Andrew Olle Media Lecture: “Time is the enemy of ratings”

The Project‘s Waleed Aly gave the Andrew Olle Media Lecture at Australian Technology Park in Redfern last night.

Aly spoke to the challenges of the 24/7 news cycle, the risks of clickbait and the heart of good journalism.

Referencing French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s view that “You can’t say much on television,” because of limited time, Aly drew attention to television journalists being in a constant rush.

“They’re in a hurry to produce the content in time for the broadcast, they’re in a hurry to find people to speak about the relevant issue, and then whoever’s speaking is in a hurry to say something before they run out of time. That leads Bourdieu to a big question: ‘is it possible to think fast?’ Or more specifically: ‘why and how can [people on television] think under these conditions in which nobody can think?'” he said.

Aly, whose various Project editorials have gone “viral” noted that making a compelling journalistic argument takes time.

“Of course, this time is never available on television because it is a mass medium. And as such, it measures its success by its ability to reach the greatest number of people possible. Documentaries aside – and perhaps even then – time seems to be the enemy of ratings. As a result, though, Bourdieu argues that something really strange happens. Television’s reliance on ‘received ideas’ as a way of maximising the audience, means that in the competition for ratings, everything ends up being more or less the same as everything else. If we’re honest, we’ll admit we’ve seen this in our various newsrooms. The minute one network (or radio station) is running with a particular story, every other network scrambles to ensure they have it too.

“This phenomenon of journalists watching each other to ensure they are never left behind their competitors, combined with the narrow range of ‘received ideas’ television allows, has an overall homogenising effect where everything begins to resemble everything else while insisting it’s unique.

“It’s why, for instance, we tend to see the same circle of people reappearing regularly to have similar conversations with each other. And it’s why anyone who’s tried to pitch a TV show to a network knows that eventually they’ll be asked something that amounts to: “can you come up with something entirely new that’s already been successfully done before?

“You don’t have to agree with Bourdieu’s assessment, of course. For what it’s worth, I think there’s less homogeneity than he describes and I think there’s perhaps a touch more room for thinking than he admits. But whenever I’ve run Bourdieu’s analysis by media colleagues of mine, they’ve admitted with varying degrees of reservation, there’s something to them.

“We’re all familiar, for instance, with the way experts will be overlooked for certain stories in favour of personalities or commentators that are, as we say in the industry,’“better talent’. We’ve all seen the way television and radio shows will gather punchy, diametrically opposed voices to discuss an issue because the ensuing fireworks will be entertaining, even though the two guests might be talking past each other. We’ve all seen examples where some kind of performed, heated disagreement stands in for an actual debate where people engage each other’s ideas rather than simply roll out their pre-determined talking points.

“What we’re witnessing there is a spectacle of duelling ‘received ideas’. And it’s hard to dream up an alternative because, to put it simply, a real debate just takes too much time. So it’s easier to pretend conflict is the same thing.”

The full speech will be broadcast on ABC News 24 today at 3:25pm, and repeated on Sunday at 12:25pm and 7:25pm.

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