Is journalism about truth or marketing? If you picked the former, go back three spaces.

Journalism, as it is practised for the most part today, is about packaging, framing and distributing information to match the world views and ideological biases of distinct target markets. But don’t take my word for it.

A highlight of the recent New News Conference’ in Melbourne – held as part of writers’ week – was a session involving the bosses of Fairfax, the ABC and Crikey. News Ltd predictably was unrepresented, which is why that fusty King of the Tory Nerds, Gerard Henderson, could safely describe it as  as a lefty luvvies love-in.

The video above is a discussion between the ABC’s Mark Scott, Fairfax’s Greg Hywood, Crikey’s Sophie Black, retired unionist Kevin Rennie and moderator Maxine McKew. Go to around the 38-minute mark and you’ll hear Scott note that media consumers increasingly favour outlets that reflect and confirm their prejudices (the Alan Jones effect).

“If you want, you can read Andrew Bolt, you can listen to Alan Jones, you can watch Andrew Bolt on television. And so it’s the emergence here in a sense of that Fox News model that says if you have a certain ideological world view, you can have all your media experiences within it. And it’s important that others are providing a more pluralistic engagement.”

So Scott’s defence of the ABC’s ‘production of innocence’ –  a term which Jay Rosen uses to describe journalism that boasts about its ‘neutrality’-  – is that the ABC will line up all the wingnuts from right to left and let you make your own mind up about where the truth might ultimately lie. Well, thanks Mark, great service. I feel, so….informed by this array of choices. So in our world of journalism as marketing, the ABC emerges as a kind of Big W or Target – aisle upon aisle of cheap and trashy opinions for you to fill up your already overflowing shopping basket.

Meanwhile, down at the formerly chic and now shabby Country Road outlet – otherwise known as Fairfax Media  – Greg Hywood is trying to satisfy the fickle tastes of multiple new niche markets without the former Gold Amex of classified advertising that funded quality journalism. Hywood’s argument is that formerly there weren’t that many choices for media consumers. But now there’s too many. And that’s making it hard for mainstream, traditional media organisations to satisfy everyone. So they target distinct audiences.

“I think people get upset because there is not a balanced coverage of everything,” Hywood says. “And when you had a small choice, those media organisations had a relatively balanced approach because they were mass audience publications.  But in this plethora of choice, the traditional media forms have to make a choice about who their audience is.”

Call me naive,  but I would argue that mainstream media organisations need to focus firstly on producing good, truthful journalism that serves the needs of the public. Where the media went wrong in the last 30 years was trading in its editorial integrity for the advice of marketing consultants and product positioners who thought the truth was just another brand choice.

The fact is news journalism isn’t a brand that you sell to aggregate an audience for advertisers. Neither is it a smorgasbord of unrelated “facts” sold as a sort of bland neutrality. Journalism involves making judgements; it means representing the weak and voiceless against the strong and well connected, it means calling out vested interests selling self-serving propaganda as fact; it means asking tough questions of those whose displeasure could hurt your employer commercially.

News should not be a commodity that you sell to build a target audience around your “brand”.  It should not be a commercial process. But it has become so. And it explains why so much of the media tranquilizes us with “lifestyle” reports, crime beat-ups, bogus opinion polls, lazy template “yarns” and the political racecall. None of this would matter much if the consequences of selling news as a commodity were not so deleterious to our democracy – a point put passionately by the Guardian’s Nick Davies (the fearless journalist who broke the News Corp hacking scandal) in his landmark book ‘Flat Earth News’:

“What we are looking at here is a global collapse of information gathering and truth telling,” Davies writes. “And that leaves us in a kind of knowledge chaos, where the very subject of global debate is shifted from the essential to the arbitrary; where government policy, cultural values, widespread assumptions, declarations of war and attempts at peace all turn out to be poisoned by distortion; where ignorance is accepted as knowledge and falsehood is accepted as truth.”

Real journalism should not be a commercial endeavour at all. It is about the truth. And its value lies in the trust that is engendered between the journalist and his or her audience. Go back to THOSE values and everything else will fall into place. Until then, it’s just marketing.

(PS: See Tim Dunlop’s latest piece for an example of how the news as branding exercise works. In this case, The Australian puts on a song and dance about a defamatory story it pulled, in an effort to satisfy a market that has bought its narrative about the minority government)


15 Comments

Rhiannon · August 30, 2011 at 10:56 AM

An excellent post, thank you.

paddybts · August 30, 2011 at 11:16 AM

Thanks for the summary Mr D. I'm still trying to grit my teeth long enough to get through the whole video clip.
So far it's proving fairly heavy going.

P.S. You deserve a virtual Walkley for this bit though. 🙂
[the formerly chic and now shabby Country Road outlet – otherwise known as Fairfax Media ]

weaver · August 30, 2011 at 11:59 AM

Well, we're getting closer to the truth but there's still no acknowledgement from Hywood et al that they “target” a particular audience because they're the kind of demographic their advertisers want to sell to. While the lion's share of the income stream comes from advertising the audience is merely a product.

FoxNews isn't comparable because its pandering model is partly a result of the fact that 50% of their income comes from subscriber fees, so keeping happy the talkradio audience Murdoch wanted to capture during TV primetime remains important. Faux can still assure the advertisers who provide the other 50% that the channel can guarantee a rusted-on audience of angry white males, should they have a product that appeals to that group, which will never diminish in size nor look for its news elsewhere. That audience won't grow either, mind, which may prove a problem in the years to come.

I don't think Scott's pluralism is inherently a bad idea – the problem is that the ABC currently determines its view of the range of opinion by looking at the commercial media rather than at reality (well, we all know reality has a leftwing bias), or by staying within the insanely right-wing and bee's-dick thin Overton window presented by the two major political parties. (Their desperate pursuit of “balance” is amusing to watch, though. I particularly loved how whenever QandA had some actual leftist on (John Pilger, Guy Rundle) they balanced them out with the biggest rightwing nut they could think of: Greg Sheridan. He must be so pleased to be their go to guy.)

Anonymous · August 30, 2011 at 1:31 PM

Dear Mr D,

Thank you for your article. I have been reading your insightful articles for quite some time now and find very little to argue with. My questions are: with all this knowledge of how it works/doesn't work, how do we/they fix it?; Is there no room for a new media outlet applying good journalistic skills?; could such an outlet be profitable?; in what ways can we bring change about in the existing outlets?; is 'online' the only landscape available? Just some questions I'd like answered to ease or compound my frustration with the state of the media in Australia.
Roger

Jane Bovary · August 30, 2011 at 5:35 PM

Wow…I feel enlightened. Thankyou for that great article.

Link · August 30, 2011 at 10:20 PM

There is so much going on in the world that we can know and so much more that really should be scruitinised in depth. Editing the news must be a bit like going fishing where news teams converge in their boats on the one school and pull up similar but slightly different fish. News of a landslide or a train derailment, turns up lots of landslides and train derailments simultaneously. Which gives a good exercise in compare and contrast, but then the next week there's not one to be had anywhere–apparently. It's a bit too arbitrary as to what gets chosen to be reported and what doesn't, and London to a brick it's the unreported stuff that has the biggest impact on our everyday lives. Perhaps it's just a matter of classification? I've long thought that 'crime' like 'business' should have it's own section.

What irritates me most about Australian journalism is the reduction of EVERYTHING to it's dollar value I find it particularly sickening as if (and yes perhaps it is so, but perhaps journalists help make it that way) the dollar was the Holy Grail of All & Everything in Australia.

Real journalism should not be a commercial endeavour at all. It is about the truth.

God that's good. I love you. That's such an obvious 'truth'. But try getting any of the fuckers to inact it? Running media outlets with the above as a maxim would require leadership from a facist dictator. Or God. Or something. But if everybody keeps repeating it . . .

Anonymous · August 31, 2011 at 9:33 AM

Just another angry customer dropping in to offer heartfelt thanks to Mr Denmore for another near flawless expose of a problem both chonic and critical, in and to the life of our civilisation.
No question, a right rebuttal of the incredibly despicable idea that reportage of real world events should parallel a Wendy's ice cream parlour for children, rather than a knowledgable, well-communicated, informative and unbiased commentary on issues that can effect us all.
I see the arch dissembler, Scott, takes the view that no use of substance is somehow pluralistic, will a leopard everchange its spots?
P. Walter.

Kevin Rennie · August 31, 2011 at 11:25 AM

Gerard henderson and I went to the same school in the same era. Can't blame everything on environment.

Best session I attended at MWF was Women Writin’ Science For Themselves

Worst was 'The Spin Cycle' with Stuart Littlemore, George Megalogenis, , Tim Soutphommasane and Nick Bryant. All boys show like my old school. Panellists poorly prepared. George took the opportunity to badmouth Fairfax in their absence.

Kevin Rennie · August 31, 2011 at 11:25 AM

Gerard henderson and I went to the same school in the same era. Can't blame everything on environment.

Best session I attended at MWF was Women Writin’ Science For Themselves

Worst was 'The Spin Cycle' with Stuart Littlemore, George Megalogenis, , Tim Soutphommasane and Nick Bryant. All boys show like my old school. Panellists poorly prepared. George took the opportunity to badmouth Fairfax in their absence.

Kevin Rennie · August 31, 2011 at 11:26 AM

The actual title of the science writers session was 'Writing in Lab Coats' but that was a misnomer.

730reportland · August 31, 2011 at 3:49 PM

Well said Mr D, excellent. Weaver, you too are right on the money. The ABC copy-ing the other media mobs is stupid. The demographic, target audiences that they chase or have is not the ABC audience. And shouldn`t be. But the ABC keeps annoying the hell out of it`s current audience with the dumbing down of shows like 730report. The ABC is Poisoned by “political-correctness“ and “we-are-neutral“ and “media-balance “. Is the ABC Board still stacked with John-W-Howard-Stooges? http://bit.ly/qjoZhQ

Mike H · September 1, 2011 at 10:42 AM

730reportland: The current ABC board is:

Mark Scott – Managing Director
Maurice Newman AC – Chairperson
Steven Skala AO
Julianne Schultz AM
Michael Lynch, CBE, AM
Cheryl Bart AO

Not sure how many of those are Howard appointees. I believe his two most scurrilous ones, Windschuttle and Albrechtsen, went earlier this year.

Notus · September 2, 2011 at 7:45 PM

The Liberal Party has always hated the ABC. What a great idea, stack management and run it into the ground thus propping up a declining commercial market.

Craig Thomler · September 3, 2011 at 12:41 AM

Well yes, we all agree what journalism SHOULD be. However there is a clear reason it is not. It doesn't make enough money.

A free media doesn't necessarily equate to a profitable media (although paid journalists will always argue that if they didn't get paid they could not afford to write quality news).

We don't need more people telling us what the problem is. We need ideas about the solution. How do we change the dynamics so that media tells us what we need, not only what we want? And who gets to decide what we need anyway?

How do we encourage those who stand for truth, justice and the free media way over those who stand for truth at the right price (supported by entertaining half or non-truths to carry base load costs)?

730reportland · September 3, 2011 at 7:55 AM

Hi Craig Thomler, you said “..However there is a clear reason it is not. It doesn't make enough money…“ This doesn`t apply as an industry wide statement. Fairfax true. ABC different again. Murdock closes NotW and increases his profit by 45%, therefore untrue… MrD points out correctly much advertising is passed as news-tainment… We all deserve a proper explainer as why the ABC follows the Limited News billy goats so often, when setting the news agenda.– Thanks and hello Mike-H.

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