What are the main challenges confronting media, in Australia and beyond, as you see them?
The most pressing are directly connected — fragmentation and trust. The rise of the billion-channel model offered via social media means that everybody can, in some way, be a broadcaster (albeit in a narrow sense). Who would you rather consume — the curation and opinion of a bunch of strangers, or the curation and opinion of someone whose views and taste you can absolutely trust, i.e., you?
The Tower of Babel this has created — everybody shouting, nobody with the time to listen — has eroded trust in (and the need for) mainstream media. With that, crucially, has also gone the funding model which used to sustain it. What we lose when we lose media organisations with sufficient scale, experience, expertise, and corporate memory are the very necessary holding to account of government, business and large institutions they have always provided. It is clear that Facebook, Google, Amazon and the other rising behemoths are not skilled for, or even interested in, this task.
How can we combat fake news and misinformation in the digital age?
The most necessary (and, doubtless, most contested) step is to remove anonymity from the internet. If you have an opinion, a story, an allegation, a fact, or a rumour, then you must be prepared to sign your name to it. Genuine accountability will, in itself, make those who would spread lies (and worse) aware, at least, of the possible consequences of doing so.
The greater challenge is presented by advances in things such as CGI and face-mapping technology. In the foreseeable future it will be possible to create credible, but entirely fake, human beings (anyone from Marilyn Monroe to your next door neighbour). We might have to end up block-chaining human beings to vouch for their authenticity! As Grace Jones (almost) put it — slave to the algorithm.
Is there a crisis of trust in media, particularly in news media?
An escalation, certainly. I would contend that the phone hacking scandal which revealed the excesses and amoral actions of News International (read Dial M for Murdoch if you want your eyes opened wide) caused great damage well before Trump and the mantra of “fake news”. But, then, it’s ever been thus. Hearst, anyone? Berlusconi? Northcott? Who owns the media, owns the message. That being said, the clear and present threat to established media, as personified by Trump, has also driven to it new, and record, levels of support. All is not yet lost.
If so, what can be done to enhance that trust?
Supporting a genuine plurality of strong media voices, from all sides of the political spectrum. Public broadcasting is one model. The Scott Trust, which supports The Guardian, another. Neither of these are guaranteed, however. It has been mooted that Facebook and Google, who have profited greatly from mainstream media and journalism without having to fund it, should now help support the same via a levy. I can see sense in this, as nothing is more important to a functioning democracy than open and well-informed debate from all sides. We must maintain a credible public square if we are to remain a workable civic society.
How important are journalism and news media
See above. Perhaps the easiest way is to think of it in these terms. When a complex, multi-year issue such as the behaviour of banks and the ensuing Royal Commission comes up, who would you rather have exploring and exposing it (and then, if necessary, following through to ensure that bad behaviour does not go unchecked) — a handful of deeply commited bloggers, or a newsroom (in fact several) with journalists schooled in and dedicated to the task, supported by legal and financial heft guaranteeing them the freedom to do their work in the face of likely intimidation?
This article was originally published by the Centre for Media Transition at UTS.
He’s bang on regarding anonymity. Anonymous speech isn’t ‘free speech’ – the phrase is a verb derivative, not a noun, as in ‘speaking freely’, and if you are cloaked, you’re not speaking freely. This is the single most important key to working our way through the current epistemological chaos. Want to say something? Then attach yourself authorially. Or we should (dis)regard your blather as white noise, static…even if it’s genius.
Where I disagree with AD is when he claims that newsrooms of dedicated professional journalists are (unquestionably, still) best placed to seperate fact from fiction, etc. I don’t think this can true anymore, at least so long as journalists continue to embrace the (disingenuous) vocational contrivance of ‘objectivity’ as an epistemological virtue. It’s always been an ersatz mode of communication (naughty J Writer!) , because – if you think about it – it really is just a slightly more sophisticated form of authorial anonymity: the journalist as unanchored, detached, and, ultimately, unaccountable medium of ideas/info. The sterility of the third person omnipresent voice, of passive mood, the weirdly contrived phrasings of journalism – ‘It has been said’…’Some may regard’…’it’s understood that…’ – have generally been embraced/taught as definitive craft tools, but in fact what it’s done is slowly untether the language and epustemology of journalism (‘the public square’) from the actual concrete world. None of us talk like journalism reads, sounds. None of us think like it. Crucially – absolutely crucially, in these Trumpian times – nobody lives, acts like it describes our lives, our actions…which is what creates the duplicitous gap-space-stage (between reality and fantasy) for the world’s cunning grubs to reverse-engineer their deceits. In a very real way ‘serious journalism’ has been the epistemology incubator of its own antithesis. Let’s never forget: journalism invented the doctored photo, the made-up byline, the opinion-editorial-report mashup…
We will start to trust serious journalism again when serious journalists finally embrace their subjectivity as an open virtue: be proactively open and constantly clear (and unapologetic) about the various personal, ethical and political views they might hold on relevant stories, and stop speaking in a way that distances them from us. That’s what makes the hounding of Emma Alberici and – even more laughably – that bloke who described Abbott as the ‘most destructive politician of his generation’….so viciously corrosive. Both those figures are first class journalists of impeccable professionalism and unimpeachable vocational commitment, and the (very mild) insertion of their own subjective positions in those yarns served to give extra credibility and trustable anchorage to their reportage, not (as was claimed) the opposite. More please, press.
Nice interview, SM. AD’s an insufferable twat like all celebrities, but a pretty lovely, sharp and decent one, too.
Northcliffe not Northcott?
“What we lose when we lose media organisations with sufficient scale, experience, expertise, and corporate memory are the very necessary holding to account of government, business and large institutions they have always provided”
What media organisations are these, exactly?
Denton’s later mention of Hearst et al demonstrates he’s aware that the problem of nasty politically biased fake news spouting media is not actually new and didn’t begin with Murdoch, so the paean to some era of great news organisations serving the public interest and holding business and government to account is a puzzler. I’m not aware of such an era. I’m aware of a smattering of great and respected journalists who have done this over time, but few media companies have really taken steps to try and encourage this behaviour, ever.
Trust in media is not at an all time low because of fragmentation. Trust in media is at an all time low because media is incredibly untrustworthy and it has become plain to see. To blame this behaviour on a lack of money is, um, disingenuous. They’ve always been this bad, it’s just more obvious now.
As for “Genuine accountability will, in itself, make those who would spread lies (and worse) aware, at least, of the possible consequences of doing so.” well, that has clearly greatly deterred Andrew Bolt, Chris Kenny, Bill O’Reilly and the cast of Fox News, Donald Trump etc etc etc. Did Denton give this any thought at all?
What lack of anonymity WILL do is deter people from voicing opinions that are contrary to those of the great and powerful, opinions that might deter an employer, opinions that might piss off a Coalition government minister and have him leak your personal file to The Australian to embarass you, opinions that may cost you a great deal.
Denton is so far wrong on this it is not funny. Anonymity is the protection regular people have from the mighty.
As for improving trust: hold the media accountable for lying. That’s a pretty big one. You lie or mislead the public, you set the record straight. you continually do it, you suffer consequences. A correction 2 weeks later on page 34, long after the misinformation is lodged in people’s brains, is not good enough. A media that’s actually accountable might be able to rebuild trust.
But they’d rather scream about freedom of speech and keep on lying, and then wonder why noone trusts them.
Arky, there’s no polite way of saying so I won’t bother trying: your anonymity makes you a reasonably irrevelant-kicker, and your opinions reasonably ignorable. Every day men and women around the world get killed for standing up publicly and owning what they say. I think it’s to be disdained, when people hide behind anonymity in fairly safe, comfortable, well-ordered nations, without absolutely real reasons. Threat of death, say.
Loss of job? Nasty name-calling? Embarrassment? Awkwardness? Please.
The point Denton makes is spot on: people online use anonymity overwhelming not to speak crucial truths to power that otherwise wouldn’t be heard, but…to be grubby, nasty, petty, self-serving, to fart in church, to chuck a rock from a passing car, drop a lit turd on someone’s doorstep, spray a big cock ‘n balls on a Macca’s window…or bully, harass, stalk, snipe, troll, phish and – mostly – just lazily kick a few tyres, in a coffee break. That’s the reality behind most internet anonymity.
One of the most powerful, in fact the defining crucial, aspect of Julian Assange’s inspiring stance is Wikileaks lack of anonymity: of its publisher, that is. That there is someone at whom the buck can (and did) stop – at huge cost to him – is what differentiates (epistemologically) the information (often, yes, anonymously sourced) Wikileaks publishes from most other online whistleblowing. There’s a human body publicly (‘authorially’) attached to the abstract information presented. Some live meat. In speaking ‘truth to power’, it’s not the truth that really matters, it’s actually the visibility of the speaker. Everyone can already see the Emperor is naked. It’s the kid saying it without hiding that is epistemologically powerful.
Authorship: That’s what scares the mighty. ‘Here I stand, and your power doesn’t scare me – at least not enough to stay hidden while here I stand’. Anonymity doesn’t challenge power, Arky, it actually confirms it, reinforces it, legitimises it….it…respects it. That’s why Assange has to be crushed. It’s why dissenters must publicly recant before execution. It’s why a woman like Gillian Trigges must be publicly humiliated.
Andrew Denton isn’t anonymous. Sascha Molitorisz isn’t. Professional journalists aren’t. Politicians aren’t. I’m not. Army, for the first time in history people like you and me – nobodies – are on a reasonably level publishing playing field to the Hearsts and Murdochs. We can self-publish to a potentially near-infinite audience, our words unshackled from the tyranny of the medium. Authorislkt, Arky…seven billion individual bylines are now set free. And yet…billions of us apparently are just too scared by that freedom to embrace it.
Join us, Arky. Don’t choose to be anonymous. Not now, of all times in the history of human literacy. Your name uttered in public is the single most powerful piece of information you possess.
Use it, or lose it.
What is the part of Sacha Molitoritz in this? Is it a joint article? Is Molitoritz quoting Denton or vice Versa? In any case, I’m sorry, for me this is a dull piece. It is axiomatic that anybody would prefer trained and experienced Journalists to analyse and report on the events around us if they could fearlessly report their findings, were not gagged, not blinkered, not ’embedded’ and not threatened with jail (along with any informants) for disseminating truths governments and vested interests do not want known.
Blogs are of course, among other things, opinions and any reader has the choice to accept or research such pieces.
Furthermore both of them above already know this so this can only be a propaganda piece.
I was wondering the same thing! There was an article by Shaun Micallef with the same Sacha M’s details at the top so I thought it may have just been one of Shaun’s alter egos (same initials). If its not I apologise for my imprudence Sacha!
Yes it was so much better in the old days, like when Keith Murdoch was running the show. According to Wikipedia, In June 1940 Murdoch was appointed to a newly created Australian Government post, Director-General of Information, and on 18 July he obtained authorisation to compel all news media to publish Government statements as and when necessary. Comparisons were made with Goebbels.