Q&A is BS.

Q&A is probably the dumbest show on television. Yes, dumber than MKR, dumber than Dating Naked, dumber than American Pickers.

The first thing to be clear about is that Q&A is not a current affairs program - it is the political equivalent of The Footy Show.

Its formula is simple.

Step 1. Get a collection of people on a panel, raise an issue and ask for their opinions.  But be careful. This could be interesting if, for example, you had a couple of senior politicians or public servants, policy makers, scientists, legal advisors, foreign affairs experts - whatever - in a one-on-one or even a three way discussion. That runs the risk of being informative. But Q&A doesn’t want to convey information. It wants a fight. So make sure your panel includes people who have nothing to do with the issues but have strong feeling about them. Get in some all-round but irrelevant intellectuals like Germaine Greer, perhaps a novelist or poet, and even a bad wannabe comedian.

Step 2.  Get members of the audience to ask questions of the panel. To get this in perspective, think of all the public lectures you have even been to where they “opened it up for questions” at the end. Do you recall ever hearing an intelligent question from the audience? No. I didn’t think so. People in the audience never ask intelligent or interesting questions because they don’t really know anything about the topic. That’s why they’re in the audience instead of being on the stage.

Step 3.  The coup de grace. Invite people to Tweet responses to the show and actually put these idiotic comments on the screen.

So why does the ABC put this garbage to air?

Do they imagine is the modern equivalent of the old Monday Conference with Robert Moore, because it isn’t.

Do they think that it is their version of SBS’s Insight because it certainly isn’t that either.

The first and most obvious answer is that it is cheap. None of the people on screen is being paid, so it’s really only the cost of the production staff. And Tony Jones' $330,000 salary.

There is however a more troubling reason lurking in the background which has to do with that bete noire of the Left - the notion of authority.

Back in the ancient mists of time, the ABC was set up to be an “intellectual” broadcaster. It was envisaged that it would transmit programs on scientific, academic, cultural and political topics delivered by professionals in the field. In that model of broadcasting, journalists themselves became part of that echelon of professionals and for many years, current affairs broadcasting was mediated by experienced journalists who knew what questions to ask, which answers to accept and which ones required further interrogation. The ABC still conducts this sort of journalism in the 7:30 report, and specialist programs like The Business. The word which we might apply to these forms of journalism is “authoritative.”

But Q&A is not about this at all. Q&A is a product of the modern, post-modern, anti-authoritarian idea, that everyone should have a “voice.”  In its on-air promotions the ABC invites everyone to “Join the conversation.” as if the ABC was one big chat room. The ABC website, which could be, if it wanted to be, a premier news site, is substantially taken up with opinion pieces written by the Usual Suspects – Jonathon Green, Greg Barnes, Julian Burnside etc – followed by hundreds of stupid comments from armchair experts and fervent partisans.

The ABC apparently feels that in some way it is practising a form of “media democracy.”

But of course, organisations that purport to be anti-authoritarian always have their own form of authoritarianism working in the background. The “conversation” which people are invited to join on the ABC is limited to a specific range of topics and attitudes. While Q&A purports to be an open forum for views, anyone who expresses an unpopular opinion is quickly interrupted and cut-off by the moderator. Views that the hand-picked audience agrees with are applauded. When the ABC is criticised by the government for having inappropriate guests in the audience, the Managing Director makes it clear that it will not cave in to authority – in doing so establishing the ABC’s own authority. So, as usual, an anti-authoritarian stance is just a way to establish one’s own authority.
 

The SBS program Insight is an example of how a panel with audience program can work. It takes large scale issues and concentrates on them through a range of views and experiences. Those views and experiences tend to be complementary rather than adversarial. The interaction with the audience feels intimate and genuinely interpersonal. Most importantly, Jennie Brockie is very good at guiding the conversation through the key points. No sense of The Footy Show here.

In other words, the format can work, so why doesn't it work with Q&A. In the end, the program that is made up mainly of people expressing opinions succeeds or fails on the quality of those opinions. In short, Q&A is unwatchable because so many of the people on the panel, in the audience and watching at home are simply dumb.

By way of conclusion, let me list the things that I am personally NOT interested in watching on TV.

Panel discussions that jump from topic to topic. (Q&A)

Comments and questions from people in the audience. (Q&A)

Comments on political and economic topics from people in the arts. (Q&A)

Journalists interviewing other journalists (The Insiders, The Drum.)

Journalists delivering long editorials to camera. (The Bolt Report)

Tweets.

Especially tweets.           

Unfortunately these are the things that television current affairs programs currently consists of.

1-7-2015