Voters are incorrigible in making up their own minds

Harrumphing about lapsed standards is only a whinge away from bemoaning the youth of today, writes Gerard Howlin

THE relationship between media and politics resembles a dysfunctional couple whose remaining connection is mutual abuse but who cannot leave one another alone. Self-obsessed, self-referential prickliness intensifies parasitical co-dependency. Yet nearly every societal trend indicates politicians and media occupy significantly diminished roles. Pillars of an interdependent establishment, both are unsettled by a dispersal of authority and the arrival of new technology. Part of the force field of social media is its acceleration of entrenched patterns of disruption. Not only does it allow you receive information in myriad ways, alarmingly it allows almost anyone offer an opinion, in public.

Offering opinion was always the prerogative of anyone on a bar stool. The disruptive, democratisation of social media is that it allows everyone into the conversation. The plaintive wailing last weekend from political grandees about falling standards and an insatiable lust for negativity in the media was unintended comedy. That newspaper columns were the stage for this merriment, only exposed their lack of self-awareness.