I agree with the author's true , though discouraging comments . Surely , not many listeners / readers really care about the sex lives or personal joys / tragedies of royalty ,politicians , sporting or entertainment persons , yet the media see these as being an endless source of fascination .

The program "Who do you think you are ? " should be retitled " Who gives a damn who you are ? " . Although I might enjoy watching a drama starring some actor / ess , I am quite uninterested in that person 's supposedly heart rending history .
Similarly , I am sorry for persons who have suffered some misfortune , through a crime or road accident , but I do not want to watch , or read about how much they or their bereaved relatives are suffering , with the usual crying and hugging scenes . Sad as these are , they are deeply personal and their privacy should not be invaded .

In the case of the ABC and SBS , they have been forced to mimic the lowest common denominator behaviour of the commercial channels by constant comment by the latter and politicians that the ABC and SBS are elitist .

None of this is very new. What did Tanner just read Amusing Ourselves to Death and a few Tony Blair speeches on the media?

'ABC FM Classic is being slowly pushed down market. It was once the preserve of classical music. Now jazz, rock, folk, and any old stuff is being served up, doubtless to increase ratings.'

Hahaha. How dare they put music on that people like. What is the government to subsidise unpopular music just for you out of our tax dollars?

All this agonising over the media is really pointless, as you don't HAVE to consume any media. One could go straight to governmnet web sites and watch question time. It is possible to be an active rather than passive consumer of information.

But you know what, the people who watch ACA aint there to listen to policy analysis. They're there for entertainment and there is nothing wrong with that.

Should they have informative content surreptitiously served to them between adverts about the latest Bra they have chosen to watch because they wish to be titillated?

It seems a pretty hollow argument that people turning up to Maccas should be served healthy tasty food.

If you're argument is it's all Maccas, and choice has been diluted then there is a point but I'm not sure it has. I agree choice for the lazy has been diluted, but for an active rather than passive consumer of information there is more choice than there has ever been.

TV, as a medium, is suited to entertainment. That you want to be informed only on that passive medium is your own shortcoming.

I have been watching with some interest the development of a website (currently in beta mode) that was built to provide “information, analysis and commentary from the university and research sector”.

Contributors of articles to the website are from the main university and research centers in Australia.

The website includes a video from Peter Doherty, Nobel Laureate and former Australian of the Year.

http://theconversation.edu.au/who_we_are

Some transcript of the video is below: -

“When it comes to complex issues like climate change that have major implications for all of us, there is an enormous difficulty in getting well resourced and verifiable information across to the general public. The Newspapers have their own goals and agendas, principally to do with selling their product. The visual media is increasingly going to sound bites,”

However I have noticed a slow decline in the content of that site, and the latest main article is titled “Will the PM meet (and be discreet) with the Dalai Lama?”

Hardly riveting stuff.

I have also noticed a decline in the actual science articles in the website, until finally there has appeared an article written by a lecturer in biology with the line “Much like human males, male mantids have one brain in their head and another in their abdomen.”

Male denigration in universities is prolific, and the article was simply an excuse for a university academic to carry out male denigration and vilification, with no facts in the article that can be relied upon.

The website began well enough with some important articles, but the dumbing down of that website has occurred over a number of months, until finally it is like so many others, and the public is eventually left with nothing in the website that can be relied upon.

With all the availability of information on the internet, the most difficult thing is to find sources of information that can be relied upon.

Three years ago I stopped watching TV altogether previously the only program I would watch was SBS 6:30 world news. It may not have been all spit and polish and laptops and perfectly produced but it gave me what I was looking for and that was a serious news program where the presenter presented the news and not their opinion.

It truly covered the entire world and that too was my reason for watching it. Now it has gone the way of the ABC: commercial, parochial trash. The Internet it a send from Heaven there are online papers and blogs that are not just good but excellent and some coming out of 3rd world countries.

There is a variety of perspective and the always present propaganda in Western newspapers is easily discerned from the prospective of another newspaper. The relationship between media and government has become incestuous and if one can give a date when it all turned to trash it was probably following the terrible 9/11 attack on America.

The reporting from that date was coming straight out of Federal government never has the press been so compliant. I used to subscribe to Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) until far too often headlines had Paris Hilton in it or some other celebrity if I want to read tabloid trash I wouldn't expect to find it in SMH I cancelled my subscription after almost 15 years.

I believe in the free market and it is for the corporations that own these publications to realize the highest profit for their owners and/or shareholders. It would appear that it is we the public that have a preference for this type of news or at least a majority of us.

Sponsors in newspapers and on TV and Radio will back a program that can draw the biggest audience to its adverts obviously the majority are not interested in serious news and debates. So the question should not whether these media barons are dumbing down the news but are we asking that the news be dumbed down?

When you factor media has to get as many people to whatch/read it for the sole purpose of selling advertising. As the advertising dollar declines so will the budget to produce content. This is the main reason why most media in Australia is utter crap.

Good theory but it doesn't explain what is happening to the ABC. That is caused by a number of factors but main one is incompetance. The team they have managing the ABC at the moment are hopless. The only thing that can save the ABC is to decentralise it again. Now that the ABC is basically run out of their Sydeny office they have a the rest of Australia can go to hell practice. I get zero local news from the ABC even the state news is basically filled with stories about what is going on in Sydeny. you would have thought that news 24 would have helped but it has made it worst.

Nothing can save the Australian media now not even the ABC. Anyone who can drive the internet has already voted with their mice and clicked onto overseas sites and blogs like this one.

"One could go straight to governmnet web sites and watch question time"

Therein lies the problem. Our 'leaders' leading by example.

"There's a bear in there
And a chair as well
There are people with games
And stories to tell
Open wide
Come inside
It's Playschool"

ORDER!!

Vanna – your comment suggests academia is a bunch of cynical elitists – which does confirm the behaviour of some self – professed “academics” who do, from time to time, post here

I suppose what this Lindsay Tanner book is saying really is “I don’t find the media sympathetic with my view, therefore the media must be dumbing down their readership.”

Of course, if a socialist ever had a view which was worthy of being read or listened to, instead of their predictable pretentious / elitist claptrap, they might find a greater take-up in the press but with the performance of the Krudd and Gillard governments profligate squandering, it should be as no surprise to anyone that the socialist monocular views of the way things have to be, fall on deaf and disinterested ears.

Of course, if Tanner really wanted to read he is free to grab on to the UK Daily Telegraph… they have really wide coverage of everything written by articulate people who have been around, honing their craft for years….. although he might feel the DT is dumbing things down too…

Mind you it will require that a socialist come to grips with computers.... a difficult ask for the "cognitive challenged".

The real problem is Lindsay Tanner is just dumb and reading his book and articles merely confirm the sad reality.

Sad, but true.

This concisely written article made me realise that I too have been dumbed down. Successfully manipulated by Tony Abbott's many media appearances in factories/meatworks etc, all screened in 30 second video portions by ABC news as much as the commercial stations. Subtly, making me think that Tony Abbott and the Liberals will represent the true heart of working Australia more than Julia Gillard and Labor.

You know, it's still quite likely that I will conclude that they will.

But not without being more cynical about the strategic "positioning" used by all politicians to appeal to our dumbed down media-manipulated society where the "image" (visual) has triumphed over the "word" (verbal - rational). The journalist, Neil Postman wrote a great book about this process: it's title: "Amusing Our Selves to Death"

Reading this article made me feel sad.

I am a well-educated person.

But subtly, I have been taken in by Tony Abbott's media strategy.

Tony, I'm going to look closer at your policy and your actual words now - not just your media posturing.

But hey, I gotta admit, you sure know how to to that media posturing.

The opinion polls are going in your favour.

And its even been working on ME.

Col ruge
The website mentioned is being sponsored by some of the top universities and research centers in Australia including the Australian Group of Eight universities (ANU, University of Adelaide, Monash University, University of Melbourne, University of New South Wales, University of Sydney, University of Queensland, and University of Western Australia) plus University of Technology, Sydney, CSIRO, and the Australian Science Media Centre.

However the website has gradually deteriorated in time, and now most of it is mindless pap, with little reliability in any article in the website, perhaps culminating in the article by the university lecturer with the line that males have "have one brain in their head and another in their abdomen.”

Therefore I don’t think the media per se is to blame for declining standards or any dumbing down of the public.

Some of the top universities and research centers in the country are also a part of the dumbing down process and production of unreliable information.

vanna "Therefore I don’t think the media per se is to blame for declining standards or any dumbing down of the public. "

nor do I

but it is the sort of lazy excuse you would expect from a socialist politician

I thought that Tanner and Forkbender stated they had left politics to “spend more time with their families”?

Are we to read into recent events that what they actually meant was, “I’m leaving this party and public office because I’m sick of the structure of the ALP, the members, the caucus, the trade unions, the ministers, how they treat each other, how the formulate policy, the cabinet process, the divisive policies themselves, the damage they are doing to Australia, the 32% of Australians that still vote for them and their loss of sense of smell that prevents them from recognizing the cadaver they call a government”.

Sounds like a great basis for yet another to blame someone other than ourselves!

The tend towards infotainment is an interesting one. I wouldn't be alarmed by it if 'information' was readily available without the 'entertainment' added in, but that seems to be slipping away. Even 'hard-hitting' journalists function as entertainers: I suspect that many focus more on making their interview subjects squirm than on revealing information. That isn't a new trend - even Jana Wendt, who was considered a 'serious' journalist in her heyday, seemed to know what she wanted her interviewees to say and focused purely on getting them to say it, preferably through the most painful methods.

As for those sensible shows in the ABC and SBS - the ones that apparently challenge politicians in serious debate - well, they seem to run a similar line. Sometimes I'm surprised the pollies don't get up and slap the interviewers for being so impertinent. Interruptions, redirections, 'hard-hitting' questions that are really thinly-veiled personal attacks ... it's all a sorry sight in my opinion. At least shows like The 7PM Project openly admit what they are. Others could follow in that lead, or (even better) try to be what they claim to be.

Vanna, your link to The Conversation is interesting. I've been following that site as well and, in the main, find it interesting. After your comment, I dug around and found the article referring to mantids. I found it interesting, and didn't really find the quip about male brains to be a denigration of men. I did, however, find it to be an unnecessary addition that weakened the scholarly seriousness of the piece. While I'm sure the target audience is educated enough to be aware that men don't have brains in their abdomens, and has read enough to recognise an attempt at humour when faced with one, I'd tend to agree that it is unnecessary. I have confidence in the reliability of the actual information in that article, however I am left wondering what other reliable information was left out to make room for the author to insert some personality.

Otokonoko,
There have been other articles on that website that were objectionable, and I understand complaints have been made directly to the universities involved.

I have noticed that when some of the articles were objectionable, the editors moved the article to the top of the list for that category. This has now happened with the brain in the abdomen article, and others as well.

The editors are hoping for an increase in website hits I suppose, similar to a TV show hoping for an increase in ratings.

However it means that wanting an increase in website hits, or wanting an increase in audience ratings, is believed to be more important than presenting reliable information.

I now mostly look at websites such as SciDev and Science Daily for science news.

Hey! I know what you mean, Peter.

I was once an ABC junkie but I simply refuse to watch the damn ABC anymore. Every damned time I turned it on, there was nothing but endless stories about Cornelia Rau, David Hicks, Mamdouth Habib, boatpeople, refugee advocates, Bob Brown, greenies painting the Opera House, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and the gantries at Newcastle BHP.

Jesus, give it a rest.

Lego in your case I don't think you have cause to be concerned about the dumbing down of democracy you have already chosen to dumb down what you read and watch. I hope you find your new fare infinitely more enjoyable.

It is, Ulis, it is.

Janet Albrechson, Piers Ackerman, Henry Bolt, and Keith Windshuttle.