tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/news-reporting-31814/articlesnews reporting – The Conversation2022-07-10T20:28:24Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1862102022-07-10T20:28:24Z2022-07-10T20:28:24ZNo wonder no one wants to be a teacher: world-first study looks at 65,000 news articles about Australian teachers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472716/original/file-20220706-12-xk5gax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C7%2C4746%2C3149&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Remember when former Morrison government minister Stuart Robert <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/education-minister-blames-dud-teachers-for-declining-education-results-20220317-p5a5k6.html">lashed out</a> at “dud” teachers? In March, the then acting education minister said the “bottom 10%” of teachers “can’t read and write” and blamed them for declining academic results. </p>
<p>This is more than just a sensational headline or politician trying to get attention. My research argues the way teachers are talked about in the media has a flow-on effect to how people feel about becoming a teacher, and how current teachers see their place in the community. </p>
<p>So, when we talk about the shortage of teachers in Australia, we also need to look at media coverage of teachers in Australia. </p>
<p>My <a href="https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Constructing_Teacher_Identities/3zJoEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">new book</a> examines how teachers have been represented in the print media for the past 25 years. When you look at the harsh criticism and blame placed on teachers, it’s no wonder we are not attracting enough new people to the profession and struggling to retain the ones we have. </p>
<h2>My research</h2>
<p>In a world-first study, I explored how school teachers have been portrayed in Australian print media from 1996 to 2020. I looked at more than 65,000 media articles from all 12 national and capital city daily newspapers, including all articles that mentioned teacher and/or teachers three times or more. </p>
<p>With an average of 50 articles per week for 25 years, and a total word count of more than 43 million, my analysis is one of the largest of its kind. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Newspaper front pages." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472717/original/file-20220706-20-ptrsdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472717/original/file-20220706-20-ptrsdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472717/original/file-20220706-20-ptrsdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472717/original/file-20220706-20-ptrsdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472717/original/file-20220706-20-ptrsdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472717/original/file-20220706-20-ptrsdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472717/original/file-20220706-20-ptrsdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The study looked at more than 43 million words written about teachers over 25 years.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">April Fonti/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While a lot has been written about teachers in the media over the years, this is the first study to systematically analyse such a large number of articles, representing such a complete collection of stories about teachers in newspapers, published over such a long time. </p>
<p>So what did I find? A lot. But here are three key findings that are critical when it comes to the way we think and talk about teachers and their work. </p>
<h2>We are fixated on ‘teacher quality’</h2>
<p>First, my research charts the rise and rise of attention to “teacher quality”, especially between 2006 and 2019. This period covers the start of the Rudd-Gillard “education revolution”, which <a href="https://apo.org.au/sites/default/files/resource-files/2008-08/apo-nid9133.pdf">reframed education</a> in Australia as all about “quality”. It ends with the start of COVID, when reporting on teachers and education temporarily concentrated on home schooling. </p>
<p>My analysis found the focus on “quality” was far more on teachers than, say, teaching approaches, schools, schooling, education systems or anything else. </p>
<p>The graph below shows my tracking of the three most common uses of “quality”.</p>
<iframe src="https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/10554028/embed" title="Interactive or visual content" class="flourish-embed-iframe" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="width:100%;height:600px;" sandbox="allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-scripts allow-downloads allow-popups allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<div style="width:100%!;margin-top:4px!important;text-align:right!important;"><a class="flourish-credit" href="https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/10554028/?utm_source=embed&utm_campaign=visualisation/10554028" target="_top"><img alt="Made with Flourish" src="https://public.flourish.studio/resources/made_with_flourish.svg"> </a></div>
<p>Why is this an issue? It puts the emphasis on the purported deficiencies of individual teachers rather than on collective capacity to improve teaching. </p>
<p>It detracts from system quality - the systemic problems within our education system. “Teacher quality” is a way for politicians to place the blame elsewhere when they should be committing to addressing the root cause of these problems: inadequate and inequitable funding, excessive teacher workload, unreasonable administrative loads, or teachers being required to work out of their field of expertise.</p>
<h2>Teachers’ work is made out to be simple (it’s not)</h2>
<p>The second key thing I found is media reporting on teachers consistently talks about their work as simple and commonsense, as though all decisions made by teachers are between two options: a right one and a wrong one. </p>
<p>The phrase “teachers should” appears about 2,300 times in my database. Examples include, “teachers should be paid according to how their students succeed”, “teachers should not adopt a cookie-cutter approach to learning”, “teachers should arrive in classes prepared” and “teachers should not be spending time organising sausage sizzles”. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-are-not-in-this-alone-stressed-teachers-find-hope-in-peer-support-model-used-by-frontline-health-workers-185683">'We are not in this alone': stressed teachers find hope in peer-support model used by frontline health workers</a>
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<p>Research <a href="https://larrycuban.wordpress.com/2011/06/16/jazz-basketball-and-teacher-decision-making/">conducted in the 1990s</a>, and still widely referred to by scholars, found teachers make roughly 1,500 decisions in the course of every school day.</p>
<p>Recent research, including some I’m <a href="https://research.qut.edu.au/ttpatw/">currently doing with colleagues</a>, suggests teachers’ work has greatly intensified and accelerated over the past 30 years. So it’s likely 1,500 decisions per school day is now a very conservative estimate. </p>
<p>These decisions include everything from “what texts will we focus on in English next term?” to “should I ditch what I’d planned for this lesson so we can keep having this conversation because the students are absorbed by it?”. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Teacher shows class letters on a whiteboard." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472923/original/file-20220707-25-cjs67b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472923/original/file-20220707-25-cjs67b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472923/original/file-20220707-25-cjs67b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472923/original/file-20220707-25-cjs67b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472923/original/file-20220707-25-cjs67b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472923/original/file-20220707-25-cjs67b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472923/original/file-20220707-25-cjs67b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Research in the 1990s found teachers made about 1,500 decisions a day. It is likely to be much more now.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dan Peled/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It also includes social decisions, such as “do I intervene right now and potentially escalate what’s going on at the back of the classroom or just keep a close eye on it for now?”.</p>
<p>Every single one of those decisions is complex. And yet, in media coverage, claims of what “all teachers” or “every teacher” can, should or could do come thick and fast.</p>
<p>Teaching is relentlessly difficult, and while not everyone needs to understand that – in the same way not everyone needs to understand exactly how to conduct brain surgery – we do need to pay some respect to the <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/education/schools/latest-release">300,000 or so Australian teachers</a> who navigate the profession every day. Just because the complexity may not have been evident to us in our 13 years as school students doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. </p>
<h2>Teacher-bashing is the norm</h2>
<p>Finally, I found stories about teachers were disproportionately negative in their representations. I did find “good news” stories in my research but they were outnumbered by articles that focused on how teachers, collectively and individually, don’t measure up. </p>
<p>This included the linking of “crises” to “poor quality” teachers. Take, for example, former education minister Christopher Pyne’s <a href="http://www.aief.com.au/cms/workspace/uploads/141018-the-australian-making-a-difference-in-indigenous-education.pdf">comment</a> that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>[…] the number one issue, in terms of the outcomes for students, is teacher quality, in fact [the OECD] said eight out of ten reasons why a student does well in Australia or badly is the classroom to which they are allocated. In other words, the teacher to whom they are allocated.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In other words, “teacher-bashing” is the norm when it comes to stories about teachers in the Australian news media. </p>
<h2>The PR around teaching needs to change</h2>
<p>As we consider what to do to improve teacher numbers in Australia, we need to think about the way we talk about teaching and teachers in the media. </p>
<p>If all people hear is that teachers are to “blame” for poor standards and they should be finding their demanding, complex jobs easy, this is hardly likely to encourage people into the profession. Nor does it give those already there the support and respect they need to stay. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/read-the-room-premier-performance-pay-for-teachers-will-make-the-crisis-worse-185406">Read the room, Premier. Performance pay for teachers will make the crisis worse</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/186210/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicole Mockler receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>New research examines 25 years of newspaper reporting of teachers and finds consistent evidence of “teacher bashing”.Nicole Mockler, Associate Professor of Education, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1463662020-09-18T12:57:08Z2020-09-18T12:57:08ZClimate crisis: news outlets still giving a platform to dangerous and outdated views<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358823/original/file-20200918-16-1gfw1cb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=27%2C16%2C3646%2C2434&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/london-uk-19th-april-2019-climate-1387448567">John Gomez</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For years, scientists have been stressing the need to act quickly and effectively on climate change. And as <a href="https://repository.canterbury.ac.uk/item/86qv1/the-theory-of-planned-behaviour-self-identity-and-moral-disengagement-what-predicts-sustainability-at-work">part of my work</a> as a media psychology academic, I’ve seen the way <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0963662510385061">media outlets</a> along with <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/casp.2355">readers</a> have discussed climate change over the past decade. </p>
<p>I’ve observed very slow progress on the issue. But many news outlets do now present the <a href="https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/03/media-coverage-of-climate-change-in-2019-got-bigger-and-better/">climate crisis</a> as fact rather than a matter of belief. Though given the scale of the problem, this feels like too little too late. This is why I, along many other academics and <a href="https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/i-took-my-turn-friday-be-arrested">psychologists</a>, have joined the environmental campaign group Extinction Rebellion (XR).</p>
<p>This group of activists have long advocated for the need to put in place policies and regulations aimed at addressing the climate emergency and breakdown. <a href="https://extinctionrebellion.uk/the-truth/demands/">Extinction Rebellion</a> poses three demands:</p>
<ol>
<li>Tell the truth</li>
<li>Net zero emissions by 2025</li>
<li>Organise Citizen Assemblies whose decisions are binding</li>
</ol>
<p>Extinction Rebellion repeatedly claim that government and media alike are not telling the truth about the gravity and seriousness of the climate crisis. This has led to a series of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/16/extinction-rebellion-britain-democracy-protest-westminster">recent demonstrations</a> against mainstream media outlets calling on them to highlight the crisis and to increase their coverage of climate issues. </p>
<p>So just how much of an issue is press coverage of the climate crisis and are journalists going far enough in their reporting?</p>
<h2>False balance and distortions</h2>
<p>Back in 2007, <a href="https://rockyanderson.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/MediacoverageofCC-current-trends.pdf">researchers from Oxford University highlighted</a> the barriers to accurate and consistent coverage of the climate crisis. </p>
<p>One of the key messages of their report was that sometimes coverage is poor not because of an intentional distortion by the media, but because of a clash between journalistic values and the need to tell the truth about the climate crisis.</p>
<p>Providing a balanced view is an important aspect of reporting and is highly valued by journalists. But <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2016-00600-001accost">research has found</a> that so-called “false balance”, whereby a counter argument or expert is given on a topic where there is otherwise overwhelming consensus, can distort the public’s perceptions of what ought to be noncontroversial subjects.</p>
<p>The way the news is often framed (for example, whether a natural disaster is presented as an isolated incident or in the context of a large-scale phenomenon) can also lead to distortions. So can the types <a href="https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10584-019-02504-8.pdf">of images</a> associated to climate change news – such as the iconic polar bears, or the melting ice. These images can make it seem like this is something happening far away that won’t impact most people’s lives.</p>
<h2>Beyond consensus</h2>
<p>I’ve spoken with Extinction Rebellion critics who argue that modern coverage of climate change no longer questions consensus. Indeed, <a href="https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S0959378016305209?token=E6CB37AC44F64D26DCBFB30D6873E67D0B68F2117FA2B2895AE7EB311E1AA04D4BBF6E235281A850ECE36378D4A6EFEA">research has found</a> that more recently, the media does generally recognise the existence of consensus in the scientific community – and that critics of climate crisis are in a small minority. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Polar bear on melting ice." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358830/original/file-20200918-16-ptrgm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358830/original/file-20200918-16-ptrgm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358830/original/file-20200918-16-ptrgm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358830/original/file-20200918-16-ptrgm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358830/original/file-20200918-16-ptrgm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358830/original/file-20200918-16-ptrgm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358830/original/file-20200918-16-ptrgm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">One of the classic climate change images.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/polar-bear-on-melting-ice-floe-193652336">FloridaStock/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the study also shows how distortions still occur in the way journalists frame and interpret climate change issues and expert opinions around it. These results support <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17524032.2014.995193">previous research</a> that analysed climate crisis coverage in British newspapers between 2007–2011. It found that uncontested sceptical voices - though in clear decline - were still present. This practice was predominant in editorials and opinion pieces in right-leaning newspapers often written by non specialist, in-house columnists. </p>
<p>In other words, although the mainstream media has corrected its representation of scientific consensus, a sceptic view is still delivered to readers – just via opinion pieces or editorial rather than news reporting.</p>
<p>This can also be seen in the BBC’s recent response to a complaint concerning the way Justin Webb, presenter of Radio 4’s Today programme, described the climate and ecological emergency as “a matter of opinion”. The complaint office responded by saying that while there is agreement on the reality and existence of man-made climate change, the “notion of there being a climate emergency is the subject of some debate”. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1305422007568302086"}"></div></p>
<p>This is despite the fact that the UK Parliament has declared a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48126677">climate emergency</a> in response to <a href="https://extinctionrebellion.uk/the-truth/the-emergency/">accumulating evidence</a> on the need to act urgently to save our planet. </p>
<p>Similarly, <a href="http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/1666">Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp</a> papers were promoting a sceptic reading of the devastating 2019 wildfires in Australia.</p>
<h2>Outdated views</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14616700601056866?needAccess=true">Research on</a> journalistic norms shows how, by and large, journalists see their role as “informing the citizenry, free from influences of government or obligations to any external force”. </p>
<p>But in the upcoming book, The Psychology of Journalism, that I’ve edited with my colleague Peter Bull, we explore how demands posed by the political and economic system journalists work in can affect the way in which news information is presented. And this can also influence the way people receive and respond to news. </p>
<p>Ultimately though, journalists can still be <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/09/16/we-need-a-new-climate-narrative-not-a-dystopian-movie-but-a-vision-of-hope-change-and-empowerment/">hesitant</a> to adopt a “doom and gloom” approach when talking about the climate emergency. But research shows this is <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01292986.2020.1784967">not the only way</a> to talk about climate crisis – and continuing to present it as a topic to be debated is outdated and dangerous.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/146366/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sharon Coen is affiliated with Extinction Rebellion</span></em></p>Journalists are better at covering the climate crisis but there’s still room for improvement.Sharon Coen, Senior Lecturer in Media Psychology, University of SalfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1448562020-08-24T05:00:28Z2020-08-24T05:00:28ZMedia reporting on mental illness, violence and crime needs to change<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354328/original/file-20200824-22-1p6c8p2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1920%2C1920&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brett Sayles/Pexels</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The media is a key source of information about mental illness <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20978883/">for the public</a>, and research shows media coverage can influence public attitudes and <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00127-018-1608-9">perceptions of mental ill-health</a>. But when it comes to complex mental illnesses such as psychosis and schizophrenia, media coverage <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1753-6405.12441">tends to emphasise negative aspects</a>, often choosing to focus on portrayals of violence, unpredictability and <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27048265/">danger to others</a>.</p>
<p>These portrayals can give an exaggerated impression of the actual rate at which violent incidents occur. In reality, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5419209_Violent_behaviour_among_people_with_schizophrenia_a_framework_for_investigations_of_causes_and_effective_treatment_and_prevention">such incidents are rare</a> and are often better accounted for by <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23418482/">other factors</a>. </p>
<p>This can generate a skewed impression mental illness causes violent behaviour, which reinforces myths, <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30349962/">increases stigmatising attitudes</a> and <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16478286/">cultivates fear among the public</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233618607_Media_Mental_Health_and_Discrimination_A_Frame_of_Reference_for_Understanding_Reporting_Trends">Research</a> also shows the media can play an important role in <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23407209/">challenging these stereotypes</a>. Portrayals that are responsible, accurate, informative, and “stigma-challenging” have been found to <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30349962/">positively influence public beliefs</a> about mental illness.</p>
<p>Our <a href="https://mindframe.org.au/mindframe-guidelines-severe-mental-illness-violence-and-crime">new guidelines</a>, released today by <a href="https://mindframe.org.au/about-us">Mindframe</a>, a program that supports safe media reporting of mental health as part of the Australian government’s national suicide prevention program, offers advice to the media about the most responsible way to report on issues related to mental health, violence and crime.</p>
<h2>Safe, responsible coverage</h2>
<p>Media portrayals in which severe mental illness is linked to violence can be among the most stigmatising representations of mental illness. So it’s important the media cover these stories safely and responsibly. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354304/original/file-20200824-22-bvwvh4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A news app open on a phone." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354304/original/file-20200824-22-bvwvh4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354304/original/file-20200824-22-bvwvh4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354304/original/file-20200824-22-bvwvh4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354304/original/file-20200824-22-bvwvh4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354304/original/file-20200824-22-bvwvh4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354304/original/file-20200824-22-bvwvh4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354304/original/file-20200824-22-bvwvh4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">It’s important media coverage of mental health and violence is responsible. Especially when approximately 96% of violent crimes are committed by people who do not have a mental illness.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We developed the new guidelines in consultation with journalists, editors, mental health professionals and people with lived experience of complex mental illness in advocacy roles.</p>
<p>The guidelines offer practical advice to help media when reporting on these issues. Tips include: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>keep in mind complex mental illness is rarely the cause of violence. Around <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2142118/">96% of violent crimes</a> are committed by people who do not have a mental illness</p></li>
<li><p>consider the impact of media reporting on people living with complex mental illness and their families</p></li>
<li><p>include relevant contextual factors when reporting on a violent crime in which mental illness has been confirmed by authoritative sources to have played a part in the person’s behaviour</p></li>
<li><p>use appropriate and respectful language when talking about people with a mental illness. Say “a person with schizophrenia” rather than “a schizophrenic”.</p></li>
</ul>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-seeing-problems-in-the-brain-makes-stigma-disappear-83946">How seeing problems in the brain makes stigma disappear</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The new guidelines build on the previous guidelines for media reporting around mental health issues, introduced by Mindframe in 2002. The new guidelines extend the guidance specifically to cover reporting of mental illness and crime.</p>
<p>Since the launch of the original guidelines, Mindframe has implemented a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14623730.2006.9721749">comprehensive strategy to promote the guidelines</a>, including organising <a href="http://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/everymind/assets/Uploads/Effectiveness-of-face-to-face-briefings-to-promote-uptake-of-resources-and-understanding-of-issues-around-reporting-suicide-and-mental-illness.pdf">professional development sessions with media</a>, and supporting those who may work with media as experts or sources, such as mental health workers, police, court officials, and people with lived experience of mental illness. </p>
<p>We have also provided <a href="https:/www.researchgate.net/publication/309916186_Empowering_Future_Practitioners_A_Curriculum_Approach_to_Enhance_'Response_Able'_Communication_and_Mental_Health_Issues">training for journalism and public relations students</a>, and worked with media peak bodies to integrate the guidelines into <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/hpja.316">media codes of practice and editorial policies</a>. The <a href="https://www.sane.org/services/stigmawatch">SANE StigmaWatch</a> program monitors and responds to reports of inaccurate or inappropriate stigmatising media portrayals.</p>
<h2>How does the way media talk about mental illness impact others?</h2>
<p><a href="https://mindframe.org.au/mental-health/communicating-about-mental-ill-health/language">Unsafe and stigmatising language</a> can affect the way people who disclose their experience of mental illness are treated by others in the community. They can be denied job opportunities, find it hard to maintain safe and secure housing, and experience social exclusion. Families and friends supporting a loved one may find it difficult to seek support for fear of being treated differently.</p>
<p>Even more worryingly, negative media portrayals of mental illness can lead to <a href="https://www.sane.org/information-stories/facts-and-guides/self-stigma">self-stigma</a>, in which an individual living with mental illness internalises the attitudes of others. It can mean people choose not to seek help, withdrawing from their social networks for fear of being stigmatised or discriminated against. This can lead to social isolation, distress and even an exacerbation of symptoms.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/violence-and-mental-illness-harsh-reality-demands-sensitive-answers-23460">Violence and mental illness: harsh reality demands sensitive answers</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Taking action to reduce stigma and discrimination towards people affected by severe mental illness is more important than ever during the COVID-19 pandemic. <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0069792">Research overseas</a> has shown during times of economic recession, stigma and discrimination towards people affected by severe mental illness increases, particularly with respect to employment. The media has a vital role to play in ensuring we remain a cohesive and empathetic society during these troubled times. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/as-lockdown-fatigue-sets-in-the-toll-on-mental-health-will-require-an-urgent-response-143817">As 'lockdown fatigue' sets in, the toll on mental health will require an urgent response</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144856/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anna Ross receives funding from NHMRC and Australian Rotary Health. This article was coauthored by Sara Bartlett, Acting Program Manager, Suicide Prevention at Everymind.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth Paton works for Everymind as acting Project Lead of Mindframe, which is funded through the Australian Government Department of Health's National Suicide Prevention Leadership and Support Program. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Blanchard is the Deputy CEO at SANE Australia and a non-Executive Director of youth mental health organisation batyr.</span></em></p>Media reporting often unfairly stigmatises people with mental illness and promotes the stereotype that mental illness causes violent behaviour. New guidelines offer tips for more responsible reporting.Anna Ross, PhD Candidate in Mental Health, The University of MelbourneElizabeth Paton, Conjoint Senior Lecturer, School of Creative Industries, University of NewcastleMichelle Blanchard, Honorary Senior Research Fellow, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1414862020-07-01T14:19:26Z2020-07-01T14:19:26ZThe media often conflates malicious criticism with genuine critique: why it shouldn’t<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344311/original/file-20200626-104538-15dm0fs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GEORGES GOBET/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><strong><em>This is an edited extract from <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/tell-our-story/">Tell Our Story: Multiplying Voices in the News Media</a> by Dale McKinley and Julie Reid.</em></strong></p>
<hr>
<p>“If journalism is a force of immense influence – and I think it is, and should be – then it surely deserves scrutiny.” These are the words of Alan Rusbridger, former editor-in-chief of <em>The Guardian</em> in London.</p>
<p>News media sector representatives, journalists and editors often respond to criticism of the press with assertions that the freedom and independence of the news media must be protected at all costs. This is often an almost automatic knee-jerk reaction. For many, the freedom of the press is an infallible sacred cow. This line of argument is sometimes well placed. But at other times it is decidedly manipulative and unhelpful.</p>
<p>There is no question that the world’s investigative news media suffers significant <a href="https://www.indexoncensorship.org/targeting-the-messenger-investigative-journalists-under-extreme-pressure/">strain</a>. This results, in part, from the difficulties of financial sustainability and the crisis of credibility associated with campaigns that set out to delegitimise the media as well as fake news. </p>
<p>But it is also becoming increasingly more dangerous to be a journalist, especially for women. Direct <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/dec/05/threat-journalists-highest-level-10-years-report">threats</a> to journalists are on the increase across the world. This includes assassinations, death threats and intimidation, arrests and detention, or online trolling. </p>
<p>In addition, political and governmental interference in the editorial independence of news outlets, politically connected media ownership and regulatory restrictions on freedom of expression and access to information are still prevalent in many countries. </p>
<p>It’s therefore easy to understand why journalists and media professionals automatically take up defensive positions when confronted with criticism. They feel as though they are under attack. And they are. </p>
<p>But too often genuine critique or evidence-based scrutiny of the news media’s performance by media analysts is unreasonably equated with the tack of the sinister forces who intend to do media workers serious harm. </p>
<p>The two cannot simply be equated. </p>
<h2>Differentiating criticism</h2>
<p>The rantings of a crooked politician who dismisses the news media’s reportage as <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-real-news-on-fake-news-politicians-use-it-to-discredit-media-and-journalists-need-to-fight-back-123907">fake news</a> and calls for draconian media regulations to conceal his own corruption is one thing. The critique and criticisms of media analysts, but more especially of ordinary citizens, whose only request is that the news media works better for them, is an entirely different matter. And ought to be respected. </p>
<p>Threats against the freedom of the press may be serious. But they are not the same thing as genuine and constructive criticism that aims to contribute to a more democratised media sphere, and one that operates to serve its audience better. </p>
<p>These two factors ought to be considered separately. </p>
<p>The loud defence of the journalistic ideal prompts the question: independent from what and from whom? Surely not from the equally important <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/S15327728JMME1504_5">journalistic ideals</a> of fairness, balance and impartiality?</p>
<p>And surely not from those whom the mainstream press professes to ‘serve’: the mediated public, the media audience and ordinary citizens?</p>
<p>The line of argument adopted by news practitioners, infused with connotations that the press ought to remain beyond reproach and untouchable in order to protect media freedom, has often proven unhelpful. This cop-out discoursal manoeuvre is irrational and unjustifiable. It is also an injustice to the billions of people who are media users, many of whom have legitimate grievances with the press. </p>
<p>The freedom of the press is important, and of course it must be protected. But the freedom of everybody else and of ordinary citizens is also important. It too should be taken into consideration.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-journalists-in-south-africa-should-do-some-self-reflection-105056">Why journalists in South Africa should do some self-reflection</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Freedom of expression debates that focus solely on the freedom of expression rights of media workers can be a hindrance when they effectively block conversations about the freedom of expression and representation rights of media users and citizens. The right of freedom of expression of the press is traditionally regarded as universally so precious that any ‘meddling’ in content – despite the inherently problematic nature of that content – is widely regarded as patently wrong. </p>
<p>This simplistic and naive view relegates the notion of media freedom to the role of a beating stick to dissuade anyone from suggesting that news media content needs to improve or change. It immediately disables legitimate debate and introspection on the part of the media sector. The result is that opportunities to explore new ways of creating media content that speaks to, for and about ordinary media users is dismissed. </p>
<p>But contrary to the way in which it has been mythologised, the freedom of the press is not a magic wand that imbues the news media with the status of an untouchable golden calf. The press can be critiqued without its rights being infringed upon, just like anything else.</p>
<p>For these reasons, among others, I have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/02500167.2017.1337648">argued elsewhere</a> for a substantial revision of the popular way in which we think of the notion of media freedom.</p>
<p>Our definition of media and press freedom needs to change because of the current exclusionary nature of the popular understandings of these terms. Much of the debate on media accountability has centred on the tension that this causes between journalistic autonomy and the public’s need for a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327728JMME1504_5">responsible press</a>.</p>
<p>But, if we were to understand media freedom differently, this relationship may involve less tension and more balance.</p>
<p><em><a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/tell-our-story/">Tell Our Story: Multiplying Voices in the News Media</a>, authored by Julie Reid and Dale T McKinley, is published by <a href="http://witspress.co.za">Wits University Press</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/141486/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julie Reid has received funding from the Open Society Foundation for South Africa, and the Women in Research Fund, awarded by the University of South Africa. She is affiliated with the Media Policy and Democracy Project. </span></em></p>The freedom of the press is important, and of course it must be protected. But the freedom of everybody else and of ordinary citizens is also important.Julie Reid, Associate professor, University of South AfricaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1362322020-06-25T20:14:26Z2020-06-25T20:14:26ZFriday essay: how a ‘gonzo’ press gang forged the Ned Kelly legend<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343406/original/file-20200623-188886-1xfrpv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=28%2C28%2C1542%2C1173&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Destruction of the Kelly Gang. Drawn by Thomas Carrington during the siege.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://search.slv.vic.gov.au/permalink/f/1cl35st/SLV_VOYAGER1656516">State Library of Victoria</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Washington Post publisher, <a href="https://plgrahamfund.org/">Philip L. Graham</a>, famously declared that journalism is the “first rough draft of history”. It’s also the first rough draft of inspiration for movies and books “based on a true story”. </p>
<p>Since four Victorian journalists witnessed Ned Kelly’s last stand on June 28 1880, their vivid accounts have influenced portrayals of the bushranger – from the world’s first feature film in 1906 to Peter Carey’s 2000 novel, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/110090.True_History_of_the_Kelly_Gang">True History of the Kelly Gang</a>, adapted to a <a href="https://theconversation.com/true-history-of-the-kelly-gang-review-an-unheroic-portrait-of-a-violent-unhinged-colonial-punk-128463">gender-bending punk film</a> earlier this year.</p>
<p>In the hours before the Glenrowan siege, the four newspaper men – <a href="http://www.auslitjourn.info/writers/f-p/melvin-j-d/">Joseph Dalgarno Melvin</a> of The Argus, George Vesey Allen of the Melbourne Daily Telegraph, <a href="http://www.auslitjourn.info/writers/f-p/mcwhirter-john/">John McWhirter</a> of The Age and illustrator <a href="http://www.auslitjourn.info/writers/a-e/carrington-francis-thomas-dean/">Francis Thomas Dean Carrington</a> of The Australasian Sketcher with Pen and Pencil – received a last-minute telegram to join the Special Police Train from Melbourne to confront the Kelly Gang. </p>
<p>The rail journey would prove to be one hell of an assignment and inspiration for Kelly retellings over the next 140 years. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/true-history-of-the-kelly-gang-review-an-unheroic-portrait-of-a-violent-unhinged-colonial-punk-128463">True History of the Kelly Gang review: an unheroic portrait of a violent, unhinged, colonial punk</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>All aboard</h2>
<p>The journalists have a fleeting scene in the <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066130/">1970 Ned Kelly</a> film starring a pouty Mick Jagger. Two characters rush up to the train, holding huge pads of paper to signal their press credentials to the audience. </p>
<p>It’s a cinematic glimpse of the journalists whose historic descriptions continue to influence the Ned Kelly cultural industry that is the cornerstone of Australia’s <a href="http://sensesofcinema.com/2001/feature-articles/oz_western/">bushranger genre.</a></p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343872/original/file-20200625-132972-10fwowm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343872/original/file-20200625-132972-10fwowm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343872/original/file-20200625-132972-10fwowm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343872/original/file-20200625-132972-10fwowm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343872/original/file-20200625-132972-10fwowm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343872/original/file-20200625-132972-10fwowm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343872/original/file-20200625-132972-10fwowm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343872/original/file-20200625-132972-10fwowm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Four reporters (plus a volunteer) huddle in the train’s press carriage in an image drawn by Carrington.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.slv.vic.gov.au/pictoria/gid/slv-pic-aab38090">T. Carrington/SLV</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The train left Melbourne late Sunday evening. Carrington, “embedded” along with the others, described the journey: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>… the great speed we were going at caused the carriage to oscillate very violently … The night was intensely cold.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>McWhirter’s take was somewhat more upbeat, suggesting a thrill in the cold evening air. He wrote <a href="http://kellygang.asn.au/index.php?title=The_Age_(2)&mobileaction=toggle_view_desktop">the night was</a> </p>
<blockquote>
<p>a splendid one, the moon shining with unusual brightness whilst the sharp, frosty air caused the slightest noise in the forest beyond to be distinctly heard. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>After 1am Monday, the train arrived at Benalla, where it picked up more troopers, horses and “Kelly hunter” Superintendent Francis Hare, played by Geoffrey Rush in Gregor Jordan’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0277941/">2003 adaptation</a> of Robert Drewe’s novel, <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/our-sunshine-9781742283524">Our Sunshine</a>.</p>
<p>Sometime later, the train was flagged down before Glenrowan by schoolteacher Thomas Curnow, alerting the travelling party to the dangerous Kelly gang ahead. In a follow-up <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/5983729?searchTerm=Kelly%20gang%20last%20stand%201880%20correspondent&searchLimits">article about the siege,</a> Melvin reported the first details of the teacher’s bravery. This would become a pivotal scene in future Kelly recreations: “Kindling a light behind a red handkerchief, he improvised a danger signal”. </p>
<p>When the train arrived at Glenrowan station, the horses were released and bolted “pell-nell into a paddock”, wrote Carrington, as the Kellys opened fire. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iZYRCzMYCvI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A 1906 Australian-made production is thought to be the world’s first feature-length narrative movie.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Part of the story</h2>
<p>Unhindered by modern media ethics, the journalists became actively involved in the siege. Their involvement is a nod to “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/20/gonzo-journalism-cities-tribes-ethnographer-hunter-s-thompson">gonzo journalism</a>” practices – made famous nearly a century later by writer Hunter S. Thompson – in which journalists join the action rather than neutrally report on it. </p>
<p>Kelly had a love-hate relationship with the press. He once <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=iKZyDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PT115&ots=O0qhDqzQYY&dq=Had%20I%20robbed%2C%20plundered%2C%20ravished%20and%20murdered%20everything%20I%20met%2C%20my%20character%20could%20not%20be%20painted%20blacker%20than%20it%20is%20at%20present&pg=PT115#v=onepage&q=Had%20I%20robbed,%20plundered,%20ravished%20and%20murdered%20everything%20I%20met,%20my%20character%20could%20not%20be%20painted%20blacker%20than%20it%20is%20at%20present&f=false">wrote</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Had I robbed, plundered, ravished and murdered everything I met, my character could not be painted blacker than it is at present, but I thank God my conscience is as clear as the snow in Peru …</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Early in the siege, the journalists sheltered from the gunfire at the station, until they saw Hare bleeding from the wrist. Carrington wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We plugged each end of the wound with some cotton waste and bound it up with a silk pocket handkerchief … Mr Hare again essayed to start for the hotel. He had got about fifty yards when he turned back and reeled. We ran to him and supported him to a railway carriage, and there he fainted from loss of blood … Some of the bullets from the verandah came whistling and pinging about us. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>As the siege continued into the early hours, the journalists recorded the wails of the Glenrowan Inn’s matron, Ann Jones, when her son was shot, as well as the eerie tapping of Kelly’s gun on his helmet, which Carrington wrote sounded like “the noise like the ring of a hammer on an anvil”.</p>
<p>Their interviews with released hostages revealed gang member Joe Byrne was shot as he reached for a bottle of whiskey that, like Curnow flagging down the train, has become another key Kelly siege scene.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343874/original/file-20200625-133013-ozdri3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343874/original/file-20200625-133013-ozdri3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343874/original/file-20200625-133013-ozdri3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343874/original/file-20200625-133013-ozdri3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343874/original/file-20200625-133013-ozdri3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343874/original/file-20200625-133013-ozdri3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343874/original/file-20200625-133013-ozdri3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343874/original/file-20200625-133013-ozdri3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In one frame, drawn during the siege by Carrington, 25 prisoners are released.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://search.slv.vic.gov.au/permalink/f/1cl35st/SLV_VOYAGER1656517">State Library of Victoria</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Man in the iron mask</h2>
<p>Of all the gripping details the journalists recorded, their first descriptions of the bushranger emerging in his armour in the morning mist were what proved most inspiring to subsequent Kelly creators. </p>
<p>Allen wrote the helmet was “made of ploughshares stolen from the farmers around Greta”, describing the cutting blade construction, and called him “the man in the iron mask”. <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/5983068?searchTerm=ned%20kelly%20from%20one%20who%20went%20in%20the%20special%20train&searchLimits=dateFrom=1880-01-01%7C%7C%7CdateTo=1880-12-31%7C%7C%7Cl-state=Victoria%7C%7C%7Cl-title=13">Carrington wrote</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Presently we noticed a very tall figure in white stalking slowly along in the direction of the hotel. There was no head visible, and in the dim light of morning, with the steam rising from the ground, it looked, for all the world, like the ghost of Hamlet’s father with no head, only a very long, thick neck.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>After Kelly was shot in the legs, the writer described his collapse and his dramatic unmasking:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The figure staggered and reeled like a drunken man, and in a few moments afterwards fell near the dead timber. The spell was then broken, and we all rushed forward to see who and what our ghostly antagonist was […] the iron mask was torn off, and there, in the broad light of day, were the features of the veritable bloodthirsty Ned Kelly himself.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Precious film footage restored by the Australian National Film and Sound Archive of the 1906 film The Story of the Kelly Gang, the <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/world-first-film">world’s first feature film</a>, shows Kelly shooting at police in his iconic armour, then collapsing by a dead trunk on the ground surrounded by police. The scene is just as Carrington and his colleagues described it in their reports. </p>
<p>Perhaps the most faithful rendering of Carrington’s Kelly description is Peter Carey’s fictional witness in the preface of True History of the Kelly Gang. </p>
<p>Carey’s witness echoes the description of Kelly as a “creature” and describes its “headless neck”. </p>
<p>After he was shot in the legs, the witness recounts Kelly “reeled and staggered like a drunken man” and falling near dead timber. The book’s preface and Melvin’s first <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/5975546?">Argus</a> report both describe Kelly after he fell as “a wild beast brought to bay”.</p>
<p>Carey’s witness may be fictional, but his account is based on journalists’ accounts of witnessing Kelly’s capture. Carey credited many of his research sources to Kelly historian Ian Jones, who republished Carrington’s <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/142169227">account</a> titled Catching the Kellys – A Personal Narrative of One who Went in the Special Train along with illustrations in <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2437185">Ned Kelly: The Last Stand, Written and Illustrated by an Eyewitness</a>.</p>
<h2>‘Hunted like a dog’</h2>
<p>The journalists helped the police strip Kelly of his armour and carry him back to the station, cut off his boots and kept him warm, all the while interviewing him as the siege continued with the remaining bushrangers inside the inn. </p>
<p>McWhirter remarked the bushranger was “composed”. </p>
<p>“I had several conversations with him, and he told me he was sick of his life, as he was hunted like a dog, and could get no rest,” Carrington wrote. He described Kelly’s clothes underneath the armour – a crimean (meaning a coloured, no button flannel) shirt with large black spots. </p>
<p>The journalists then turned their attention to the burning of the inn, featured in the background of Sidney Nolan’s 1946 painting, <a href="https://artsearch.nga.gov.au/detail.cfm?IRN=28948">Glenrowan</a> which depicts a fallen Kelly towering in his armour over policemen and Aboriginal trackers.</p>
<p>Kelly was hanged in Melbourne in November 1880, a few months after the journalists’ train ride and the siege. </p>
<p>The journalists continued their careers, with Melvin becoming the most prominent of the four in participatory journalism. After a stint as a war correspondent, <a href="http://dlib.nyu.edu/undercover/kanaka-labor-traffic-jd-melvin-argus">he joined the Helena ship</a> as an crew member to investigate, undercover, the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/australias-hidden-history-of-slavery-the-government-divides-to-conquer-86140">blackbirding</a>” trade that indentured South Pacific Islanders to the Australian cane fields.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343397/original/file-20200623-188886-6h9kzn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343397/original/file-20200623-188886-6h9kzn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343397/original/file-20200623-188886-6h9kzn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=875&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343397/original/file-20200623-188886-6h9kzn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=875&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343397/original/file-20200623-188886-6h9kzn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=875&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343397/original/file-20200623-188886-6h9kzn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1099&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343397/original/file-20200623-188886-6h9kzn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1099&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343397/original/file-20200623-188886-6h9kzn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1099&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNTY4ZDk5MzYtNjk2Zi00ZWY3LTgwZjUtNDc5MWEzMWFlOTQzXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNjU1MTEwMjI@._V1_.jpg">IMDB</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the 1906 review of the first feature film - The Story of the Kelly Gang and exhibition, <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/201682715?searchTerm=ned%20kelly%20moving%20pictures&searchLimits=dateFrom=1906-01-01%7C%7C%7CdateTo=1906-12-31%7C%7C%7Cl-title=809">The Age critic</a> wrote, “if there were any imperfections in detail probably few in the hall had memories long enough to detect them”. </p>
<p>Yet, the 1906 film was <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/9663171?searchTerm=ned%20kelly&searchLimits=dateFrom=1906-01-01%7C%7C%7CdateTo=1906-12-31%7C%7C%7Cl-state=Victoria%7C%7C%7Cl-title=13">criticised by the Argus</a> for not being faithful to the original descriptions of his “bushman dandy” dress as described by Carrington and his colleagues on the day. </p>
<p>The art may be in the interpreting eye, but the scenes are from that first rough draft of history.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/136232/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Four reporters joined the showdown with the Kelly gang 140 years ago. They became part of the story and set the tone for a legend.Kerrie Davies, Lecturer, School of the Arts & Media, UNSW SydneyWilla McDonald, Senior Lecturer, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1034202018-10-04T10:30:32Z2018-10-04T10:30:32ZThink journalism’s a tough field today? Try being a reporter in the Gilded Age<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239197/original/file-20181003-52674-1jo6hai.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An 1899 photograph of the pressroom of the Planet, a newspaper in Richmond, Va.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/press-room-planet-newspaper-richmond-virginia-238816945?src=acBFAsRV-VwSEmwjCHzM1Q-1-54">Everett Historical/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The internet has upended the journalism industry – and not in a good way. </p>
<p>Over the past decade, over 100,000 journalism jobs <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/07/30/newsroom-employment-dropped-nearly-a-quarter-in-less-than-10-years-with-greatest-decline-at-newspapers/">have been shed</a>, while advertising revenue has fallen <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/01/circulation-and-revenue-fall-for-newspaper-industry/">US$30 billion</a> since 2004.</p>
<p>Sponsored content <a href="https://www.poynter.org/news/sponsored-content-state-media-and-press-release-2018">is on the rise</a>. Reporters <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/16/us/kevin-cullen-boston-globe-suspended.html">have been suspended</a> for fabricating aspects of their stories. And, yes, <a href="https://slate.com/technology/2018/07/american-conservatives-had-a-hand-in-the-macedonian-fake-news-industry-report.html">entire stories have been made up out of thin air</a>. </p>
<p>Not surprisingly, trust in the media <a href="https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/trust-in-media-down.php">has plummeted</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Randall_Sumpter">As a media historian</a>, I see a lot of similarities to another era of soaring inequality: the Gilded Age of the late 19th century. </p>
<p>Back then, the media market was oversaturated; revenues were down; pay was poor; and publishers were locked in circulation battles, working to one-up one another for more subscribers – even if it meant engaging in some unsavory practices.</p>
<p>When I was researching my book “<a href="https://upress.missouri.edu/9780826221599/before-journalism-schools/">Before Journalism Schools: How Gilded Age Reporters Learned the Rules</a>,” I learned that if Gilded Age reporters adhered to one rule, it was to do whatever it takes to get the story – even if it meant making things up. </p>
<h2>A booming news biz goes bust</h2>
<p>After decades of sustained growth, many newspapers found themselves in financial trouble in the late 19th century. </p>
<p>The reports on printing and publishing that accompanied the 1880, 1890 and 1900 national censuses shed some light on the issue: Newspapers had saturated virtually every possible geographic market. </p>
<p>According to the 1900 census, 451 daily newspapers were published in the nation’s 50 largest cities – about nine newspapers per city. These newspapers competed for smaller and smaller slices of advertising revenue. Even some tiny communities had more than one daily newspaper duking it out. As early as 1880, Tombstone, Arizona, for instance, had two dailies serving a population of 973. </p>
<p>Newspapers also were locked in expensive battles over who could acquire and deploy the latest technologies in typesetting, illustration and printing. </p>
<p>These technologies were costly to purchase and operate. For instance, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/technology/Linotype">the linotype</a>, a new mechanical typesetting device, cost $3,000. More significantly, trained technicians who belonged to unions needed to be hired to run the machines. These technicians couldn’t be easily fired like young reporters, known as cubs.</p>
<p>To cut labor costs, publishers hired novice reporters, but didn’t train them. They left it up to these raw recruits to learn basic news work on their own. </p>
<p>Most of these workers were not salaried employees, so during slow news periods, editors would routinely lay off reporters. Editors also paid reporters on <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=2NNJAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA40&lpg=PA40&dq=%22the+space+system%22+journalism&source=bl&ots=6RPQmycTAT&sig=rqBCRyD3zVCTeWtwyvlbCt80Vz0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjHge723erdAhUNnOAKHeX2Ab0Q6AEwA3oECAYQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22the%20space%20system%22%20journalism&f=false">the space system</a>, which meant the longer the story, the more the reporters got paid.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239210/original/file-20181003-52681-1g0jy3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239210/original/file-20181003-52681-1g0jy3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239210/original/file-20181003-52681-1g0jy3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239210/original/file-20181003-52681-1g0jy3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239210/original/file-20181003-52681-1g0jy3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239210/original/file-20181003-52681-1g0jy3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239210/original/file-20181003-52681-1g0jy3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239210/original/file-20181003-52681-1g0jy3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nellie Bly was one of the many female reporters who went undercover.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Nellie_Bly_2.jpg">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>News executives did start hiring more women than they had in the past, but the aggregate industry data from the census reports show that these women earned about $312 a year in 1900 – half as much as men.</p>
<p>Editors hoped women reporters writing soft news for society pages would attract more female readers and more advertisers. They also hoped to exploit women reporters as “stunt girls” – a term used for female reporters who undertook risky reporting ventures. A popular one involved being admitted to an insane asylum and then writing about the experience, as undercover reporter Nellie Bly <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/how-nellie-bly-went-undercover-to-expose-abuse-of-the-mentally-ill">famously did</a>.</p>
<h2>Journalistic delinquency</h2>
<p>Even with the industry struggling, men and women were still pursuing careers in the news business. One industry trade publication, The Journalist, estimated in 1889 that 100,000 people were seeking news jobs. </p>
<p>To survive in a Gilded Age newsroom, cubs would have to hustle to get by – even if it meant deviating from standard practice. </p>
<p>They might produce fakes, stage events or abandon hazardous and time-consuming assignments from their editors. They’d also share work with reporters from competing newspapers, a tactic known as “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08821127.2013.767686?src=recsys&journalCode=uamj20">combination reporting</a>.”</p>
<p>In an era with few university-level courses in journalism, cubs learned how to master these strategies by observing more experienced reporters. They sometimes witnessed truly colossal fabrications. </p>
<p>Florence Kelly, a former Boston Globe reporter, recorded one of these fabrications by a co-worker <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Flowing-Stream-Fifty-Six-American-Newspaper/dp/B000J0SK76">in her 1939 memoir</a>. After doing some research at the public library and concocting an interview with an imaginary ship captain, the co-worker produced a story about a volcanic eruption somewhere in the South Pacific. He then sold the story to the Globe, and the Globe turned around and sold it to European newspapers. Those newspapers sold the story once more to American newspapers. </p>
<p>Eventually, the story was discredited. But Kelly’s co-worker was able to keep his job by arguing that his story was based on authentic accounts of real eruptions. </p>
<p>He used the money he earned to buy a train ticket.</p>
<h2>Staging a story</h2>
<p>Fakes became so common that an article in an 1892 issue of The Journalist estimated that the majority of stories supplied to newspapers by local news bureaus and press associations were fiction. </p>
<p>While some stories were made out of thin air, other practices, like staging, required deliberation and planning. </p>
<p>Samuel G. Blythe described the unfolding of such a story series in his 1912 autobiography, “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=-40oAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22The+Making+of+a+Newspaper+Man%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi7p7-P0uXdAhVsmeAKHWCgBdAQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=%22The%20Making%20of%20a%20Newspaper%20Man%22&f=false">The Making of a Newspaper Man</a>.” </p>
<p>At the time, Blythe worked for a Buffalo, New York, newspaper. One of the newspaper’s more experienced reporters purchased a cadaver’s hand and arm from a medical student. He severed some fingers and cut the arm into pieces. He then dropped fingers in a nearby canal, returned to the newsroom, and wrote a story about discovering one of the fingers. </p>
<p>“He speculated graphically on the problems of where the finger came from, whose finger it was, and why the police had not reported a missing man,” Blythe wrote. </p>
<p>More appendages in local waterways followed and so did more stories until the authorities investigated. At that point, the reporter wrote a final story exposing the hoax and criticizing police for taking so long to take action.</p>
<h2>Our ‘era of error’</h2>
<p>None of this delinquent newsroom behavior was extraordinary by 19th-century standards. Rank-and-file reporters openly discussed it with colleagues, none of whom reported it to their superiors. Newspaper economics and the advent of new technologies encouraged this behavior.</p>
<p>Today’s news environment shares some parallels with the 19th-century news world. Digital media have changed how fast and how accurately stories are written and edited. Continuous news cycles, shrinking newsroom staffs and the multiple, simultaneous demands for content have produced what Washington Post writer Paul Farhi referred to as the “<a href="http://ajrarchive.org/Article.asp?id=5462">Era of Error</a>.” </p>
<p>The lack of formal gatekeepers on the internet has made it easier for the creators and disseminators of fake news <a href="http://fortune.com/2016/11/28/map-fake-news/">to spread their deceptions and force out legitimate news</a>.</p>
<p>Perhaps the best advice on ethical behavior for today’s reporters and editors comes from a 19th-century source. </p>
<p>After surviving his initiation into reporting as a 14-year-old cub and later becoming an influential news executive, Moses Koenigsberg drafted his own “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/King-News-Autobiography-M-KOENIGSBERG/dp/B000NZQ7ZO">Newspaperman’s Seven Commandments</a>.” </p>
<p>“At all times and in all things the editor must serve the reader to the exclusion of everyone else,” Koenigsberg wrote.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103420/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Randall S. Sumpter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>To survive in 19th-century newsrooms, reporters would have to hustle to get by, even if it meant producing fakes, staging events and sharing work with reporters from competing newspapers.Randall S. Sumpter, Associate Professor of Communication, Texas A&M UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/857112017-10-22T23:39:42Z2017-10-22T23:39:42ZIs local news on the cusp of a renaissance?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190876/original/file-20171018-32361-1kfep1k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/morning-paper-674951?src=4NSnJCQ-kmB2K0EVbNaaeA-1-0">Bridget McPherson</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s not an easy time to be a journalist in the United States. Since 2000, <a href="http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/07/newsonomics-the-halving-of-americas-daily-newsrooms/">nearly half of newsroom jobs</a> – <a href="https://www.poynter.org/news/asne-stops-trying-count-total-job-losses-american-newsrooms">more than 20,000</a> of them – have disappeared.</p>
<p>Rubbing salt into the wounds, CareerCast <a href="http://www.careercast.com/jobs-rated/worst-jobs-2016">named</a> “newspaper reporter” the worst of 200 jobs in 2016 for the third successive year. (Pest control worker and meter reader came in at 195 and 190, respectively.) And it doesn’t help that the profession now finds itself routinely <a href="http://ew.com/tv/2017/06/27/donald-trump-fake-news-twitter/">targeted and criticized</a> by the White House.</p>
<p>Given this negative backdrop, it’s not surprising that many journalists are driven by a strong <a href="https://www.cjr.org/covering_trump/journalists-trump-media-press-calling-fake.php">sense of vocation</a>. Yet now, more than ever, we rely on journalists to do the things they have always done: <a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/editors/index.ssf/2017/10/the_oregonianoregonlives_toxic.html">act as a check on those in power</a>, create an <a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/page/draining_oregon_day_1.html">informed citizenry</a> and <a href="http://www.journalism.org/2016/11/03/civic-engagement-strongly-tied-to-local-news-habits/">encourage civic engagement</a>.</p>
<p>This is particularly true at a local level. Local journalism, the subject of my <a href="http://journalism.uoregon.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Radcliffe-Agora_FINAL-for-web.pdf">new report</a> for the <a href="http://journalism.uoregon.edu/agora/">Agora Journalism Center</a> at the University of Oregon, not only fulfills an important watchdog function, it also plays a pivotal role in helping create – and define – a <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=tq3ACQAAQBAJ&pg=PT17&lpg=PT17&dq=how+local+journalism+creates+sense+of+community&source=bl&ots=FTCymItZ0Z&sig=oDiDtKucaYe1NjdlxIxWuFgQHqM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjziuy9qfjWAhUBKGMKHd4VAs0Q6AEIUTAG#v=onepage&q=how%20">sense of community</a>.</p>
<p>Telling this story through the eyes of 10 local news outlets in the Pacific Northwest, I found editors and journalists eager to talk about their <a href="https://medium.com/@damianradcliffe/the-revenue-conundrum-72f09be9ea4e">efforts to diversify revenues</a>, <a href="https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/local-journalists-digital-tools-optimism.php">harness new digital platforms</a> and find fresh ways to <a href="https://medium.com/@damianradcliffe/the-rise-of-engagement-online-and-in-real-life-11a0c261a500">engage with audiences</a>. </p>
<p>Their experience serves as a microcosm for <a href="http://www.niemanlab.org/2017/02/if-small-newspapers-are-going-to-survive-theyll-have-to-be-more-than-passive-observers-to-the-news/">discussions</a> and <a href="http://us14.campaign-archive1.com/?u=e417ea0aa7f5255fb7fd59b38&id=caae04c421&e=527c173d22">activities</a> taking place in local newsrooms across the country every day. </p>
<h2>What if they were to disappear?</h2>
<p>To understand the importance of local journalism, one need only look at areas where strong local reporting has disappeared. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.cjr.org/local_news/american-news-deserts-donuts-local.php">The emergence of media deserts</a> – communities devoid of “fresh” news and information – risks creating an environment where citizens miss important information and public officials are potentially <a href="https://www.chapman.edu/wilkinson/_files/pdf%20white%20papers/Tom%20Hogen-Esch.pdf">less accountable</a> than they should be.</p>
<p><a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/bell-calif-city-leaders-arrested-salary-scandal/story?id=11691192">One prominent example</a> of this took place in Bell, California, where a Pulitzer Prize-winning <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/bell/la-me-bell-scandal-a-times-investigation-20160211-storygallery.html">investigation</a> by the LA Times revealed that some of the town’s top officials were paid double or triple the salaries of their counterparts elsewhere. The story triggered a criminal case, which led to jail time for several public officials.</p>
<p>Because “no one was actively looking for corruption or fraud there,” the Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity at Columbia Law School <a href="https://www.law.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/microsites/public-integrity/files/bell_report_final_pdf_2.13.15.pdf">concluded</a>, “it took a newspaper investigation to draw law enforcement scrutiny.” </p>
<p>That this investigation was conducted by the LA Times, rather than a local paper, is partly because the city’s paper was no longer around.</p>
<p>“A lot of residents tried to get the media’s attention, but it was impossible,” said Christina Garcia, a local community activist and teacher (reported in the FCC’s mammoth <a href="https://transition.fcc.gov/osp/inc-report/The_Information_Needs_of_Communities.pdf">2011 report on the Information Needs of Communities</a>). “The city of Bell doesn’t even have a local paper; no local media of any sort.”</p>
<p>As local newspapers continue to shutter, and further newsroom jobs are shed, the risk of “more Bells” is very real. </p>
<p>Mark Zusman, editor and publisher of Willamette Week (Portland, Oregon), told me that trends point to “an environment in which the potential for corruption and misdeeds has never been greater, because of the lack of watchdogs on a local level, not on a national or a federal level.”</p>
<h2>Getting creative about revenue</h2>
<p>To do their job, however, journalism <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/06/15/state-of-the-news-media-2016-key-takeaways/">needs to be on a firmer financial footing</a>. </p>
<p>“You cannot have an artistic success without a financial one,” John Costa, president and publisher of the Bend Bulletin (Oregon), said in an interview for the report. “But the purpose of that business model is to make sure that you’re doing high-quality content because you have to collect readers or viewers in our business to stay vital.”</p>
<p>For all news providers, refining their business and revenue model is arguably their biggest challenge.</p>
<p>As traditional advertising dollars have <a href="https://www.baekdal.com/blog/what-killed-the-newspapers-google-or-facebook-or/">flowed online</a>, they’ve typically migrated to organizations like Google, <a href="https://www.minnpost.com/business/2014/02/how-craigslist-killed-newspapers-golden-goose">Craigslist</a>, Yelp and Facebook, <a href="https://home.kpmg.com/content/dam/kpmg/co/pdf/co-17-01-08-tmt-stop-the-presses.pdf">rather than</a> the digital portfolios of newspaper groups.</p>
<p>The news providers in the Pacific Northwest that I spoke to realize they must find <a href="https://medium.com/the-local-news-lab/new-revenue-for-news-52-ideas-to-support-local-journalism-1ee3720a7897">new revenue streams</a>, and many of them are going about doing just that.</p>
<p>For example, the Register Guard in Eugene (Oregon) has set up a spinoff company, <a href="http://rgmediacompany.com/">R-G Media</a>, to produce websites, apps and digital content for commercial clients. Outlets such as Portland’s Willamette Week and Seattle’s GeekWire are hosting and producing <a href="https://www.geekwire.com/events/">events</a> as a way to engage with their readers and generate money through ticket sales and sponsorships.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, membership programs – historically the preserve of local PBS and NPR stations – may work for other outlets too.</p>
<p>“I think one of the main ingredients of our secret sauce, if you will, is pledge drives,” said Morgan Holm, senior vice president and chief content officer at Oregon Public Broadcasting. “It forces you to articulate on a regular basis to your audience what you do for them and why it’s of value to them.”</p>
<h2>The journalist’s new job</h2>
<p>Pledge drives and events aren’t just potential revenue sources. They’re also a great way to find stories and engage with your community. In an era of “Fake News,” this matters: Journalists need to be more visible and more accountable, showing that they’re listening to their readers.</p>
<p>Caitlyn May, editor of the Cottage Grove Sentinel (Oregon), hosts a weekly, informal, “Meet the Editor” discussion at a local coffee shop. She also appears on a monthly radio show (streamed via Facebook Live) and takes questions from listeners.</p>
<p>Elsewhere, radio stations, such as KUOW Public Radio in Puget Sound (Washington) have been embracing some of the tools created by the news startup <a href="https://www.wearehearken.com/">Hearken</a>, encouraging readers to submit <a href="http://kuow.org/post/there-really-giant-octopus-under-tacoma-narrows-bridge">questions they want answered</a> or suggest topics they want covered.</p>
<p>This represents a shift for many journalists. In the past, many would engage with the community at an arm’s length, lest it appear to <a href="http://niemanreports.org/articles/reporters-relationships-with-sources/">taint their objectivity</a>.</p>
<p>But in the digital age, journalists can – and, indeed, are expected to – interact with audiences, and this doesn’t just mean responding to online comments or engaging with followers on Twitter. Attending events, appearing on <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-facebook-live-means-for-journalism-72233">Facebook Live</a> or producing podcasts are all ways for journalists to break down traditional barriers with readers. </p>
<h2>Being relentlessly local may hold the key</h2>
<p>These types of interactions will be essential if news providers hope to reassert their relevance and build audiences that are willing to pay for their products.</p>
<p>In this regard, local journalists potentially hold several advantages: they intimately know their audience and usually live within the community, characteristics national outlets cannot compete with. </p>
<p>For local outlets, these foundations could offer a path to financially sustainability. </p>
<p>Journalists also need to embrace the fact that the future of journalism cannot – and will not – look like the past. Moving forward will require doing some things differently.</p>
<p>That means being open to new forms of storytelling like video and <a href="https://www.heraldandnews.com/news/local_news/eclipse-public-viewing-details-in-augmented-reality/article_54d674bd-1eb9-5190-a7e1-0cd29b8728f7.html">augmented reality</a>, finding new ways to <a href="http://mediashift.org/2016/12/5-ways-engaged-journalism-movement-made-progress-2016/">engage with your audience</a> – online and in the real world – as well as a willingness to embrace concepts such as <a href="https://ijnet.org/en/blog/what-makes-successful-solutions-journalism-story">Solutions Journalism</a>, an <a href="https://www.solutionsjournalism.org/what-is-solutions-journalism/">approach</a> to coverage that journalists haven’t historically embraced: reporting on what’s working as rigorously and relentlessly as what doesn’t. </p>
<p>Although the journalism industry continues to face many challenges, there are causes for optimism. Newsrooms in the Pacific Northwest and the rest of the country are experimenting with new revenue, reporting and engagement strategies. </p>
<p>To get some sense of this, check out the experiments in <a href="https://www.heraldandnews.com/news/local_news/check-out-the-winter-wings-parrot-show-in-video/article_10118b04-1958-5f71-818f-42aba8fec12e.html">360 video</a> and <a href="https://www.heraldandnews.com/news/local_news/eclipse-public-viewing-details-in-augmented-reality/article_54d674bd-1eb9-5190-a7e1-0cd29b8728f7.html">augmented reality</a> being produced by the Herald and News in Klamath Falls (Oregon), this <a href="http://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/news/education/2017/10/07/disabled-salem-preschooler-walks-race-peers-thanks-unlikely-friendship/683203001/">heartwarming video</a> from the Statesman Journal (Oregon) or the <a href="http://www.columbian.com/news/2016/oct/13/clark-talks-podcast-the-columbian/">podcast</a> of the Columbian (Vancouver, Washington). </p>
<p>There’s no exact recipe for success, but these signs suggest an industry in the process of reinventing and reinvigorating itself.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85711/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Damian Radcliffe continues to engage in freelance creative and consulting work related to his expertise on media and technology matters. He is a member of the Online News Association and has received funding from the Agora Journalism Center and the Tow Center for Digital Journalism to research developments into business models, innovation and civic engagement in local media.</span></em></p>A new study explores the state of an industry that’s tapping creative revenue streams and incorporating new tools to engage with readers.Damian Radcliffe, Caroline S. Chambers Professor in Journalism, University of OregonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/755832017-04-06T01:05:15Z2017-04-06T01:05:15ZTechniques of 19th-century fake news reporter teach us why we fall for it today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163938/original/image-20170404-29081-lbhfsp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">German journalist and novelist Theodor Fontane.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Theodor_Fontane.png">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Donald Trump appears to have a straightforward definition of fake news: Stories that are critical of him or his presidency are <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/844886082663698436">“fake,” while those that praise him are “real.”</a></p>
<p>On the surface, the logic doesn’t hold up. But at the same time, the way Trump thinks about fake news points to a key reason why it works. </p>
<p>In my recent research, I’ve been reverse-engineering fabricated news articles from the 19th century to analyze their logic, and I’ve discovered that fake news is effective because it tells you something about the world that you, in a way, already know. This may sound counterintuitive. But a look into the work of a 19th-century fake news writer helps explain this phenomenon – and what’s going on today.</p>
<h2>The fake foreign correspondent</h2>
<p>Fake news flourished in the 19th century. During that period, newspaper and magazine circulation skyrocketed due to <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=qVrUTUelE6YC&pg=PA508&lpg=PA508&dq=printing+technology+nineteenth+century+newspaper+circulation&source=bl&ots=PYyiK2ySpF&sig=-0x5szIhBbNuRYzZAylgsFp8QXQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi3y_SXuYvTAhWK6YMKHUjrDVwQ6AEISTAJ#v=onepage&q=printing%20technology%20nineteenth%20century%20newspaper%20circulation&f=false">innovations in printing technology and cheaper paper</a>. Professional news agencies set up shop in major cities all over the world, while the telegraph enabled messages to be rapidly sent across continents. </p>
<p>Reporting became increasingly standardized, with newspapers generally covering the same topics, adopting the same formulaic language and presenting stories in the same formats. Competition in this emerging, fast-paced news business was tough, and with growing standardization, editors needed to figure out ways to stand out from the crowd.</p>
<p>One strategy involved sending foreign correspondents abroad. The idea was that the correspondents could provide stories and analysis from a personal point of view that readers might find more appealing than the standard, impersonal reports that emerged from news agencies.</p>
<p>However, sending a reporter abroad was expensive, and not every paper could shoulder the cost. Those that couldn’t found a creative and much cheaper solution: They hired local staff writers to pretend they were sending dispatches from abroad. By the 1850s, the phenomenon was so widespread in Germany that it had become its own genre – the “unechte Korrespondenz,” or <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/view/product/3469">“fake foreign correspondent’s letter,”</a> as people in the German news trade called it. </p>
<h2>How to make a 19th-century fake news story</h2>
<p>One such fake correspondent was Theodor Fontane, a German pharmacist-turned-journalist who would go on to write some of the most important German Realist novels. (If you’ve never heard of Fontane, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/10/the-dickens-of-berlin/378413/">think of him as the German Dickens</a>.) </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163940/original/image-20170404-5715-ko471m.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163940/original/image-20170404-5715-ko471m.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163940/original/image-20170404-5715-ko471m.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163940/original/image-20170404-5715-ko471m.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163940/original/image-20170404-5715-ko471m.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1128&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163940/original/image-20170404-5715-ko471m.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1128&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163940/original/image-20170404-5715-ko471m.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1128&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The front page of a 1914 edition of the Kreuzzeitung.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kreuz_1914_0708.gif">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1860, Fontane – struggling to make ends meet – joined the staff of the Kreuzzeitung, an ultra-conservative Berlin newspaper. The paper assigned him to cover England, and for a decade, he published story after story “from” London, spellbinding his readers with “personal” accounts of dramatic events, like the devastating Tooley Street Fire of 1861. </p>
<p>But during the entire decade, he never actually crossed the English Channel.</p>
<p>The stunning thing – and the part that resonates today – is how Fontane pulled it off. Fontane’s story about the Great Fire illustrates his process. By the time he decided to write about the fire, it had already been raging for days, and reports about it were in virtually all the papers. </p>
<p>Fontane sifted through these existing accounts to get a sense for what readers already knew about the catastrophe. He cut up the old articles, picked out the most relevant passages, and glued them together for his own account – this becomes clear from mapping his piece onto these sources. Then, to elevate the drama, he wrote some new passages with details and characters that were completely fabricated, such as a “companion” with special privileges who allegedly helped him cross the police cordon roping off the burning area. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163919/original/image-20170404-5702-1w3bxrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163919/original/image-20170404-5702-1w3bxrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163919/original/image-20170404-5702-1w3bxrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163919/original/image-20170404-5702-1w3bxrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163919/original/image-20170404-5702-1w3bxrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163919/original/image-20170404-5702-1w3bxrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163919/original/image-20170404-5702-1w3bxrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The 1861 Great Fire of Tooley Street.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Tooley_Street_fire_by_the_end_of_the_second_day.JPG">Stephencdickson/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Fontane then reported what he “saw”: (what follows is a translation from his German article): </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I went to the scene today, and it’s a terrible sight. One sees the burned buildings like a city in a crater […]. Fires live on eerily in the deep, and at any moment a new flame can burst forth out of every mound of ash.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>His readers probably believed him because his story confirmed a lot of things they already knew from prior press coverage. Fontane was careful to use familiar imagery, stereotypical descriptions and well-known facts about London. Meanwhile, he dressed up these familiar elements to make them more entertaining. </p>
<p>His own piece was styled in such a way that it fit right in with what traveled through the 19th-century mass media communications circuit. </p>
<h2>Echoes today</h2>
<p>Today’s fake news stories are also written from inside a closed mass media system. It’s one of the main reasons why these yarns – <a href="http://www.factcheck.org/2016/10/did-the-pope-endorse-trump/">even the absurd ones</a> – seem credible enough to get picked up: They recombine news bits, names, images, people and sites that we have already seen in similar contexts. Once this backdrop of credibility has been established, the sensational, made-up elements can be introduced all the more convincingly.</p>
<p>Take one of the fake news masterpieces from last year’s campaign trail, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/us/fake-news-hillary-clinton-cameron-harris.html?smid=nytcore-iphone-share&smprod=nytcore-iphone&_r=1">the bogus story about stacks of ballot boxes</a> that had “turned up” in a warehouse in Ohio and supposedly contained fraudulent Clinton votes. Cameron Harris, the 23-year-old college graduate who authored the story, later explained to The New York Times how he had approached the topic: He knew he had to connect his story to a familiar narrative in order to get it off the ground.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/us/fake-news-hillary-clinton-cameron-harris.html?smid=nytcore-iphone-share&smprod=nytcore-iphone&_r=1">And according to Harris</a>, that narrative had been established by Donald Trump’s repeated claims of a “rigged” election: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Trump was saying ‘rigged election, rigged election.’ People were predisposed to believe Hillary Clinton could not win except by cheating.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Just like Fontane with his “companion,” Harris also invented a guy – an electrical worker and everyman – who stumbled across the ballot boxes in a little-used part of a warehouse. Harris quoted him and even added a photograph, showing a guy standing behind a stack of black plastic boxes. </p>
<p>No matter that Harris had found the image on Google and that it pictured a British man: It fit with how readers might imagine an electrical worker and ballot boxes. </p>
<p>Producing this sort of fake news has become easier because there is no longer a way to avoid mass media. In a 1994 lecture, the sociologist Niklas Luhmann <a href="http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=1302">famously declared</a>, “Whatever we know about our society, or indeed about the world in which we live, we know from mass media.” </p>
<p>Think about it: How much do you truly know firsthand, from personal experience, compared to what you know from schoolbooks, television, newspapers and the web? </p>
<p>We like to think that we select the media that then shape and become part of our reality. That’s no longer how it works, though. Since the second half of the 19th century, the mass media have been shaping their own reality and narratives.</p>
<p>In early 2016, Americans spent <a href="http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/reports/2016/the-total-audience-report-q1-2016.html">almost 11 hours each day</a> staring at screens. These data do not even reflect <a href="http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/reports/2017/the-nielsen-total-audience-report-q4-2016.html">the phenomenal increase in news consumption</a> during the tail end of the presidential campaign and the election. And in this vortex, it can be tough to discern what’s fake and what’s not.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75583/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Petra S. McGillen is affiliated with the Theodor Fontane–Arbeitsstelle at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany. </span></em></p>Theodor Fontane was a German newspaper’s England correspondent – who reported ‘from’ London without leaving his Berlin desk.Petra S. McGillen, Assistant Professor of German Studies, Dartmouth CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/734882017-03-06T18:04:02Z2017-03-06T18:04:02ZUniversities can do much more to recognise and plan for risks<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158510/original/image-20170227-26326-wp0a97.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The right questions and planning can help universities to mitigate risk.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you want to understand how tough it is to run a university anywhere in the world today, just read the news. From student and staff <a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/university-of-east-london-stabbing-manhunt-launched-and-campus-on-lockdown-after-student-knifed-a3467026.html">safety</a> to students apparently <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/live-chicken-thrown-in-air-forced-to-smoke-at-stellenbosch-res-party-20170220">behaving badly</a>, <a href="http://www.enca.com/south-africa/university-in-pe-petrol-bombed">fee protests</a> to <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2016-12-14-qa-max-price-on-ucts-year-of-living-on-the-edge/#.WLVDPRJ97LE">governance issues</a>: university managers have their hands full battling the many risks they face.</p>
<p>This is why many universities have risk management policies, teams and processes. The problem is that, as research I’m currently conducting has showed, institutions’ attempts at formal risk management tend to be limited to a regulatory, compliance-based approach in line with government requirements but goes no further. There’s little actual integration of formal risk management principles in daily decision-making at all management levels.</p>
<p>So while an institution identifies and assesses risks and logs these in a risk register, this is often a once a year effort that happens just before internal audit and annual reporting. Theoretically, the risk register should be a live document that continues to inform decision making during management meetings throughout the year. In practice, it often becomes the last meeting item that universities never get around to.</p>
<p>This means that an institution’s risk register becomes a costly artefact that adds no real value. Its contents will appear in internal audit documents and annual reports, but will not actually mitigate a university’s risks in a meaningful way.</p>
<p>One of the reasons for this is that working with – and even just thinking about – risk is difficult. Risk has to do with uncertainty; people struggle to conceptualise and manage that which they are unsure about. </p>
<p>My <a href="http://www.nwu.ac.za/uarm/home">colleagues and I</a> are busy with research on the use of data from risk-related news reports to facilitate the risk identification and assessment process. We hope to present some of this research at a conference later in 2017.</p>
<p>Although relationships between media reporting and risk perception have been researched in the <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1539-6924.2005.00693.x/full">climate change</a> and <a href="http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.87.5.842">health science</a> fields, the constructive use of data gathered from news articles in higher education risk management hasn’t been actively reported in the academic literature. </p>
<h2>Risk and human influence</h2>
<p>Risk is about uncertainty in the sense that, as author and risk management guru Douglas W. Hubbard <a href="http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470387955.html">puts it</a>, “something bad could happen”. Human beings struggle to identify and manage events we’re uncertain of – those which haven’t happened yet. It’s far easier to focus on what’s already gone wrong. That’s why managing the operational fallout of current and recent risk events is – erroneously – called risk management. </p>
<p>But your judgement is impaired during stressful and uncertain times. Psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/185/4157/1124">explained why</a> in their seminal 1974 work showed that while it’s natural to focus on that which is recent and available to us when we’re making decisions, it comes with an inherent danger: we may neglect to identify and manage other, equally probable and even more damaging risks. </p>
<p>This very human limitation makes implementing risk management difficult in all organisations. It’s certainly not limited to the higher education sphere, and is <a href="http://www.lse.ac.uk/accounting/pdf/MKP%20AOS%202009%20(4).pdf">equally common</a> in corporate spaces and other complex organisations.</p>
<p>All of this may suggest that formal risk management is a lost cause. But our research provides an evidence-based way of looking at risk that allows managers to learn from others’ experiences, creating a collective institutional memory. If universities are willing <a href="https://theconversation.com/universities-around-the-world-should-share-notes-as-they-face-the-same-challenges-72513">to learn from</a> their counterparts all over the world – and to carefully monitor the news – they can go a long way to mitigating risks in a practical, helpful manner.</p>
<h2>Understanding and reacting to risk</h2>
<p>In practice, overburdened university management teams often simply don’t have the time or the resources to actively share their risk experiences with other institutions by, for instance, setting up email or phone conversations, or organising face to face meetings.</p>
<p>That’s where news reports, freely available on the internet, come in.</p>
<p>As part of our ongoing higher education research project, we’ve used news reports about universities to identify the kinds of risks other higher education institutions should be planning for.</p>
<p>These reports also provide information about the expected frequency of events related to these risks, as well as causes and good and bad responses to such events. Using news reports as guidelines for decision making will allow university councils and management teams to base their decisions on information from other universities’ experiences.</p>
<p>The news reports cover a range of topics, including access, animal rights, discrimination, ethics, fraud, free speech, funding, gender, governance, protest, quality, racism, rankings, religion, research, safety, sexual assaults, social media and teaching.</p>
<p>All of these issues can negatively impact a university’s ability to deliver on its objectives. In doing so, they indicate potential risks that should be planned for. </p>
<p>Once we’ve collected event reports, we link to the risk types that university managers must consider when making decisions as part of their roles. This is illustrated in the diagram below.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158707/original/image-20170228-29922-1kftc7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158707/original/image-20170228-29922-1kftc7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158707/original/image-20170228-29922-1kftc7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158707/original/image-20170228-29922-1kftc7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158707/original/image-20170228-29922-1kftc7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158707/original/image-20170228-29922-1kftc7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158707/original/image-20170228-29922-1kftc7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">UARM Typical Risk Type Diagram.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Asking the right questions</h2>
<p>With these reports in hand, university stakeholders ought to be able to ask pertinent risk-related questions about their own institutions. These questions should be raised both before a risk event occurs and afterwards.</p>
<p>Such questions include: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Has the risk been identified?</p>
<p>How was it assessed? </p>
<p>What was the cause of this risk event?</p>
<p>What is the risk management plan should the risk event occur?</p>
<p>How do we know that this is a good plan?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If these questions can’t be answered, the university may face serious consequences to its reputation. Its governance may be compromised and it could even face litigation. </p>
<p>University management teams must guard against being so focused on recent events – for instance, student protests in South Africa or academic strikes <a href="http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/ureport/article/2000221200/Major-issues-stirring-%20unrests-in-Kenyan-universities">in Kenya</a> – that they don’t plan for other possible risk events. They can do so effectively by looking to other institutions’ experiences and lessons, and using the information to mitigate risk in this way.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73488/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hermien Zaaiman works at the North-West University. </span></em></p>Risk has to do with uncertainty; people struggle to conceptualise and manage that which they’re unsure about. This is true in the higher education sector, too.Hermien Zaaiman, Manager Centre for Applied Risk Management (UARM) and Associate Professor Risk Management, North-West UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/712142017-01-24T01:14:57Z2017-01-24T01:14:57ZHow should you read unnamed sources and leaks?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153933/original/image-20170123-8055-1m15vwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/oil-painting-558038083?src=KIvPZ-J6crdSAmQxLiS1-Q-1-2">'Secrets' via www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>During my 13-year career in professional journalism, I rarely encountered issues with confidential sources or leaks directly. But during graduate school I became fascinated by the legal complications of journalists protecting sources and have written about the right to speak anonymously for nearly 20 years.</p>
<p>Using unnamed sources and leaked information is fraught with ethical and legal perils for journalists, their employers and their sources. Whether the risks are worth it depends upon the importance of the story. But in an age when the term “<a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/dec/13/2016-lie-year-fake-news">fake news</a>” is becoming part of the lexicon, how should readers judge the credibility of a story whose sources aren’t revealed?</p>
<h2>The minefield of unnamed sources</h2>
<p>Some selfless sources approach journalists in order to right a wrong or blow the whistle on a governmental or corporate betrayal of the public’s trust. But sources also sometimes have axes to grind. This doesn’t necessarily invalidate their information. However, it does mean that reporters must exercise caution when accepting their help, promising confidentiality or reporting on leaked documents.</p>
<p>The issue of sources <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/01/12/this-former-british-spy-was-identified-as-the-trump-dossier-source-now-he-is-in-hiding/?tid=sm_fb&utm_term=.014a2d947914%20fb&utm">came up recently</a> when the media reported that a former British intelligence officer named Christopher Steele had written a dossier containing unconfirmed claims that Russia had compromising information about Donald Trump. </p>
<p>People who know Steele have spoken highly of his expertise and skill in gathering intelligence. But we have no way of judging whether his sources were reliable because we do not know who they were. The report had also been commissioned by Trump’s opponents from both political parties. These circumstances create opportunities to discredit the leaked report.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp">The Code of Ethics for the Society of Professional Journalists</a> reflects the messy relationship between sources and journalists. It instructs journalists to “identify sources clearly,” “[c]onsider sources’ motives before promising anonymity” and grant anonymity only to sources who would face harm if identified. The code also states that journalists should be “cautious when making promises, but keep the promises they make.” </p>
<p>There’s probably a reason the code suggests using anonymous sources only when absolutely necessary. <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/073953290903000405">Studies</a> have shown that using unnamed sources hurts journalists’ credibility with the public. At the same time, some potentially important stories would not be reported if journalists were unable to promise sources anonymity. </p>
<p>Famous examples of stories that relied to some extent on confidential sources include the Watergate scandal <a href="http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/All-the-Presidents-Men/Bob-Woodward/9781476770512">uncovered</a> by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein that led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation. The world’s most famous anonymous source, “Deep Throat” (later revealed to be FBI Deputy Director <a href="http://www.simonandschuster.ca/books/The-Secret-Man/Bob-Woodward/9780743287166">Mark Felt</a>), was only one of many confidential sources the reporters used. </p>
<p>Other examples are the Post’s <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/01/AR2005110101644.html">revelation</a> that the United States was shipping post-9/11 detainees to secret prisons overseas where they could be questioned more “aggressively” and the exposure of the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal by the Boston Globe’s <a href="http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/movies/spotlight-movie">Spotlight Team</a>.</p>
<p>But there also have been instances when journalists have regretted relying on confidential sources, including the <a href="http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/weapons-mass-destruction-and-media-anatomy-failure">media’s systemic failure</a> to question the Bush administration’s leaks about Saddam Hussein’s alleged stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. Another example is the 2004 CBS Evening News story about President Bush’s service in the Texas National Guard in the 1970s. Dan Rather retired early from his anchor chair after <a href="http://us.macmillan.com/truthandduty/marymapes/9780312354114">sources failed to defend</a> the authenticity of documents critical of Bush’s service.</p>
<h2>An outlet’s reputation is critical</h2>
<p>All of this makes it difficult for readers to know whether to trust reports based on unnamed sources and leaks. The task for readers is further complicated by the explosion of new online media outlets that might not adhere to mainstream journalistic standards or best practices. </p>
<p>There are a few things readers should look for when determining whether to trust (or post or retweet) a story based on unnamed sources. First, the more specific the identification of the source and her reason for wanting her identity concealed, the better. For example, “A source with direct knowledge of the situation who did not want to be identified because she was not authorized to speak to the media” is better than “some people say.” </p>
<p>Second, is the news outlet transparent about how it handles unnamed sources and sensitive documents? Many reputable sites are not but should be. Some news outlets have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/column/the-public-editor">public editors</a> or media critics who explain how news was gathered or criticize their own publications when they stray from best practices. Some also publish explainer pieces about how they gathered information about <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/03/insider/the-time-i-found-donald-trumps-tax-records-in-my-mailbox.html?action=click&contentCollection=Politics&module=RelatedCoverage&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article">particularly controversial stories</a>. </p>
<p>Finally, readers should remember that the media love controversy and conflict. Therefore, if a news site or channel delivers a vaguely sourced big scoop and no other media pick it up, readers should be very wary, particularly if the site is obscure or openly partisan. </p>
<h2>Flimsy legal protections</h2>
<p>While it’s understandable that readers would be suspicious of stories that rely on unnamed sources – particularly if the sources have leaked classified information – they have good reason to ask journalists to protect their identities. In the wake of the Trump dossier’s publication, Christopher Steele probably didn’t <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/11/former-mi6-officer-produced-donald-trump-russian-dossier-terrified/">flee his home</a> to simply escape nosy reporters. He probably feared some sort of retaliation.</p>
<p>In the United States, sources who leak classified documents to journalists face possible prison time if their identities are exposed. Many are probably familiar with the leaks about National Security Agency eavesdropping by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/edward-snowden">Edward Snowden</a> (now self-exiled in Russia) and war-related documents by <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/chelsea-manning-21299995#synopsis">Chelsea Manning</a>, who spent seven years in prison before President Obama commuted her sentence earlier this month. </p>
<p>While Obama might receive praise in some circles for this act, his Justice Department <a href="http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/jan/10/jake-tapper/cnns-tapper-obama-has-used-espionage-act-more-all-/">prosecuted at least twice as many people</a> for leaking information as all previous administrations combined. </p>
<p>Journalists put themselves on the line too as their legal right to conceal the identities of their sources isn’t well-established. According to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, <a href="http://www.rcfp.org/jailed-journalists">at least 20 U.S. journalists</a> have been jailed since 1972 for refusing to reveal sources. Many more have been fined. </p>
<p>In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/408/665">Branzburg v. Hayes</a> that the First Amendment didn’t give journalists the right to not cooperate with grand juries, even if cooperation meant identifying sources. A concurring opinion by <a href="http://law2.wlu.edu/alumni/bios/powell.asp">Justice Lewis Powell</a> limited the 5-4 ruling to the particular cases involved, however, and federal courts ever since <a href="https://www.rcfp.org/browse-media-law-resources/digital-journalists-legal-guide/federal-constitutional-and-common-law-rig">have tried to figure out what that means</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.rcfp.org/reporters-privilege">Thirty-nine states and the District of Columbia</a> have shield laws that protect journalists from being forced to reveal sources to state and local authorities. But Congress’ <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/1962?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22Free+Flow+of+Information+Act+113th+Congress%22%5D%7D&r=5">last attempt to pass a federal shield law</a> in 2014 <a href="https://freedom.press/news-advocacy/congress-dangerous-attempts-to-define-ajouralista-in-shield-law-threaten-to-exclude-bloggers/">failed</a> over concerns about whom the law would apply to, such as nonprofessional bloggers or sites like Wikileaks. </p>
<p>The legal problems of journalists and sources could be ameliorated by a strong, broad federal shield law, amendments to <a href="http://employment.findlaw.com/whistleblowers/whistleblower-protections.html">whistleblower laws</a> to protect those who go public with concerns and a less aggressive use of the Espionage Act, which was used in the prosecution of Chelsea Manning.</p>
<p>In the end, the relationships between journalists and sources come down to trust. Sources must trust that journalists will protect their identities. Journalists must trust that sources are being truthful regardless of any ulterior motives. Readers, meanwhile, have to choose whether to trust media reports based on unnamed sources. Each reader has his or her own reasons for trusting or not trusting the news, but media outlets could help by relying as little as possible on unnamed sources and being as transparent as possible when they do.</p>
<p>With a president who has shown particular <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/trump-faces-a-weakened-press-corps/512849/">hostility</a> to the press entering the White House, the media may have to rely more on unnamed sources and leaks to inform audiences. </p>
<p>Audiences, then, will have to decide where to place their trust: in the administration or in the media.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71214/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anthony Fargo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>With an explosion of media outlets that don’t adhere to mainstream journalistic standards, it’s became difficult for readers to know whether to trust reports based on unnamed sources and leaks.Anthony Fargo, Director, Center for International Media Law and Policy Studies, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/696022016-12-06T02:25:14Z2016-12-06T02:25:14ZUnbelievable news? Read it again and you might think it’s true<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147988/original/image-20161129-17069-14gb0wr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pixabay.com/en/donald-trump-politician-america-1547274/">tiburi/pixabay</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the weeks since the U.S. election, concerns have been raised about the prominence and popularity of false news stories spread on platforms such as Facebook. A BuzzFeed analysis found that the top 20 false election stories generated more shares, likes, reactions and comments than the top 20 election stories from major news organizations in the months immediately preceding the election. For example, the fake article “Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President, Releases Statement” was <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/viral-fake-election-news-outperformed-real-news-on-facebook">engaged with 960,000 times in the three months prior to the election</a>.</p>
<p>Facebook has discounted the analysis, saying that these top stories are only a tiny fraction of the content people are exposed to on the site. In fact, Facebook CEO <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2016/11/10/technology/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-fake-news/">Mark Zuckerberg has said</a>, “Personally I think the idea that fake news on Facebook, which is a very small amount of the content, influenced the election in any way – I think is a pretty crazy idea.” However, psychological science suggests that exposure to false news would have an impact on people’s opinions and beliefs. It may not have changed the outcome of the election, but false news stories almost definitely affected people’s opinions of the candidates. </p>
<p>Psychological research, including my own, shows that repeated exposure to false information can change people’s beliefs that is it true. This phenomenon is called the “illusory truth effect.”</p>
<p>This effect happens to us all – <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000098">including people who know the truth</a>. Our research suggests that even people who knew Pope Francis made no presidential endorsement would be susceptible to believing a “Pope endorses Trump” headline when they had seen it multiple times.</p>
<h2>Repetition leads to belief</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147975/original/image-20161129-16998-73ui8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147975/original/image-20161129-16998-73ui8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147975/original/image-20161129-16998-73ui8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147975/original/image-20161129-16998-73ui8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147975/original/image-20161129-16998-73ui8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147975/original/image-20161129-16998-73ui8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1093&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147975/original/image-20161129-16998-73ui8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1093&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147975/original/image-20161129-16998-73ui8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1093&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Lewis_Carroll_-_Henry_Holiday_-_Hunting_of_the_Snark_-_Plate_1.jpg">Henry Holiday illustration accompanying 'The Hunting of the Snark' by Lewis Carroll, 1931.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>People think that statements they have heard twice are more true than those they have encountered only once. That is, simply repeating false information makes it seem more true. </p>
<p>In a typical study, participants read a series of true statements (“French horn players get cash bonuses to stay in the U.S. Army”) and false ones (“Zachary Taylor was the first president to die in office”) and rate how interesting they find each sentence. Then, they are presented with a number of statements and asked to rate how true each one is. This second round includes both the statements from the first round and entirely new statements, both true and false. The outcome: Participants reliably rate the repeated statements as being <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1088868309352251">more true than the new statements</a>.</p>
<p>In a recent study, I and other researchers found that this effect is not limited to obscure or unknown statements, like those about French horn players and Zachary Taylor. Repetition can also bolster belief in statements that <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000098">contradict participants’ prior knowledge</a>. </p>
<p>For example, even among people who can identify the skirt that Scottish men wear as a kilt, the statement “A sari is the skirt that Scottish men wear” is rated as more true when it is read twice versus only once. On a six-point scale, the participants’ truth ratings increased by half a point when the known falsehoods were repeated. The statements were still rated as false, but participants were much less certain, rating the statements as “possibly false” rather than closer to “probably false.” </p>
<p>This means that having relevant prior knowledge does not protect people from the illusory truth effect. Repeated information feels more true, even if it goes against what you already know.</p>
<h2>Even debunking could make things worse</h2>
<p>Facebook is looking at ways to combat fake news on the site, but some of the proposed solutions are unlikely to fix the problem. According to a Facebook post by Zuckerberg, the site is considering labeling stories that have been flagged as false <a href="https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103269806149061">with a warning message</a>. While this is a commonsense suggestion, and may help to reduce the sharing of false stories, psychological research suggests that it will do little to prevent people from believing that the articles are true.</p>
<p>People tend to remember false information, but forget that it was labeled as false. A 2011 study gave participants statements from sources described as either “reliable” or “unreliable.” Two weeks later, the participants were asked to rate the truth of several statements – the reliable and unreliable statements from before, and new statements as well. They tended to <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2011.08.018">rate the repeated statements as more true</a>, even if they were originally labeled as unreliable.</p>
<p>This can also apply to reporting about false public statements. Even a debunking-focused headline like CNN’s “<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/27/politics/donald-trump-voter-fraud-popular-vote/">Trump falsely claims ‘millions of people who voted illegally’ cost him popular vote</a>” can reinforce the falsehood Trump was spreading.</p>
<h2>Correcting after the fact doesn’t help much</h2>
<p>When media outlets publish articles that contain factual errors – or that make assertions that are later proved false – they print corrections or retractions. But when people have strong preconceptions, after-the-fact updates often have no effect on their beliefs, even when they remember the information has been retracted. </p>
<p>In the early days of the second Iraq war, many news events were initially presented as true and then retracted. <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2005/03/07/1316359.htm">Examples included allegations</a> that Iraqis captured U.S. and allied soldiers as prisoners of war and then executed them, in violation of the Geneva Conventions. </p>
<p>In 2005, cognitive psychologist Stephan Lewandowsky gave Americans and Germans <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0956-7976.2005.00802.x">statements about various news events during the war</a>. Some of the statements were true; others were reported as true, but later retracted; still others were false – though those labels were not provided to the study participants.</p>
<p>The participants were then asked to rate whether they remembered the news event, whether they thought it was true or false, and whether the information had been retracted after its initial publication. Participants were also asked how much they agreed with official statements about the causes of the Iraq war.</p>
<p>Americans who remembered reports that had been retracted, and who remembered the retractions, still rated those items just as true as accurate reports that had not been retracted. German participants rated the retracted events as less true. In responding to other questions in the study, the Americans had shown themselves to be less suspicious of the official justifications for the war than the Germans were.</p>
<p>The researchers concluded that the Germans’ suspicions made them more likely to adjust their beliefs when the information was retracted. Americans, more likely to believe the war was justified, were also less likely to change their beliefs as new information arrived.</p>
<p>The study suggests that Clinton supporters, who tend to be suspicious of positive information about Trump, may remember that the pope-endorsement story was false, and discount the information. Trump supporters, by contrast, would be left with a more positive opinion of Trump, even if they remembered that the story was false.</p>
<p>There is no easy solution to the problem of fake news. But it’s clear that it is a problem: Exposure to false news stories can affect readers’ beliefs and opinions. Simply <a href="https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103269806149061">labeling the information as false</a> is unlikely to reduce this effect. </p>
<p>A true solution would somehow limit the spread of these fake stories, preventing people from seeing them in the first place. A first step that each of us can take is to check our sources and not share unreliable articles on social media, even if they affirm our beliefs.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69602/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa Fazio does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>People who read false news items come to believe them – even if they know better. It doesn’t help to know the source is unreliable or the report has been debunked.Lisa Fazio, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Vanderbilt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/657892016-11-24T23:15:47Z2016-11-24T23:15:47ZWhy we need to educate journalists about Aboriginal women’s experience of family violence<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146858/original/image-20161121-4528-1r3gear.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Journalists need to understand the complexities of Aboriginal family violence</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Joe Castro</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>If violence against women is a <a href="http://plan4womenssafety.dss.gov.au/the-national-plan/what-is-the-national-plan/">national priority</a>, and Aboriginal women are disproportionately affected, then the experiences of Aboriginal women need to be valued, made visible and reported on appropriately.</p>
<p>According to the Council of Australian Governments, <a href="https://www.dss.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/08_2014/national_plan1.pdf">gendered family violence</a> is one of:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… the most pervasive forms of violence experienced by women in Australia.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But if you are a Torres Strait Islander or Aboriginal woman, you are <a href="https://www.dss.gov.au/our-responsibilities/women/programs-services/reducing-violence/the-national-plan-to-reduce-violence-against-women-and-their-children-2010-2022">35 times</a> more likely than non-Indigenous women to experience family violence. </p>
<p>These statistics <a href="https://theconversation.com/factcheck-qanda-are-indigenous-women-34-80-times-more-likely-than-average-to-experience-violence-61809">vary</a> depending on where you live and your access to resources including support. But one thing is for sure: Aboriginal women in Australia experience family violence at a disproportionate level.</p>
<h2>Absent in the media</h2>
<p>The media is <a href="http://awava.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Working-with-News-and-Social-Media-A-Strategic-Framework-for-Victoria.pdf">“a powerful setting for, and influencer of, social change”</a>, especially in the area of primary prevention of family violence. The media play an important role in how it is understood, interpreted and responded to. </p>
<p>Whether violence is state-sanctioned or perpetrated by an intimate partner (or in the case of in the case of <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lawreport/marking-25-years-since-rc-into-black-deaths-in-custody/7315132">Ms Dhu</a>, who experienced both), until very recently Aboriginal women’s experiences have remained almost absent in mainstream media coverage. </p>
<p>Earlier this year, professor Marcia Langton highlighted this absence when <a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2016/july/1467295200/marcia-langton/two-victims-no-justice">she said</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Aboriginal women have died from assaults and criminal misconduct, and they have passed without any public attention or anything like justice. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Since 2015, blogger <a href="http://blackfeministranter.blogspot.com.au/p/since-beginning-of-year-following.html">Celeste Liddle</a> has also been keeping count of the number of Aboriginal women who have been murdered, in an attempt to offset the lack of public attention these deaths receive. And while the ongoing call made by Indigenous women to <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-17/national-press-club:-ending-the-violence-in/8034682">tackle Aboriginal family violence</a> is gaining traction, a silence nonetheless continues to exist.</p>
<h2>Lack of complexity in news coverage</h2>
<p>It is not only an absence of media attention around violence against Aboriginal women that’s notable. There is also a lack of complexity in the news when it comes to Aboriginal family violence more generally. </p>
<p>I recently investigated how Aboriginal family violence is reported by the Victorian print media. I found there is a tendency for journalists to reinforce family violence as an “Indigenous issue” that is inherent in Victorian Aboriginal communities. This can be seen in the way the determinants of Aboriginal violence are framed by the media. </p>
<p>Over a five-year period, few articles mention possible determinants of Aboriginal family violence beyond alcohol or drug addiction. Only four out of 145 articles noted family violence, including importantly the reasons why Aboriginal women enter and stay in a violent relationship, as a <a href="https://settlercolonialstudies.org/about-this-blog/">legacy of colonisation</a> and intergenerational trauma. </p>
<p>Yet a guiding principle set out in the <a href="http://www.dhs.vic.gov.au/about-the-department/documents-and-resources/reports-publications/indigenous-family-violence-task-force-report-2003">Victorian Indigenous Family Violence Task Force report</a> is the recognition that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… from an Indigenous perspective the causes of family violence are located in the history and impacts of white settlement and the structural violence of race relations since then.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The framing of family violence as an “Indigenous issue” also disregards the innovative work Aboriginal people and community representatives, such as <a href="http://www.fvpls.org/About-Us.php">Aboriginal Family Violence Prevention and Legal Service</a> (FVPLS) in Victoria, are doing to prevent family violence. </p>
<p>Another example of this over-simplification is that during the five year period I investigated, only two out of 145 articles in Victorian newspapers noted that not all perpetrators of violence against Victorian Aboriginal women and their children are Aboriginal men.</p>
<p>In their <a href="http://www.rcfv.com.au/getattachment/14CD545A-D0C8-4679-87DA-C022619D9C7D/Aboriginal-Family-Violence-Prevention-and-Legal-Service-Victoria-(FVPLS)">submission</a> to the <a href="http://www.rcfv.com.au/">Royal Commission into Family Violence</a>, FVLPS representatives stated a need for more accurate data on the Aboriginality of family violence perpetrators. This is because they routinely see: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Aboriginal clients, mostly women, who experience family violence at the hands of men from a range of different backgrounds and cultures, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Nicholas Biddle at the <a href="http://caepr.anu.edu.au/">Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research</a> used census data to show that 85% of Aboriginal women in Melbourne, 67.9% in Shepperton and 82.4% in Bendigo have a <a href="http://caepr.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/cck_indigenous_outcomes/2013/11/2011CensusPaper_15.pdf">non-Indigenous partner</a>. These statistics are important to consider in policy responses to, and media portrayals of, Aboriginal family violence. As Biddle suggests:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… when attempting to reduce the rate of domestic violence or marital dissolution experienced by the Indigenous populations (for example), it is important to keep in mind that the majority of the partners of Indigenous Australians who experience such traumatic life events are likely to be non-Indigenous. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>While these figures are from Victoria, similar situations can be found in urban regions across the country. </p>
<h2>So where to now?</h2>
<p>The complexity of a news story is important. We must understand that the disproportionate rate of violence experienced by Aboriginal women stems from a long history of intergenerational trauma. </p>
<p>When the media portrays high levels of family violence as culturally inherent, stereotypes are reinforced and we may be more likely to accept the violence and less likely to report it. </p>
<p>The complexity of news stories about Aboriginal family violence depends on the source of the story. In Victoria, more complex stories always have an Aboriginal-controlled community organisation as a source instead of or in addition to a police or government representative. </p>
<p>So, where to now? </p>
<p>One answer is that journalists and government media managers need to work with organisations like <a href="http://www.fvpls.org/">FVLPS</a> and the <a href="https://www.vacca.org/">Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency</a>. In turn, these organisations may need more support in meeting the demand for public information. It is important, though, that these organisations determine the support they require.</p>
<p>There is good research into the way gendered violence against women is portrayed by the <a href="https://www.vichealth.vic.gov.au/media-and-resources/publications/victorian-print-media-coverage-of-violence-against-women">Victorian</a> and <a href="http://anrows.org.au/publications/horizons/media-representations">New South Wales</a> media. We now need to add the category of <a href="https://theconversation.com/intersectionality-how-gender-interacts-with-other-social-identities-to-shape-bias-53724">race</a> (and arguably socioeconomic background and geographic location) to the gender analysis. </p>
<p>More research is needed to understand the way Aboriginal family violence is portrayed by the media, including the challenges faced by journalists in reporting on Aboriginal women as victims of family violence. </p>
<p>Journalists in turn need training in the ongoing impact of settler colonialism and how it works in <a href="https://theconversation.com/factcheck-qanda-are-indigenous-women-34-80-times-more-likely-than-average-to-experience-violence-61809">different geographic locations</a>. It should also include how settler colonialism continues to inform the way non-Indigenous people view and respond to Aboriginality and Indigenous issues.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>The National Sexual Assault, Family & Domestic Violence Counselling Line – 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) – is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week for any Australian who has experienced, or is at risk of, family and domestic violence and/or sexual assault.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65789/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This research was completed in collaboration with Victorian Aboriginal communications company Kalinya. The author received funding from the Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet to undertake this research.
</span></em></p>Violence against women is a national priority, and Aboriginal women are disproportionately affected. This must be reported on appropriately in the media.Lilly Brown, PhD Candidate, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.