The reputed $6 million offer by the Nine Network to Tasmanian miners Todd Russell and Brant Webb tells us as much about media audiences as the grubby media iteself.
The bulk of media audiences lap up the emotional, the pruient, the salacious and inconsequential, especially about people of their own kind and leave aside the more important, difficult, analytical and consequential, especially if it is about people not of their kind.
Sure, it was terrific the miners were rescued and why shouldn’t they try to milk their story for all it is worth if the audience wants it?
But while Russell and Webb were underground about 200 Chinese miners died. The official figure of Chinese mining deaths in 2005 was 5986. The real figure was probably several times that. Chinese mining disasters and rescues rarely get media coverage.
We know news values are not driven by the number of deaths or even the method of death.
Indeed, a Third World shipping disaster can claim more lives than the Titanic and be swept from the public consciousness in no time.
Media outlets often downplay or ignore the plight of the poor and oppressed, especially those outside Australia, in response to audience attitude.
Also while the two Tasmanians were underground three other Australians – Torres Strait Islander fishermen – had an equally miraculous rescue. After being given up for dead they managed to row their stricken vessel to within mobile-phone range of Murray Island (where the Mabo case began) and text-message a plea for help. They, like the Tasmanian miners, engaged in ingenious self-help. But no $6 million for them. The story got passing coverage.
So we know news values are not driven purely by courage in adversity and the miraculous.
The critical thing is for the audience to connect with the people involved in the news event. It helps for the protagonists to be like the bulk of the audience – white, employed and English-speaking.
In competitive, mass markets the media has to feed the appetite, or perish. In those markets, media companies go further than feeding the appetite – they often buy the stories to feed the appetite because it makes economic sense.
The interesting thing is who is offering and why. In Australia, television stations do the buying and the newspapers do not bother. In Britain it is the other way around.
The offer to Russell and Webb comes shortly after The Daily Mirror in Britain paid several hundred thousand dollars for the dairy of Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott’s secretary and lover, Tracey Temple. Temple’s boyfriend came across the diary and sold it.
In an ideal world there would be no market for these stories. But there is a market where the media scene is intensely competitive – and there is perhaps no more intensely competitive media scene than Australian television, largely because of government policy.
Market research shows that the amount of money available for advertising is fairly static, growing at only the rate of the economy as a whole; all that changes is what share of the finite cake each player gets.
In Australia, advertisers are willing to pay $3.2 billion to free-to-air television to flog their wares and no more.
There are only three players vying for that money – Nine, Seven and Ten. (SBS is a bit player.) Under government policy each of the big three can only broadcast one program at a time. They are not allowed to split their digital spectrum into several programs as in other countries.
They like it this way. They still get their $3.2 billion and only have to shell out for one lot of programming. If they multi-channelled there would be no more advertising revenue; just extra costs. The owners of Nine, Kerry Paker and later his son James lobbied the Government for this policy against the interests of Australian television consumers. And the Government fearfulthat media barons could turn on them agreed.
So the nine million pairs of eyes that watch commercial television each evening in Australia are watching only one of three program streams – Nine, Seven and Ten.
If any of these big three want some extra advertising revenue they have to steal it from another. The station with the most viewers gets the highest amount of money per minute of advertising.
The competition is fierce. The stations will do almost anything to gain market share, including buying stories.
The $6 million for the miners will ultimately be returned because the station that pays it will be rewarded with higher market share on the day of broadcast and more generally as it gets the reputation as the station worth watching (if you are a member of the mass audience).
The real mugs are the consumers of advertised products who pay higher prices to pay for the excessive advertising.
Newspapers in Australia do not bother buying stories because most of them have no direct competition. They compete for people’s time, not against each other. Geography made it impossible for a competitive national press to develop. Moreover, most papers are home-delivered and pre-sold no matter what the content.
Not so in Britain where half a dozen national papers vie on the newstands for commuters every morning. The one that offers the most sensational will get bought. Every extra copy sold is almost pure profit because the paper cost is trivial. They do not have many pages because they don’t have the classified-ad volumes that Australian city-based papers have.
So British papers will happily pay for stories and recoup from extra circulation.
But the trouble with bought stories is they are not so well tested. The writers and broadcasters will craft the story to the audience’s taste – make it more salacious, more emotional or even omit the awkward. No independent journalists are there to test the waters. It will not happen or will not matter with the Tasmanian miners, but it does in other cases.
It is ironic that the fierce competition that creates this environment results in the monopolised “exclusive” story and poorer journalism for media consumers.
CORRECTION: Richard Dawkins called replicating social behaviours “memes” not “menes” as I wrote in last week’s column.