Why equivalency in media is absolute crap.
Perhaps you haven't noticed. I don't blame you if you haven't, but our media is awash with a notion called 'equivalency'. This jargonistic catch-phrase was born into our media landscape under the Liberal beer-hall putsch on culture led by John Howard. Howard had a problem as Prime Minister, it was simply that when he said something heartless, cruel or stupid, some media outlets bought attention to it, and related it as the cruel, heartless or stupid thing he had said.
Naturally this would be infuriating. Imagine if, for example, you said it was good that a red-haired racist was denigrating anyone of non-caucasian aspect. The temerity of anyone to repeat that, and perhaps assume that you may be racist yourself! John Howard preferred media that did the right thing and referred to all of his deeds, words and policies as the brightest rays of golden sunshine to ever grace the benighted earth and uplift all of its peoples from suffering. Like Channel 9 and it's Lego-man-haired wunderkind Ray Martin. Ah, nostalgia...
So he did what right wing people are good at. See right wing people are not very good with facts. They start from a position of not liking them, and the relationship tends to sour from that point. What right wing people are good at, is changing the nature of the question around the facts. So, rather than say 'I like to let impoverished and desperate men, women and children drown at sea, or be tortured, raped and murdered when they are sent back home', they prefer to change the nature of the issue to 'I am keeping our borders safe from potential terrorists.' It's rather like if someone asks you if you want milk or sugar in your tea, and you answer 'bourbon'.
John Howard said that the real problem was not that he said stupid or hateful things, or ran roughshod over civil and human rights, it's that the media reporting these things was biased. Biased against crooks, tyrants and absolute lying f#cking liars I can only imagine. So he had a series of commissars installed at the 'biased' media outlets, that the government happened to own - the SBS and ABC. All the other TV networks were privately owned, and also coincidentally biased in favour of crooks, tyrants and absolute lying f#cking liars, so that was okay.
The role of these commissars was to ensure balance, an 'equivalency' of viewpoints. So if you happened to say that the Prime Minister was showing overt favouritism to a gang of evil, ignorant racist f#cks, you also had to have someone offer the viewpoint that maybe the gang of evil, ignorant racist f#cks had a point, and all foreign people ARE dirty, smell bad, and probably poo in the shower.
Thus was equivalency born. Got someone saying that gay teens shouldn't be committing suicide at ten times the rate of straight teens? Invite on Fred Nile to say that all p00ftahs are going to roast in hell. Got someone saying that 98% of the most knowledgeable scientists in the entire world all agree that anthropomorphic climate change is real AND happening right now? Invite on Lord Monckton and his googly Kermit The Frog eyes to say that they're all socialist Nazis (whatever that means).
There was a special wrinkle to this lovely policy of equivalency. It was that a news story was only an 'issue' if both of our major political parties took a different stance on it. Needless to say, this probably means that there are many things happening we'll never know about, as our two main parties' differences resemble the differences Adolf Hitler and Ante Pavelic had on the Jews, ie not f#cking many.
This has also led to a rise in the phenomena of the talking head, ie the opinionated pundit as a substitute to reporting facts. Rather than reporting on an issue, say, like what actually happens to animals in live export, we instead get to hear what Bob Katter and Lee Rhiannon think about live export. It also means that when there really just aren't two credible sides to a story, you have to bring on a complete nongwit to present 'the other side'. Ladies and gentlemen, making the case for Anthropomorphic Global Warming - the CSIRO, NASA, the Bureau of Meteorology and the global scientific community. Making the case against - a pompous uni drop-out columnist from Melbourne. You see what I mean?
In the interests of presenting a 'balanced' viewpoint you end up having to counterpoint fact with complete lies, leaving a muddied picture of half-truth. Some people come away believing fact, others come away dazzled by bullshit.
Think about the now-torpedoed Malaysia Solution 'debate'. Gillard wanted asylum seekers processed in Malaysia, Abbott thought that's a bad idea - we should choose another country. What are we not being told? That processing asylum seekers offshore is ILLEGAL. When there is a report on the court challenge to offshore processing, we go 'Oh some legal thingo must be stopping it. Oh well.' The 'legal thingo' is that we have been trying to violate an international treaty since Howard took over. If they don't land here, we don't have to process them. It's like inviting all the kids to your birthday, and when they get there saying 'I ate half the cake, threw the rest in the bin so you can't have any. Now leave your presents and F#CK OFF.' We are not being told that Australia is degenerating into a renegade backwater of racist hillbillies, and even if we were, Andrew Bolt would be invited on to tell us how good it is to abuse human rights, and how dark people are all criminals anyway (although you can just read his columns if you want to hear that - apparently Somalians are to blame for EVERYTHING).
Equivalency is dangerous. We get half the story, a bullshit load of misinformation, and end up thinking someone's opinion can change fact. We have ended up living in a fairyland of complete and utter lies.
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