Experts talk a lot of junk. The more famous they are, the more hooey they talk. The media tarts in a study by Phillip E Tetlock made worse predictions of future events than his control group of dart-throwing chimps. The famous study hasn’t done much to humble commentators. They come to prominence by talking sense on issues they understand. As their profile grows, they accept invitations to comment on a wider range of topics outside their fields. Before they know it, they are making asinine statements on Q&A.

The ABC Board’s decision to bring Q&A into the news division following ministerial boycott feels like a win to the Abbott government. If it is, it’s symbolic only. More likely, it will turn out to be a loss when the full implications play out. Balance is meaningless in a debate format which is degraded. Supposedly the show will be subject to stricter guidelines of fairness and balance, but guidelines on ‘impartiality and diversity of perspectives’ are already uniform across the ABC. If you think they’re working, it ain’t broke. If you don’t think they’re working, this won’t fix it. The Drum, which operates a similar format for weekday afternoons, is already a part of the news division. Judging by The Drum, fairness and balance for the news division require that the producers procure at least one right-winger for each show. And right wing can be anything from the delightfully freedom-oriented Labor ex-staffer Cass Wilkinson to an actual Conservative. News division fairness and balance may include stipulations on gender, as The Drum is also not able to go to air without at least one woman. Neither of these concessions materially contributes to a diversity of opinion on the show, as the host, two of three panellists, and often the special guest, are left wing. Three to one is not an accurate mirror of the Australian political landscape in a country where the two dominant parties struggle to achieve more than an equal share of the primary vote.

But even if the show were perfectly calibrated to reflect the main streams of belief in the Australian population, it would make no difference. The format makes meaningful discussion impossible.

Both Q&A and The Drum insist on covering a handful of topics in every show. Regardless of the eminence each panellist has achieved in their own field, commenting on topics outside their expertise makes dilettantes of them all. It comes down to simple math. For The Drum, the equation is thirty minutes, minus a news break, divided by four topics across three panellists, a moderator and a special guest. That’s generously about one and a half minutes for each guest to encapsulate the nuance of his or her position on complex policy issues such as the RET, education policy or IR.

Q&A has one hour, five panellists, several audience questions and a wildly popular Twitter feed. The odds of getting a meaningful statement out are improved but the incentive is less. A better tactic is to belt out something meme-worthy, harvest a round of applause, set Twitter afire and read about yourself in Fairfax the next day. The potential for worthwhile insights is further reduced by the categories which the shows like to recruit in. Media-hungry commentators need to develop a brand that is essentially a stereotype. Brown Man, Brown Woman, Toffee-Nosed Tory, Heartless Free-Marketeer, Bleeding Heart Leftie, Environmental Warrior, Elite-Speaking-On-Behalf-Of-The-Battlers (in two flavours – Left and Right), I-Swallowed-This-Morning’s-Labor-Party-Messaging-Memorandum, I-Would-Have-Swallowed-This-Morning’s-Liberal-Party-Messaging-Memorandum-But-Peta-Hasn’t-Circulated-It-Yet, ABC-Made-Celebrity-To-Cross-Promote and Ex-Politician Suffering-From-Relevance-Deprivation- Syndrome are just a few.

Q&A adds some stereotypes of its own, including: Kooky-Arty-Person-Who-Is-Not-Intellectual, Overseas-Guest-Who-Is-Unfamiliar-With-Local-Debate, Politician-With-A-Message-To-Sell and Politician-On-The-Make. Erring outside of your stereotype is frowned upon, as it makes for Bad Television.

Despite these failings, it would have come as a surprise to many that the show was not already in the news division. Tweeters often rave that they feel discussion on the show is making them smarter. The ABC website claims that it is ‘democracy in action’ and aims to encourage people to ‘engage with politics and society’. The major mastheads report on Q&A ‘events’ and quote from the Twitter storm that surrounded them. It has what Stephen Colbert, who coined ‘truthiness’ in his soft news and comedy show, might call ‘newsiness’: it is presented as non-fiction current affairs TV moderated by a journalist with a pedigree in serious news and amplified across multiple serious outlets.

Consequently, moving Q&A to the ABC’s news division may do more harm than good by reinforcing viewers’ belief that they are being informed.

Soft news shows like Jon Stewart’s Daily Show and Stephen Colbert’s Colbert Report, delightful and fun as they can be, inspire what John F Kennedy called ‘the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought’. To illustrate this, a couple of academics at East Carolina University tested the effects of the Daily Show on its primary audience, young Americans. They found that ‘participants exposed to jokes about George W. Bush and John Kerry on the Daily Show tended to rate both candidates more negatively, even when controlling for partisanship and other demographic variables’. Nonetheless, they found that ‘viewers of the Daily Show reported increased confidence in their ability to understand the complicated world of politics’. That is, people who watched these shows believed they had a good grasp of the issues, when in fact their opinions had been formed by gags.

While, ironically, lamenting the dumbing down of democracy in Sideshow, Lindsay Tanner claims that ‘programs like Q&A, which is an entertainment format built around serious content, demonstrate just how vital the ABC is to Australia’s democracy’. His reasoning? ‘The ABC is biased in favour of serious subjects, which by definition tend to attract more attention from educated, progressive audiences…As such, [Q&A] helps to widen public discussion well beyond the narrow power elite that inevitably dominates in any society.’ He means, I think, that the gags are currently working in favour of his party.

Q&A is dumbing down the viewers and oversimplifying the debate. This cannot be the role of the taxpayer-funded broadcaster. Time for it to be scrapped.