Politics downhill

Many people have noted that the quality of our politicians and our political discourse is heading ever south.

It occurs to me that this process started just around the time that the internet popped up for the masses.

Here’s a new hypothesis as to what happened…

First, on-line advertising started eating into broadcast media advertising revenues.

Secondly, broadcast media reacted by creating cheaper and cheaper content so as to remain profitable.

Thirdly, one of these cheap content options was ‘politics’. All the broadcast media needed was a few cheap-arse obsessive-compulsive commentators and ‘bingo’. And there were more of these than there were politicians, so supply and demand was in their favour.

Fourthly, and so started the over reporting all things political.

Fifthly, this over-reporting of politics put downwards pressure on the quality of fools willing to endure the minute-by-minute inane coverage of their efforts as politicians.

Sixth, eventually the politicians realised that the only way to get into power was to feed the content-starved broadcast media with ‘total opposition’ content. They needed cheap news and big headline content – bugger the facts and any eventual downside impacts.

So, assuming this hypothesis is correct, the slide in the quality of politics in Australia (and everywhere where there is more than one political party) will continue to fall until people stop using broadcast media as their primary source of political news.

Of course, even if they do stop using the broadcast media as their source of political news, the politicians will have to notice. And given that their average intelligence has diminished somewhat there might be some delay before this happens.

So what we need as an ‘index’ to measure this. Take the polling process and overlay it on the electoral process, and find out where all the key swinging voters are getting their political info and opinions from and turn this into a ‘political media index’.

And, hey presto, in no time sanity will be restored as the Gen Ys do their bit for humanity.