As the Victorian state election looms (November 27 for those playing at home), you’d think the media would have every detail of government policy and process fixed firmly under their microscope.
Not if the coverage of the Brumby Government’s annual reports release is anything to go by. On September 16 the Brumby Government tabled more than 200 annual reports of departments and statutory authorities in just one day. When these reports were made public, about five or six were scrutinised and formed the subject of news reports in mainstream media. More than 190 received no attention.
The Swinburne University of Technology journalism course in conjunction with Crikey teamed up to comb through every single report in an exercise in identifying what the media missed. The result? The Brumby Dump.
A team of Swinburne students over the past month have scrutinised the reports to capture a snapshot of Victoria in the lead-up to the state election.
As the school of journalism heads Margaret Simons, Andrew Dodd and Dennis Muller write in Crikey today:
Because the media operates on a 24-hour news cycle, newsrooms are loath to investigate a report even a day after it has been released. The tragedy of this is that while this is occurring, government and public administration are becoming more complex. Government agencies are also better at spin and managing embarrassing situations, meaning reporters have an even tougher job of finding out things.
Over the next fortnight, Crikey will publish stories researched and written by Swinburne students about contamination, crime, conflict and incompetence, under-resourced welfare agencies and regional hospitals in unsustainable financial positions. There are examples of policy bungles, strained relations and under-performance. There are revelations about the finances of some of our biggest institutions and we see emerging trends across entire sectors that deserve greater exposure and discussion.
The study again highlights the need for adequately resourced and trained reporters, and the sheer volume of information that gets missed when journalists aren’t afforded the time to do what they do best: dig dirt.
are the students being paid?
Good move. Years ago I worked in a government agency which disclosed a major fraud involving one of its own employees as a footnote in the financial statements contained in the annual report. To this day, no-one in Paliament or the press has ever picked up on the case.
Ragster, Perth
Excellent initiative! This might be the only chance we get to assess if the Brumby government is corrupt, or just incompetent.
THANK YOU….VERY , VERY MUCH. The present government has reached such a stage of spin, opaqueness, cronyism, corruption and disdain of we, the citizens , that I hope nothing can save it…I speak as a labor voter for 61 years.
Setting aside questions of transport, education, the billions spent on sport and the weird miasmic bog of J. Madden’s territory of planning, development and mateship, the reports which have to be fine-toothcombed are those to do with the even more urgent and culpable areas, those which end in death.
Consideration of the desperately miserable, under-funded areas of children in and/or needing care, the lack of treatment and large hidden suicide rate of the seriously mentally ill and the fearful plight of our frail aged; these three groups are our most neglected Victorian citizens and, coincidentally, our three largest groups who do not vote. Is it coincidence? Could there possibly be a connection between these two facts?
Thanks again. Let us know all the damning facts newspapers can’t be bothered chasing.
Brilliant idea, Crikey. It seems that everyone wins in this situation – except the high profile media organisations which are now so busy presenting and printing news around the clock that they haven’t the time to familiarise with, or dig into, the detail of their stories.
The Swinburne students will have honed their research skills and Crikey readers will benefit from their labours. Sod the main stream media. The advantage of students doing the research is they have no vested interests – unlike media barons.