Historically, good, worthwhile journalism made a difference. Governments would react. Ministerial scalps would be claimed. Reports that attracted relatively small audiences could drive action if the report was shocking enough. The craft had important metrics to determine the worthiness of journalism; a mix of editorial judgement (what stories were splashed on the front page) and peer-driven prizes.
Last week in Sydney, the Walkley Awards again recognised the outstanding journalism that continues to be produced in Australia. The gold-winning story from Melbourne’s Herald Sun suggested, like last year’s gold winner, that journalism is valuing investigative true-crime reporting.
Meanwhile, in Canberra, the Morrison government was demonstrating again that when it comes to politics, it’s sometimes easier to deflect a damaging story than to give it impact by standing aside a minister. That’s because Australia’s conservatives have taken one-big lesson from Trump: for many, political alignment is more important than journalistic truth.
A big user of political truisms, Trump quipped back in 2016: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” Over almost four years, Trump has repeatedly nailed this truth.
Now, with the Angus Taylor letter to Clover Moore, Morrison is seeking to determine how far this goes in Australia. The story has been on a slow burn since The Daily Telegraph first led its page three with the all-too-unbelievable report of excessive travel expenditure by City of Sydney. Yet another bit of red meat impact-journalism for the mutual climate-denying base of the government and the paper.
A month later, The Guardian revealed that the letter used false figures to stand up its allegations. Since then, while the minister has apologised for using incorrect figures, NSW Police have begun an investigation and the prime minister has been ringing up his old neighbour, the NSW Police Commissioner.
Not as dramatic as a shooting in Fifth Avenue, but dramatic enough for Australian parliamentary standards. Yet the government is standing firm in the belief that for all the noise, it won’t lose votes off the back of it.
It’s possible that the accountability built into a parliamentary (as distinct from a presidential) system will prove them wrong. But at the same time, there are other Australian media peculiarities that would give them confidence in their approach.
A combination of paywalls and click-driven priorities means that any story can struggle to catch fire across the media landscape as it once would have done. At the same time, the domination of News Corp in Australian media gives the government a ready-made fire break. Already the company’s commentariat is out putting out sparks, with fireman Chris Kenny in particular using the very Trumpian “too-dumb-to-be-a-crime” defence.
Of course, as Malcolm Turnbull could caution the prime minister, this is a greater comfort to the Liberal Party, than to its leader. News Corp is usually only one thought bubble away from promoting a leadership challenge as much for the clicks as for the politics.
Australia’s defamation laws restrain accountability. Journalistic reporting of any Australian political scandal has to be manoeuvred cautiously around the legal pitfalls, hedging the words with cautious denials of any suggestion of actual impropriety. Insiders may be able to read between the lines, but the general public may not. This is unlikely to change significantly despite the reforms proposed by Australia’s attorney-general last week.
The media focus on political personalities over government policy means that the big government stumbles — robodebt, Ensuring Integrity, medivac — have been driven by activist groups rather than the media.
Yet, the ABC demonstrates that media can continue to impact policy when it focuses on these big issues. Its reporting on aged care was the most influential journalism of the year, leading to a royal commission and, restoration of funding.
Is journalism struggling? How can the media better hold leaders accountable? Let us know your thoughts at boss@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication.
Sure thing, journalism is struggling. In part it’s struggling because of the changing conditions in which it operates, but also because it panders to navel gazing. This is no exception. The biggest question about this story is – if neither Taylor nor his staff faked the Sydney City Council report, who did? If the faked report was sent to the staff, why didn’t they fact check it? Surely, it would have been quick and easy to go to the website and see what the full document said there? It seems remiss of the staffers to not check it – also remiss of Taylor to not ask for a check since the total is exorbitant for local government (even a local government that has different political views).
So get on with journalism and stop navel gazing.
What if the faked document was not seen by Taylor’s staff? He said in Parliament that the document did not come from himself or any member of his staff. Unless he is misleading Parliament, then it seems reasonable to infer it came from someone who he presumably knew and trusted and whose identity he does not want to reveal in order to protect them for other reasons?
I still think it came from him, no matter where he got it from.
And once upon a time a minister would take responsibility for the mistakes of his staff or department.
It might have been signed by him but that doesn’t mean he wrote it. Consider the possibility that the motivation to attack Clover Moore might have been for reasons not directly related to his own political interests.
Utterlt irrelevant. He signed it, he takes responsibility for it. Or can we decide which of our cheques we actually meant to honour?
* Teletrash at war for years with “greenie” Moore.
* Moore sends letter to Ley to let her know Moore’s council is declaring a “climate emergency”.
* “Smart-arse Rhodes Scholar and Minister for Climate Change Denial” gets his paws on the letter.
* Someone in the “Smart-arse Rhodes Scholar and Minister for Climate Change Denial” orbit gets their hands on travel costs of City of Sydney Council and decides to play a bit of mischief?
* “Smart-arse Rhodes Scholar and Minister for Climate Change Denial” puts his name to document, because it suits his and his PR peddling Teletrash’s politics, and sends it off for publication?
Does it matter if he falsified those figures any more/less than putting his name to them sans checking, before offing them to one of Murdoch’s climate change denying rags, to use for political PR purposes/high jinx?
So who in his orbit would he be wanting to protect? Staff are dispensable. Who would be indipensable?
Do you believe the “pedantic” Taylor?
He originally denied, on the record, that he intervened in the investigation of the alleged illegal clearing of the critically endangered grasslands on a property near Delegate – “The minister has not made any representations to federal or state authorities in relation to this investigation. This is entirely a matter for Jam Land.”
That got mown down. He’d “intervened” on behalf of ‘constituents’? Funnily” enough his brother is a “constituent” – and their “family” company stood to benefit?
If it wasn’t “done in his office” – then from whom at the City of Sydney Council is he getting corrupted data from that he isn’t checking before he recycles it under his name?
And what is about Taylor and “grasses”? Bibbenluke Common : “Clover” Moore?
Klewso – if I said who I thought might have been the driver behind the Moore letter, I’d get a defamation suit from his lawyer.
Why do you think it might have been from someone on the SCC? Maybe it was someone who wants to be on the SCC.
Have a poke around on google and Facebook.
“…. the “semantics pedantic” Taylor? ……”?
At least part of the answer to that parlous state of news reporting in Australia is in the last paragraph of this piece: 1. The ABC must stop following agendas cooked up by News Corpse and must fearlessly create its own news agendas. 2. Balance is not giving a forum to nut jobs that run arguments with no basis in fact.
BA – it never fails to amaze me what a good run the ABC still gives those nut jobs and propaganda merchants.
They should bite the bullet and start calling out the bullshit, refusing to accept crap commentary, and to hell with the consequences.
Revenge from the LNP in terms of threatened funding should also be called out for what it is, and let groups like GetUp muster up the defences – the bad PR is exactly what the LNP needs.
I was having a chat with a colleague recently about authority, responsibility and accountability and offered the following functional definitions:
Authority: power legitimised as a right;
Responsibility: power held to legitimised critique;
Accountability: the protocols under which power is held responsible.
If the right of authority is established democratically, then that’s only through commensurate responsibilities, held accountable. To establish it any other way, even with popular support, undermines democracy.
The question about who should have what responsibilities and under what authorities is then the fundamental democratic conversation about policy, while the question of how well those responsibilities have been discharged is the fundamental conversation about civic programs.
As media by definition are the means by which those conversations are recorded and made available, media have to pursue authority, responsibility and accountability, even when it’s unpopular to do so. And the standards by which it does so have to be the standards of demonstrable public good, and not simply popularity. When governments suddenly increasingly panicked about what media know (as opposed to what they print), that seems reason enough to justify media knowing more, not less.
Yet I also wonder whether governments have found it easy to become populist and authoritarian because mainstream media has spent decades reshaping itself into communications companies seeking rent on whatever is popular to publish.
While authoritarian governments have been glad to lock media into that role, I wonder whether that was a cupboard mainstream media gladly stepped into in the first place.
If so, then media have a double challenge: to break out of a cupboard that greed helped lock them into in the first place, and to convince a justly suspicious public that they can be trusted outside again.
Thank you for this article, Christopher.
Agreed, Ruv, but its rather more than what you have identified. The moral environment (in the widest sense of the word) has changed radically over the last 35 years. Both Fraser and Hawke dismissed Ministers for SEEMING NOT to observe conventions that were ambits of a Minister. Nowadays, a Minister can brief the media on the raid of a Union office – and walk away from it!
Some history. At the turn of the 20th century newspaper articles were written for the moderately literate and informed. The advertisements, enlisting quite distinct language, were for the plebs. Nowadays, in an environment of electronic media its all about numbers : just ask Crikey. One might observe “x minute read” from time to time when, if the article is to be taken seriously, at least an hour or two of thought is required for a useful contribution.
Identity and “feelings” have superseded facts and empiricism. In other words, the basis of classical morality has been jettisoned. HoDs, Deputies and Principals are confronted with instances of lying over serious mattes on a weekly basis yet to correct the condition invariably invites the belligerence of an indigent parent. It ought not to come as a surprise when the same crap is displayed by an Official. The MAJOR QUESTION is : what are the implications for governance some short years hence?
Hi Kyle (are you back? Welcome back!)
Thank you as always for some interesting thoughts. I have three questions for you:
I. Where do you see any moral core of a modern society as residing?
Some institutions where I think it doesn’t and can’t reside:
1. Churches: geared toward influence over accountability;
2. Political parties: the same;
3. Mainstream media: the same;
4. Academe: like an airport terminal, now a rent-seeking, throughput-driven industry;
5. Large corporates: understand ethics to mean minimal legislative compliance, and have no regard for what moral impact might mean;
6. Individuals: private conscience (how we feel about what we do) is not the same as moral intelligence (an informed, responsible and compassionate understanding of our impacts.) Moral intelligence requires a contested conversation between people of good will toward one another; private conscience merely requires comfortable self-satisfaction.
II. Where can a society-wide moral conversation be held today, free from undue commercial influence?
III. What shared and fundamental questions would underpin such a conversation, if we found place and time to have it?
It seems to me that until we can answer those questions clearly, there’s no way to contest — much less arrest — the kinds of moral decay you mentioned.
My innocious reply has been embargoed for the entire day (3 Dec) on account (I presume) of a significant albeit somewhat careless reference to a religion. Thought I’d let you know.
(I think it’s done automatically, Kyle — perhaps on keywords, length, frequency of posting to one topic and even hyperlinks — all of which correlate on posts of mine that also get embargoed. The duration may have nothing to do with the content so much as the availability of some intern to vet and approve embargoed posts. 😉 )
ha ha. Now the damed post has disappeared. Do you have a generic email address? Frankly, my post took a contrary “Guardian” view but I would not have deemed it inflammatory by any means.
I’ll take the matter up with Crikey in any event.
Journalism is part of the trouble with modern politics – where recalcitrant partisan elements of our “news” media are actually either complicit or encouraging bad/corrupt/immoral political behaviour – while not enough elements of those that see themselves as “serious journalists” fail to take that errant cohort to task for what they do.
“The standard you walk past, is the standard you accept.”
The problem is that power in our society is no longer enacted by government and critiqued by an independent mainstream media. Instead, power (especially right-wing power) is exercised through an integrated politico-journalistic entity in which two parts work in concert to, first, manipulate public opinion to make it more amendable to the power elite’s preferred political and economic strategies and, second, provide protection from adverse public opinion in situations where the elite’s needs are met at the expense of the best interests of the rest of society. As a consequence, individual journalists are caught in a conflict between their desire to maintain professional standards and their need to support their employer’s machinations.