As I write this, a lot of Australia is underwater. The people of Southeast Queensland have been all but swept to sea. Towns have disappeared, people lost and lives destroyed. Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia have all felt nature’s wrath and been subject to disastrous flooding. The scale and aftermath of January 2011 will be years in quantifying and decades in rectifying.

The point that the Australian environment is harsh and often cruel needs no further belabouring. It seems that barely a year passes without another community sent to the wall at the whim of flood, fire, cyclone or drought. As normal, rational humans, especially given our understanding of the fickle and random nature of Australia’s environment, our hearts bleed and our shoulders slump for the latest bunch of poor bastards to whom nature has dealt a cruel hand. Generally, we all understand. We all feel some measure of pain and, where we can, we all get on board and help out.

My own personal sense of sadness at each tragedy has increasingly been matched by growing anger and frustration at the way such events are reported by the media. With every new disaster the media undertakes a mobilisation of resources that would put a communist army to shame. Long before the rain has ceased, fires have been contained or victims identified; hordes of helicopters, outside broadcast vans and painted, coiffured reporters descend en masse to hoover up the misery and scream it back at us around the clock. Expressions of sombre concern, carefully prepared and practiced, barely hide their morbid fascination with each new piece of bad news, or the fierce competition to present the most heart-rending montage on the commercial news hour.

It is not new to question the methods and practices by which the mainstream media operates. The networks are always quick to spit back with “the public’s right to know” and that they “need to pass on vital information to the community”. Is it therefore fair to ask why we hear so much more about the death toll and number of people missing than we ever do about road closures and weather conditions. If actual information does make it onto the broadcast it will invariably have an ominous overtone. “We’ve just had a report from the Bureau of Meteorology and it looks like there is more bad weather on the way. Hmmm, more bad news on the way for the people of Struggletown then!”

Like Jackals feeding on the sick and injured, the commercial media seems to grow stronger with every prospect of bad news. Any new addition to the death toll is voraciously reported and repeated at length for hours after and numbers of missing are reported without hope that they will be found but with a tone that suggests they are already gone, as if the misery of their prospective death can be extracted early.

At a time when ordinary decent humans are trying to mobilise resources to the aid of others, I can’t help but wonder at how much this media circus gets in the way. Every nightly newscast seems to broadcast live from the emergency control room where surely the real estate could be better used to coordinate the emergency response rather than to report it. Not only that, it is difficult not to notice the contrast between the fresh faces, clean clothes and well rested expression of the reporters and the sleepless desperation on the faces of those that scurry around in the background, doing the work. Out of the studio it gets worse. Grubby, tired, desperate people not only contrast the newly ironed, perfectly presented reporters, they have to avoid them as they salvage and flee their shattered lives, running the gauntlet of their ridiculous questions about how they feel, what they’ll do and whether they’ve lost any loved ones. Sometimes it’s more subtle; the heart wrenching pictures of people clinging for their life on the rooftops of flooded houses are captured from one of the squadrons of news helicopters marshalled for the media misery orgy. Helicopters that would be perfectly capable of plucking the poor bastards to safety, if they were not loaded with reporters, cameramen and sound guys.

A disaster of massive proportions, especially one in our own country, has every element a network media outlet needs: drama, action, tragedy and comedy. When nature tries to eradicate a large chunk of Australia all of those elements exist in the one place and the line between information and salacious voyeurism blurs in an instant.

Next time you’re in the video store take a look at the size of the sections. Drama and action are most of the shop. Documentaries? Good luck finding them. There’s no money in keeping the masses informed, they want to be entertained. So give them death tolls, make them cry for young victims, make them laugh about a picture of a frog riding on the back of a snake. But whatever you do, to the greatest extent possible, don’t give too much airplay to the facts. Downplay the chance that things may not be as bad as the worst case scenario and keep the viewers watching. Roll up, roll up roll up. The circus is back in town.

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