It’s an important issue, but the views of News Corp and the ABC seem to only get louder and force a great deal of the public to either switch off or become entrenched in a view that has been formed more by stubbornness than education.

We stop listening either out of fear or exhaustion.

That’s a shame because they are weighty issues that we should all be discussing but if you were to form a view, particularly in public, you face the prospect of being a painted as right-wing spear carrier (The News Corp side) or the ABC’s left-wing pearl clutchers.

Noel Pearson’s recent depiction of indigenous campaigner Mick Dodda as a bedwetter because of his concerns relating to the Voice to Parliament was an appalling example of this. It said more about Pearson than it did about Dodda.

I’d hate to be a supporter of Victorian premier Dan Andrews because that marks you as a complete idiot in much of the media.

The latest issue is the Voice to Parliament, an issue the public appears to be genuinely struggling with.  It hasn’t been explained well by the pro-camp while some of the negative claims made about it border on absurd. But that’s where this polarity in debate is leading us: extremism and tribes.

So far, the culture wars have had the following battles: the coronation, transgender identity, Brittany Higgins, climate change, racism, the Voice to Parliament, Israel Folau, LGBTIQ … the list, which regularly seems to include ABC personalities like Grant, seems to grow every week. They shouldn’t be political issues but somehow they are and the media has to take a share of the blame.

Somewhere along the way the media’s role of informing the public has morphed into telling them what the news is and what they should think about it.

The yelling starts at the two big media institutions and flows into the smaller ones, like some of the talkback shows, where nuance gets drowned and serious issues are either black or white and there is no room for shades of grey.

There is a simple reason why this is the case. Grievance has become a commodity in the big media outlets. If there is an issue, then there is overwhelming need to draw sides and champion it or shout it down – and batter everyone else into submission.

That gets a reaction, it draws eyes to the outlet that is loudest.

Meanwhile, we are being painted into corners and forced to justify legitimately held concerns whether it is about transgender identity or climate change policy.

If we take the Voice to Parliament, the general public clearly has some issues and not unreasonably because we are talking about race and changing the Constitution. It’s a complex issue that many grapple with.

The yes vote is slightly ahead in recent polls which means the screaming from both sides of the culture wars is likely to get louder and Australia risks making a bad decision based on which side has the loudest voice.