Last Night's Protest on Q&A Revealed the Problem with the Show

Image by Ben Thomson

If you’re a Twitter user—and let’s face it, the Venn diagram of VICE readers and Twitter users probably looks like a slightly out-of-focus circle—then you fall into one of two groups: someone who takes to Twitter on a Monday night with the hashtag #qanda at the ready, or someone who studiously avoids the social networking platform until all the sodding #qanda tweeters have fucked off.

For those unfamiliar: the ABC’s Q&A program has been running since 2008, and features a panel of politicians, journalists, whatever pundits are, and usually a token musician or comedian to provide the faux high brow version of “That’s what she said” to lighten the mood after heated stoushes.

ABC stalwart and silver fox Tony Jones hosts the show, fielding questions from a live studio audience and keeping the panellists in check. At the bottom of the screen, attention-seeking Twitter users try to get their dull bon mots broadcast live on air, often referring to events that took place minutes earlier and distracting the viewer from whatever is happening in the show.

In theory, the show allows its guests to debate the nuances of issues, and holds public figures accountable in front of the public they represent. In practice, it is an hour of theatre, shouting and point scoring that ultimately satisfies no one. Except for the people who got their tweets on air, obviously.

Nothing brought this fact into sharper focus than last night’s Q&A, in which a group of protestors began chanting “No cuts, no fees, no corporate universities” as they dropped a back-to-front banner down from the balcony they were seated in. They turned the banner around, but still managed to hold it in a way that was unreadable. It was great television.

Education Minister Christopher Pyne sat happily as the students, who later identified themselves as part of the Socialist Alternative, embodied the wet dream fantasy of every News Ltd columnist. It was pretty embarrassing for everyone involved, and a fairly compelling argument for a national service, even though nobody has proposed one.

The ABC cut away for a few minutes to something more substantive: Katie Noonan singing Gotye’s "Hearts a Mess" from an earlier program. The program then resumed minutes later.

As Christopher Pyne sat there, grinning like the cat who won $6 billion in annual cream subsidies, it was clear that only one agenda had really been advanced, and it was nothing to do with education. It was that of Q&A.

Q&A did what was technically the responsible thing to do. Once it became clear that the protestors weren’t going to stop of their own volition, the network cut away until the situation could be resolved. If you’re a program that at least fosters the appearance of elevated discourse, then this was the only option available to you.

But there is a big difference between being the story and being outside of the story, and later ABC news headlines felt no such compunction to sweep the events under the rug. Through that evening, and on this morning’s breakfast shows, and all over their news site, the ABC breathlessly reported on the disruption during the show, replaying the clip over and over again. The same news arm that deemed the disruption to be something that must be cut away from could now play the clip as often as possible. The appearance of being removed from the event, framing the interruption as something completely outside of their purview, gave them tacit permission to indulge in the theatrics as often as they could manage.

The reporting has focused on the fact of the disruption, with brief lip service paid to the issue behind it: the deregulation of university funding. This is as much the fault of the protestors, whose tertiary education is clearly letting them down if they think this is an effective way to convey their message. But it’s also the fault of the ABC, which is now on the level of commercial current affairs programs doing stories on the impact of a soap opera storyline that aired on the same network the night before.

It was, truth be told, actually the perfect Q&A episode: something unexpected and newsworthy happened, ensuring a healthy amount of promotion for next week’s episode, and Tony Jones, frustrated at the protestors, got to appear on side with Christopher Pyne. The ABC never passes up an opportunity to awkwardly combat the myth of left-leaning bias.

That’s not to say that Q&A is completely devoid of substance. Moments do slip through, but they’re merely tangential. The next time you see an ad for Q&A, look at what they choose to focus on: shouting, disagreements, jokes, “unexpected moments”. This is the show they’re selling.

Meanwhile, the ABC would be better served reporting on the fight between James Packer and David Gyngell. Next to the real problems of the world—276 missing schoolgirls in Nigeria, the WHO report on polio, and yes, the government’s deregulation of university funding—t’s utter nonsense, but compared to furiously reporting on your own mismanaged television broadcast, it’s positively topical.

Follow Lee on Twitter: @leezachariah