It’s simple maths: fewer journalists equals less news coverage. And, in Australia that formula has resulted in national politics dominating the news.
We’ve been left with a media hammering away bulletin after bulletin at the political aspects of COVID-19: conflict (closed borders!) and administrative failure (quarantine! Aged care!). Take this morning’s Australian Financial Review, jam-packed with “devastated” businesses, “aghast” and “lashing” Victoria’s lock-down extension. But as Peggy Lee would ask: is that all there is in a pandemic?
There’s already been some pushback to this. News Corp — which often stumbles along the fine line between accountability and gotcha journalism — has been criticised for bickering about blame. Herald Sun reporters have been accused of hijacking Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews’ press conferences. Twitter has responded with #Thisisntjournalism, and public feedback suggests that most people trust their own premier over their local News Corp tabloid.
It’s clear that solely focussing on the political circus gets in the way of reporting what the public needs to know. For instance: what do the public health lockdown measures mean for me?
Australians are not experiencing this public health emergency as politics as usual. Political leaders that try to make it about the politics — Trump in the US and, increasingly, Morrison here in Australia — pay a price. The media should expect the same treatment.
Nine months into this rolling crisis, the media needs to be bringing a greater sense of humility. The public wants reporting that builds on data, tells the stories of the individual experiences of ordinary Australians, and better explains the uncertainty and shifting understanding of public health policy and the science of the virus.
Outside politics, journalism has been central to sharing the wide range of data on tests, cases, hospitalisations and deaths. This data is mutating public understanding and policy thinking, giving everyone an insight into the logic behind epidemiological policy.
In the UK, the Financial Times’ coronavirus trajectory chart has enabled a country-by-country comparison of the growth of cases and deaths. It’s accountability journalism at its best, providing a powerful benchmark for citizens to assess the effectiveness of the response of their own government. This was a quick application of data to the big question: what do people need to know right now?
In Australia, The Guardian and the Nine mastheads have developed strong work around data. The ABC has also centred data reporting in its news bulletins, including its flagship political show Insiders: Casey Briggs’ data screens have become central to the weekly summary.
These reports have kept state governments honest by contrasting public disclosure of, say, hotspots in NSW with the initially poorer information in Victoria. Even when overshadowed by the political circus, the reporting of the data has, based on all surveys, sustained public support for lockdowns and border closures. This is despite the efforts of right-wing pundits to bring US-style pushback into Australia.
Australia’s media has been less effective in telling stories of the lived experiences of ordinary people in the pandemic, other than when it can be used to illustrate the political conflict: farm workers stuck at borders, families with members in aged care, Australians stuck overseas.
The media’s failure was demonstrated in the weak coverage of the lock-in at the Melbourne public housing towers. There’s been plenty of chatter about the lack of journalism’s diversity lately. Here’s a case study of what that means.
The pandemic disproportionately affects the very groups that a non-diverse Australian media silences. They’re the communities most likely to be in one of the key drivers of the virus: insecure and casual work.
Worse still: when these communities appear in the News Corp tabloids, they are more likely to appear as villains, not citizens — literally, in The Courier-Mail, as “enemies of the state”.
Thank you for a thoughtful piece. I’m commenting because the bad journalism gets the most comments and I think that probably only reinforces the bad stuff.
The politics of the new lockdown plan in Victoria are dominating every news bulletin. It was after lunchtime today before I could find the ABC’s report on Queensland Covid-19 new cases.
But isn’t it tremendous news about the free vaccine for all Australians, wow, let’s celebrate! Just like we did only three weeks ago when Scotty from Marketing first announced a freebie for an item of pure fantasy. Reminiscent of Groundhog Day.
I do wish they’d stop putting gold-fish food in their muesli – the ABC’s been selling that “vaccine” all morning too.
It’s even been taken up by the BBC – all a marketer could wish for.
Sorry, Zut Alors, meant to agree with your comments, went into minus area and could not alter it.
You gotta feel for the corporate citizenry of business, and their political and media caravan?
Forming unions to lobby government to screw workers wages, penalty rates and super schemes.
That have done so much to stagnate wages – and wonder why the economy is so stagnant?
That members of those business unions rip off their employees, harass and would cut down hours for maximise profit – with no thought of the employees’ circumstances?
That can use tax concessions to their own benefit.
That then hide behind “poor employees losing wages” as an excuse to open borders?
That pursue opening state borders (closed for health reasons) : and ignore the cost of ‘Scotty’s Ozzie Border Closures Over Covid Koncerns’ (closed for health reasons too) on the economy ?
And too much of our media has abandoned any pretence of objectivity in “reporting” that. Preferring to join the political witch-hunt lynch mob.
Imagine the state of the pandemic if Scotty and Rupert’s boy Mickey O’Brien was “in charge”?
The whole place would be in complete disarray there would be people demonstrating in the streets for the LNP to do more to protect senior Australians. As it is, the LNP federal government earlier cost cutting, dismal management and regulation of aged care centres has resulted in many needless deaths from the virus.
Not missing the Mark. The Marks are becoming aware of the bulldust.
It mystifies me why anyone who genuinely wants reliable information would still waste their valuable time churning through the now-redundant middleman of ‘journalism’. Why not go straight to the ABS to get economic, employment, demographic truths? Why not go to the relevant departmental sources for policy detail? To Hansard for the politics? To the academic open source sites for technical, expertise stuff? To specialist and social media sites, even, for the pros and cons of every issue? Etc?
Journalism just…doesn’t add value to information anymore. Given the relentless (market-loss driven) resource starvation long underway, even the very best stuff is really mostly superficial posh info-churn now, if you’re lucky with a bit of writerly sparkle and acute opinionating. I think what this crisis has really underscored is that most ‘journalism’ is now just getting in our way, an unnecessary layer of self-appointed information pestishness, like the annoying loudmouth who keeps butting in to ‘helpfully explain’ every sentence two grown-ups are trying to exchange. Who the hell picks up the phone and calls a journalist when things turn serious and information is life-and-death? In a real crisis, it’s the CMOs, the Premiers, the PMs and Health Ministers etc we want to hear and watch, not the hangers-on in the press scrums. It’s the ABC’s bushfire info-broadcasts we really respect, not its self-important info-celebs. It’s information we want. And we can get that direct now. It doesn’t matter anymore what Paul Kelly or Katherine Murphy says about what someone important says (to take two extremes of Oz journalism: pompous, craft-ossified, entitled and agenda-fueled/self-effacing, craft-superb, still-hungry and open-minded). It’s not really about quality, though, it’s about…an entire dying vocation. It doesn’t matter now what any self-inserted ‘information middleman’ says about what Daniel Andrews – or this, or that, or the other person of news interest – says/does. We can see it for ourselves, thanks. We can go direct. And they to us. What we really need from journalism now is to be quiet, step out of our line-of-sight – OK, maybe leave the (metaphorical and actual) camera and sound guys in the mix – and let us and that original source of information (and all the implied skeptical/opposing sources) have our direct exchanges.
We can now. Is the point. It’s sad, but there it is. There’s just nothing much for journalists to do now in the information landscape/cycle, beyond advertise their own critical importance to the information cycle. (‘Oh, Jack, but who’s going to be sceptical/investigative/hold power to account/test the information/do the deep research/retain the corporate memory/craft the words/explain the news <pssst for stupid people>…’.
As if a) journalism has ever on the whole done that terribly well, anyway, and b) no other literate human being can do that stuff for ourselves – no, not lawyers, not doctors, not tradies, not pollies or researchers or teachers or academics or cops or anyone else but a ‘journalist’ can manage the whole incredibly specialized ‘words and information’ thingie. (Most journalists are actually borderline illiterate nowadays, anyway.)
It’s sad. I get it. But like town criers and scriveners, the Fourth’s information services are increasingly just…no longer required. Especially if – as it appears – they come at the cost of much of them (News being the stand-out offender) being destructive, trivial, agenda-fueled and/or incompetent. If the price of a Katherine Murphy byline is a small army of vicious, boorish Rupert thugs dishing out spoiler propaganda and throwing rocks at a politician desperately trying to save our lives…then sorry, Murph. You’re absolutely a nice-to-have, but…no longer a ‘must have’. And so, simply not worth all the other damaging bullsh*t now.
Journalism, alas, is dead. Sad, but life goes on. In our connected age those who want to be already are – and will grow evermore – immeasurably better informed than ever before in information history. Those who don’t want to be…were never made otherwise, simply by journalism’s brief time in the information sun.
Jack, 10 points for “Journalism just…doesn’t add value to information anymore.”
Unfortunately panderers and populisers are always in demand for the siplereason that most people will NOT go directly to Hanard, ABS or authoritative sources for facts, they prefer predigested pap.
Why else would so many people watch morning, especially commercial, TV or pay money to be lied to by NewsCorpse?
A tablespoon of sugar helps the garbage go down.
True enough. And we all have our ‘nice to have’ journalism. Like all forms of information, it can be many good things: amusing, diverting, explanatory, informative, contextualising, just, reassuring, courageous. It’s just…not those things now far, far more often than it is. The default setting on ‘journalism’ now is, alas, ‘Mostly Bullsh*t’. That makes the epistemological project for our times – if we’re interested in saving our species – stripping journalism of its self-appointed status as arbiter of ‘the truth’. And certainly its sense of entitlement – for example, demanding protectionist regulatory intervention to save it from superior information marketplace competitors, like FB, Google…and the ABC, SBS and Crikey et al. (The current hillbilly farce is much more about privileging News, Nine and Seven over its smaller legacy and local internet information-content competitors than it is about anti-Big Tech pluckiness or lofty journalistic ideals.) We can and should mock Trump’s ‘fake news’ riffing, and disagree vehemently with his selection of which bits of it are, but the reality is that overwhelmingly – by total volume produced, by volume consumed, by consuming audience level of resulting awareness of our world – journalism is bad information. Bad, crap, wrong, damaging, destructive, self-harming. That’s a pretty sobering thought, cuchulain – or should be. Can’t think of a single other trade, profession, vocation or industry to which that metric applies. By definition such industries die out. Whither…’the news’.
The epitaph? ‘Here lies Journalism. In the end, it was mostly sh*t.’