Prioritizing entertainment over substance is a dangerous trend in modern political reporting

What happens when news media and politicians take the politics out of, well, politics? In many ways, this is an odd question to ask. Several observers would instead argue our politics are becoming far too, well, politicized.

Civility has gone out of style. Polemics are now where the action, and the eyeballs, gravitate to. Rather than joining together to develop workable policies and solutions, politicians and pundits demonize one another and hurl snide insults in the hopes of scoring momentary partisan points.

It’s no exaggeration, then, to suggest that our public sphere is hyper-politicized. And it’s perhaps unsurprising that observers across the political spectrum are asking why “Canadian politics has become so stupid,” worrying that it’s about to “get worse as the vote gets closer.”

In a recent study, we identified a major trend that could be contributing to this politicization: the tendency to avoid discussions about policy options, party platforms, ideological positions and ethical debates — the actual substance of politics — and instead cover politics as mere entertainment, akin to reality TV.

While this neglect of political substance in news coverage might not sound as pernicious as hyper-politicization, we believe citizens should be no less worried about it.

The ‘Golden Age’ of democratic journalism

Quality public information has long been viewed as the lifeblood of democracy. Without it, citizens cannot make decisions in their best interests. This, in turn, erodes the possibility of informed consent, a cornerstone of democracy.

A free and independent press is therefore a must. But the quality of the press is also crucial, for the style and content of news coverage shapes politics in complex and important ways.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, professional journalism in the West sought to produce a specific type of quality news coverage — often referred to as the Golden Age style — that would provide serious information and analysis about the political questions of the day.

This style was considered far superior to entertainment, commercial, partisan, or propaganda lenses. News organizations thus sought to ensure that only this style was used for serious and informative “hard news.” Yet today, that line is far more blurred than many might care to admit.

Infotainment and political news coverage

One helpful concept for making sense of this changing situation is “infotainment.” This term, which originated in the 1980s, refers to the increasing use of entertainment-style framing to present social and political information.

Infotainment has a long history and exists in many forms. In the case of political news, infotainment is coverage that is primarily:

• Personalized: focusing on politicians’ private lives and personal characteristics;

• Sensationalized: using emotional or dramatic narratives, or presenting scandals, conflicts and election developments without analysis or investigation;

• Decontextualized: presenting political news without the context needed to make sense of it, or treating it as a strategic game or horse-race.

Some optimistic observers argue certain forms of infotainment can have positive effects and be used, even in newsrooms, to educate audiences. Yet these claims tend to rest on a narrow view of engagement that’s more concerned with attention-grabbing than cultivating a well-informed electorate.

Many, therefore, suggest that infotainment news coverage generally fails to provide readers with the information and analysis required for their role as citizen decision-makers.

Infotainment and Canadian politics

There have been virtually no studies about whether an infotainment style is employed in Canadian political news coverage. To find out, we analyzed nearly 1,000 election stories published by national and regional newspapers during the 41-day 2019 federal election. We rated the presence and intensity of both Golden Age and Infotainment styles on a scale of one to five.

Much to our surprise, our study found that more than half (51 per cent) of all stories showed significant levels of infotainment, with over 42 per cent showing very strong levels (that is, an Infotainment Scale rating of four to five).

This suggests that infotainment has a strong presence in Canadian political news coverage — a very sobering conclusion.

Yet on the other hand, 40 per cent of stories demonstrated little to no infotainment characteristics, and almost 45 per cent scored a four or five on the Golden Age Scale. This suggests that even though it’s less prevalent than infotainment, there still remains a tradition of Golden Age political journalism in Canada.

Looking to the future

How much longer the Golden Age style of political journalism will continue, however, is an open question. A variety of pressures are increasing the likelihood that infotainment will continue to expand.

Quality journalism is struggling to survive, facing staff and budget cuts, quicker news cycles and intensified time pressures, the shuttering of local newspapers, and declining audiences. These are all pressures that encourage journalists and editors to employ infotainment techniques at the expense of Golden Age journalism, which requires far more resources, time and skill.

This tendency is now also being accelerated by new technologies. Real-time data, which tracks audience engagement and preferences, is increasingly shaping the content of both journalism and political campaigning.

Meanwhile, Canada’s political class appears to be adjusting their strategies to benefit from these trends. Instead of engaging in good-faith debates, politicians seem to be adapting to a surface-level infotainment culture, where image curation and sound bites are the new measure of political success.

This is not surprising, as politics, journalism and entertainment all influence one another through “media cultures.” Successful styles used in one medium are eventually copied by other media and institutions, including politicians and their strategists. These convergences are likely to create even more pressure on journalists to adopt infotainment framing.

What this means for Canadian democracy

Given the structural forces arrayed against quality political debate today, there are no easy answers about what to do in response.

As a starting point, we need to ensure that, when we discuss how to improve our public political discourse, we recognize and seek to address the problem of infotainment as much as we do hyper-politicization. Infotainment’s sensational horse-race coverage and polarizing polemics are only likely, after all, to intensify that politicization.

Journalists must weigh whether quoting politicians’ every infotainment-tuned word, slogan, or political attack constitutes quality news. Searching out more diverse, informative voices on election issues could pressure politicians to respond with more detail and substance.

For their part, politicians and their strategists ought to wrestle with how to effectively share their positions without pre-packaging them in overly-simplistic, infotainment-friendly frames.

Governments, too, might better prioritize media literacy, so that citizens can reward more informative perspectives. At minimum, critical media analysis should be a central part of school curriculums today.

These are not insignificant asks, particularly when time and resources are so low and the competition for eyeballs is so high. They are, however, much more preferable to either doing nothing or, worse still, further embracing infotainment. For either of those will very likely lead to further declines in the quality of journalism and the very feasibility of democracy.

Robert Marinov, PhD Candidate in Communication, Concordia University and Paul Saurette, Full Professor, School of Political Studies, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.