Abstract
This book, despite its title, is not a study of conventional Australian television news. Taking its cue from cultural studies, it promotes a more inclusive perspective with regard to news formats. Harrington puts forward that, as the subtitle states, the new forms, functions, and futures of news are to be found in the “larger cultural practice than the core of the profession often recognises” (p. 6). To this end, he has chosen to look at one of Australia’s commercial channels’ breakfast news, Sunrise; a now defunct panel show on another commercial channel that discussed current affairs in a nonexpert, light-hearted fashion titled The Panel; and Australia’s arguably most successful satire show, The Chaser’s War on Everything, which was broadcast on the public broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).
In his opening chapter, Harrington argues, along the lines of Hartley, Lumby, Fiske, and others, that popular news formats, like tabloids, should not be simply dismissed as entertainment but be seen as less hierarchical, more comprehensible, and hence more democratic forms of news. Emotionalism and simplification can draw audiences who may otherwise feel left untouched by and unaware of public events.
In putting his case for a latitude of forms that open possibilities of political commentary and engagement, he also uses the instance of the United States after 9/11 and during the early stages of the Iraq war as a time when satirical shows were the only ones that could dare to be less patriotic and thus come closer to a more balanced and factual view of the world. But in the main, it is the notion of democratization and connectivity to a wider audience that underpins Harrington’s reasoning for studying a breakfast show, a panel, and a satirical program.
Given this rationale, the book seems strangely ahistorical. Its narrowly drawn approach gives the impression that it was written in a time before digital and social media had an impact on traditional media and their use, and changing the format on television was the only way to reach people otherwise disconnected from public life. Little mention is made that digital publishing, user generated content, social media, and Twitter have also caused a considerable democratization in news creation and consumption. Their influence, for example, on the breakfast show, is hardly taken under scrutiny.
This lack of contextualization is unfortunately a major shortcoming of the book, not only with regard to the changing media landscape but also in other areas. The reader is given very few and interspersed facts about the Australian news media, which makes it hard to assess the impact of the programs used as case studies. It would have been good to learn where Australians get their news, whether television, radio, print, or online. It also would have helped to know about the popularity of traditional news and current affairs broadcasts in Australia. Some of these, such as Channel Seven’s Today Tonight range among the highest ranking weekly television programs. Appropriate data would have underpinned Harrington’s claim that television is the most important medium in Australia and that, in the period of Harrington’s case studies, at least half of Australia’s population got their local news from television, rising to two-thirds for international news.
As it is, all the reader learns is that the breakfast show’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)” (p. 47). In view of the argument of new formats reaching out to new audiences, it would have been valuable to know whether these 400,000 viewers who watch the breakfast program also watch the nightly news or whether the breakfast program is the viewers’ only connection to public events.
Harrington, however, in his methodology chose qualitative analysis and makes it clear that he wanted to go beyond using the three shows as “texts.” To this end, he interviewed the shows’ producers and hosts and conducted focus group interviews for each of the three shows. While on one hand, the interviews with producers provide valuable insight into industry thinking, the focus groups answers on the other hand are also liberally reproduced, which makes for lengthy and repetitive reading. It would have been better had these answers not been presented as prima facie evidence but had been offered in a briefer form, filtered through analysis and interpretation.
The majority of the chapters are devoted to the case studies of shows, which Harrington considers as “reciprocal” journalism due to its claimed interplay between news, opinion, and emotions. With regard to opinion and emotions, the producer of the Sunrise program points out that the structure of the show was influenced by radio talkback show logic (p. 30), which thrives on opinion and emotion. Being “radio on TV” (p. 35) brings other advantages. Australia has a deeply ingrained tradition of radio listening, and the comment of some viewers that they listen more than they watch comes as no surprise. On the emotional level, the show tries to function as “family” to the viewers and encourages the presenters to react emotionally to news, which in Australia can be disastrous fires and floods. As to opinions, the show actively solicits e-mail feedback, some of which is read out on air. Harrington claims that these elements make for effective and satisfactory communication with viewers that counteract accusations that shows such as Sunrise are merely infotainment. In his view, the Habermasian modernist demand for a rational-critical public sphere has blended with postmodern stylistics that incorporate celebrity, personal chat, and show biz without losing its highly political nature (p. 59), transcending the entrenched binary of high and low culture.
The strongest chapters of the book are devoted to The Chaser’s War on Everything. Harrington is Australia’s foremost scholar on television satire. One of the Chaser team’s stunts came to worldwide attention when in 2007 at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting, one of the team members, dressed as Osama bin Laden, managed to pass all security without checks to arrive at the hotel where President George W. Bush was staying. Another stunt included giving out the then Prime Minister’s home phone number so that all those protesting about Australia’s involvement in the Iraq war could complain to him personally. The Chaser’s War on Everything, which now has changed into a less acclaimed series, was highly political but also at times, grossly unethical. Harrington does not elaborate this point, which has been a characteristic of Australian practical jokes, or pranks, one of which—coming from a radio station—has led more recently to the suicide of a British nurse. Instead, he emphasizes that satirical shows have a latitude that allows them to express what, as it were, can only be said in jest. Shows like The Chaser can also throw a light on the weaknesses of the “public conversation” enabled by the traditional media.
The last two chapters serve to drive home again the point that “orthodox forms of journalism simply [can] no longer lay exclusive claim to the domain of news and political discourse in the public sphere” (p. 149). This is successfully argued from the popular culture perspective with regard to some television shows. But no attempt is made to place this argument into the wider frame of the newly evolving media ecology, which not only involves a higher degree of interactivity but also points to the diminishing role of institutionalized media. This intensifies the sense of a book that tries to show new ways of an old medium without breaking new ground.