia and Japan, would you agree that we’d be able to kill a couple of Japanese people for research purposes?” (The Chaser’s War on Everything, 14/7/06). The intention of this was to highlight Japan’s ludicrous claim that its ongoing whaling program is undertaken for the purposes of scientific research.

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FIGURE 19: CRAIG REUCASSEL AND THE JAPANESE AMBASSADOR

According to Craig Reucassel, the intention of The Chaser’s political satire is to work in opposition (or indeed, bring some ‘chaos’) to the highly formulaic, very structured world of contemporary politics where ‘control’ is the ultimate aim:

Craig Reucassel: I mean, one of the things that I think we found fascinating and annoying and certainly try to subvert was the very stage managed nature of political campaigns nowadays: the way in which it’s very media managed, very much [that] all the journalists get on the bus provided by the party and go to the next event, and that sort of thing. I mean, those first Election Chaser kind of things where we’d kind of turn up and… people were like, ‘What the hell is this?’ … and it’s that approach of doing it a different way, and it has become a part of [our style].

Julian Morrow explains that although these stunts may be seen as frivolous intrusions into the important domain of organised politics, their underlying intention is to inject a sense of fun and frivolity into the mundane:

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Julian Morrow: I think it’s a sign of a healthy society to be self-critical and capable of… you know, taking the piss out of yourself. I mean, I’m mindful of not making what we do seem too lofty, because I don’t think it is, but I do think that people should be susceptible to criticism and, indeed, ridicule.

The intention of these stunts was evident when Chas Licciardello (dressed in a Ku Klux Klan outfit) approached New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma to “talk policy”, after the NSW Labor Party (lead by Iemma) accepted a donation which appeared to come from that particular racial-hatred group:

FIGURE 20: POLITICAL DONATIONS

Chris Taylor: Chas… You’ve been investigating the very pertinent issue of political donations. Chas Licciardello: I have, and it’s a very delicate issue because hundreds of companies and lobby groups donate money to political parties these days, and they usually expect something in return. Craig Reucassel: Well, I know in New South Wales lately, both Labor and Liberal have called for donation reform, haven’t they?

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Chas Licciardello: Well, yeah, but do they actually practise what they preach, or are they happy accepting money from anybody? Well, to find out, we sent the New South Wales Labor Party a donation from the Ku Klux Klan. And what do you know? They accepted it! No questions asked! So, then we sent the New South Wales Liberal Party a donation from the Man-Boy Love Association. And, guess what? They accepted it too! Chris Taylor: I never knew they were so open-minded Chassie. Chas Licciardello: No, it’s great to see them embracing such noble organisations, Chris. The least I could do is thank them in person. (Video) … Chas Licciardello: (Dressed as a member of the Ku Klux Klan) Hey, Mr Premier, how are ya? I just want to thank you so much, and the whole New South Wales Labor Party, for accepting our political donation! Morris Iemma: Is that you Chas? Chas Licciardello: No, I don’t like that Chas guy. We don’t like wogs 11 in the KKK at all. … Chas Licciardello: The New South Wales Labor Party has accepted our donation. You know how this works, you’ve been doing it with the construction industry for years… What I want to know about [is], should we get rid of Jews or Muslims first? (The Chaser’s War on Everything, 23/5/2007)

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FIGURE 21: MORRIS IEMMA AND CHAS LICCIARDELLO

While Iemma seemed to take it all as something of a joke (probably due to the fact he could quickly identify who was behind it, thanks to the team’s notoriety), the intent lurking underneath this stunt is to point out the impropriety of the current electoral donation system. In fact, the humorous nature of the stunts means the team can be quite direct in their political criticism. While a ‘dry’ sermonising about how the system ‘must be improved’ would say much the same thing, this approach catches its targets off guard, and does so in a manner that is humorous and therefore arguably more powerful in terms of public engagement. Where The Daily Show, for example, has the freedom to pursue a “distinctly subjective” approach because it is a selfdeclared form of ‘fake’ news (Baym, 2005: 267), The War does not parody the news genre, yet it has similar freedoms 12 because it does not have to operate within preexisting conventions of journalism. As Chaser member Chris Taylor (in De Lore, 2008) notes: “Anyone who uses comedy or satire has this wonderful latitude to say what regular journalists can’t say.”

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Julian Morrow: It is OK, for comedic purposes, to go, ‘That’s fucked’. Like, that’s not much of an argument… you couldn’t print that as an opinion on the opinion pages of The Australian or something, but you can essentially say that indirectly through comedy. So it just gives you a licence to be more blunt and opinionated in a way, and perhaps, therefore, sometimes to say things that resonate with people more than a well-balanced argument that makes sense… I’m sure that if any of us were [traditional journalists] we’d do it probably in a way that most of those good-willed professionals do their job. But it is certainly the case that there are only certain things that you can do within those structures, and we just – because of some sort of genetic deficiency – are pre-disposed towards doing something that is slightly different from that.

It could even be suggested that their ‘tackling’ of public figures harks back to an earlier form of TV journalism, where the reporter acted as more of a ‘hero’, working hard in the pursuit of truth, rather than as a mere talking head. It is an arguably ‘tabloid’ technique, but, like Michael Moore’s walk-ins, appropriated by The Chaser against a powerful figure. One theme that emerged through some of the participants’ discussions was that when media/political figures are approached in these unexpected ways by members of The Chaser, their response – which someone can never be ‘trained’ for, unlike a traditional, pre-planned media conference – can be quite telling, and so may well be one of “the salutary effects of agitation” (Bruna, 2004). By interrogating politicians in ever-changing, ever-surprising ways, the viewer is given significant insight:

Michael: It shows the politicians as humans, not just the face on TV…

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Brian: Like, what they say officially will be different to what they say in this, because this is a joke, so what they say will be what they’re actually thinking, and not just some official statement on TV. … What they say will be what their actual opinion is, rather than their ‘official’ opinion. (C1: 44)

Underlying these remarks is a belief that politicians show a more ‘real’ side of themselves when they are thrown ‘off-message’ 13 by these unexpected confrontations. In testing these people and their ability to cope with the abnormal, the audience can more clearly see through politicians’ heavy armour of ‘official’ political rhetoric. In the following example, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark dodges a ‘Pursuit Trivia’ question at a press conference, playing on the different perception of accents 14 between Australians and New Zealanders:

Julian Morrow: Prime Minister, you’ve spoken about the value of tourism to New Zealand, but in ‘Literature’, according to the Book of Revelation[s], what is the ‘number of the beast’? Helen Clark: I wouldn’t have a clue. Julian Morrow: You don’t want to guess? Helen Clark: (Laughing) No. Julian Morrow: I’ll give you a clue, it’s six… Helen Clark: I’m not going to say that word in Australia. (Laughs) (The Chaser’s War on Everything, 20/6/2007)

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Tim, who saw this segment in the episode shown to his focus group, believed these interjections of absurdity can bring about real moments of candour in those under interrogation.

Tim: [‘Pursuit Trivia’] takes a traditional… joke, but it makes it so public – to do that to [New Zealand Prime Minister] Helen Clark was very clever, and she handled it well. And that’s the other thing too, it’s really interesting how public figures respond. (C4: 26)

Of course, the inverse of Tim’s comments are that politicians either don’t take favourably to being approached in this way, or don’t ‘get’ the joke. A similar ‘Pursuit Trivia’ question directed to the then-Attorney General Phillip Ruddock did not get the same shrewd reaction as the one directed to Helen Clark:

Julian Morrow: Minister, you’ve outlined the Government’s counter-terrorism strategy this morning, but can I ask you, in ‘Entertainment’, what is Austin Powers’ middle name? Phillip Ruddock: Who is Austin Powers? Julian Morrow: Well, it does bear on your portfolio minister. Austin Powers is a superspy. Phillip Ruddock: Is he. Julian Morrow: Yes. Phillip Ruddock: For whom? Julian Morrow: Ah, the British Government, I believe.

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Phillip Ruddock: I see. I don’t ever know the names of spies. And I certainly don’t know the names of intelligence officers, nor should you. Julian Morrow: OK, so I shouldn’t tell you that the answer is, in fact, ‘Danger’…? Phillip Ruddock: Umm, no, you shouldn’t tell me the names – that may be a nom de plume – of agents, when you may expose their lives to danger. (The Chaser’s War on Everything, 26/5/2006)

While neither Ruddock nor Clark actually answered Morrow’s trivia questions, and may in fact have refused to do so for similar reasons, the message the viewer would take away from each would likely be very different. Ruddock could be seen either as ‘stiff’, thanks to his refusal to play along with the joke (or thanks to his use of the phrase nom de plume), or as genuinely oblivious to ‘lowbrow’ popular culture, and therefore ‘out of touch’ with the lives and experiences of ordinary voters. 15 The latter may be even worse for a politician’s image, because the participants’ comments above seem to indicate that they can better critique politicians’ ability to govern in their interests by understanding them firstly as people. As Coleman (2003: 756) notes:

The last thing that citizens want is to be reached more easily by politicians. Their idea of connection, if they have one, is that politicians should be seen to live in the same world as them: not necessarily to be like them, but certainly to know what it is like to be them.

This argument is very similar to the ones surrounding the Alan Keyes/Michael Moore furore discussed in Chapter 2. Whereas Keyes was criticised by his fellow politicians

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for his irresponsibility, to many citizens he would have been seen as ‘cool’ and therefore more likeable/electable.

‘IT’S ABOUT CULTURE’

In literally taking on everything for its current series, it is worth considering The Chaser’s War on Everything as a form of cultural satire. Such a description of the show’s approach recognises that culture itself encompasses the political and social spheres, both of which have been targets of The Chaser’s War. One participant actually made this connection of his own volition, noting that while this show was not strictly political like other series, it was a more broad critique of society:

Tim: …it’s more about culture, isn’t it? Than news. (C4: 10)

Maggie: … I think it’s fair to say it’s social commentary, rather than particularly political. (C4: 31)

Craig Reucassel notes a main reason behind the team’s redirection of satire away from politics and towards culture is because of the War on Everything’s longer run:

Craig Reucassel: … the ABC wanted a longer-run show, which, you know… To be able to do CNNNN [we] do 10 [shows], or to do four for The Election

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Chaser and The Chaser Decides is pretty lucky in a way, and they could be quite focussed. I think you’d find it very hard to sustain political satire over 25 [weeks] in Australia.

Sanjay suggests the process of making humour out of current events and issues of public concern is actually a cultural one – something people do on a private level with their friends as a sense-making practice. This suggests the program is merely reflecting quite a natural practice of understanding change through the use of humour:

Sanjay: I think they’re a bit like the guys at the local pub kinda thing. They’re the guys at the pub – they come home and they’ve heard some issue on the news and they have a good old chin-wag about it, make jokes about it… Like, you go, ‘There’s like news about a terrorist bombing’ or something, so the guy’s sitting down after work at the pub talking about terrorists, ‘Blah this, blah that’ and they make all these jokes about that kind of stuff, or John Howard’s IR laws or whatever, and they pick on points and they carry on about it and make jokes about it. That’s what these guys are doing, pretty much… [they’re] doing the same thing really. (C2: 17-18)

Other participants, however, felt The Chaser’s irreverent ‘take’ on serious news issues was an innately Australian quality. Hollier (2007) believes likewise – that a “deeply ingrained” pragmatism means Australians “accept authority but, as [The Chaser] have realised better than the authorities themselves, that is not because we respect it”:

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Janice: It is the Australian way of laughing at themselves. I don’t think any other culture laughs at themselves as much as we do, and mocks themselves. I mean, having lived in the [United] States for several years, I don’t think you would get Americans making fun of themselves in the same way. (C4: 15)

Maggie: Yeah, it is that notion of ‘taking the piss’. 16 And it’s… something that Australians do, I think, particularly well. (C4: 16)

Tim: I think it’s totally Australian. I think it captures Australian humour… see, what it does is, it wakes people up. Australians are so fucking apathetic, and so fucking mediocre, and this is so good, because it’s just a shake-up. (C4: 6)

That participants (particular those in group 4, who were generally a little older than the other three) could see the ‘Australian-ness’ of this program is quite an interesting finding. It perhaps rightly identifies the fact the War on Everything does come at the end of a long line of satirical political comedy shows in Australia, many of which also first emerged on the ABC. Perhaps the starting point of this history is the 1970s, and the ABC comedy The Aunty Jack Show, out of which emerged Garry McDonald’s character Norman Gunston, who proved so popular that he received his own program: The Norman Gunston Show. Gunston, an awkward, incompetent and inappropriately dressed interviewer (bearing many similarities to Ali G or Borat today), was present on the steps of Australia’s Parliament House as Gough Whitlam addressed the

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assembled crowd following his dismissal by the Governor General in 1975 – one of the most significant political events in Australia’s history (Wikipedia, 2008). Throughout the 1980s, Clive Robertson’s Newsworld and Graham Kennedy’s News Hour – which Turner (1989) would describe as “Transgressive TV” – both played with the TV news format (see Turner, 1996c; 2001), which is a tradition that runs still today, with the SBS news parody Newstopia, and the comedy/game show Good News Week. 17 One focus group participant, Baley (C4: 15), thought the War on Everything had much in common with (D-Generation’s) sketch comedy program The Late Show. In fact, there are many similarities between The Late Show and the War on Everything, particularly the use of topical issue as sources of humour, tied together via studio-filmed pieces in front of a live audience. 18

In being a kind of cultural satire, however, The Chaser has managed to continually test the boundaries of culture and the private sphere. While the various political stunts discussed so far in this chapter fall very much in line with the team’s efforts in previous series, many of the stunts undertaken during the course of The War on Everything have been carried out with anonymous ‘innocent bystanders’. Where Michael Moore used his stunts primarily against corporate greed, the various forces that have come to bear on The Chaser’s original political bent (such as its currently longer series) now mean the show has often directed its ‘sensibility’ on members of the general public and made seemingly decent, ordinary Australians look awkward or silly in a way that is merely a more ‘hip’ version of Caught on Candid Camera. In fact, their cultural satire often bears much similarity to Dom Joly’s UK shows Trigger Happy TV and World Shut Your Mouth, or perhaps even the slightly crasser Balls of Steel. Julian Morrow’s Citizens’ Infringement Officer character is a classic example

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of this at work, showing how much of The Chaser’s recent work is about the comedy of simultaneous daring and annoyance:

FIGURE 22: JULIAN MORROW AS THE CITIZENS’ INFRINGEMENT OFFICER

Julian Morrow: I’m the Citizens’ Infringement Officer – we’re cracking down on baby names. Woman #1: He’s perfectly fine. Julian Morrow: Well, I’ll be the judge of that. Man #1: Lucien. Julian Morrow: Lucien? Man #1: Yes. Julian Morrow: That’s a little bit poncy isn’t it? Woman #2: Hunter. Julian Morrow: Hunter? I’m sorry, that’s actually a surname. (Writing) Surname as first name – that’s a hundred dollar fine. Woman #3: Tiana. Julian Morrow: Tiana. Ill-thought-out name… see Tiana’s going to have to live with that name for the rest of her life.

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Woman #3: Oh, go away! (The Chaser’s War on Everything, 8/9/07)

On another occasion, Chris Taylor created a sketch titled ‘Where can you take a horse?’, which involved his walking a horse through Sydney’s CBD to uncover ‘horsism’ that exists at shops, restaurants, pubs, hotels and cinemas, to the surprise and scorn of the people operating those particular businesses. While this may be humorous, and arguably a case of turning the spotlight on ‘culture’ (broadly speaking), the news or public sphere value of such a stunt is negligible. So in testing the boundaries of what’s acceptable publiclly, and engaging in cultural satire, The Chaser team may also have pushed past satire’s limits of public value. As some participants noted:

Callum: It talks about shit a lot of the time… but it’s funny shit. (C3: 9)

Maggie: Yeah, well, [I would like them to spend more time on politics,] otherwise… you end up with a bit too much schoolboy toilet humour. And you sort of think, ‘Well, apart from getting a cheap laugh, what’s the point of that?’ (C4: 9)

What is quite interesting about The Chaser’s move to the domain of cultural satire is that, on the one hand, they were seen by some participants as something of a ‘voice’ of the people:

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Dan: It’s good because they get…. politicians and they put them into situations where they look like jackasses. Richard: Yeah… they take the ‘mickey’ out of them. Dan: Because you always want to get back at them. Richard: They’re kinda doing what you want to, but can’t. Brian: They say what everyone’s thinking, but on TV. (C1: 2)

And yet ‘the people’ are themselves often the butt of the joke:

Sanjay: I reckon they’re taking the piss out of the general public as well, really… by saying how stupid these ads and news is [sic] that we fall for. (C2: 3)

Sanjay’s comments above, however, may reveal one of the reasons why the show remains popular. His use of the term “the general public” in an oppositional sense reveals a classic high/low cultural capital binary. It suggests, for Sanjay at least, The Chaser is “taking the piss” out of the general public (i.e. ‘them’, ‘the masses’ etc.), and that this is a potential point of humour for ‘smart’ people who watch the War on Everything and get the jokes. This in itself may be a major flaw in The Chaser’s methods and therefore the potential of this format as a source of public knowledge. In some cases participants even suggested the show’s focus on minor ‘cultural’ issues (in pursuit of comedy) make the Chaser team no better than populist current affairs programs like Today Tonight and A Current Affair. Perhaps this signals that, although

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people have long seen satire as something of a remedy to journalism’s ills, it does have limits:

Joseph: In a way, they’re just like a smarter, funnier version of [Today Tonight’s] Naomi Robson, really – ‘cos they just beat up issues in a different sort of way… like, they are cynical, and they are witty, whereas you wouldn’t really say that the staff of Today Tonight are, in the way they present their news. But, like, it’s not really news, it’s entertainment, and it’s the same as what Today Tonight or A Current Affair [are], really … (C2: 7-8)

Sharna: Yeah… they’re almost… they make so much fun of those current affairs shows, but they’re just as bad in the way that they pick a little issue and blow it out of proportion…. (C2: 17)

In saying that The Chaser has pushed the limits of satire, however, I do not wish to argue every instance of cultural interrogation has no value whatsoever. While ‘cultural satire’ can result in rather dubious stunts like ‘In-Store Raving’ – where Chas Licciardello created a mini rave party at a clothing shop – it can also have an upside in drawing much-needed attention to privately held views. This is evident in the following example, in which Julian Morrow tested the acceptance of diversity in an upper-class northern Sydney suburb:

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Chris Taylor: … A study came out over summer which rated the tolerance levels of various suburbs in Australia and, interestingly, it was the very wealthy and elite Sydney suburbs of Woollahra and Mosman which were named as among the most racially intolerant in the country. Julian Morrow: Yeah, that’s right. And, of course, at the time the Mayor of Mosman [Denise Wilton] disputed those findings and said that the local residents there were, on the whole, very tolerant. (Video) Denise Wilton: We have cultural diversity here, and we’re all the better for it. Chris Taylor: But, just how keen are they on diversity? We decided to test Mosman’s tolerance levels by unveiling plans for a big new Mosque to be built in the main shopping strip of Mosman, and some of the locals weren’t too happy. (Video) Julian Morrow: There’s a proposal before council for a Mosque to go between The Crescent and Military Road, just next to the library and youth centre there. Woman #1: A Mosque? Julian Morrow: Yeah. A Mosque, yeah.

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Woman #1: (Shocked) No….!

FIGURE 23: A MOSQUE IN MOSMAN

Woman #2: I think Mosman people would be very interested in that. Julian Morrow: I’m sure they would. Absolutely. Woman #2: They’re quite broad-minded I’d say. Woman #3: Are we talking about building a Muslim temple in Mosman somewhere? Julian Morrow: [Yes] Woman #3: No, it doesn’t work for me at all. Man #1: Frankly, I would hate to see this suburb populated by people of this nature. Woman #2: I don’t like the minarets, actually. Julian Morrow: Right, OK. Woman #2: They don’t look very Mosman to me. Woman #4: I wouldn’t be too happy about it.

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Julian Morrow: Is it the design? Woman #4: It’s not the design. Just thinking that all these people are coming into our… town. Woman #5: You probably asked the wrong person. Julian Morrow: Why? Woman #5: I don’t know. All the trouble and everything… they’re just… Woman #4: I’m not racist or anything, but… I just [worry about] what might happen, like in Cronulla, 19 that’s all. Julian Morrow: Do you have reservations about this design? Woman #6: I would have reservations about this design. Julian Morrow: Right, OK. What would they be? Woman #6: I don’t have reservations about the Muslim community or the Muslim faith, but I wouldn’t like to see that… in Mosman. Julian Morrow: Is there any way the design could be modified to allay your concerns? Woman #3: Well, perhaps get rid of the temples and perhaps get rid of the feel that it’s a Muslim temple of worship. Man #1: Clear the lot away. Julian Morrow: Clear the lot away? Man #1: Oh yeah. I don’t think it’s appropriate in this vicinity, in this area, in this district. Julian Morrow: How far away from Mosman should the Mosque be? Man #1: In the western suburbs. (The Chaser’s War on Everything, 3/3/2006)

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Janice, who was not prompted with this example, but raised it from memory, discussed this segment in a focus group:

Janice: I mean, there are occasional ones, like there was the one that I took off YouTube and sent ‘round to several people… that just blew my mind and disgusted me. Where they went to the eastern suburbs of Sydney – where I lived for many years – and they took the whole concept of building a Mosque. God it horrified me. And the way people were just, like, ‘I’m sorry, you can’t possibly build it here’… … Maggie: But, yeah, they were doing that in the eastern suburbs. And see, I actually thought that was… I wasn’t disgusted at The Chaser at all… Janice: No! No! I wasn’t disgusted in The Chaser, I was disgusted in Australians. I was horrified. Maggie: No, that’s right, that’s right. And occasionally they really hit the mark, when they do pieces like that, that show all those well-to-do people in Mosman who wouldn’t dream of having a Mosque in their backyard. (C4: 13)

So, where the Citizens’ Infringement Officer is as much a form of cultural satire as the Mosque in Mosman segment, one is simply a chance to make fun of ordinary people, while the other provides a glimpse into the hidden racism that exists in our most-privileged and supposedly most reputable communities. A similar example came from founding Chaser member Charles Firth – who filed reports from the USA for the War on Everything – when he stopped several Americans on the street to ‘poll’ them

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about whether or not they feel Muslims should be forced to carry a special form of identification.

FIGURE 24: CHARLES FIRTH IN THE USA

Charles Firth: Do you think US Muslims should also wear a badge with the word Muslim on it? Man #1: I would say so. Charles Firth: Why? Man #1: So you [can] recognise them, you know. Charles Firth: Which Muslims should have a special security number tattooed on their arm? Only the evil Muslims, only Arab Muslims, or all Muslims? Man #2: All of them. Man #1: I would say all of them. … Man #2: I think there should be… some special mark or something. Charles Firth: Maybe a computer chip? Man #2: Right, a computer chip or something, that way they can’t hide it… where [it] glows through their clothes or something.

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Charles Firth: Would you support proposals for Muslims to be converted to Christianity, converted to Judaism, or incarcerated until the war is over? Woman #1: Incarcerate them ‘til the war is over. … Charles Firth: So, incarcerate them until the war is over? Man #3: No, incarcerate [them]… Charles Firth: Forever? Man #3: Yeah! Charles Firth: Would you ever consider buying a Muslim-deterrent spray, such as ‘Pork Spray’? (The Chaser’s War on Everything, 19/9/2007) 20

Firth’s methods here (like Morrow’s in the previous example, are actually grossly unethical by traditional standards of journalism. He is actively misrepresenting himself by pretending to be conducting a survey, but is actually there seeking to unearth racism and/or ignorance. However, this unethical, ‘fake’ approach is what helps him to achieve the overall effect, uncovering racist views and those who hold them. The cultural interrogation he is undertaking then is not dissimilar to that seen in the 2006 film Borat. As Sacha Baron Cohen (in Strauss, 2006) who plays that character points out, “By himself being anti-Semitic, … [Borat] lets people lower their guard and expose their own prejudice.” So while The Chaser’s satire has been turned on the public for the War on Everything, the result can be either a very illuminating cultural critique or just an excuse to annoy ordinary people for the purposes of comedy. Although it is at times problematic, that does not mean, however, that its flaws negate any possible public value. For those participants in this

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study who acknowledged the show sometimes went too far, or that they wanted more political content, there was still very much a sense that the intent of the show was fundamentally reasonable:

Baley: … I don’t think they mean to mock anything and everything, although they’ve got a plentiful supply out there to do it with – they can drum up the material from anything if they want to – but I think they do it for a good measure… to point out the ridiculousness of a situation. (C4: 8)

Tim: And that impact – that shock impact – can’t be sustained. And that’s why I think they have their standard [comedy] format, and once in a while, suddenly (clicks fingers) a penny drops. (C4: 14)

CONCLUSION

This chapter has examined two forms of satire employed in The Chaser’s War on Everything. The Chaser team’s use of satire in this series sends an important political message that may also help boost political knowledge amongst the audience (having a similar effect to the comments by ‘Elaine’ at the start of this chapter). However, their turn towards cultural satire requires a more nuanced perspective (such as that advocated at the end of Chapter 1). While some of their public stunts are simply an excuse to make ordinary people on the street the butt of a joke, in some instances their

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use of cultural satire can make us think very deeply about our own views, and the state of Australian culture in general. By getting public figures ‘off-message’, and by bringing some ‘chaos’ and a sense of the carnivalesque to the very ordered, static world of politics, the War on Everything is creating an engaging and insightful form of political television. Furthermore, The Chaser may also give us, in the words of Mario (C4: 2), “a look into ourselves that we don’t often take notice of”, therefore providing a cutting, satirical insight into our own culture.

Although some of The Chaser’s recent work is sketch comedy with a debatable level of public value (no more so than, say, Saturday Night Live), this chapter provided evidence to support my argument that The Chaser’s approach to public information does open up many possibilities for viewers’ understanding of politics and culture. The Chaser’s War on Everything does not always use the opportunities it has been afforded for the public good, but it certainly has a part to play in the wider spheres of politics, culture, and, as discussed in the next chapter, the media.

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NOTES

1

This comment has been reproduced verbatim as per the original spelling and grammar.

2

Probably the most famous moment from this series was when Julian Morrow filmed a piece in the

United States investigating how much knowledge Americans possess about “The world their country runs”. He asked questions like “What is the religion of Israel?”, and, astonishingly, received answers like “Catholic, probably”, and asked people to locate the next country America should invade on a mislabelled map (one person identified Australia as Iran). As of December 2008, a video of this segment has

been

viewed

almost

18

million

times

on

the

Internet

site

YouTube

(http://youtube.com/watch?v=fJuNgBkloFE). 3

Quote taken from author’s interview with Morrow.

4

In late 2005, when the ABC first announced that it was going to be airing a new Chaser series the

following year, the team suggested they wished to call the show Thank Allah It’s Friday! 5

This roughly equates to around 10% of the entire Australian population. As the Australian Bureau of

Statistics estimated that there were just over 21 million people living in Australia in September 2007 (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2007), and the USA’s population has a little over 300 million (United States Census Bureau, 2008), then this is the equivalent of 30 million people in that country tuning in to watch the same program at the same time. 6

Naturally, none of these figures take into account the number of viewers who have seen the program

online via the show’s website. Australian web users are offered the chance to freely download entire episodes online after they have aired on television, and/or watch selected clips from the show. Full episodes were also podcast (for free) through iTunes, while DVDs of each series have also been released. Video sharing sites like YouTube also offer many clips from the series, uploaded either officially by the ABC, or unofficially by website users. 7

I emphasise the word rough, because certain things that they do might could arguably be classified

under several of the ‘types’ I outline. 8

This was the Prime Minister’s actual home phone number, but was disconnected soon after the

newspaper was published, because angry citizens began calling to vent their frustration. 9

The heavy-set Former Opposition Leader Kim Beazley had been previously accused the then Prime

Minister that he didn’t have the ‘Ticker’ (heart) to become the country’s next leader. 10

Crikey! is an email-based news publication which prides itself on independent news commentary.

11

A racial epithet, denoting an immigrant from southern Europe (principally Italy or Greece), that has

been re-appropriated in more proud terms by this community. 12

Elsewhere (Deitz, 2006: 291), Julian Morrow has said about their newspaper that “It’s a liberating

and fun way to write about politics because you don’t have to be as carefully argued, but you also don’t have to be as cautious of the political ramifications of what you’re saying… In fact, a lot of the time you can be a lot more open and honest in the way you write in comedy, than what you could get away with in [the] mainstream press, for instance.”

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13

In his appearance on Crossfire, Jon Stewart argued the excellent opportunity that program had to “get

politicians off of their marketing and strategy” was squandered with “knee-jerk, reactionary talk” and therefore failed its “responsibility to the public discourse” (Crossfire, 15/10/2004). 14

The joke here is that New Zealanders pronounce ‘six’ in much the same way as Australians say ‘sex’.

15

In late 2006, for example, then-Leader of the Opposition Kim Beazley was publically humiliated

because he did not know that former soap actress Belinda Emmett (and the wife of well-known TV presenter Rove McManus) had recently died after a long battle with cancer. Asked on live radio to make a comment about her passing, a confused Beazley offered his condolences to Karl Rove, the Deputy Chief of Staff to George W. Bush. Less than one month after this incident, Beazley lost the party leadership to Sunrise regular Kevin Rudd, with many commentators suggesting that Beazley’s lack of knowledge about the event showed that he was out of touch with ‘ordinary’ Australians. 16

Damon (in Chapter 4) used a very similar argument about Sunrise’s casual approach to the ‘Big Guns

of Politics’ segment. 17

Good News Week originated on the ABC and moved to the Ten Network in the late 1990s. It has

often had federal politicians on the show as guests, including, most recently, Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop (van Onselen, 2008). 18

The similarities do not end there either, as both comedy teams comprised friends who met at

university. The Chaser team mostly met at the University of Sydney, where Working Dog/DGeneration hailed from the University of Melbourne. 19

Cronulla is a Sydney beachside suburb that was the setting for a race riot in late 2005, primarily

involving young Anglo-Saxons (so-called ‘Aussies’) and Lebanese Muslims (see Hartley & Green, 2006). 20

This piece can also be found on the DVD for Appendix A.

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CHAPTER 7

CHASING REPORTERS: MEDIA SATIRE, INTERTEXTUALITY AND PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE

If you’ve got a tip off or a gripe, don't tell Media Watch they'll just make a legitimate point on your behalf. That may give you some satisfaction, but it won't be as satisfying, or as fun, as getting the Chaser team to wreak some revenge for you.

– The Chaser’s War on Everything’s Website (ABC,

2007b)

This chapter examines The Chaser’s media satire, which is interpreted here as a form of what Gray (2006b) calls “critical intertextuality”. It pays close attention to “the powers of parody to talk back to more authoritative texts and genres, to recontextualize and pollute their meaning-construction process, and to offer other, ‘improper,’ and yet more media literate and savvy interpretations” (Gray, 2006b: 4). As such, this chapter will attempt to analyse specifically The Chaser’s critical reflection of news, current affairs and the media more generally, and further attempts

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to understand it as a form of knowledge production. The chapter argues The Chaser’s War on Everything does not necessarily report on current events, but conceived as a form of critical intertextuality, its continual use of ‘real’ journalism as a source of comedy provides some critical insight into the way in which current events are presented elsewhere in the media. The show’s ability to engage in a meta-level analysis of other news sources plays an important role in the public sphere, but questions remain as to whether or not it promotes a form of scepticism that mitigates against active citizenship.

MEDIA SATIRE

Julian Morrow: The thing that I suppose shits us most is the really trashy, tabloidy, commercial media that purports to represent all these other interests, [but] is actually just a cynical exercise in raising advertising revenue and dumbing things down for, well, the sake of more advertising revenue. And we have the liberty of being able to point that out.

Chapter 6 examined two forms of satire in The Chaser: political and cultural satire. There is, however, a third form of satire that features very heavily in this program: media satire. There have been many examples of this satire, one of the most frequent examples of which is ‘The Ad Road Test’, in which the team test the scenarios and claims made in advertising to see if they stack up in reality. Most often the segment will take an ad which makes a ridiculous suggestion about the product or service being advertised. Parodying the ad for the National Roads and Motorists’ Association

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(NRMA) breakdown service, which showed the roadside assistant helping the customer find a new dress for a ball after it had been ruined in an accident, Chris Taylor attempted to see if the same might happen to him in real life. He of course found out – after calling the service and approaching the helper while wearing a pink dress like the woman in the original ad – that the NRMA is only there to help people with their cars, not fashion dilemmas, highlighting the fact ads like it are making claims that obviously do not have any basis in reality.

FIGURE 25: THE NRMA ‘AD ROAD TEST’

On several occasions The Chaser interfered with the other television program analysed in this thesis, by standing outside the window at Sunrise’s ‘Breakky Central’ studios (see Chapter 4), making themselves visible to the Sunrise audience. In one instance Chas Licciardello placed a television showing the Today program up against the studio window in order to help boost Today’s flagging ratings. On another occasion they stood solemnly with a cardboard cut-out of Kevin Rudd, as someone dressed a soldier played the last post on a bugle, trying to make fun of the ‘fake dawn’ scandal mentioned in Chapter 5.

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Like The Daily Show, The Chaser team are very critical of what could broadly be seen as the degradation of media culture. ‘The 2:30 Report’, 1 which casts a critical eye over “what’s on telly after midnight when no one’s watching” is one such example. In one of these reports they discussed interactive late-night ‘quiz’ shows, which have become popular on Australian TV in the past three years. These very low-budget programs, with hosts who seem to be very adept at continual ‘padding’, involve people calling in to win cash prizes by answering ridiculously easy questions or puzzles. 2 Of course, the segment highlighted the fact these programs make money by continually begging people to call their premium toll phone number to win a cash prize, and yet very rarely give any callers the chance to actually win anything. The team showed a clip in this segment in which the Nine Network program Quizmania ran a two minute ‘Bonus Speed Round’, during which time the show’s host claimed they would “take as many callers as we can, and give away as much cash as we can”. During this two minute period not a single person was put on the air to win a prize, and the show gave away no money (The Chaser’s War on Everything, 11/8/2006). The next segment ran a timer underneath an edited clip of one quiz program, showing it went for over 24 minutes without taking a caller. In the course of another report on Christian programming, The Chaser team showed televangelist Mike Murdoch seeking donations to his charity – to “Sow a seed… as a covenant between you and God” – by telling his viewers: “God spoke to me and said, ‘Tell them about the miracle of the thousand dollar seed’” (The Chaser’s War on Everything, 1/9/2006).

In other instances, The Chaser tested the unwritten rules that govern the media and culture itself. Andrew Hansen, as his ‘Mr 10 Questions’ character, who approaches famous people at press conferences to ask a string of ten humorous questions (without

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giving them time to answer) offended one member of the Backstreet Boys by enquiring, among other things, if the name of their group was “a sexual reference, because enduring your music is like being rogered 3 roughly from behind?” (The Chaser’s War on Everything, 10/3/2006). Hansen caused more controversy in a similar incident when he asked screen legend Sophia Loren, “as the world’s most refined actress, do you ever fart?” (The Chaser’s War on Everything, 6/6/2007). Where other journalists were fervently buying into the publicity frenzy that is a celebrity press conference, Hansen, and the Chaser team, subverted the exercise in not playing by the rules of the media ‘game’ of obsequious co-promotion.

Another aspect of the media that has attracted The Chaser’s ire is the kind of reportage that characterises FOX News, which was satirised semi-regularly during their 2007 segment ‘The News According to FOX’. The segment, which is always run with pretend FOX screen ‘clutter’ (logos, news ticker, other headlines, flag graphics), would openly mock the news network for – in the words of Jonathan Gray (2006a) – “leaving several basic tenets of journalism behind, instead preferring shows with lots of yelling and angry people”. In the following example, they poke fun at FOX, and their attempts to engage in rigorous discussion over the slightest piece of inane news about a dead celebrity:

Chas Licciardello: So, what’s the news according to FOX this week, Andrew? Andrew Hansen: The news this week, Chas, like last week, and like the eight weeks before that, is the death of Anna-Nicole Smith. Chas Licciardello: Now, here in Australia, we simply heard that she died. But only FOX took you on a tour of Anna-Nicole’s house.

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Andrew Hansen: Not just her house, but every appliance in it! (Video) Geraldo Rivera: Ladies and Gentlemen, in a few minutes we’re going to be showing you photographs of the refrigerator in that house. Andrew Hansen: And he showed you alright. Or, should we say, (reading from the FOX graphic) ‘Death Fridge’. Well they showed us Anna’s house, we’ve seen inside her fridge, what more could there be? (Video) FOX Anchor: Inside Anna’s secret sperm bank, next. Andrew Hansen: Now you don’t unearth real news like that without an army of highly-trained experts, and FOX always brings you the people most central to the story. Chas Licciardello: Case in point, this guy here from Trimspa, which is a diet drink that Anna-Nicole did ads for. Now, sure her fridge was full of lethal doses of methadone, but the issue FOX really nailed was [the] brand of diet drink [that] was in her fridge. (Video) Sean Hannity: How was it for you when inside of this refrigerator was the methadone and the Slimfast, and yet she was representing your product, which is Trimspa? Trimspa CEO: Well, of course, initially when we saw that we were concerned. I called Howard [K. Stern] immediately and asked him about it, and he said that the Slimfast was planted. Chas Licciardello: You see! News story over! The Slimfast was planted. (The Chaser’s War on Everything, 4/4/2007)

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MEDIA SATIRE AND COMMERCIAL TV

In early 2007, it was rumoured The Chaser team were in the process of weighing up lucrative offers to move to one of Australia’s three commercial TV networks. On 19 April 2007, for example, the Nine Network’s A Current Affair ran a very flattering piece about the team (called “Chasing The Chaser”), which was seen by many as another attempt to lure them over to their network. 4 However, many of these rumours stopped very abruptly after the concept of a move to commercial TV was parodied in the subsequent episode of the War on Everything, with the team showing scenes from a fictional pilot they supposedly shot for Channel Nine. The joke was that the pilot was The Chaser with its satirical, critical edge almost entirely absent, featuring higher production values and a more standard ‘talk-show’ format, which was appropriately titled ‘The Chaser’s War on Everything (Except Sponsors)’. In contrast to their normal disruptive, antagonistic approach, the style of ‘The Chaser’s War on Everything (Except Sponsors)’ was extremely friendly, with a bigger, more professionally designed set (adorned with strategically-placed Toyota promotional mugs on desks) and a much more formally-dressed cast. The overall effect highlighted what The Chaser team obviously see as commercial television’s lack of courage, for fear of offending sponsors or political associates. 5 Approaching Prime Minister John Howard as he left the ABC’s Sydney headquarters, Craig Reucassel was almost the opposite of his usual self:

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Craig Reucassel: Prime Minister! Just wanted to say how much I like Workchoices! 6 I’ll be voting for you PM – it’s a great policy! Have you considered lowering business tax? Business tax is too high! But otherwise, good job – keep it up! Thumbs up for the next term. (Prime Minister’s limousine drives way) Woo hoo! Go PM! That’s the Prime Minister, people… good bloke.

In the commercial version of ‘What Have We Learned from Current Affairs This Week?’ (the conventional version of which is discussed in greater detail later in this chapter), Chas Licciardello and Andrew Hansen pan one program and praise another:

Chas Licciardello: Well, this week Channel Seven’s Today Tonight served us up more of the usual shallow, exploitative rot that we’ve come to expect from them. Andrew Hansen: Yes, whereas A Current Affair, of course – 6:30 weekdays here on Nine – was once again both incisive and informative. I couldn’t fault them at all. Chas Licciardello: No. In fact, if we just update the tally board, ACA is now leading Today Tonight in ‘exclusives’ this year – an amazing 43 to 7! Andrew Hanson: They’re also way ahead in ‘general excellence’ – 57 to Nil. … Pick up your game Today Tonight! (The Chaser’s War on Everything, 25/4/2007)

This example is important for two reasons. First, it provides an opportunity to assess further the limitations of the Chaser ‘sensibility’ as a form of journalism, and whether or not a show such as this could work on commercial TV. It raises the question as to

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whether public service broadcasting is the only habitat which can uphold an explicitly anti-commercial and anti-everything show (as suggested by the name). If the show’s core purpose is satirising politics, culture and media, then this may have many implications for its approach as a valuable and sustainable form of making news events accessible to the public. When asked about his thoughts on whether The Chaser’s War on Everything could work anywhere other than on the ABC, Andrew Hansen was unsure:

Andrew Hanson: It’s hard to know, because so much of our material is explicitly anti-commercial… because we hoe into big business and we hoe into ads… I mean, you know, ads themselves we hoe into, and because we’re so irreverent and a lot of people are offended by The Chaser and ‘tut-tut’ and feel that we’re naughty and irresponsible and so on… I imagine [commercial networks would] be nervous about having The Chaser, because their prime agenda is not to offend any of their advertisers, and they have so many ads – like, hundreds – and they can’t offend one of their advertisers. And… I mean, look at the pap that’s on commercial channels, the sort of comedy they run is so safe, and safety destroys comedy.

The second reason why ‘The Chaser’s War on Everything (Except Sponsors)’ is significant in the context of this chapter is because it is just one of several attempts the team has made to illustrate how commercial values have an influence on television content. Some of the participants in this study believed the show was deserving of a wider audience but thought it would work too strongly against the logic of commercial television, and therefore would not be nearly as stinging. The following

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discussions show these participants believe the team, by working through Australia’s public broadcaster, are awarded a degree of creative freedom in not having to be afraid of offending advertisers or the owners of a TV network:

Thomas: If it was on Channel Ten, I reckon it would do a lot more better [sic]. I reckon it suits Channel Ten’s demographic very well. Callum: No. See, I wouldn’t [say that], because then there’ll be too many fucking ads, there’ll be too much legislation of what you can and cannot say on fucking TV… and all that kind of stuff. It’ll be just too… you would lose what the show is all about. There’s a lot of passion behind the stories… (C3: 21)

Tim: See, I don’t think they’d be able to take the mickey out of the commercial world once they go onto commercial TV. Maggie: Well, maybe that’s the case. Tim: I think they’d lose a dimension… Maggie: All I’m saying is that it is deserving of a wider audience… Tim: Of course it is. (C4: 23-24)

What is immediately noticeable about Tim’s comments above is that he talks about how the show will change “once they go onto commercial TV”, as though this was inevitable. Nathan and Dan, however, acknowledged many of the same issues regarding commercial television, but seemed to think this would be a reason why the team would not (or could not) leave the ABC:

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Nathan: Well, they definitely haven’t [gone commercial]… and you’ll find they won’t. Because, you’ll find there’s a lot more people to offend on… Dan: Commercial TV. Nathan: You’ve got to look at investors, you’ve got to look at that sort of thing. (C1: 3)

The fact participants had formed such a strong impression of this show’s operation outside of commercial imperatives – in effect ‘teaching’ them about political and economic influences on content – suggests it might be valuable to pay attention to this and other aspects of the show’s media satire in terms of its intertextual framing.

CRITICAL INTERTEXTUALITY

The problem is not in getting the information. The problem is, who has the information of record. Who can you trust to provide you with information that is useful to you, because you're surrounded by junk. (Jon Stewart, in Schlosser, 2003: 28)

In his book Watching with The Simpsons, Jonathan Gray (2006b) offers a slightly different approach to existing debates about the public sphere and non-factual entertainment television’s contribution to it. Rather than attempting to uncover ‘meaning’ from The Simpsons’ content, the focus of Gray’s argument surrounds the notion of “critical intertextuality”. Far more than simply referring to, drawing upon,

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building upon or being situated ‘between’ other texts (in a state of peaceful coexistence), critical intertextuality is a specific form of antagonistic satire with the power to “reevaluate, ridicule, and teach other genres” (Gray, 2006b: 4), or those other texts that we, as viewers, are so often found watching with (or ‘through’) the Simpson family. Gray examines three main sites of this type of intertextual parody, including television’s ‘commercial logic’, which is certainly applicable to the previous example of ‘The Chaser’s War on Everything (Except Sponsors)’. For this thesis, however, the most significant form of critical intertextuality that Gray identifies is that relating to the news media. Rather than suggesting the show creates news, or that it could serve as a suitable substitute for the news genre, Gray believes The Simpsons’ critique of the form, standards and foibles of news as it is often presented elsewhere on television, is in itself an important constituent of the public sphere. Where Habermas (1989: 117, emphasis added), saw “rational-critical” debate as a central (but often missing) requirement of the public sphere, critical intertextuality – even when it is situated in “irrational” entertainment (Gray, 2006b: 95-96) – can itself help to build, or perhaps re-build, a kind of public sphere by satirising other programs’ usually more serious (but often unsuccessful) attempts to do the same thing:

Parody works by talking of genre, and it can inspire ridicule of a genre through discussing that genre’s inner mechanics. Consequently, while The Simpsons does not tell us what is happening in Capitol Hill, Westminster, or the Sudan, it calls for a critical appraisal of those televisual voices that do tell us (or at least try to tell us) of world news. The Simpsons’ news parody… can, in its own small way, contribute to a shared teaching and learning of the news, and thus it hails

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us not solely as news consumers, but as citizens trying to make sense of the news and of ‘what happened’… this contributes to a public sphere, and, as such, constitutes a mainstream and popular media literacy education of sorts. (Gray, 2006b: 96-7)

In making this argument, Gray appropriates the work of David Buckingham, who believes much greater emphasis should be placed “on how the text situates the viewer in relation to ‘information’” or “how it defines and constructs the experience of ‘becoming informed’”, rather than simply judging news programs on their ability to deliver news to the viewer (Buckingham, 2000: 18, emphasis added). The Simpsons may be a cartoon sitcom that presents a caricature of the real world (or perhaps just a look into a fictional microcosm of it), but the (admittedly irregular) news parody within that program helps enable viewers “to construct and define their relationship with the news itself”, and as such they “can be better equipped to read through and filter through, political information” in the real world (Gray, 2006b: 104). Given Morley’s (1999: 142) argument that “the distant world of ‘the news’ is so disconnected from popular experience” that it may be “beyond critical judgement for many viewers”, forms of television programming that help to create an awareness of the ways in which news is ‘encoded’ can build a “genre literacy” that affects the way viewers ‘decode’ and – as argued by Gray (2006b: 30, 34) – “redecode” news forms that are situated extratextually.

Returning to the example used extensively in Chapter 2, The Daily Show generates humour out of the struggles by many ‘old’ news organisations to maintain their own (self-imposed) standards and highlights characteristics of the news genre that are

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faulty or problematic. A powerful example of this is correspondent Jason Jones’ satirical report about Carl Monday, an Ohio journalist who ran a six-part investigation on a teenager he had caught (via a hidden camera sting) masturbating to Internet pornography in a public library. Through sarcastic praise of his ‘idol’, Jones mocked the reporter’s ethical standards, claiming: “Wow, I want to be a reporter just like Carl Monday!” Jones then went on a stake out to secure an interview with Monday, later asking him, “Do you have any tips for young reporters like myself to be able to kick people while they’re down?” And, “What’s the best way to take away someone’s dignity?” The implication of this ‘fake’ news piece is that we, as citizens and viewers, should not simply place our trust in a ‘real’ journalist who chooses to go after teenage library masturbators rather than, in Jones’ words, “the high and mighty” (The Daily Show, 28/9/2006).

Much the same goes for The Daily Show spin-off, The Colbert Report. By parodying the form and tenor of sanctimonious and self-righteous opinion programs, Stephen Colbert continually forces us to reflect on the state of political discourse elsewhere on television, particularly the repetitive and forced populist appeals that characterise TV stars like Bill O'Reilly in the US, and talkback radio hosts such as John Laws and Alan Jones in Australia (see Flew, 2003). In Colbert’s regular segment ‘The Word’, for example, an on-screen graphic undertakes a humorous, oppositional and subversive decoding of the (often illogical) argument Colbert himself is making directly to the viewer. In doing so, it may create a sense of healthy scepticism which its viewers can then apply to real arguments being made in other places and texts at other times.

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Although it was a work of fiction, the Australian comedy Frontline – a satirical behind-the-scenes look at a television current affairs program cast from the same mould as A Current Affair and Today Tonight – can also be seen as a form of critical intertextuality that worked on this level in much the same way as Gray (2006b) argues The Simpsons does. Frontline’s main source of comedy was the humorous and spurious production practices that flourished behind the scenes of a current affairs program (of the same name), which therefore helped to deconstruct that particular genre. McKee has described Frontline as a “meta-text”, because it was “an important text in popular culture’s continual self-interrogation”, and “allowed popular culture to discuss the production of popular culture” (McKee, 2001: 294). A more recent example of the same phenomenon is The Gruen Transfer, one of the ABC’s most popular new programs of 2008. That show, which casts a critical eye over the world of advertising, makes explicit the persuasive techniques advertisers use to sell their products or services, thus heightening its audience’s ability to ‘read’ and deconstruct advertising on commercial television.

The arguments here, and their implications are, in fact, not particularly dissimilar to those being made about online blogs as a form of participatory ‘citizen’ journalism. Bruns (2005: 11-30) suggests because in our digital age there is so much news and information already (freely) circulating within the public sphere, there has emerged a form of online journalism, the practitioners of which act not as ‘gatekeepers’ – reporters who decide what is news, gather it and attempt to generate discrete news reports – but instead as ‘gatewatchers’, whose aim is to signpost, sort, interpret, and/or check the news and information that is already available. These gatewatchers, Bruns (2005: 19) claims, are less concerned with ‘publishing’ news, than they are

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with ‘publicising’ it, and thus tend to create evaluative reports which “often take the form of brief summaries or digests which combine pointers to a number of such reports and discuss their relevance, identify different angles for evaluating the same event, or make connections to other related issues”. While this argument has been made in relation to online journalism, it may also be applicable to critical intertextuality in the midst of “cultural chaos” (McNair, 2006). Because information can come from a range of media forms and texts, news programs do not always have to generate ‘new’ information, but can be significant for their ability to interpret and frame news created by other sources.

DISSECTING THE TABLOID

FIGURE 26: ANDREW HANSEN (LEFT) AND CHAS LICCIARDELLO

Perhaps the best example of The Chaser’s critical intertextuality is the segment ‘What Have We Learned from Current Affairs This Week?’ in which Chas Licciardello and Andrew Hansen aim to ridicule the standard of journalism employed on the commercial current affairs programs Today Tonight and A Current Affair. Each week

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the pair explore a theme that runs through these shows and so might discuss, for example, their attitude to young people, migrants, or their ridiculous attempts to make metaphorical mountains out of molehills. For example, one week they sent up these programs’ tendency to look continually for extreme examples to sell a story, and how A Current Affair (ACA) once ran a story about what The Chaser called a ‘supermance’: “A pre-operative transsexual deaf lesbian schizophrenic with a violent past” (The Chaser’s War on Everything, 19/9/2007).

FIGURE 27: THREE SCORES FROM THE ‘CURRENT AFFAIRS TALLYBOARD’

This particular segment plays mostly on the cognitive dissonance between what programs such as TT and ACA claim to be doing (serious hard-hitting journalism) and the often unethical, poorly-conceived reality – confirming they are trying to win an audience like any other show. This “illustrates that the news is a show, carefully put together for entertainment purposes”, while “dutifully obeying the (sometimes disinformation) objectives of its owners, and [is] still as much a product as any ad” (Gray, 2006b: 101). Although this segment is focussed quite narrowly on only two programs within the broader Australian media sphere, both arguably represent the classic tabloid archetype and are perhaps merely representative of poor TV journalism in all its forms. Through The Chaser’s teaching and redecoding (see Gray, 2006b: 34) of these programs, viewers might be more able to spot substandard journalism

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elsewhere. By cutting through their grandiose façade and taking a microscope to these shows, this segment encourages viewers into a far more media literate, savvy decoding – or perhaps reading through (see Gray, 2006b: 34) – of journalism when it is seen throughout the media. So, when it showed how many times TT and ACA have depicted grieving interviewees walking along a beach, we, the audience, see that these stories are constructed to fit a narrative arc, as opposed to being somehow natural representations of truth and reality.

Andrew Hansen: … it’s about the dreadfulness of those shows, and I get a genuine satisfaction out of ribbing those terrible programs but I think it’s also fun – and I hope funny for the viewers, or at least those who find it funny… A lot of that segment is: ‘Look at these shows, they’re clearly not telling us the truth’ … and they’re often not telling us anything…

Hansen, who suggested that creating ‘What Have We Learned from Current Affairs This Week?’ represents a cathartic outlet for the anger and frustration these shows generate in him, believes the segment’s aim is to highlight the fact they constantly recycle story ideas in particular genres. These genres then show up in the ‘Current Affairs Tallyboard’, with categories such as ‘Menace to Society’, ‘Old People Screwed Over’, or ‘Mindless Celebrity Fluff’. Possibly the biggest area of attack in this segment comes through laughing openly at Today Tonight’s or A Current Affair’s warped sense of news values, by highlighting their tendency to cover stories which might be interesting or salacious, but have little or no relevance to society more broadly. In the following example, we see them exposing the discrepancy between

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what was actually news on a given day, and the news according to A Current Affair, where, according to Chas Licciardello, the “big stories just keep on coming”:

Andrew Hansen: Now, the seventh of February will live in history. Not because of the Iraqi wheat scandal, or because Australia saw one of its biggest drug stings ever, but because of this tragedy of global proportions: (Video) Tracy Grimshaw: …Tiny tots who got themselves, and their mums, banned from a family restaurant because they were having too much fun. Chas Licciardello: Yes. The day innocence died at the Gourmet Pizza Kitchen. Now let’s take a moment to remember where you were, the day Tina and Erina were asked to leave. (Video – sad music) … Chas Licciardello: Do you remember where you were on the day that Tina and Erina were thrown out of the Gourmet Pizza Kitchen? Man #1: No idea. Woman #1: I’ve never heard of [them] before. Chas Licciardello: They’re the ones whose children were having too much fun. Woman #1: (Slightly confused) Oh, OK. Man #2: What, is that on Neighbours or something like that? Chas Licciardello: No no no no, it’s the news. Woman #2: Who’s Tina and… who? Chas Licciardello: Tina and Erina.

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Woman #2: Who are they? Woman #3: Seventh of February, where was I? Probably at work… Andrew Hansen: Memories, Memories… now the amazing thing is that that story was almost eclipsed by the whopper that followed it. (Video) Tracy Grimshaw: Let’s move on to the latest U.F.O. sightings over Australia. (The Chaser’s War on Everything, 2/6/2006)

By showing that ‘ordinary’ people on the street neither know who Tina and Erina are, nor care about their treatment at the Gourmet Pizza Kitchen, Hansen and Licciardello are arguing that ACA is not covering the issues people really worry about and is treating the matter with an undue level of importance. Like The Simpsons’ Kent Brockman, whose “news priorities are remarkably and exaggeratedly misplaced” causing viewers to “laughingly reflect on our own news channels’ failure to provide what is important” (Gray, 2006b: 99), The Chaser’s analysis of bad journalism also “works to engender or further nourish a suspicion and distrust of the news” (Gray, 2006b: 97).

The faux empathy that seems to be a hallmark of current affairs TV in Australia was lampooned on one occasion when The Chaser showed how ACA ran a story about a young Australian girl with body image concerns, because of her having oversized breasts. During the report on this young girl, the ACA team still drew attention to her chest (while she wore a revealing singlet top) from almost every conceivable camera angle whilst simultaneously pointing out that she is normally “too shy to show her

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14G chest” (because she hates the attention she receives). The Chaser mined this journalistic insensitivity for comedic purposes, pointing out their use of vision of the girl’s breasts taken from as many camera angles as possible, including one “hovering inches above her breasts”, and another that Andrew Hansen described as “a 180o tracking shot reminiscent of The Matrix” (The Chaser’s War on Everything, 11/4/2007). This further highlights the chasm between the ‘help’ these shows claim to offer ‘ordinary Aussies’ and the exploitative, unethical reportage they often produce. 7

Another of the segment’s weekly ‘lessons’ was devoted to the art of network crosspromotions. On this occasion, The Chaser played a clip in which ACA’s anchor Tracy Grimshaw introduced a story (called ‘Behind CSI’) by saying, “CSI, the original Crime Scene Investigation is about, of course, forensic cops who combine good looks, cutting-edge intellect and designer-label fashion…” (The Chaser’s War on Everything, 28/4/2006). The fact that CSI is one of the Nine Network’s top-rating shows seems far more than just a coincidence when framed in this way. In another instance, Chas Licciardello pointed out ACA’s vested interests affected its coverage by showing – via recourse to their tallyboard – that stories about poker machine addiction were few and far between on that program, but relatively common on TT. He implied this was due to the fact the Nine Network was (at the time) part of the PBL (Publishing and Broadcasting Limited) empire, a large part of which comprised a stake in casinos around the world, including Melbourne’s Crown Casino. Such a frank illustration of how commercial interests affect what receives critical coverage is very important, in that it shows the viewers programs which continually seek their trust perhaps do not deserve it.

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Although the segment very often makes fun of these shows’ sense of what constitutes news, it has also made much of their weak attempts to cover more serious news topics as well. In the following example, Licciardello and Hansen show how traditional news and current affairs programs privilege the ‘eyewitness’ account so much they are willing to interview someone who was merely in the general vicinity of a major news event, and that a tragic incident can easily be used (or abused) by a journalist interested in milking an interviewee’s grief to heighten a story’s emotional appeal and viewer empathy.

Chas Licciardello: … Every now and then Today Tonight has a terrible lapse and they accidently cover some news, like after the Virginia Tech shooting, and how desperate were they to get someone, anyone, even vaguely connected to the incident? This desperate: (Video) Anna Coren: Where were you when the shootings began? Interviewee: (Via Satellite) Ummm, not too too far away [sic], but far enough away that I couldn’t hear the actual gunshots. Anna Coren: And when did you first discover the magnitude of what was going on? Interviewee: Probably when I switched on the TV at, like, 10:30 in the morning. Andrew Hansen: Oh, that woman found out only an hour-and-a-half after I did! … But even if you do get hold of the right interview subject, sometimes you just can’t get anything out of them. Poor [ACA] reporter Peter Stefanovic, oh what a

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valiant effort he made to wring grief out of this man, who narrowly escaped a boating accident: (Video) Peter Stefanovic: What’s it like being here [back at the scene of the accident] now? Is it particularly chilling for you? Interviewee: Ah, not really. (The Chaser’s War on Everything, 30/5/2007)

Hansen’s mode of address in the above example is quite important. He is not so much laughing at the fact TT’s ‘on location’ interviewee contradicted the very reasons for her status as an important character in the narrative (giving away that she was no more an ‘eyewitness’ than TV viewers sitting half a world away). Rather, Hansen is literally instructing viewers on how to be a current affairs journalist, most noticeable in his use of the term ‘you’, which is employed in an empathetic way. By using the example of “poor” Peter Stefanovic, Hansen is actually describing the reporter not as deceitful or unethical per se, but simply as a good-willed person trying to do his job in a way that fits a pre-set mould. The criticism is not personal in all cases then, but critical of the genre itself. It therefore promotes amongst its audience what can be seen as a genre literacy:

Thomas: I think they’re just reacting to what’s happened during the week in the current affairs shows. They’re just telling it in another way. (C3: 22)

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Sanjay: And… they’re trying to make people aware of… the influence politics does have on the media, I reckon. (C2: 15)

Richard: They[’re] not making news, they’re designed to make fun of the news. … Brian: If you watched nothing but Today Tonight, you’d think we’re all crazy and going to hell in a hand basket. Everyone’s just like, ‘Ahhh, chaos, crisis’, but we watch [The Chaser], we think it’s great… (C1: 42)

WHEN ‘OLD’ MEETS ‘NEW’

While ‘What Have We Learned From Current Affairs this Week?’ can be interpreted as a form of critical intertextuality, there have been numerous instances of its going one step beyond intertextuality, undertaking a more active (in some ways even journalistic) critique of reporters and their practice. Although the segment is significant because it speaks about current affairs television, Hansen and Licciardello have also made very strong attempts to speak directly to (or perhaps back to) the genre as well, rather than sustain a purely textual critique. After TT reporter Brian Seymour made two young Asian immigrants look awkward and silly because, according to his standards, they had little understanding of so-called ‘Australian values’ (e.g. knowing who Don Bradman 8 was, or what pavlova 9 is), Hansen and Licciardello turned this thinly-veiled racism on its head in defence of an ethnic group

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that so often receives unfavourable coverage in these contexts. Here The Chaser further demonstrates a reporter can find anybody to say or do something which merely conforms to their own pre-conceived opinions, and that a report’s meaning can be dramatically altered through the use of judicious editing:

Chas Licciardello: You don’t know what a pavlova is? Take your substantial contribution to the country and piss off! (Throws a pavlova at the camera) Andrew Hansen: Frankly, I don’t know about Seymour’s test results. When we went to Chinatown, we found Asians know quite a lot about Australia. (Video) Chas Licciardello: Do you know who Brian Seymour is? Asian Man #1: He’s a fuckwit. Asian Man #2: A shoddy journalist. Asian Woman #1: He has a penis for [a] head. Asian Woman #2: Brian Seymour is the nadir of tabloid journalism. Asian Woman #3: The commonest news in China is more balanced than him. Asian Woman #4: Brian Seymour – get out of my country. Asian Man #3: Brian Seymour… isn’t he that dickhead, arsewipe, motherfucking slut from Today Tonight hosted by that bitch? Actually, can I give a message to Brian Seymour? Chas Licciardello: (In a state of shock) Yeah… Asian Man #3: Brian Seymour – fuck you! (The Chaser’s War on Everything, 19/9/2007)

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FIGURE 28: ASIAN AUSTRALIANS ON BRIAN SEYMOUR

So, more than simply speaking to and back to the genre, The Chaser have used their heightened media profiles to confront and interfere with it directly. As seen in relation to The Daily Show in Chapter 2 (see Sotos, 2007), by confronting journalists and checking their standards, The Chaser’s media satire can also be perceived (rightly or wrongly) as a kind of ‘fifth estate’. There are, in fact, many parallels between this comedic approach and, the ABC program Media Watch, in that both aim to critique the current state of the news media and indirectly attempt to keep the standards of modern journalism in check. In the following example, Hansen and Licciardello show that TT reporter Chris Simond has ‘gone soft’ on many of his subjects, and as such does not do his job properly:

Andrew Hansen: One guy who isn’t taking crap from anyone is the legendary Chris Simond from Today Tonight. Just watch him sink his fangs into the unsuspecting head of Wizard Credit Cards [Mark Bouris]. (Video) 262

Chris Simond: You’re certainly throwing down the gauntlet to other credit card companies aren’t you, to improve on their interest rates and conditions. Mark Bouris: Yeah, absolutely. Chas Licciardello: Oh, that’s gotta hurt! Andrew Hansen: Got him! If you thought that was merciless, you didn’t see Simond blindside the Olsen twins. Nothing could have prepared them for this: (Video) Chris Simond: But you’re really here for the launch of your new MaryKate and Ashley range. Tell us all about it. I gather it’s bold, bargainpriced and very colourful. Mary-Kate Olsen: (Smiling) You should sit here and say that! Ashley Olsen: (Laughing) I know. Chas Licciardello: He tore strips off them! Andrew Hansen: Shot down in flames.

To go one step further with their point in this example, the pair then tracked down and confronted TT reporter Chris Simond at a shopping centre, because Hansen had deemed him a “thug” who deserved “to be taken down a peg or two”. What ensues is not a surprise attack on him or his character, but a more polite, ironic critique of his style:

Andrew Hansen: Chris Simond, tell us about your journalistic style, I gather it’s hard-hitting, rigorous and eloquent. Chris Simond: Well, I like to think it is, yeah.

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(The Chaser’s War on Everything, 7/4/2006)

Because the War on Everything and those who created it so often test the limits of taste and public acceptability (see Chapter 5), they themselves have become fodder for moralising on current affairs television. Andrew Hansen’s rude confrontation with Sophia Loren for example, saw Today Tonight openly criticise him, claiming The Chaser had ‘gone too far’ in an attempt at humour by disrespecting a major international celebrity, thus giving Australia a bad image. While the team has usually acknowledged on air that being criticised by a program like Today Tonight can be read as a sign they might actually be doing something right (especially given that the purpose of their stunts is often to frustrate people, or interfere in public events), they have also managed to use this attention to further the extent of their media criticism. On one occasion they themselves participated in a story TT was doing about The Chaser (which never made it to air on Seven), playing tough as interview subjects because they were very suspicious that this was not going to be just another ‘puffpiece’.

Andrew Hansen: Last week [Today Tonight] contacted us, offering to follow us around on a stunt. Chas Licciardello: Yes, reporter James Thomas offered to write a flattering puff-piece on us, and we said, ‘Sure James, come on over with your cameras, it’ll be great!’ Andrew Hansen: Unfortunately for James, when he got to the ABC we did the very thing Today Tonight always does to their subjects – we double-crossed him.

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(Video) James Thomas: So, can you tell me who you’re doing now? Chas Licciardello: Basically, what we’re thinking we’re going to do, is we’re going to go after your boss Peter Meakin. James Thomas: Oh, fuck. Chas Licciardello: Yeah. James Thomas: Oh, no! Chas Licciardello: He’s been getting in a bit of strife recently, you know, so we thought we’d help him out a bit… and I believe the car is here right now. (The Chaser’s War on Everything, 13/6/2007)

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FIGURE 29: JAMES THOMAS AND THE PETER MEAKIN BOOZE BUS

Seven’s head of news and current affairs (and therefore Thomas’ boss), Peter Meakin, had faced court on several occasions and received a lot of bad publicity at the time because of a series of drink-driving offences. 10 One can only wonder, therefore, what was going through the mind of James Thomas as he interviewed the pair inside the ‘Peter Meakin Booze Bus’ – filled with buckets of chilled alcohol which Hansen told Thomas, “Ought to last your boss ten minutes!” – as it sat outside Seven’s Sydney headquarters. 11 His extremely awkward attempts to continue with the story while Licciardello and Hansen drank beer (and goaded him into saying something worthy of getting fired) threw into stark relief the different logics of each program. Today Tonight’s sense of self-importance and inflexible method, and The Chaser’s seemingly more authentic, playful style which follows no rulebook came into contact with quite awkward but very humorous results. Thomas’ attempts to run a serious

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story on two media figures who take almost nothing seriously (let alone a reporter for a program such as his) said a lot about the mainstream media’s failure to grasp and come to terms with what Julian Morrow described in the previous chapter as The Chaser ‘sensibility’. Thomas’ failure to realise he was being set up put him – and, by extension, the community of traditional reporters to which he belongs – on the outer, while we, as viewers, are privy to the joke:

James Thomas: How do you choose who your targets are? Andrew Hansen: Oh, well, if a journalist rings up offering to do a piece on us, usually we’ll target their boss. Chas Licciardello: Especially if he’s a drink-driver. … Andrew Hansen: What’s [Peter Meakin] like when he’s drunk…? Chas Licciardello: Is he drunk every day at work? … Andrew Hansen: Was he drunk when he hired Naomi Robson to host the show? Chas Licciardello: And when he gave her a contract extension…? He must have been totally smashed. Andrew Hansen: He must have been pissed-as! James Thomas: (To Hansen, trying to ignore his jokes) Your songs, they are very good, where do you get your inspiration from? Andrew Hansen: Well, I’m doing a song about Peter Meakin being a piss-head this week. James Thomas: Right…

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(The Chaser’s War on Everything, 13/6/2007)

While Hansen and Licciardello humiliate Thomas as a way of criticising his boss (which may seem somewhat harsh), Craig Reucassel explains that programs like Today Tonight are actually setting themselves up to be criticised, mainly because they rarely live up to the expectations that are embedded in their hypocritical discourses and promotional slogans (see Turner, 2005: 52) – that they are effectively not doing the kind of journalism they make claims to:

Craig Reucassel: One of the reasons that these shows can actually be such good targets is that – theoretically – they’re holding themselves up to be these [important] current affairs shows…. within [that segment], sometimes I think there’s some really good bits of media criticism, which almost have a Media Watch element to them in those scripts. Other times they’re just basically just trying to find a funny grab. So, once again, they combine elements of satire and real comedy, I guess.

MEDIA SCEPTICS

As we can see from the following audience analysis, a notion of intertextuality did permeate a lot of discussion about The Chaser’s relationship to news and current affairs, suggesting that the program could not operate in isolation from the rest of the media. While it is a difficult effect to demonstrate in this circumstance, further evidence of the show’s critical intertextuality was the fact that, in the process of

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conducting the focus group interviews, much of the discussion seemed to move away from the specific program under analysis to a far more general discussion of the operation of the media, news and politics. Many participants, for example, signalled the fact they generally needed to know about current news topics to fully understand the many jokes made in an episode.

Michael: Yeah, you need to have an understanding of what’s going on. (C1: 11)

Talia: I don’t get some of it because I don’t [follow the news]. (C3: 2)

Dan: But I’d still want to know what else was happening though. I’d still want to watch an actual news program – you wouldn’t be able to rely on that for your news. (C1: 13)

Claire: I find, with that… you almost need to be equipped with some knowledge of the real issues before you can really appreciate everything The Chaser has to offer. (C2: 15)

On several occasions the participants talked about ‘What Have We Learned from Current Affairs This Week?’ very enthusiastically, even though it may not have been present in the episode screened to the focus group as stimulus. Several viewers in this

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study described the segment in near identical terms and thought the show did an extremely good job of highlighting second-rate journalism (and generating humour out of it) when it appeared on TT and ACA:

Thomas: It’s a little bit like Media Watch in that way, actually… [inaudible] watching the ABC, like, [pointing] out inaccuracies in reporting, and media beat-ups like three year olds [caught stealing] on security cameras, and sending it up. So they sort of send up that chequebook journalism, I suppose… [and] they do promote scepticism as well. (C3: 12)

If it is true that not all audience members are equipped with the savvy to be able to critique news programs because it is an ‘impersonal’ genre that communicates in a way generally divorced from common vernacular, then a segment such as this, in some small way, may help remedy that situation. Almost like a ‘new’ news version of Media Watch, ‘What Have We Learned from Current Affairs This Week?’ deconstructs the genre, and lays out its inner mechanics for all to judge more easily, and manages to create humour out of its failings:

Claire: I guess it just puts things back in perspective. Those shows are very good at over-exaggerating an issue, and you do just kind of take it on board, and don’t question that that’s how they’ve decided to describe it, or whatever. But when you see [The Chaser make] a mockery of the extremist terms that they want to use, or whatever… you suddenly realise that if they exaggerate that, what else are they exaggerating?

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Sharna: It’s funny, in that… they’re just making a joke about how the issues that A Current Affair are looking at, they’re kinda saying that they’re not really issues. A Current Affair makes them sound like they’re huge, but they’re just petty human relationship type things. (C2: 11)

Joseph: And when these guys make fun of [host Naomi Robson] I realise that Today Tonight is really a load of rubbish, and you almost want to watch it just to see how bad it is. But before [this show] I wouldn’t have really thought about it. Before these guys, in particular, I never would have really thought about it. (C2: 4)

If, as per Claire’s claim (above), this segment “puts things back in perspective”, then viewers may be less inclined to be – in the words of Janice (below) – “sucked in” by commercial current affairs television. They are more likely to understand the strategies that TT and ACA employ in their desperate nightly battle for the biggest audience:

Mario: [TT and ACA are] really just putting Picture 12 magazine on television, aren’t they? Just a few shocker stories to titillate the viewer, really. Janice: You can watch them and it’s just like eating fairly floss. Maggie: That’s right. Janice: They’re fun to watch occasionally, but that’s why they’re banned in our house (Laughs) because you can watch them and get sucked into them. You can watch and go, ‘Oh my god, are you serious?!’ and start watching them.

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(C4: 21)

Of all the enthusiastic responses to ‘What Have We Learned from Current Affairs This Week?’ during the focus groups, Michael was the participant who best encapsulated the concept of critical intertextuality as he discussed the show, talking about its ability to furnish viewers with a more acute, healthy scepticism of the media:

Brian: Maybe if you see [‘What Have We Learned from Current Affairs This Week?’] and you don’t understand what’s going on, you’re more likely to go and watch the news so you know more about what they’re talking about. Michael: Definitely, definitely. Interviewer: So it could kick-start an interest in what’s going on? Michael: It does, yeah, and because they pay out on Today Tonight, you don’t have to go and watch Today Tonight for that. And I suppose after watching that, and seeing them being more critical, I think you yourself might be more inclined to be more critical of what’s going on. Interviewer: Is that a good or a bad thing? Michael: That’s a good thing. (C1: 34-35)

So, although The War on Everything does not report the news, its critical redaction of and commentary on news as it is presented elsewhere helps viewers to understand those issues in a more complete way. While it does, at times, inform viewers of things they were not already aware of – and is in that sense providing them with ‘news’ – it can add colour, depth and another dimension to stories when the audience already

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possesses a pre-existing knowledge of the particular issue. This suggests what the show does is much more than create new information, or generate new public knowledge. What it can do is give people ways of understanding, and a more sophisticated ability to negotiate, the television genre which is such a central part of the public sphere:

… As a critical intertextuality, parody employs a joking, laughing, and hence ‘irrational’ language and tone, but in doing so, it still manages to foster a public sphere. The talk that surrounds shows such as The Simpsons includes mockery and discussion of prevalent media genres and of their role in our lives. This at times implicitly acknowledges that much of the media is failing to create a public sphere, but the talk about that failure builds it own public sphere. Albeit in a small, unfinished, and often conflicted form, parody can therefore contribute to that which political economists claim is dying or dead on serious television. (Gray, 2006b: 167)

While The Simpsons and The Chaser each takes a very different approach to televised entertainment, the notion of intertextuality is certainly applicable to the parts of The Chaser’s War on Everything that have focussed on the media. Although, as discussed in the previous chapter, this series is not nearly as political as the team’s previous efforts (particularly the three series which were timed to coincide with federal elections), its heavy focus on media criticism – and the media’s intersection with politics and culture – is still an important service within the public sphere. If it is the purpose of journalism to facilitate the operation of the public sphere, and we accept that the contemporary public sphere is the mostly mediated ‘space’ in which our

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society can talk to (and back to) itself, then a program which is able to critique and analyse the weaknesses of this “public conversation” (Turner, 2005: 149) – while not generating new dialogue, per se – does nevertheless have significant public value. If we accept Hartley’s (1996) claim that the public sphere is now almost entirely enveloped by the media sphere, as well as the various suggestions that politics is almost completely “mediatised” (Mazzoleni & Schulz, 1999; see also Cappella & Jaimieson, 1997: 30-31), then analyses of the media’s representation of politics can themselves be a significant form of political enquiry. If it is the role of journalism to furnish “people with informative material to help them make sense of the world and to fulfil their role as citizens” (Dahlgren, 1995: 53), then surely helping people make sense of the way politics becomes mediated is equally as important as helping to make sense of what might be actually happening in the halls of parliament.

In saying that this program’s media satire has value, I do not wish to suggest, however, that The War (or anything which takes a similar approach to culture and politics) is entirely unproblematic. I am not suggesting every part of the program is a culturally subversive, ground-breaking piece of political satire, but this chapter has offered some evidence that The Chaser’s intertextual media critique does help to inform citizens about how matters pertinent to the public sphere are disseminated. Cases such as ‘What Have We Learned from Current Affairs This Week?’ may act as a ‘chaser’ to more serious forms of journalism, however, that does not mean it is not undertaking a valuable form of interrogation.

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CONCLUSION: WILLINGNESS TO APATHY?

Although we can look at The Chaser team’s work as an exciting opportunity for young people to reengage with politics by showing them that it does not always have to be boring and ‘difficult’, Robert Putnam – who is well known for his argument that citizenly (community-based) activity in public life has declined over the last four decades – believes any form of mediated politics is not a suitable substitute for the ‘real’ thing:

TV-based politics is to political action as watching ER is to saving someone in distress. Just as one cannot restart a heart with one's remote control, one cannot jump-start republican citizenship without direct, face-to-face participation. Citizenship is not a spectator sport. (Putnam, 2000: 341)

Putnam here taps into one of the main counter-arguments to any optimistic reading of political satire like that offered in this chapter and the previous one. That is, satire can often be another part of the problem, rather than necessarily offering a ‘solution’ to the ever-pressing issue of political disaffection. Given the amount of concern over young people’s engagement with news and politics, there still exists a possibility that satire simply affirms (or encourages) an apathetic position, rather than showing people political action is still a viable and legitimate response, even though the political system in its present state is a source of laughter.

In regards to The Daily Show, Alejandro Bárcenas (2007: 93) wonders about the possibility that that show’s “laughs come at the high price of generating a jaded

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audience, decreasing trust in politicians, the media, and even democracy itself.” In a recent issue of Critical Studies in Media Communication, this debate again raised its head, with Hart and Hartelius (2007) ‘charging’ Jon Stewart with promoting a form of political cynicism they feel leads to detached observation and inaction (i.e. apathy) rather than genuine civic connection:

Our specific charge is that Mr. Stewart has engaged in unbridled political cynicism. And it is no coincidence that ‘sin’ and ‘cynicism’ have an assonant quality. But we are not accusing Mr. Stewart of being an apostate, one who has abandoned the Democratic Faith altogether. Unlike an apostate, a heretic professes faith in the overall tenets of the religion but disagrees with, or fails to practice, or tries to undermine, its most vital beliefs. In contrast, Mr. Stewart cleverly claims to advance the tenets of democracy during his nightly assignations while in truth leading the Children of Democracy astray. He plants in them a false knowledge, a trendy awareness that turns them into bawdy villains and wastrels. (Hart & Hartelius, 2007: 263)

Others, however, have defended Stewart and have seen his comedy as more of an entertaining corrective to the disconnection of political leaders from those they serve; his “comic display of cynicism is valuable today because it is one of the few effective antidotes to a deeply cynical political culture” (Hariman, 2007: 275). This debate bears much resemblance to Gray’s (2006b: 154) discussion of Sloterdijk’s distinction between cynicism and kynicism. Sloterdijk’s notion of cynicism (in Gray, 2006b: 154) is what Hart and Hartelius (2007: 269) see as “a way of announcing that all life is dross, that social organizations and continuing commitments… are passé”, which is

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very different to kynicism (or ‘healthy’ scepticism) – a more classical Greek notion of cynicism which aims primarily to actively speak “truth to power” (Bárcenas, 2007: 96). The difference between the two is that “Despite all apparent lack of respect, the kynic assumes a basically serious and upright attitude toward truth and maintains a thoroughly solemn relation, satirically disguised, to it. With the cynic, this relation has given way to a thorough flabbiness and agnosticism (denial of knowledge)” (Sloterdijk, in Gray, 2006b: 154; see also Cappella & Jaimieson, 1997). Gray (2006b: 154) makes a further distinction, noting: “where cynics have lost faith in the existence of truth, and where their cynicism serves as a reaction to this loss of faith, kynics hold on to a notion of truth, but since they see it as being perverted all around them, their kynicism and laughing ridicule serves as a defense and an offense to this state of affairs.”

Lance Bennett (2007: 282-83) claims viewers of The Daily Show do not simply pull away from politics because Jon Stewart adopts a cynical perspective, but instead “employ cynicism as a perspective-building tool to engage with politics and civic life.” If we take this perspective, “Cynicism certainly can be destructive, but only in the sense of highlighting and undermining reckless practices, unreflective understanding, which, left alone, become detrimental to society” (Bárcenas, 2007: 102). In this sense then, Hart and Hartelius are accusing Jon Stewart of being classically cynical, whereas Bennet, Hariman and Bárcenas are actually claiming instead that he is instead merely cynical, which is a far more useful political stance.

Whether we call it, apathy, cynicism, kynicism, or something else, what Hart and Hartelius worry about is the relationship Jon Stewart helps to forge between his

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audience and the meta-political institutions out of which so much of his comedy springs. When the carnivalesque or the absurd is juxtaposed against the political systems that sustain democracy, there is a risk one will be confused with the other, and citizens will see poorly-executed democracy as a failure of democracy itself. The concern, then, is that this undermines any sense of “system legitimacy” (Paletz, 1999: 117), and therefore promotes what Grossberg has termed “grotesque inauthenticity”, where “the only allowable affective investment is a negative one”:

Grotesque inauthenticity delights in the threat to normality… the grotesque threat comes from within the spaces of everyday life, without explanation. In fact, there cannot be a reason which could account for the level of the threat itself. Reality itself has become the only justification possible, and all that it can justify is nihilism. (Grossberg, 1992: 232)

Whether or not The Chaser’s comedic stance sponsors this kind of nihilistic view of politics, culture and the media is difficult to completely calculate through this research. One issue several participants identified, however, was that the show would always tend to focus on the news issues that were ripe for humour:

Claire: Yeah, it does. I think they tend to take the issues which were a bit questionable to start off with, but, from what I’ve seen, they don’t often take something that we know as a true serious story that can’t take any twists or turns. (C2: 5)

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Michael: They’re also going to select items that they’re going to be able to play around with. If they need this certain amount of irreverence, they’re not going to do some big thing on paedophilia… Richard: They’re only going to talk about things that are funny. (C1: 12)

Others, however, postulated that The Chaser would eventually start to show people that politics is ‘real’, something that is happening all the time whether it is reported on the news or not, that it is important and does affects people’s lives directly. Therefore, there was a possibility that, in the end, the show might make politicians more accountable to the public:

Brian: I think the purpose [of this show] is, eventually, to bring everyone’s attention to the fact that… [there’s things that] they’re saying, and nobody trusts the politicians, [but] something actually happens from it. Interviewer: So, that something could happen…? Brian: Yeah. If, for some reason, everyone starts listening to this stuff, and then politicians become accountable to people like they’re supposed to be… (C1: 43)

What Brian is suggesting is that The Chaser has, at the very least, got the potential to connect mediated citizenship and civic action, or perhaps join the dots between macro and micro politics. Coleman (2006) notes there have been various links observed between political talk – participation at some level within the political public sphere – and increased levels of political action or participation. If indeed this is the case, then

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the potential for The Chaser to spark genuine interest may also signal some hope for the continued relationship between citizens and democratic participation. Better deciphering whether or not Brian’s claims in the above quote stand up outside of the focus group scenario or whether this form of satire causes viewers to simply feel engaged with politics, and thus feel like ‘better’ citizens, requires further empirical investigation. There is a real possibility that while The Chaser may produce a more sophisticated understanding of the media, culture and politics, it may not generate the kind of public knowledge that necessarily leads to real-world political engagement. What is needed, therefore, is an understanding of the audiences for political television that goes beyond knowledge and understanding, to examining the relationship between these kinds of programming and political action (both textual and physical).

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NOTES

1

This is a play on the name of the ABC’s flagship current affairs program The 7:30 Report.

2

One of the questions shown in this segment was from Quizmania, which asked ‘Who is the Prime

Minister of Australia?’, and gave three possible answers: Daffy Duck, Kermit the Frog, and John Howard. 3

A euphemism for sexual penetration.

4

The movement of popular ABC sitcom Kath and Kim to the Seven Network in 2007 was seen by

many as evidence that networks were willing to part with enormous sums of money to lure proven talent from the stables of Australia’s national broadcaster. 5

In many ways this is another tool of media literacy, as the team is pointing out the apparently

restrictive nature of commercial TV, in that it tries so hard in many cases to avoid upsetting those people, organisations or advertisers which keep it running. 6

This is the same controversial legislation that Joe Hockey and Kevin Rudd were debating in the

excerpt used in Chapter 5. 7

Although this discussion need not descend solely to questions of ethics, my main concern here is the

lack of public value in a story such as this – that it lacks both significance and ethics. As David McKnight (2000: 23) notes, “If journalism fails to fulfil its own goals, but does so in a supremely ethical way, then it is of no use to anyone.” Although it is possible to claim The Chaser are no better than ACA because they showed the very same footage, in this context The Chaser’s re-take of the footage probably evokes more empathy for her, because we are shown how she is being ‘used’ by ACA. 8

A former Australian Cricket captain and legendary batsman. Bradman has long been a highly-revered

national figure, in much the same way as Babe Ruth in the United States. 9

A popular meringue dessert.

10

This was made much worse by the fact Today Tonight has often demonised (and ‘shamed’) repeat

drink-driving offenders. 11

This is the same location as Sunrise’s ‘Breakky Central’ studios.

12

A pornographic magazine.

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CONCLUSION

The first part of this thesis examined how contemporary journalism’s intersection with the public has largely been understood in academic terms, and looked at some previous audience research into popular news programming. Chapter 1 provided a review of the key critical approaches to news and journalism from the late-20th Century to today. It argued that the previous debates about popular news forms have generally adopted crude binary taxonomies which may have obscured a proper understanding of the way in which news circulates in the public sphere. Chapter 2 then went on to outline the main theoretical claims surrounding ‘new’, alternative approaches to journalism, and the results of several previous qualitative studies.

The second part of this thesis undertook a close examination of two different Australian political television programs. Chapter 4 examined Sunrise as a form of ‘reciprocal’ journalism, which (unlike most traditional forms of TV news) has forged a very intense bond with its audience. Chapter 5 examined Sunrise’s approach to news

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more closely, and suggested that the show belongs to what Baym (2007a) calls the “televisual sphere”: a hybrid space which blends the form and priorities of news and entertainment.

Chapter 6 analysed The Chaser’s approach to political and cultural satire, arguing that although the political satire in the War on Everything may help boost political knowledge amongst its audience, their recent turn towards cultural satire requires a more nuanced perspective of its social potential. Chapter 7 then examined The Chaser’s media satire through the lens of “critical intertextuality” (Gray, 2006b), demonstrating that although it does not always present ‘original’ news, it can inform our understanding of the news that already exists within the public sphere. The lingering question, however, was whether this program can help citizens to enact a form of active, ‘healthy’ citizenship.

In essence, this thesis examined the changing relationships between politics, audiences and the public sphere, and used two examples from Australian television to explore and illustrate the qualitative impact of these changes. It showed that TV is intersecting with and constructing the public sphere in new, more complex ways, and that infotainment and satire – two very different genres which have each been written off in a variety of contexts as either ‘trivial’ or ‘frivolous’ respectively – can play a significant role in citizens’ understanding of the world around them. This has therefore, in part, investigated “the significance, and direction” of the changes wrought by Cultural Chaos (McNair, 2000a: 209), which is the wider phenomenon that this research has tapped into. Journalism’s place within the public sphere is still inherently valuable, but is becoming less central as a result of the larger changes to

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the way information moves through our culture with less predictability, and the increased speed at which it does so. With the significantly greater amount of information now available to the public and cultural hierarchies of production now flattened considerably (thanks mostly to advances in technology and more widespread technological literacy) journalism’s position within society is now much more permeable, and is now contested by a range of different media outputs.

Although Sunrise and The Chaser’s War on Everything are two very different genres of television, it may seem challenging to assess both together, and analyse the audience responses to each as a collective. However, because these shows actually could be perceived as two quite different sides to the same phenomenon, the similarities are actually quite stark. If there is one strong theme that may unite both programs on a single continuum, it is that their success stems in large part from an ability to make political information accessible, and therefore have greater positive impact on public knowledge. Where The Chaser uses humour, David Koch and Melissa Doyle on Sunrise use their personality. Each is then employed to connect viewers and their micro-political lives to the events that shape the larger, macropolitical world. For example, Loraine saw Sunrise as casual or ‘comfortable’:

Loraine: They appear to be, you know, easy, comfortable with themselves. Kochie’s [like] ‘This is me, what you see is what you get’. (S4: 12)

And Nat saw The Chaser team in quite similar terms – as young (like her), ‘cool’ and more credible:

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Nat: I think it’s great to watch five young, intelligent guys talking about current affairs… Because they’re cool-looking, they’re credible, [and] they don’t talk nonsense. (C3: 2)

As a result, each program has the ability to engage viewers with content that they might otherwise have no desire to engage with. As Nat went on to point out:

Nat: I come away having learned something, even though it’s presented in a… humorous way. I don’t watch current affairs programs, but I feel as though I now have some understanding of the world, which is more than I had prior to watching it. (C3: 2)

Interestingly, both programs challenge, to different extents, the traditional top—down structural relationship between producer (broadcaster) and audience (public). As discussed in Chapter 4, Sunrise has been extremely attentive to its audience through a range of communication mechanisms, and has often harnessed this relationship 1 to increase the flexibility and speed of its newsgathering services. This increasingly dialogical approach is not especially innovative, and has only been made possible by the ubiquity of email and other online tools, but may be some evidence of broadcast television embracing (or perhaps succumbing to) the dynamics of the very polylogical world of user-generated online content. While The Chaser has not gone to the same lengths as Sunrise in its attempts to utilise its very large captive audience, in many

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ways it appears to embody a bottom—up ethos. By emphasising ‘ordinary’ people (the hosts) disrupting established processes, The Chaser can be seen as de facto members of the public expressing general dissatisfaction with the status quo. In this way the program is championing the voice of ‘the people’, just as Sunrise does, demonstrating how popular media does have significant latitude to challenge elite individuals, which can then be rewarded with more (and more loyal) viewers.

Brian: When [The Chaser] say things, you say, ‘Oh, well, that’s how I feel too.’ That’s what everyone seems to do when they watch it. (C1: 2)

While there are some common elements underpinning both shows, (and some curious content relationships between the two), there are also some very significant differences. As was explored in Chapter 7, the War on Everything has devoted much of its efforts into undertaking a critique on what they perceive to be weaknesses, absurdity or hypocrisy in the media, showing through especially in the segment ‘What Have We Learned from Current Affairs this Week?’. This attitude (which has been used in relation to FOX News’ obsession with inane celebrity news), does not necessarily sit comfortably with a show such as Sunrise. As Craig Reucassel pointed out, Sunrise and Today were proposed as initial targets of their media satire:

Craig Reucassel: Earlier on, [when we were planning the show] we were thinking, ‘What Have We Learned from Breakfast Television?’, and we kind of looked at that a little bit. But you can find funny things, but it’s not like they’re

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holding themselves up as great journalism. Although I guess they are news in a sense, there has been a dumbing down of those shows over the last several years.

While Reucassel’s comment strongly undermines the thoughts and attitudes of David Koch or Adam Boland discussed in Chapter 5, an antagonistic relationship (or critical intertextuality) between the two is not necessarily detrimental to public knowledge. Because, as shown at several points throughout this thesis, audiences seek new knowledge from a range of informational sources, this potentially oppositional stance can further instil a sense that no single media source is complete or ‘true’. Indeed, the ease with which participants often talked about their simultaneous consumption of multiple, interrelated news sources (for instance, Don talked about how he read the newspaper, watched Sunrise and listened to ABC radio almost every morning) suggests that audiences are adept at navigating a public sphere now heavily characterised by chaos, and seem very comfortable with the idea that “understanding an issue comes scattershot” (Barnhurst, 1998: 216).

UNDERSTANDING CHAOS: FROM JOURNALISM TO JOURNALISMS

One thing this entire study has directly challenged is the notion (still prevalent among some industry professionals and media scholars) that television journalism still remains a unified, coherent set of practices with clear semiotic boundaries, that can only be undertaken by qualified professionals. This thesis has argued, however, that political news comes in many different forms, operating in different ways, viewed by different audiences. These forms may look like the evening news, A Current Affair

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and Today Tonight, or The 7:30 Report. However, they may also look like Sunrise, or The Chaser’s War on Everything. Indeed, if journalism is viewed as the process of disseminating relevant information to the public sphere, then there are many texts and genres on television and across the media generally that can perform this task without recourse to traditional journalistic methods. This quasi-dogmatic approach is an outdated mode of thinking in the 21st Century, given the rapid developments in media and communication forms, and because so much news and current affairs on television is now created in what Turner (1996c: 88) calls “a ‘post-journalism’ production culture”.

If we instead look at “TV news as a form of cultural discourse, rather than information” and something that serves to “link the viewer and his/her everyday life to the larger world in a manner which is ritualistic, symbolic and ultimately mythic” (Dahlgren, 1988: 289), then our conception of journalism must account for news on television as being far greater than the news genre. 2 It is important to stop valorising one particular form of news (or use textual hallmarks to separate journalism from ‘everything’ else), and move our attention to its function, and what a text is offering its audience in terms of political knowledge and/or engagement. It is important to remember ‘journalistic’ undertakings are not the exclusive domain of ‘news’ programs; that news (the cultural product) and ‘The News’ (genre) are two very distinct entities. We might usefully build into our own critical discourses a clearer sense that traditional, ‘old’ models of news broadcasting are now simply one kind of journalism amongst many. The hurdle that must be overcome, however, as John Corner (1995: 54) recognises, is that “‘The News’ [genre]… [is] perceived as so closely related to the events themselves as to not warrant separate identification.”

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Rather than thinking or talking about journalism in the singular, it may be far more productive to think about it in the plural; as a variety of different journalisms.

Twenty years ago, Henningham (1988: 197) described his vision that there might one day be a “new sensitivity” to particular groups, and sub-cultures within the community for their news programming. Today we may well and truly have arrived at that point, where there no longer exists a singular journalism, but a range of journalisms which operate in different ways, fulfil different requirements, and appeal to different niche audience groups. This does not mean we should abandon the more traditional, mainstream ways of doing things – as Turner (2005: 94) acknowledges, “the old ways are still around, and still attract an audience”. No single approach to journalism is, or can ever be, the silver bullet. However, the time has surely come to better incorporate some of these new forms into our thinking about what counts as useful ways of informing the public. By using a range of different sources, these different perspectives can be combined together to give audiences a more wellrounded understanding of the public sphere. As Craig Reucassel explains, as fun and subversive as satire is, it cannot do the job of journalism singe-handedly:

Craig Reucassel: I do think [satire is] a good [way of] dealing with politics and political questions. And I was going to say, it’s also just one step in the armoury. You need to have political columnists, you need to have… whatever. I think political satire is important for that, but I don’t think that satire has yet brought down a government.

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The fragmentation of TV news into smaller complementary or antagonistic parts has much to offer the public sphere. The breakup of journalism into a series of overlapping and complimentary parts (journalisms) across both the TV schedule, and the many media types available to audiences (see also Dutta-Bergman, 2004) can represent an exciting development for the way in which the politics, media and society nexuses have typically been theorised.

McNair (2006: 64) argues journalists and political agents (their PR managers and ‘spin doctors’) are continually engaged in what he calls a “communicative arms race”, each wishing to beat the other by either out-spending or out-smarting their opponent. The Daily Show host, Jon Stewart, uses a sporting analogy to describe this relationship, but argues the “offense” is beating the “defense”:

I think the problem with the media is they've forgotten their role. Politicians and corporations have figured out the system… they all know how it works. And they’ve figured out how to get around it. So now the offense has gotten better than the defense. The defense [ought to] get together and figure out how to become more effective. And to me, that will engage people as a matter of course. (in Schlosser, 2003: 29)

If Stewart’s analogy is correct, politicians (the offence) are beating the fourth estate (the defence) in this “communicative arms race” (McNair, 2006: 64). Considering journalism in the plural, rather than the singular, however, represents a major challenge to political actors and the way they have traditionally operated. Although politicians have most often played to the weaknesses of the defence (traditional

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journalism), there are now many other forms of journalism circulating in the media sphere that have different strengths and weaknesses. In the system of chaos – partially characterised by “information surplus” (McNair, 2006: 199) – textual forms have evolved which can plug the gaps in journalism’s defences.

Strategic political communication, or public relations ‘spin’, evolved because journalism used to be homogenous; it usually operated in a one-dimensional way, had predefined rules, and (generally) followed them. The political tactic of repeating a certain key word or phrase came about because it was a way for strategists to control what was filtered through to the public by journalists. By repeating a ‘talking point’ or a carefully crafted piece of rhetoric, politicians know there is a much better chance these well-chosen words will be the ones to survive the judicious editing process, and end up as a neat ‘soundbite’ on the nightly news, or quote in a newspaper. Thinking about journalism in the plural – as journalisms – presents a much greater challenge to those who wish to retain control over what the public sees and understands about politics. The more varied and diverse journalisms we have, the better off we will be in deconstructing the behaviour of political actors. Whereas McNair (2006), as discussed in Chapter 1, believes the volume of news now available in the media is good for democracy because it has seen journalists become more competitive, and more likely to vie for a ‘scoop’ (in effect, emphasising the benefits of competition), the – albeit sometimes discordant – coexistence of various forms of news is a similarly exciting prospect for the state of the public sphere. It is becoming much harder for politicians to play journalists at their own game, because journalism is becoming increasingly heterogeneous.

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The following example from The Chaser’s War on Everything demonstrates this point well. In this instance it was harder for Peter Garrett (the then Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment, Heritage and the Arts) to ‘fool’ the public with his rhetoric because although he was communicating in a way designed to nullify traditional journalistic enquiry, these attempts were completely undermined by The Chaser’s War on Everything. Their use of the footage from his press conference produced a very different outcome to the one Garrett (and his various ‘minders’) would have been hoping for:

Craig Reucassel: [Peter Garrett] spoke to radio jock Steve Price, and joked that Labor would change all its policies after the election. Now, look, I had no problem with Garrett’s initial comments, but it was his press conference afterwards that appalled me. Chris Taylor: That was an extraordinary door-stop wasn’t it? I don’t know if you saw it, but [it’s] a prime candidate for our brand new segment, ‘Soundbite Challenge’, where we see how many times a politician can repeat the same soundbite, or word, in a single door-stop. Craig Reucassel: And this week’s challenge for Peter Garrett? The word ‘jocular’: (Video) Peter Garrett: On the basis of my short and jocular conversation… (edit) on the basis of a short, jocular and casual conversation… (edit) on the basis of a casual and jocular conversation… on the basis of a casual and jocular conversation… (edit) I had a brief, jocular conversation… (edit) a jocular and short conversation… (edit) my short conversation with Steve

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Price this morning was jocular in nature… (edit) this was a short and casual conversation, jocular in manner… (edit) well, I thought it was a casual, short, jocular conversation… (edit) I don’t consider that it was anything other than a casual, short and jocular conversation. Craig Reucassel: Ten! (The Chaser’s War on Everything, 7/11/2007)

In the past, the result of a press conference like this would probably have seen the phrase “I thought it was a casual, short, jocular conversation” end up in the nightly news bulletin, and very few people not present at his press conference would have been aware of the number of times he used that particular cluster of words. However, because The Chaser operates in a different way to traditional forms of television news, the audience can see through Garrett’s attempts to water-down the controversy with a carefully selected phrase repeated ad nauseam, thereby coming off in this presentation as someone who is operating strategically, not naturally. This is what McNair has called ‘anti-spin’:

Spin has generated anti-spin, or process journalism, as journalists have become more aware of what PR is, how it works, and why it is important, passing that knowledge on to their audiences. The practice of public relations can no longer be viewed only as a corruption of authentic political communication by controlling elites... it has become the subject of that communication in its journalistic form, through the deconstructive, demystificatory sub-category of political journalism I have called the ‘demonology of spin’… (McNair, 2006: 64)

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Although Garrett’s use of the word ‘jocular’ is just one example, the (re)presentation of this clip in different forms across different media outlets is further evidence that the surplus of news – which is just one part of what McNair (2006) outlines as “cultural chaos” – has also reinvigorated its steady evolution. It may therefore become harder and harder for politicians to ‘hide’ or manipulate information in the future, because to do so they will have to successfully negotiate multiple, contrasting journalisms simultaneously.

TEACHING CHAOS: THE CHALLENGE FOR JOURNALISM EDUCATION

The fallacy of much work in journalism education is that it uses critical interrogation to reinforce existing, consensual, and praxeomorphic ways of doing things, assuming that the status quo is, all things considered, the ideal one. (Deuze, 2008: 279)

If the research presented in this thesis is further evidence audiences are using a range of media genres to keep themselves informed, a crucial – and thus far largely ignored – question should then be: how can these major developments be reflected institutionally? If we are, to use Turner’s (1996c; see also Altheide & Snow, 1991) phrase, “post-journalism”, how can the academy best adapt to this changing status quo? If the two shows examined in this thesis are merely a sign of what is to come in terms of changing patterns of news consumption (given that both appear to more readily appeal to younger audiences), then journalism educators may face a looming

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crisis which must be successfully negotiated. Though this thesis generally could be construed as a suggestion that traditional journalism will one day be a pointless undertaking, this is actually far from the case. The teaching of journalism should be refined, strengthened and, most importantly, expanded to ensure it equips graduates with a more solid theoretical understanding of journalism’s function in society. This argument is more than simply jumping on what Zelizer (2008: 261) calls “the disciplinary nearsightedness of journalism scholarship”, it emphasises the need for journalism education to embrace ‘chaos’, rather than shy away from it.

Although arguing journalism graduates should have a better understanding of media and culture is often a good concept in theory, there still exists a troubling schism (one that likely appears larger than it really is) between journalism and cultural studies in the academy. Because “[c]ultural inquiry forces an examination of the tensions between how journalism likes to see itself and how it looks in the eyes of others” (Zelizer, 2004b: 103), journalism studies as a field has often been uncomfortable when it comes to cultural investigations of its own practices (as demonstrated by Windschuttle, 1998a; Windschuttle, 1998b; see also Zelizer, 2004a). As Hartley (1999b: 25) puts it: “Cultural studies has more been interested in the cultural/textual form of ‘news’ than in the professional/industrial institution of ‘journalism’”, and has tended “…since the 1970s to criticise the media, [not] assist them” (p. 23). This tension last surfaced when the “media wars” broke out between Australian cultural studies academics and tertiary journalism educators during the mid 1990s (see Flew & Sternberg, 1999; also Turner, 2000a). While adding further fuel to the fire on this particular matter would be counter-productive, it is still important to continually examine the degree to which journalism education currently reflects the real depth and

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breadth of news production in the 21st Century (only a tiny part of which has been sketched by this thesis). I therefore advocate an approach to journalism education that Mark Deuze has termed “liquid journalism studies”:

As scholars of media and society in our studies of journalism, I strongly believe it is our responsibility to dismember the pervasive rhetoric of solid modernity in our assessments of newswork, thus letting journalism die in peace. In its place, we must reconstruct a professional identity for media practitioners that is liquid: a liquid journalism… A journalism studies that fails to acknowledge the evolutionary changes expressed in tomorrow’s new media ecology will become a zombie journalism studies – alive, but dead at the same time. (Deuze, 2006)

Instead of viewing a degree in journalism as a one-size-fits-all qualification, perhaps we should, as Hartley (1995: 27) notes, be looking to engage students with an expansive “field of knowledge”, and “branch of learning” (p. 23). Rather than show future journalists how to simply “[saturate] the public with bits and bytes of information” (Schudson, 1998: 30), we should have them consider ways of helping the public make sense of that information, interpret it, and use it in a meaningful way. Instead of simply lauding the profession as a somehow ideal means of communicating news (with little regard for the reasons behind its rules and standards in the first place), it may be far more useful for graduates to primarily know the way in which this work is read, understood, and used in an everyday context by audiences (see Hartley, 1995). Rather than teaching the genre, we should attempt to demonstrate how the entire textual system operates; or at least move further and further away from “reducing the news into a set of technical operations” (Hartley, 1996: 39), towards a

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complete understanding of the entire field, including programs like those explored in this thesis.

Students should be constantly questioning “journalism’s customs and habits, its conventional wisdom” and its so-called “common sense”, while remaining fully aware there will almost always be “a gap between what journalism is and has been and what journalism ought to be” (Glasser, 2006: 149). This teaching mode should allow students to find their own way, their own style, and be encouraged to explore the outer boundaries of the profession to have a more complete understanding of its centre. If our future journalists are encouraged to experiment and stretch conventions in this way, they will either come up with a more relevant and interesting type of journalism, or they will have a greater appreciation of its traditional form. The orthodox and the heretical both exist in the real world (see Robinson, 2005: 199), and we are not adequately preparing graduates for the real world if we fail to acknowledge this. The worst feeling to instil in students is the notion that journalism has reached an evolutionary pinnacle, because tertiary journalism education should shape the profession, not push it into the future while facing it the wrong direction. As Ken Robinson (2005: 202) argues, “Education policies for the future must learn from the past but must not be dictated by it. We cannot approach the future looking backwards.” After all, “[n]othing disables journalism more than thinking that current practice is somehow in the nature of things” (Carey, 1997: 331).

Demonising the exploration of (and a reluctance to understand) new approaches to journalism is akin to demonising music students for daring to come up with a cuttingedge style, rather than merely following classical forms. Students of any cultural form

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must, at some stage, be encouraged to experiment. At the moment, an education in journalism might be simply encouraging students to valorise the sort of programs which people are starting to switch off, not to understand why this trend might be occurring in the first place. In the 21st Century, it is extremely important to have students of the discipline understand the “role that the popular media do play in producing and distributing knowledge” (Hartley, 1996: 156). So maybe, as Turner (2005: 88) suggests, we could learn many lessons from Michael Moore – or, for that matter, David Koch and Chas Licciardello:

Perhaps we should remember that the most powerful person on the planet, U.S. president George W. Bush, in 2003 proudly announced not to read newspapers… Roh Moo Hyun, president of South Korea… after winning his country’s 2002 election: He gave his first exclusive interview to the citizen journalism website Ohmynews. If these are our society’s examples, we are not helping by trying to rhetorically whiplash journalism back within its definitional, institutional, and ideological boundaries. (Deuze, 2006)

Heinonen and Luostarinen (2008: 228-29) suggest we can generally look at journalism in one of two ways, either through a “media/profession-centric frame” (from the inside), which looks at journalism as relatively easy an activity to recognise and study. We can alternatively look at it from a “society-centric view” (from the outside), which examines journalism as “a platform or forum of information exchange and interaction, which enables both democracy and enlightened citizenship as its characteristic features” (Heinonen & Luostarinen, 2008: 229). By emphasising the

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latter of these two perspectives, we can more quickly move beyond the rigid and formal discourses which have defined television journalism for so many years.

Journalism courses should not just prepare students for the profession by imitating the profession. Is the quality of journalism currently so high that our only responsibility is to preserve it by replicating it? Journalism courses should, instead, be places where new ideas – ideas that might improve the quality of journalism – are born and tested. (Stephens, 2006: 151)

That journalists can be judged as much on their physical appearance as their specialised knowledge (in television at least), and that many employers of journalists value ‘on the job’ experience over academic qualification suggests journalism in the academy needs to assert its relevance by “interrogat[ing] the practice” (Glasser, 2006: 149), rather than just teaching it. Given the very small percentage of graduates who actually end up in conventional journalistic employment, in the direct production of news (see, for instance, Alysen, 2005; Conley, 2006), this should be sitting at the top of journalism studies’ agenda for change. Maybe the answer for journalism studies is for it to position itself more as a branch of philosophy, and demonstrate its worth through interdisciplinarity: by being a field of enquiry that can inform other sites of knowledge, rather than acting in an insular manner to entrench its own axioms.

Journalism as a profession is still extremely valuable, but continuing to act as though its traditional forms are the only “indexical and referential presentation of the world at hand” (Zelizer, 2004b: 103) is – as this thesis has attempted to demonstrate – an untenable and, in the long-term, potentially detrimental stance. Glasser (2006: 148)

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notes contemporary journalism education struggles to track the changes in the field, let alone inform them, and the fact many of the news sources discussed in this thesis have gone unrecognised by those in both academic and professional circles seems to offer further evidence of this. Programs like Sunrise and the various incarnations of The Chaser represent a challenge to long-established conceptions of news. However, this should be seen as an opportunity to expand students’ understanding of journalism and its place within the public sphere. A shift to ‘liquid’ journalism education may not be a magic solution to these issues, but it may mean the academy can at least more readily respond to inevitable change. As Deuze (2007: 234-35) points out, “whether real or perceived, a structural sense of constant change and permanent revolution is the strongest guide or predictor of the human condition in the digital age.” So, rather than acting as mere ‘guardians’ of tradition – or the sages who pass on what James Carey (2000: 13) once called its “folk wisdom” – journalism educators must continually ensure graduates are future-proofed, and hence more likely to survive the many more upheavals and audience viewing shifts that will undoubtedly occur in the course of their professional careers: “One thing certain about this era of globalization is that the future of journalism remains uncertain... [it] faces a future dotted with as many question marks and unfilled parentheses as points of identifiable declaration” (Zelizer, 2008: 253).

Hartley (2008: 50) makes the point that in the form of digital media, and its newfound connectivity citizen-to-citizen, and citizen-to-professional, “Journalism will be reinvented, but judging by what is currently done in journalism schools and in the name of journalism studies, the last people to know may be professional journalists.” Hence, journalism education must be ahead of the times to adequately prepare

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students for their future roles as media and communication professionals, and not behind the times by sending out journalists who are not fully equipped to understand the world in which they will be immersed. Only through the study of culture and journalism together can we fully understand and appreciate the true nature and extent of this shift in media consumption and production trends.

So, rather than suggesting journalism and cultural studies are diametrically opposed and should therefore keep their distance (see Windschuttle, 1998a, for example), there may actually be “much to profit from a more solid and fruitful convergence” (Zelizer, 2004b: 100) of journalism and post-structural cultural theory. Together they may still question each other’s modes of enquiry for mutual benefit, rather than argue their respective intellectual supremacy: together providing a kind of media education “that links the untidy and textured materiel of journalism – its symbols, ideologies, rituals, conventions, and stories – with the larger world in which journalism takes shape” (Zelizer, 2004b: 101). In doing so, we might rediscover “the rich thick corpus of journalism” (Carey, 2000: 23), and, in the words of Graeme Turner (1999a: 4), “provide an account of journalism which connects journalism to more than itself”.

RESEARCHING CHAOS: THE TIME FOR ETHNOGRAPHY?

As was seen at the conclusion of Chapter 7, what is also still lacking in terms of our knowledge of how people use the range of public information sources available to them is a full appreciation of the extent of the overlap and interconnectivity between each of the different journalisms. If Sunrise, for example, acts as a news ‘radar’ for

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many of the participants involved in this study, then how effectively does it ‘scan’ the news participants are interested in, and does it survey the world of news in a way audiences can easily follow-through with? If The Chaser’s War on Everything presents a critique of the media that might make for more critical readers of news presented elsewhere on television, then how successful is it in doing so? What is required then, is an appraisal of media ‘consumption’ that can account for the “meaningful interaction” (Spitulnik, 2002, p.351) of these televisual news forms and the everyday lives of audiences: a research method that moves beyond ‘consumption’ to consider its continued use in experiences outside of the lounge room or the home.

While trying to avoid simplistic assessments of contemporary journalism and its audiences, the modern media landscape is such a pastiche of news and entertainment elements (chaos) that it is virtually impossible to consider any singular part of it without also factoring in the other news-gathering and wider activity into which it is so firmly rooted. The challenge then is not just finding a research method that can understand how viewing relates to and informs other activities, but how the various forms of journalism work together, against one another or through each other. If “intertextuality is endemic to all textuality” (Gray, 2006b: 5), then studying an audience for a singular text in isolation is unfeasible and inappropriate.

If Hartley is correct, and ‘redaction’ is actually the future of journalism studies (Hartley, 2000), then we soon must better understand the complex relationships not only between the different pre-existing knowledges on which various journalisms draw, but also the way meaning can be transformed in the shift from the original to the ‘new’ (redacted) context. For example, perhaps the most significant part of The

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Daily Show is the way it repackages or ‘redacts’ pre-existing content (e.g. reportage from C-SPAN or FOX News) to generate new – and often far more comprehensible and enjoyable – meaning for the viewer. But to what degree does appreciating the final product on an emotional and affective level rely on knowledge of the original coverage of the event/issue? Does the meaning a viewer takes away from a program like The Colbert Report vary depending on their familiarity with shows such as The O’Riley Factor that are being parodied? By employing ethnographic research methods, we might better understand the point at which “[t]elevision's discourses are juxtaposed with other experiences of everyday life” (Dahlgren, 1995: 148, emphasis added).

Though we now have some idea about, for example, what makes Sunrise a successful form of breakfast television, we really know very little about how that program fits into (and perhaps informs) the overall scheme of viewers’ news diets. Similarly (as discussed in Chapter 7), it is difficult to surmise whether The Chaser’s satirical approach generates real interest in politics, or whether it simply advocates a nihilistic celebration of political failure. Does it and other shows which hybridise news and entertainment generate real interpersonal political talk (see Harrington, 2005, for example), or is this a mere fantasy created by those who have over-estimated these programs’ social, cultural or political benefits? Would the experience of watching The Daily Show, for instance, be radically different for a news media ‘junkie’ as compared to someone with very little prior knowledge of what is happening in the world of politics? Or, for that matter, does The Chaser produce engaged citizens? Rather than relying on quantitative research methods to answer these sorts of questions (as the

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social sciences would), the best way to begin filling-in this theoretical gap may be through the use of ethnographic research techniques:

…Audience research should chart the possibilities and problems for communication or relations among people, insofar as these are undermined or facilitated, managed or reconstructed by the media, rather than ask about the various reifications of the audience, the public or the market. (Livingstone, 1999: 102-03)

The “quasi-ethnographic” audience research that has tended to be appropriated in media and cultural studies (Schlecker & Hirsch, 2001: 78) – and used in this thesis – is not sufficient in accomplishing this. What I advocate is a method which attempts to more fully grasp ‘media culture’, in particular “the role of the media in everyday life, both as a topic and as an activity structured by and structuring the discourses within which it is discussed” (Alasuutari, 1999: 6). Although it has somehow become “an accepted (mis)use of the term” to call the interview and group interview research techniques employed in this thesis ‘ethnography’ (Gauntlett & Hill, 1999: 8; see also Nightingale, 1993), they can, at best, be described as “a constituent element of ethnographic methodology” (Morrison, 1998: 153). So, like Spitulnik (and Madianou, 2005: 51-53), the ‘ethnography’ advocated here involves “actual immersion in the daily practices and social worlds of the people studied” (Spitulnik, 1993: 298). This should incorporate what Geertz (1973) famously called “thick descriptions”, and not simply audience voices alone.

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Although the term ethnography has been something of a “fashionable buzz-word within the field” of media, communication and cultural studies (Morley, 1997: 122; see also Nightingale, 1993; Turner, 1996a: 158) it perhaps best labels a set of research techniques that seek to investigate media consumption and the way it occurs in the lives of consumers, rather than medium- and text-specific considerations that currently dominate qualitative studies of media audiences. Hartley (1999b: 20) notes “people as readers and audiences make much less rigid distinctions between different media, and different genres or formats of media output, than do researchers”. As such, understanding many media forms and genres simultaneously is necessary to understand the audience more completely. Gray (2006b: 10) makes a very similar claim in regard to textual perspectives, noting that “[t]extual studies have a long history of analyzing texts one-by-one, carefully respecting their boundaries, but when a text itself shows little care for these boundaries, neither must the textual analyst.” Audiences obviously do not (or cannot) view or comprehend news programs in a vacuum any more (assuming they ever did), so why should media research still treat television texts as discrete entities?

Although this study to some degree undertook a trans-genre approach to journalism (examining its different applications in television), a trans-media study involving ethnographic research methods now seems necessary to better understand the way the multitude of fragmented media experiences and encounters in an average citizen’s day fit together. As Jones (2006: 373) argues: “An examination of the interplay between these activities will probably illuminate how this complex intermixing of media affects average citizen understandings of and relationship to politics.” A research posture that tries to understand the many possible links between these new political

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media texts and other activities in everyday life may help us acquire a superior understanding of this news landscape so characterised by complex textual interweaving:

[W]e should also examine media and politics from the bottom up – that is, from the perspective of those who utilize numerous and multiple forms of media in their interactions with the world of politics… Not only should we study television, radio, film, and print media (newspapers, magazines, books, newsletters), but also their concurrent existence alongside new media (cell phones, websites, discussion boards, email, blogs and vlogs), alternative media, fax machines, music, comics, direct mail, videotapes and DVDs… For it is this intermixing of media forms that most closely approximates

the

way

in

which

citizens

employ

communication

technologies in their daily lives. (Jones, 2006: 371-72)

As Schrøder et al. (2003: 63) point out, ethnography is “an approach praised by many media scholars over the last few decades and practiced by relatively few.” And while there is a hazard of reductionism – the desire/need for a media researcher to boil down “the dynamics and diversity of media reception” (Moores, 1993: 1) into a series of focus groups and interviews – no research methodology is ever perfect (most are, in fact, far from it). Indeed, there may be an equal (if not greater) danger in dismissing the audience as simply “impossible”, allowing our analyses to stand on textual deconstruction alone, and thus losing sight “of the very real people whose constructions of reality we are discussing” (Bird, 1992: 257). To disengage from audiences completely, simply for a fear of the ‘Observer Effect’ – which is when the

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act (process) of observation/measurement will necessarily alter that which is under observation (object) – is akin to a scientist never bothering to measure the temperature of a material because the thermometer (s)he wishes to use to make this measurement will invariably cool or heat the matter being tested.

It is also worth noting similar calls for widening audience research perspectives have also been made several times before. In fact, leading cultural studies figure David Morley wished audience researchers might aspire to something similar 15 years ago:

[T]he key challenge [for audience studies] lies in our ability to construct the audience as both a social and semiological (cultural) phenomenon, and in our ability to recognize the relationship between viewers and the television set as they are mediated by the determinances of everyday life – and by the audience's daily involvement with all the other technologies in play in the conduct of mediated quotidian communication. (Morley, 1992: 197)

At a time of unprecedented media proliferation, it is important to understand how citizens connect and interpret these fragments of news and political information they get from a range of sources (or, journalisms) as a whole – from the mainstream/mundane to the ‘glamorous’. As Spitulnik (2002: 349) suggests, “The notions of ‘audience’ and ‘reception’… should be expanded or supplemented by the study of other activities and domains of experience that structure media meanings and use.” Doing so may blur and make more complex our current understanding of audiences for the news media, but would merely reflect the changing nature of the news media itself.

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Above all, the ethnographic perspective on media reception offers a necessarily humanistic alternative to more controlled, scientific analyses of ‘media effects’ or the ‘culture industry.’ Only ethnography can begin to answer questions about what people really do with the media, rather than what we might imagine they might do, or what close readings of texts assume they might do. (Bird, 2003a: 190-91)

Although ethnography may have been ‘the next step’ in audience studies for a long time, this does not mean we should not pay it careful consideration. This way we might more fully appreciate a media ecology which is characterised by diversity, fragmentation, genre convergence and complex profusion of news by and through various communication technologies. Any ethnographic approach to contemporary political communication might only ever provide close-up snapshots of the way audiences interact with news (defined in the broadest possible way), but it may be the next vital step if we are to fully understand “cultural chaos” (McNair, 2006), and the way in which contemporary forms of political television like Sunrise and The Chaser’s War are really ‘used’ by their audiences.

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NOTES

1

Stephen Colbert has utilised his loyal audience (the ‘Colbert Nation’) in more whimsical ways, such

as when he requested them to vote for him in an online vote being cast to find the most popular name for a new bridge in Hungary, and did the same for a vote in 2009 to name a new module on the International Space Station ('And the Winner Is...'Colbert',' 2009). 2

Hartley (1996: 41) suggests this prioritisation of “production, origin… [etc.] over consumption,

destination, diffusion…” is “a classic symptom of modernism”.

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APPENDIX A

DVD OF EXCERPTS

TITLE 1: Sunrise (17/4/2007) TITLE 2: The Chaser’s War on Everything (19/9/2007) TITLE 3: The Chaser’s War on Everything (26/9/2007)

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312

APPENDIX B

AUDIENCE RESEARCH TRANSCRIPTS

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This thesis could not have been written without the assistance of the following people:

My supervisor, mentor, colleague and friend Dr Jason Sternberg, who remained confident in me, even when I gave him no good reason to be. Without your sage advice, and encouragement (and love of popular culture), this thesis would not ever have eventuated.

Professor Terry Flew, whose continual support and critical eye helped to make this thesis far better than it could otherwise have been.

My benefactor, Professor Tom Dixon, whose generosity still amazes me.

All of the kind people (many of them total strangers) who took me into their homes and workplaces so that I could conduct my research. Thank you for your help and your generosity, even though for almost all of you it can never be repaid.

The kind folks at Sunrise (Adam Boland, David Koch and Melissa Doyle) and at The Chaser (Julian Morrow, Craig Reucassel and Andrew Hansen) who agreed to interviews with me despite very tight schedules, and the people who helped make them happen (Penny and Sian).

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All of the many academics and thinkers who I have met, read, been encouraged by or been inspired by throughout my PhD journey. In particular, I would like to acknowledge those who, in an ‘official’ capacity, have provided such valuable input into this thesis: Michael Bromley, Alan McKee, Leo Bowman and Chris Lawe Davies.

My family, who, to this day, are still coming to grips with the notion that watching so much TV as a kid may not have been so bad for me after all. Extra special thanks too must go to my mother, who kindly (and so selflessly) proofread the final draft of this document, despite having the best of excuses not to.

My wife Rebecca, who deserves more praise and love than I can ever possibly give. Without your (seemingly limitless) patience, support and encouragement, this long journey would not have even started, let alone ended. Darling, you are wonderful, and you are beautiful, and your sacrifice will never, ever be forgotten. I love you.

And finally, Edward, who I hope can one day read this and be proud of his silly dad.

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