What recourse have the public when the nation’s major media company wilfully misrepresents a public policy reform? What safeguards are there against blatantly dishonest journalism that presents opinion as fact and a partisan agenda as straight news?

Take a look at the two front covers above – from the nation’s two biggest selling newspapers and ask yourself, as the ABC’s Annabel Crabb has contended, whether this is merely “aggressive” reporting and that the government’s response to it is paranoid and misguided.

How can the media be said to be doing its job when it scrutinises only one side of politics and, even then, uses distortion, manipulation and outright deceit to misinform readers in support of a corporate agenda? (See Jonathon Holmes’ dissection on Media Watch of The Daily Telegraph’s dishonest coverage of the carbon tax.) It is quite clear to anyone with eyes that Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd is intent on regime change in Australia. Yet it blandly maintains, as seen in the comments by CEO John Hartigan on 730 last week, that all it is doing is “taking the fight” up to the government:

LEIGH SALES: In the UK, some of the focus now is on the relationships between the media and politicians and whether or not the Murdoch press bully and intimidate them and abuse their power by running stories with an obvious agenda. Do your newspapers in Australia bully politicians or officials in that manner?

JOHN HARTIGAN: Look, I think we take them to their official capacity and responsibilities. I don’t believe that we ever overstep. Yes, it’s a love-hate relationship and sometimes it’s loving and sometimes it’s very hateful, but I don’t think, generally speaking, that we exceed our authority.

A vigorous, questioning press is indeed an asset to a functioning democracy. But only if it employs that vigour against all sides in politics. News Limited does not do this on even the most charitable measure. Instead, it has run a nakedly partisan anti-government line on the NBN, the fiscal stimulus, asylum seekers and any number of issues with the clear intent of breaking down a minority government it has never accepted as legitimate and in which a major part is played by a party it has openly vowed to destroy. What’s more, it has done this with little respect for the facts.

Now this would not matter so much if News did not control 70 per cent of the metropolitan print market and did not hold a monopoly in a number of cities around Australia. For many people, the News Limited coverage is the only coverage they get apart from what they hear on the ABC (which is increasingly an echo chamber of the Murdoch press in any case). But the answer to this misuse of monopoly power is not another inquiry, which would only tell us what we already know. Neither is it more regulation, which inevitably has unintended consequences. The answer is increased diversity. The question is how that can be achieved.

For a while now, we have been assuming massive technological change would lead to more diversity. In the middle of the last decade, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Graeme Samuel spoke approvingly of an “exciting new era”  in media as a younger generation embraced digital technology. Samuel, as many did at that time, spoke approvingly of Rupert Murdoch’s own landmark speech to the American Society of Newspaper editors, in which he spoke of a “revolution in the way young people are accessing news”. The hope was that new technology would lead to new players and new voices.

Six years later, there certainly has been a revolution. But the search for a working business model in the digital space goes on, most people still get their news from the mainstream outlets and those same outlets employ the vast bulk of journalists.  Yet, we still hear from regulators about some wonderful imagined new media diversity  that will change our lives. It’s this utopian idea that’s the subject of the government’s current convergence review, which is looking into the appropriate regulatory framework for a world in which the old separations between print and radio and television are no longer relevant.

That’s all very well. And it’s true that convergence is happening. But this trend affect mainly affects  the technology, distribution systems and user experience, not the ownership structure, which remains as concentrated as ever. The fact is whatever happens, the established players tend to get stronger. Foxtel, in which News Corp holds a 25 per cent share, is in the process of bidding for rival Austar, which would give it a monopoly in pay television. Irrespective of the stench around News Corp in the UK, there is a strong case on competition grounds that this bid should not be allowed to proceed. In the end, politicians will have to act to force greater diversity, but as Bernard Keane argues, they do not appear to have the nerve for it.

The case against more diversity, put by Alan Kohler, is that adding more players is no guarantee of higher quality.  Kohler uses the lowest-common denominator muckracking of the UK tabloids as evidence that additional competition can actually end up lowering standards rather than raising them. In this view of the world, while Julia Gillard may plead with journalists not to write “crap”, the sad fact is that crap sells and adding more players will just accelerate the race to the bottom. As for public disgust, the News of the World was the best selling newspaper in Britain because of the gutter journalism it employed. Readers were quite happy to look the other way until the methods driving that paper’s sewer-standard newsgathering were exposed. Likewise, the bitter competition on commercial television here between Today Tonight on the Seven Network and A Current Affair on Nine has not netted any increase in quality; indeed quite the reverse.

There are a couple of responses to the ‘crap sells and people love it’ argument. The first – as we are hearing now from News Corp’s legions of ventriloquising in-house defenders – is that this ‘crap’ is really just robust, honest, rough-and-tumble, democratic journalism loved by the masses of people and loathed by the effete elites. It’s a pose that the billionaire Murdoch has been successfully striking for 50 years – even now (hilariously) characterising himself as the upstart outsider cocking his nose at a stuffy establishment with straight-talking, unpretentious truth telling.

Of course, this view would be easier to accept if News Corp did not consistently and conveniently find a common cause between the elite corporate and geopolitical interests it champions (mining conglomerates, tobacco companies, the gambling industry) and the humble battlers it purports to represent. Not to sound too cynical or anything, but commercial media organisations ritually beat their collective chests and claim to stand for truth and justice when their aims are in fact quite venal. And News Corp speaks out of both sides of its mouth better than anyone.

The second answer to the problem of “crap selling” is that strong, robust journalism and quality journalism are not incompatible concepts and there IS a market for it. One struggles to think of a better example of patient, meticulous, brave news-gathering than that they employed by The Guardian and reporter Nick Davies in pursuit of the phone hacking controversy in the UK.  Murdoch journalists, of course, would say that their pursuit of the Rudd and Gillard governments fits in the same bucket, and, yes, it is quite legitimate for the press to ask tough questions of government. But the media also has a responsibility to get its facts straight and provide honest reporting of primary information before it starts opining on it. It should also separate out straight reporting from analysis and opinion. This is not the way of the Murdoch titles, which revel in openly partisan journalism. And while fearless scrutiny is wonderful, it needs to be applied to everyone – including Tony Abbott.  “Accuracy, balance and fairness” were the three principles rammed down the throats of journalism students when I went into the trade and they still should be the bedrock upon which everything is built.

Finally, as I continue to argue on this blog, quality journalism has a social utility irrespective of its commercial viability. So we should pressure our democratic representatives to champion policies that encourage greater diversity and depth in media. That can be done by legislating limits on the control of the print media (Murdoch controls 70 per cent in Australia; compared to 40 per cent in Britain, the source of his troubles). It can also be achieved by ensuring an independent public broadcaster with a strong, non-partisan board and proper funding of news and current affairs services. Most of all, it requires a Press Council with actual teeth (not a puppet of the press barons as it is now) and an Australian Communications and Media Authority (the regulator of commercial broadcasting) that actually enforces its own existing standards. This is all achievable, but will need a much more vocal public pressure on politicians to show some backbone against a Murdoch press and talkback radio fraternity that is beyond the pale.

Further reading:
Daily Telegraph’s GST Coverage from the ’90s – Andrew Crook (Crikey)
Why we need media reform – Wendy Bacon (New Matilda)
News Ltd Journalism and Political Propaganda – Geoffrey Barker (Inside Story)
Carbon Tax Facts – a new website that strips away the misinformation and gives you the FACTS about the scheme to price carbon. Be sure to pass it onto your friends and relatives.


25 Comments

megpie71 · July 19, 2011 at 8:31 AM

The argument from the head of News Corp in Australia that the various News Corporation news organs weren't involved in a process of regime change struck me as being analogous to a philandering husband, caught in flagrante with his latest mistress by an outraged wife, demanding who she was willing to believe regarding his earlier promises not to cheat: him, or her lying eyes! Certainly, in order to believe this was the case, I'd have to have spent most of the past twelve months with my head firmly buried in the sand, and still be shaking the wretched stuff out of my ears, hair and eyebrows.

I'd prefer to see less dominance of the mainstream media by Mr Murdoch's press and publications – I gave up reading newspapers in Australia years ago, mostly because it was becoming clear that for my dollar or dollar-fifty, I was getting something no self-respecting serve of fish and chips would want to be wrapped in. Note what I'm saying there: I gave up. I stopped buying any newspaper (even the non-Murdoch West Australian) because there just wasn't much to choose from amongst them. Mr Murdoch's press boys had told us that this is what “everyone” wanted, and if you didn't want what “everyone” wanted, well, you were probably a nasty elitist whatsit.

(Has there ever been a count of us nasty elitist whatsits, by the way? The folks who don't consume mainstream media, because they have better things to do with the space between their ears, and better things to do with their time. The ones who don't watch TV, don't listen to the radio, don't buy the gossip magazines and don't buy the newspapers, because despite the best efforts of the mainstream to standardise everything to the lowest common denominator, we want something better? I know we get a pretty good idea of how many are willing to put up with the current situation, but how much of that is because there isn't anything else on offer? It's rather hard to quantify the demand for barbecue chips when the only ones on offer in the shops are either salt-and-vinegar, or vinegar-and-salt).

@TatteredRemnant · July 19, 2011 at 8:54 AM

Great piece again Mr Denmore.

What I like about the 'don't write crap' line is that it can be interpreted two ways: first (in the way you have done above) being that 'crap' refers to the tawdry tenor and pitch of tabloid reporting and secondly, being that 'crap' refers to the truthfulness, or lack thereof, of the reporting. I think that the UK has more of the first, but Australia seems to have a more pressing problem with the second.

The Murdoch press certainly reigns supreme in relation to the vigour and exhaustiveness of its adherence to both these interpretations. However, I’m wondering whether the homograph ‘crap’ can be used to shed some light on the debate as to whether the press should be regulated and whether the public should take some responsibility for tabloid behaviour.

Of course, as illustrated by the phone hacking scandal, these two interpretations often go hand-in–soiled hand when it comes to tabloid reporting, but nevertheless maybe the difference between the two is where one can draw the bright line of regulation.

I guess, what I’m saying is that maybe publishing or broadcasting ‘crap’ (salacious sh!t) should be allowed to prosper in a relatively unregulated free market, but as soon as the other ‘crap’ (smelly ill-gotten stories, lies and fabrications) is broadcast or published, the regulatory and legal hounds of hell will be unleashed. How this would happen is the million $ question, but what I find incredible is that, currently, the co-regulation of the media in this country consists of codes and standards which apply across the board to all broadcast licenses, for instance, with very little individual sanction for the most egregious perpetrators.

There’s a great deal of hand-wringing about a regulated press at the moment, but I think that rather than safely free-riding on the back of ‘freedom of the press’ arguments, media which reports and producers both kinds of ‘crap’ should always be teetering on the bleeding edge of very punitive sanctions.

I know that a highly regulated press is traditionally seen as the thin edge of totalitarianism, but with the increasing disaggregation of audiences, a model where individual proprietors, mastheads or stations could lose society’s protection and face real risk of closure for pedalling the second kind of ’crap’ would not raise the same kind of press freedom concerns that it did when distribution channels were more scarce.

In addition, there is no real reason why such a regime cannot be designed with adequate ‘freedom of the press’ protections in any case. In a modern parliamentary democracy we have a well-functioning separation of powers in regards to legal and political power, there’s no reason we should not be able to rely on that successful example of non-political interference to regulate the press. The press is becoming an increasingly vital component of our democracy, but without the responsibility which lies with the other power bases in our community.
We need a radical re-think of the shelters we as a society give to the ‘press’, when many organisations no longer carry or even accept the responsibilities that have traditionally come with such protections.

Andrew Elder · July 19, 2011 at 10:08 AM

Crap sells because it's all that's on offer: for all their bluster journos lack the confidence to write well about complex issues. Much of the damage done by Murdoch can be undone by enforcing existing laws (against bribery, misuse of telecommunications etc).

As I've said elsewhere, pro-mogul laws and concessions haven't done them much good so you could argue for killing them with kindness!

Mr D · July 19, 2011 at 10:20 AM

I agree Andrew. To an extent, journos want a quiet life. And when your only job options are News Ltd or Fairfax (and perhaps the ABC), you don't want to delve to deeply into things.

I thought Annabel Crabb's typically flippant whitewash of the News Ltd papers was also instructive in showing how much the ABC does not like to rock the boat.

In this sense, the News Ltd stain on our democracy spreads much wider than its own newspapers.

Rachel Eldred · July 19, 2011 at 12:45 PM

I find it interesting that you do not support an inquiry and yet go on to point out a number of things that could help to improve Australia's media culture. Wouldn't an inquiry help to bring attention to these most essential concerns?

Mr D · July 19, 2011 at 9:27 PM

Rachel, an inquiry into the MSM will only tell us what we already know – Murdoch is too dominant, the Press Council is toothless and ACMA is lax in enforcing its own standards.

What's missing here is political will. Just as in the UK, our politicians run scared of Murdoch. His power is as much about perception as reality, but there it is.

Personally, I think Conroy has exactly the right approach to News Ltd. Call them on it. Shut them out. Don't bestow on them any legitimacy.

They will talk about “freedom of the press”, but they are in fact just another commercial company pursuing its interests.

Anonymous · July 19, 2011 at 10:25 PM

As a graduating journalism student I can assure you that the principles of balance, fairness, accuracy and even in some respects personal culpability, are still highly stressed and reinforced. If only that will land me a job, somehow I don't feel going into this industry in its current state will lend to such qualities.

MassiveSpray · July 20, 2011 at 12:23 AM

Mr Denmore, I think it's too late for journalism in this country. As I've said here it's nothing but a rotting corpse and the blogosphere needs to pick up the ball and run with it.

The Piping Shrike · July 20, 2011 at 12:38 AM

“What recourse have the public when the nation's major media company wilfully misrepresents a public policy reform? What safeguards are there against blatantly dishonest journalism that presents opinion as fact and a partisan agenda as straight news?”

What it used to be in the past, when the press was far more consistently anti-Labor than today, was a political opposition with a real base in society.

Guess we don't have that now, so instead we have a pseudo political campaign against those parts of the media we don't like.

Mr D · July 20, 2011 at 12:45 AM

MassiveSpray, I think you need to separate the notion of “journalism” (which in my view has an incredibly bright future) from the dying institutions of the mainstream media.

The crisis is really over the death of the business model that has sustained journalism as a industrial job for the last century.

My view is that journalism is going back to what it once was – the preserve of amateur experts – and away from mass distribution of commoditised content.

Check out the recent Economist cover story

http://www.economist.com/node/18928416

Kevin Rennie · July 20, 2011 at 1:04 AM

My roundup for Global Voices: Australia: Regime Change Rupert Murdoch Style

It's interesting that The Australian editorialises in favour of a carbon tax (at some unspecified time and without proactive govt action) yet its opinion pieces are mostly strongly against. Meanwhile, Murdoch's Oz broadsheets spread fear and loathing based on blatant distortions and downright untruths.

Mr D · July 20, 2011 at 1:23 AM

Piping Shrike, that's a wider argument than I'm making. Your often expressed view about the evaporation of the base of the mainstream political parties – Labor in particular – I sympathise with.

But the crisis in mainstream media journalism is more about simple economics, I think. For Murdoch, his newspapers are loss leaders for pursuing his corporate interests. The journos who work for him don't all drink from the same ideological tank, but they don't have a lot of other choices, which is myh point really.

Notus · July 20, 2011 at 2:13 AM

In the ACT we have “The Canberra Times”(the old print media) and “The RiotAct” which is an online newspaper which runs local news items. Already The RiotAct has a “circulation” of 40,000 and climbing. This new media is fast catching the Canberra Times (declining circulation). The RiotAct encourages participation and is produced at fraction of the cost of the CT.
So your comment “For a while now, we have been assuming massive technological change would lead to more diversity.” it is happening in the ACT.
This may in part be due to the higher level of online computer use but it is also being driven by a more attractive and lower cost business model.

The Piping Shrike · July 20, 2011 at 4:14 AM

Mr Denmore, I agree, Murdoch has always used his papers as pawns to intimidate weak politicians to support his real interests, especially TV. I think that is now becoming mote obvious, so journalists who want to be more than just part of that tawdry game need to rethink things, which is what I see you are clearly arguing for with your blog.

Personally I think there needs to be a broader rethink of what the role of media and ideas play in society, so its good we live at a time when such rethinking is now going on.

Mr D · July 20, 2011 at 4:54 AM

Piping Shrike, that's what I mean about it being a genuinely exciting time. People are engaging with each other beyond the realms of the mainstream media, which just makes the MSM (Murdoch press mainly) more and more belligerent and defensive.

Of course, the cynical answer to this (and I can hear my wife talking here) is that we are all a very small minority of new digital natives well outside the mainstream of political thinking and talking in a small circle.

But I do sense (as I just posted over at Lavratus Prodeo and as Guy Rundle said earlier this week in Crikey) that the electorate is way ahead of the ideologically bankrupt political parties and media working off old and redundant templates.

It's just that no-one has aritculated the changing mood on a wider front as yet.

Dan · July 20, 2011 at 7:38 AM

Notus: I wouldn't call RIOTACT an on-line newspaper. It's more a community noticeboard with a bit of news (sourced generally from traditional outlets), some media releases rehashed and some local gossip. None of that is a criticism. It has its place and I'm a regular reader. However, it is no way an alternative to the Canberra Times. The Times is declining because it has always had an identity crisis. It's a local Canberra paper trying to be national, but no one outside Canberra actually reads it. And, increasingly, few inside Canberra are doing so (and its website is pretty ordinary.

Gordicans · July 20, 2011 at 6:14 PM

The primary goal of the Labor and Liberal parties is to court Murdoch. The rest of it is just smokescreen.

Whilst they attempt to court Murdoch (Gillard unsuccesfully, Abbott succesfully which is why he is winning), they need to dream up 'issues' to keep the electorate engaged and provide their supporter base with the idea that they actually stand for something. Howard's GST is an example of this. It served no purpose other than political. His and Reith's recent pronouncement of the need for work place reform is another example. There is no real reason for the work place reform that they describe. It is a technique no different that going to the zoo and throwing the chimps peanuts. Murdoch is the only game in town. Well, except for the Americans of course…ask Mark Arbib he of 'protected status'.

As Labor's traditional supporter base evaperates, they become more reliant on Murdoch. But Murdoch is backing the Liberals, and bizarly he is in strife in the UK. So what is her tactic now? Cut him adrift, get better at schmoozing, or look for leverage over him?

The more that Murdoch is attacked in the UK the more aggressive he will be to protect his markets in the US and Australia. This can be seen here:
http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=5115

Feminist Culture Muncher · July 20, 2011 at 10:43 PM

I agree with most of this article except the assertion that more regulation isn't the answer.

I think the truth in journalism rule in Canada is a great idea. To me it's not a freedom of speech issue – I can tell as many lies as I want if I'm on the no. 5 tram, but give me a licence to broadcast and suddenly I have a huge amount of power over the way the population thinks – and surely with that power should come a legislated responsiblity to not deliberately mislead.

Of course the question of whether the Murdoch lackeys that now dominate our parliament would actually pass such legislation is a different matter.

Mr D · July 21, 2011 at 12:43 AM

FCM, a “truth in journalism” rule sounds nice, but would be almost impossible to enforce and would tie up courts for years.

A better requirement is fairness, which is why we need a Press Council with teeth.

Bilko · July 21, 2011 at 2:03 AM

An excellent read most of us appear to be of similar regard to the state of the MSM in this country.

Patricia WA · July 21, 2011 at 6:32 AM

It goes without saying, Mr. D, that dentures won't do?

Anonymous · July 21, 2011 at 7:09 PM

On the money as always Mr D. A couple of comments.
1. Fairfax also confuses reporting with journalism, in particular with its Canberra bureau. One day Ms Grattan writes a “she said, he said” piece, next day she writes an opinion piece about the politics of the “she said, he said” piece and who won the “gotcha” prize, and the next day she might write about the issue itself. There was a particularly egregious example of this last week concerning climate change – I wrote a comment on The Age's blog about the need to separate reporters from columnists but of course it was spiked because it was critical of Fairfax management.

2. I have long agreed that Murdoch has no use for an informed public. For him, control over information is neither more nor less than a commodity for influencing events for his own commercial advantage, and the advantage (usually political) of others who will support his objectives.

If we are to rely on the media to ensure the informed electorate that is such an important pillar of a functional democracy, how is it that we allow such a critical role to be dominated by a for-profit corporation? We don't allow multinational corporations or private companies to become a political parties because we don't trust them to put national interest before commercial imperatives. Yet we not only allow a for-profit organisation to dominate our information flows, thus setting the political agenda, we have even changed regulations and laws to facilitate the process. As a result, we have contributed to the corruption of one of the foundations of our system.
To confound things even more, we have witnessed the not-for-profit ABC, which does not pursue an editorial agenda or the commercial interests of its CEO, and which should be capable of providing independent, disinterested and balanced reporting as it is tasked, being attacked by politicians and Murdoch, as though he has a higher calling and a greater commitment to the elusive informed electorate.
To corrupt something is to spoil its purity. Our political leaders in Australia may lack the venality of some of their counterparts elsewhere but they have been consistently shown willing to corrupt the foundations of democracy for personal political gain. To me, that makes them no less corrupt than Mugabe.

Rhiannon · July 22, 2011 at 10:11 AM

I am increasingly disappointed by the political 'analysis' on the Drum website…typically flippant is exactly right.

Jane Bovary · July 23, 2011 at 5:00 AM

Watching Media Watch last Monday depressed me for a week. How is it possible that someone as vile a Alan Jones seemingly wields so much power..? Why is he even given airspace? And the Daiy Telegraph? Well, I wouldn't even want to use it in the toilet for fear of contamination.

Pip · July 24, 2011 at 6:06 PM

This may go some way to explaining the power that Murdoch has over the politicians here and in the UK.

“News International 'bullied Liberal Democrats over BSkyB bid'
Party claims it was told it would be 'done over' by Murdoch papers if deal did not go through as company wanted”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/23/news-international-liberal-democrats-bskyb?CMP=twt_gu

Leave a Reply

Avatar placeholder

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *