Trust

Springtime of the Peoples

For a group where lip-curling cynicism is the mask of choice, journalists sure seem to have gone all hand-on-heart, high-falutin’. It’s impossible to read an editorial these days without being slapped around the face with warnings of the coming police state.

“Freedom” is on the chopping block, we are told, all because a government-commissioned inquiry recommended the establishment of an independent regulator to improve the accountability of media organisations to the public and to ensure they follow the very standards they claim to uphold.

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By Mr Denmore, ago

The Great Leap Forward

It is 2020. We are on deadline. And the professors are in charge. Seven years since the imposition of the News Media Council – and anti-democratic academics are editing our newspapers. Bookish elites – thinkers not doers – are defining news for the ordinary people. And our freedom – Our Freedom! – lies bleeding to death in the gutter of our dreams. (more…)

By Mr Denmore, ago

Freedom from the Press


  • “There is common ground among all those who think seriously about the role of the news media and about journalistic ethics that a free press plays an essential role in a democratic society, and no regulation should endanger that role”: Opening words of the 468-page report of the independent inquiry into the media by former Federal Court Judge Ray Finkelstein. 
  •  Labor Plan to Control the Media: Headline on Australian Financial Review’s front page splash on the Finkelstein report the following day. 

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By Mr Denmore, ago

You Can’t Handle the Truth!

If the world of politics is now so dominated by spin and media management that ‘reality’ is whatever you choose it to be, what’s the proper role of journalism?

It’s to find the truth and report it, right? Journalists are employed to serve their readers and viewers by cutting through hype, digging out red herrings, challenging misleading statements and exposing what’s really going on. You would think so, wouldn’t you? (more…)

By Mr Denmore, ago

The Gag Reflex

Journalists are a curious bunch. Priding themselves as professional sceptics and reflexively cynical about those who pursue grubby advantage under the borrowed banner of universal morality, they nevertheless are incurably romantic about their own craft.

Indeed, for those of us who have sat through the debate over the recent Bolt judgement, in which Australia’s most popular and most powerful tabloid columnist was found to have breached the Racial Discrimination Act, it has been impossible to follow proceedings for all the people in the front rows suddenly standing on principle.
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By Mr Denmore, ago

The Truth Test

What responsibility do journalists have to tell the truth? If the commercial or ideological interests of their
employers require them to misrepresent an issue or incite conflict or exploit partisanship, what protections are there for the public against that deceit? And if journalists are the professionals they insist they are, what sanctions do they face for breaching the ethics of their trade? (more…)

By Mr Denmore, ago