The Inside Word
The campaign coverage from inside the media trenches
The key to clickbait is shock and awe … but even those who trumpet the most farcical of ‘facts’ could not have eclipsed the astonishing certitude of the 2025 election result. This was not a Labor Landslide. It was an Albanese Avalanche. But let’s not succumb to amnesia. The flabbergasting outcome of May 3, and the delirium that went with it, was the antithesis of the five-week preamble.
As US political strategist Paul Begala so subtly said: “Politics is show-business for ugly people.” Any journalist on the campaign trail will tell you this election was far from pretty. In fact, it was a flop. Nine News reporter, Andrew Probyn declared 24 hours from D-Day: “The policy pledges of this election can be summarised as underwhelming and undercooked.”
Well before Anthony Albanese fired the starter’s gun, the Press Gallery knew what it was in for. A rinse and repeat recipe on health, housing and cost of living.
As veteran political commentator Chris Uhlmann said: “The hollowness at the core of this campaign is so vivid you can almost touch it.”
But who’s to blame? Is it the politicians’ poor performance? The media’s alleged penchant for being fanciful with the facts? Or, here’s another idea -is it us, the Australian people? As consumers of news, are we being fed what we don’t even know we want?
I accept that statement warrants a ‘please explain’, so here it is. Media outlets live and die by ratings and clicks. Technology has been refined for editors to identify the exact time stories are watched, heard and read – and for how long. Media monitoring meticulously pinpoints the time a consumer clicks on a story and the length it retains their attention. It knows, for example, the precise moment a viewer changes the TV channel during any given news bulletin.
Algorithms are designed to ascertain what people want and when they want it. News stories are produced accordingly. So, if you’re feeling like this campaign was all sanctimony and no substance, be it by politicians or the media, here’s a fun a fact to pontificate.
The most viewed footage or soundbite of this election campaign was Anthony Albanese falling off a stage. The second most clicked was Anthnony Albanese denying he fell off a stage. The former received more than 10 times the number of views than all other press conferences combined.
Of course, the more politically astute are on the hunt for details to delineate which party and policies best serve them. This group is a shallow pool. It IS catered for but, realistically, it’s miniscule versus mass. The appetite for a deep dive doesn’t buy votes or sell stories.
To be fair, outside of the PM carrying a Medicare card 24/7 and Peter Dutton at a petrol bowser, the public has copped a plethora of predictable policies devoid of any vision for Australia’s future. So, the visuals of the Prime Minister miscalculating the number of steps to take on a stage didn’t face stiff competition to capture the nation’s attention.We can pulverise the press. We can pound the pollies to a pulp. There’s genuine merit in both. But I promise you, if there were serious voter interest in policies, or the lack thereof, your news feed would be flooded with the facts and the Press Gallery would have relished reporting them. Ultimately, media outlets put their money where your mouse is.