Sun-Herald, September 27th 1998
By Peter Cox (media analyst)
If John Howard grasps defeat from the jaws of victory next weekend, he cannot blame blame the media which with the exception of the ABC are nearly totally supportive of the Coalition.
On one day last week, the editorials in all the Sydney newspapers supported the Government or criticised Labor.
The Sydney Morning Herald editorial had comments such as "Mr Beazley reheating leftover Labor policy", The Australian Financial review spoke of "Mr Beazley's burnt out case". The Australian had "Jobs target hurts Labor's credibility" and The Daily Telegraph repeatedly criticised Labor's policies.
Yet the polls show the Coalition could lose a second unlosable election, which makes one wonder if many people actually read the editorials or if they have any real influence.
Why do we accept that newspaper proprietors and radio talkback hosts can express their political support through such avenues as editorials, the choice and angles of stories, headings and photographs, but are aghast at the concept of television networks taking a political stance?
The average daily readership of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Daily Telegraph is 2.2 million. The Sydney readers of the national papers The Australian Financial review and The Australian add about another 300,000 , leading to a total readership of about 2.5 million.
We have three very competitive commercial television networks and a highly active public sector ABC and SBS. All of these potentially provide considerable diversity of opinion to about 1.5 million viewers of news in Sydney.
So, on numbers alone, there would appear to be a far greater concentration of power and influence in newspapers which are owned by only two proprietors.
Of course media moguls and politics in Australia are inseparable. The moguls are looking to win political favour to change the rules so they can expand their empires in a mature media market. Kerry Packer needs to change the cross-media rules so he can gain equity control of the Fairfax group and be allowed to keep his Channel 9 television network.
So it was no surprise to see him endorsing Howard this week as he did in the last election with great success. Though he did not get the cross-media rules changed in the last term of government as he wished, he did get a tremendous gift from the government on the terms for digital TV in the future.
Does the Nine Network favour one of the parties? If so, is it the result of management influence or part of the culture of the news and current affairs participants in the organisation? Finally, does the attitude of Nine, or any other media group, significantly affect the outcome of an election?
National Nine News and A Current Affair have an average audience of about 2,5 million voters and, in Sydney, 550,000 viewers.
The chairman of the Seven Network, Kerry Stokes, reportedly said that it was not appropriate for him to endorse parties and presumably this applies to his network as well.
However, both Seven and Ten have political interview programmes on Early Sunday mornings with Face to Face and Meet the Press attracting audiences of 35,000 to 40,000 viewers. In comparison The Sun-Herald has a readership of more than 1.5 million, though not all necessarily read the political stories.
Why do Seven and Ten bother to have these political interviews which receive such small audiences, unless it is yo have some political influence in Canberra? Why do the leaders of the parties get up early on a Sunday morning to go on these programmes? Are their advisers not aware of the low ratings or do they take the view that these programmes reach a lot more voters than attend barnecues or political meetings?
In the final column on the role of the media in the election, I question whether, despite having the support of powerful media moguls, Howard can convince people to vote to impose a new tax on themselves.