Nowhere Man

Chris Uhlmann wants you to know he’s a non-partisan, straight down the middle journalist. One of the stars of the reinvented post-Kerry O’Brien current affairs show “7.30” (apparently ‘Report’ is superfluous now), Uhlmann represents the new, bland, board-approved face of the public broadcaster’s current affairs coverage – as in whatever Read more…

Beaten, Not Stirred

 

It was legendary US newscaster Walter Cronkite who is reported to have said of the media in Australia: “too many reporters, not enough news”.

That quote came to mind when an excited Seven News wet its pants over Opposition leader Tony Abbott using the phrase “shit happens” when discussing with a US commander in Afghanistan a firefight in which an Australian soldier died. (more…)

Spoon Fed

In the olden days, journalists used to be taught to always write in the active voice. Oops. Let me say that again. In the olden days, journalism educators told their students to always write in their active voice. Whatever happened to that edict?

The problem with writing in active voice is that you have to introduce at the top of the sentence the source of the action being reported upon. And if you write it that way, it can simply ruin a good story. Here are two leads for a news story. Which do you think is sexier? (more…)

Itchy Triggers

The possibility of instant global publication, the growth of social media and the commodification of facts are accelerating the media’s drive to offer ‘analysis’ around news events. More ominously, and knowing reporters are looking for a point of differentiation, agents of power now routinely use social media to manipulate the official record in their favour before the facts are clear.

Of course, the problem with this is there is little evidence that asking ‘why’ before the traditional questions of ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘who’, ‘when’ and ‘how’ are answered is a recipe for good journalism. But commercial pressures, such as they are, encourage reporters to explain before they describe. And there are  plenty of voices out there feeding them lines to help them meet those pressures, while generating more heat than light. (more…)

News Speak

A bizarre year in journalism ends with our dominant media company’s flagship newspaper, an outlet that long ago gave up any pretence of objectivity, declaring war on the press gallery, the blogosphere, the twitterverse and just about anyone that wasn’t a Murdoch lackey sitting in front of a terminal in Holt Street.

The Australian is becoming a case-study in wagon-circling institutional paranoia, knee-jerk hyper-sensitivity, stupefying arrogance and an unending Orwellian capacity for declaring that black is white. Christopher Joye puts its increasingly unhinged behaviour down to insecurity, noting that the paper spends “more time defending its own actions in pushing specific agendas and ideological narratives than any other serious media forum on earth”. (more…)