Advertisement

Gillard slams media for succumbing to ‘bullies’

Getty

Getty

Former Prime Minister Julia Gillard has slammed modern media for “shallow, policy-light reporting”, bias, inaccuracy and succumbing to “bullying”.

In an exclusive interview with Guardian Australia, the former Labor Leader accused the Daily Telegraph of “integrated bias” and the ABC of “pulling its punches” for fear of more attacks by the Abbott government.

Ms Gillard’s comments come as Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull lashed the ABC for allowing a former terror suspect into the Q&A program audience on Monday night, which led to a controversial encounter with the suspect and Parliamentary Secretary to the Foreign Affairs Minister, Steve Ciobo.

In a new chapter of her autobiography My Story, and since talking with Guardian Australia, Ms Gillard concluded the media and Australia’s preoccupation with leadership destabilisation contributed to politicians’ difficulties in arguing for increasingly necessary policy changes.

• ‘That’s the sort of thing an assassin does say’: Rudd
• The Killing Season: how a dream team imploded
• ‘Ice cold’ Julia Gillard gave Kevin Rudd ‘false hope’

During the in-depth interview, Ms Gillard applauded comedy and the “larrikinism” that allowed Australians to laugh at themselves, but also questioned whether constant ridicule invited voters not to take politicians seriously.

She referred to ABC comedy series At Home with Julia in which actors playing her and her partner, Tim Mathieson, were portrayed having sex under an Australian flag.

Ms Gillard was furious with the ABC's portrayal of her and partner, Tim Mathieson.

Ms Gillard was furious with the ABC’s portrayal of her and partner, Tim Mathieson. Photo: Getty

“I’ve said I think the ABC crossed the line with that comedy series about me,” Ms Gillard told Guardian Australia.

“I tried to take that as one that should be laughed through, but I thought where it got itself to was gratuitous and disrespectful and interestingly there has been no suggestion that the ABC would be producing such a comedy about the current prime minister, so people might want to muse on that, why it was a Labor prime minister and the first woman and why it’s not the current prime minister.”

Ms Gillard spoke about a “vicious cycle” of media preoccupation with “gaffes” or “peripheral stumbles” which led to ever more tightly staged public appearances and even deeper voter disillusion.

“The very thing the public would most like to see – spontaneity, deep ideas, a focus on the longer term – is often the stuff least easy to portray in modern politics due to the nature of the media cycle,” she told Guardian Australia.

“So the public ends up feeling deprived, the media chides the politician for spin and hollowness, but the media is very rarely self-reflective about how its own practice may well be drawing out the spin and hollowness as opposed to the alternatives.”

The new media cycle also rewarded political negativity, Ms Gillard told Guardian Australia, benefiting Tony Abbott’s calculation in opposition to “go hard negative”.

“That kind of political calibration could have been easily made in an earlier age, but the political rewards for going simple and negative are greater in an accelerated media age that likes schlock and horror … I think Tony Abbott’s style profits more easily in this time,” she said.

Ms Gillard thinks Tony Abbott’s style profits more easily in this media climate.

Ms Gillard thinks Tony Abbott’s style profits more easily in this media climate. Photo: Getty

Ms Gillard claimed not to have watched the ABC’s latest political series The Killing Season, which retells the axing of the (Kevin) Rudd leadership in 2010.

She said she agreed to be interviewed for the series because she believed it would have been made with or without her participation.

“I think for everyone who took part it was a difficult decision. I didn’t want the issues about leadership in the last Labor government to distract from my current colleagues’ efforts … I thought about that very deeply, but the ABC was crystal clear that it would be made whether I participated or not,” she told Guardian Australia.

“Once it’s crystal clear there is going to be that kind of show on air it becomes a question of whether you have your voice in it or not, on balance and in some ways with a bit of a heavy heart because I knew it would cause a distraction to the current colleagues, I thought it was better to have my voice in it than not, but it was a very difficult judgment.”

But despite all her criticism, Ms Gillard said in her interview she was “long-term positive” about the capacity of the political system to achieve policy change, because of the “pent up” need for reform.

She believed media consumers would emerge from the current era of “click freneticism … and say, ‘I am over the quick click now. I might do that for reports on Kim Kardashian or celebrity culture but, for things that really matter in the political culture I am going to look for more authoritative news sources’, ” Ms Gillard said.

“I think there will be a demand build up for deeper analysis, I think it will take some time for the market to sort itself out that way, but that will help us to bust out and find places to have deeper debate.”

Stay informed, daily
A FREE subscription to The New Daily arrives every morning and evening.
The New Daily is a trusted source of national news and information and is provided free for all Australians. Read our editorial charter
Copyright © 2024 The New Daily.
All rights reserved.