The Conflict is the Message

I have a confession: I’m a reformed journalist. I used to secretly crave conflict, the itch only satisfied by hours spent in a busy, bustling newsroom. I was a journalist for 11 years and had a particular partiality, shared only by a minority of my colleagues, for exposing and bringing down the powerful.

I entered journalism in my 20s thinking it was a path to changing the world for the better. Embedded in my politics was the belief that hierarchical power, and authority more generally, corrupted people. Talking truth to power was my aim, and I sharpened my pen for the likes of local councillors, politicians, police, developers and other corporate types. I did some good work, particularly when I worked on local newspapers, supporting social causes and community campaigns and digging behind the glib public relations veneer of institutions and the powerful. That my beliefs were a little too black and white, that some people in authority worked for the good and weren’t entirely ego driven, that though a person wore a suit or a blue uniform they were still fully human, took me years to realise. By then I was thoroughly disillusioned with journalism; I had given my habit for conflict the flick.  

Adversarial culture is ingrained in some of the key institutions of our society: namely politics, the law and the media. For years these institutions have been losing credibility and legitimacy in the public mind. Surveys show journalists are trusted on a par with used car salesmen; politicians and lawyers fare little better. Many adversarial systems were formed hundreds of years ago and much about them seems irrelevant in our day. Thinking of the proceedings of court rooms or question time in parliament, there is a centuries-old whiff of arrogance and argumentativeness. An Enlightenment philosophy prevails where individuals joust in argument and debate, but the jousting process itself somehow takes on too much importance, collapses into an us-versus-them paradigm, becomes a vehicle for ego where truth and the common good are lost.

In this regard I think of the way the Australian mainstream media has been recently treating the leadership of the Labor Party. For weeks it has been obsessed with “government instability” and Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s weakness as a leader. A journalistic vortex has been created with daily speculation centred on rumours, leaks from plotters and unnamed sources. The PM has been constantly defending herself and responding to minutiae of what she knew when, what she said and didn’t say, what she did and didn’t do. Far from being an objective “messenger”, the media is an agent in the government’s current problems, used by both sides in the Labor Party and, in turn, using them to create an air of scandal and conflict. It is true that the Gillard Government is weak and internally split, but there is often little sense of proportion in the media coverage and, worse still, no larger understanding of what is beneficial for the country and what harm can done by whipping up unrest. Effectively the media are playing an indirect but strong role supporting the Coalition in its quest for government.

The reality is that the mainstream media operates in a moral vacuum, feeding on and amplifying what scraps of conflict it can find and participating in the world view and ego-driven agendas of the powerful. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that currently there is a decline in the old media institutions, the newspapers, and a restructuring in the media landscape brought on by changing technology. The abuses of the Murdoch empire have also been starkly brought to light. 

I think there is a great need for an overarching moral or spiritual order in society with a paradigm of integration and understanding of the common good. The enormous ecological and social challenges in our world require a new approach at the heart of which is a realisation of unity and relationship. We need to nurture our own and the planet’s capacity for creativity and regeneration. That doesn’t mean we abandon contests of ideas or suppress conflict when it arises, but it does mean contests serve a higher purpose than mere ego or greed. Adversarial culture is a dinosaur of centuries past and will eventually fade as the institutions that support it are forced into crisis and a need for radical change. By then my hope is that there will be a popular groundswell for a different kind of society with mutuality and respect at its core.