The Australian’s media commentator Mark Day has a shot at Crikey in his column today. Now I quite like Mark Day. He can be a bit of a fossil, but his media commentary is almost always well informed and often astute. He also has that laid back “it’s all bread and circuses” air that washes well in mainstream media. In this case, though, he must have been stuck for a topic. He is writing about stale news, and as for his logic — well, readers can judge.
Crikey, he says, is a “pest” on the same scale as radio shock jock Kyle Sandilands. The reason is that editor Jonathan Green and I had the temerity to complain to the Press Council about the publication of the supposed Pauline Hanson photographs by News Limited tabloids last March.
Now, I am grateful to Day. As followers of this blog (how are you both?) will know, I have been largely absent for the past six months, while finishing a book (details here, out next March).
As my co-author and I laboured to meet the publisher’s deadline, I had been feeling guilty for not keeping readers up with the latest on Crikey’s Press Council complaint. The complaint was reported on at length at the time and the text of the complaint was reproduced on this blog.
Day seems to have missed all that. He writes as though the news is fresh, and that Crikey’s pestishness has been all in the last week. Thank you, Mark. You have given me the hook I need to bring readers up to date with what is now old news.
But first, Day’s column. There are a few logical leaps, with the main one being to equate a complaint to an industry self-regulation body with the behaviour of Sandilands in humiliating ordinary people on air.
Leaving that aside, Day’s main charge against Crikey is hypocrisy. The argument? Day points out that Crikey’s founder, Stephen Mayne, was often innacurate. Mayne himself might describe this as fair cop. Day also says that Mayne had an engaging Quixotic quality.
But the modern day Crikey? Day’s main complaints are that we are boring, that we criticise News Limited too much (ask Fairfax about that) and that we maintian “a constant Crikey commentary on the imminent death of newspapers and the dazzling future of the web.” What a sin.
Even if you agree with him on these charges, why this makes it hypocritical for us to lodge a complaint against News Limited publications is not quite clear. I don’t follow the logic. And some would see little ol’ us taking on the might of News Limited as an example of exactly the kind of scampishness that Day seems to have grudgingly admired in the early Crikey.
The whole point of our complaint, by the way, was the privacy issue. The complaint was lodged before it was clear that the supposed Hanson photos were not Hanson at all. We argued that even if they were Hanson, no editor should have published them, because of the breach of privacy involved. There was no allegation of illegality or hypocrisy involved. The photos were supposed to have been taken before Hanson entered public life, and in the privacy of a hotel room. What on earth possessed News Limited editors to regard themselves as entitled to publish such material? That was the nub of our complaint — privacy, not factual accuracy.
Anyway, to bring readers up to date, early in August I got a letter from the executive secretary of the Press Council, Jack Herman, saying that he did not intend “processing the matter further as a complaint”.
The reasons were that the newspapers concerned had admitted error and apologised, and that ours was a “third-party complaint”, which the council does not normally accept when pursing the matter is likely to “lead to the further invasion of the privacy of those reported on”.
I guess that is all fair enough by the letter of the Press Council procedures, and I am not going to whinge about it too much, other than to point out that while News Limited editors have admitted they were wrong to publish the Hanson photos, the error they have admitted is getting the identity wrong. They have said nothing about privacy. Indeed, they have continued to suggest that if the photos had been Hanson, it would have been just tickety boo to publish them.
Herman’s letter also told me that the chairman of the Press Council, Professor Ken McKinnon, intended to address the matter in the Press Council’s annual report.
This morning Herman told me that the draft of this report is presently with the council, and should go to the printer within weeks.
I await it with interest.
Margaret Simons is back at her Content Makers blog.
Mr Days column relects that of a relic of years (many) gone by. If one in 20,000 readers of the Australian know his name it would be earth shattering. Anyone who takes his comments with a grain of salt is obviously desperate for reading material. Like his collegue Akerman he should have been pensioned off long ago. That News Ltd retain such out of touch, boring old farts on their staff simply shows how unprofessional the organisation is. Where is the fostering of young journalistic talent within that organisation? Obviously News Ltd prefers to retain dinnosaurs, who hardly raise a gallop. But that is what we have come to expect from a Murdoch outlet, he hardly rates any longer, merely an old old man playing with his toys.
I’m more interested in the attitude politicians have started taking where their personal life is public fodder and they should fall on the sword if discovered. Della Bosca and Pauline Hanson really did nothing wrong except something that most people consider none of anyone else’s business in Australia so ‘what the?’. Why didn’t Hanson put in a formal complaint herself? Why did Della Bosca think he needed to fall on a sword? Why do the papers think this is news? All Mark Day has validated is the path the media is choosing in defining their readership (ie we all read Woman’s Day) and all I can say is thank god for Crikey for not going there except to say ‘what the?’.
There are some subtexts to Day’s baiting.
Crikey competes for similar sized readership maybe.
News Corp vehicle Punch is surely meant to weaken or undermine crikey as a non aligned indy online news/analysis voice.
Crikey daily ezine may not quite be so ‘punchy’ compared to times previous as it expands in other fashions say on the constant presence of the blog rolls within their umbrella.
It was here last week I read two abc class employees writing for the crikey rival Punch. In other words I would take Day’s sincere corporate malice fairly serious with the exhortation to keep going!
Weird. Yesterday I wrote an article for our blog on why I think more people should read Crikey.
Not because it’s perfect – it isn’t. Not because it gets everything right – it doesn’t.
But Crikey is one of the few truly independent and objective media options around – and as such, it’s invaluable.
Remember when The Age used to be a force to be reckoned with? When they did actual investigative journalism and real feature articles, with well thought out and logically argued opinions? Now they’re mostly just advertorials, misspelled headlines and reprints from the internationals. It’s disappointing – I miss Saturday mornings with The Age.
There will, more than likely, come a time when my great-grandchildren are discussing (in disgust) how Crikey has sold out, how it used to be a shining light in the darkness of Australian media and now it’s just money-hungry bollocks; they’ll sigh and shake their heads and thank the gods that they have {2080VersionOfCrikey} to turn to. Bernard and Glenn’s descendants will be writing grumpy articles about {2080VersionOfCrikey} wishing it would just go away and stop making them look like pompous old relics of an unlamented era.
It happens to every organisation – they start out ambitious, energetic, and full of verve and integrity. Then, eventually, they get bogged down in bureaucracy, overwhelmed by the need to make profits and utterly out of touch with the inspiration for their beginnings. It’s has happened to The Age, it is happening to The Australian and it’s a very very long way off for Crikey.
No wonder Day is so sour about you guys.