An Open Letter to the Nation

I was watching Newsroom (not great but it has a couple of important ideas). The gist is, the news needs to go back to being ACTUAL news. Not voyeurism, not gossip, not entertainment. Actual important news. And the reason? So the viewers can be informed and educated, and make informed votes. Informed voters actually voting for real policies, not popular sound-bite media spin that means nothing. One of the characters, when demanding a change, says "I'm too old to be governed by the fear of dumb people."

Think back to the last election - all parties. What were the REAL policies? What was the media saying? Was there any connection? Or was our news just advertising?

In Fahrenheit 451 the genius Bradbury says “If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him, give him one. Better yet, give him none." He goes on to say, give them competitions, so they can feel like they're moving forward when they're actually going nowhere. That was written a long time ago but it's an apt description of our media today.

The news can do it, this fluff and human interest, because that's what the people want. I get news emailed to me - of the 4 lead stories today, one is an AFL drafting and one is about what Miranda Kerr wore. I find it hard to believe, in the great nation of ours, these are what I should be thinking about (and I love AFL, so it's not because it doesn't interest me). I have spent the last few months with what's happening on Big Brother or Masterchef being considered 'News Stories'. Why we have allowed this to happen is beyond me. However, as we let it slide, we are the ones responsible to demand a change.

We, the people of Australia, need to demand a change. We need to know the actual news - the 2 sides to every story, so we can make informed decisions. Maybe there are three sides to a story - lets see them all. We may not agree with each other, but we will be voting on the real issues. Not half baked catch phrases. We will understand the full impact of our choices.

Last election, we were voting on bullet points. They weren't backed up by facts or statistics. There were no sound numbers given to explain why we were choosing these policies. They were just words. Emotive, clever words, but words all the same. If you went seeking the facts and figures, the budget to achieve these policies, the how would they achieve these policies, it was very hard to find any sort of information on it. It certainly wasn't being broadcast to Joe Public in the nightly news. I'm referring to the policies of all parties, not just taking a swipe at the winning coalition. "Nothing is more important to a democracy than a well-informed electorate." We have four years to demand better information. We have four years to start to understand the impact all these promises will make. Give us the real facts. Give us both sides, in detail. Let us decide what we want.

To quote V, "People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people".

Sadly not much has changed since I wrote this. We dance around the sideshow but know little of the real news. Shame on us.