Anthony Albanese has accused some rightwing media of being “stenographers” and a “cheer squad” for his opponent, the Liberal leader Peter Dutton.
The prime minister expressed his frustration with unspecified newspapers and radio and TV commentators in an interview with an Australian National University podcast, complaining particularly about coverage of Labor’s revamped income tax cuts.
The comments are unusually frank for Albanese, a Labor leader from the party’s left faction who nevertheless maintains dialogue with rightwing news organisations including 2GB Radio and Sky News.
Coverage of Albanese in News Corp publications such as the Daily Telegraph has been mixed over the years, ranging from a Save Our Albo front page endorsing him over his Greens opponent in 2016 to an exclusive in 2021 accusing him of an “awkward lie” about eating Streets Viennetta ice-cream as a child.
Asked about a request from former prime minister Julia Gillard to journalists not to “write crap”, Albanese told ANU’s Democracy Sausage podcast that journalism “has become more difficult” and journalists “are under enormous pressure to produce things almost instantaneously”.
Albanese cited the “the front pages of the newspapers over the first 48 hours” after Labor proposed changes to income tax cuts as an example of coverage that “if you showed it to some of the journalists, they might be embarrassed by some of the commentary that was there”. “They’re not talking about any of those issues now.”
In January Albanese proposed reforming stage-three tax cuts to increase the benefit for low- and middle-income earners. Initial coverage in conservative media framed the decision as a breached election commitment, but the heat came out of the issue when Dutton and the Coalition opted to wave the changes through parliament.
“Quite often some of the articles are essentially about clickbait these days,” Albanese said. “So you have quite dramatic headlines, and then you read the articles and the articles can be reasonable.
“You do have a blurring of news from opinion, as well. There are some journalists who [are] more stenographers, in particular in the rightwing media, than actual journalists.
“They’re a cheer squad. Some of the transcripts that you read from Peter Dutton, essentially, is him just saying ‘yes, I agree’ with particular radio commentators or TV commentators.”
Albanese said that considered long-form pieces are “far less frequent”, and newspaper front pages tended to be “gone tomorrow because there isn’t substance to it”.
“I’m constantly surprised, now, by some of the lack of follow-up. I can do a press conference, even with the federal press gallery, and the journalists from some publications won’t follow up on what’s been a front-page story … It’s gone in five minutes.”
Albanese also blamed social media for increasing polarisation in politics, with algorithms that “push people towards more extreme positions”.
“Whereas previously, I think people shared some of the same experience, they’ve read the same newspapers, they watch the same TV news … that is being lost.”
Albanese cited the “absurdity … over how long the Uluru statement from the heart was” as an example of a debate with a premise that was “just not factual”.
After he gave support on Tuesday to a campaign to restrict access to social media for children aged under 16, Albanese told the podcast he had been concerned about “the impact of the internet and social media on mental health, not just of children, but of adults as well”.
Albanese said Australia needed a debate about the “reprehensible, violent [and] threatening” language on social media, which he predicted would “broaden very quickly” beyond access by children to “a debate about social media in general”.
