“A newspaper is a private enterprise owing nothing whatsoever to the public, which grants it no franchise. It is therefore affected with no public interest.” – William Peter Hamilton, a former publisher of the Wall Street Journal.
That quote is particularly poignant this week as News Limited follows Fairfax in shedding staff and restructuring its business activities. News Ltd’s Chief executive Kim Williams today told staff there would be job losses through retrenchments and natural attrition as the group moves to centralise its operations from 19 to five divisions under a “one city, one newsroom” strategy. He did not say how many jobs would need to be shed.
Are we really becoming like the Americans, where newspapers owe nothing to the public? Perhaps. But my entire reason for educating young people about the practical skills of the Fourth Estate is to ensure that there are Australians capable to shining a light on politicians – and industry – who are working against the public interests. That’s our collective interest as Australians. And it’s those interests which are currently under attack.
Bernard Cohen wrote in 1993 wrote: “the press may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think … it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about”.
But the moves of News Limited and Fairfax this week will ultimately mean fewer and fewer voices, and fewer things to think about. This week’s announcements won’t stop the decline of newspapers – it will accelerate it. With fewer journalists, more generic content, more sub-editing outsourced to Page Masters in New Zealand, our Australian newspapers will become a pale imitation of what they are now, which is a pale imitation of what they once were.
Put it this way – with fewer journalists at our major newspapers, those who are left will become even more captive to vested interests than they were before – and that’s regardless of Gina arriving or Rupert leaving. Media moguls have come and gone – and most have been bad – that’s not the big issue. The bigger issue is diversity of voices heard by Australians.
Just look at Australian Provincial Newspapers (APN) where its once vibrant local and regional titles have been swallowed up and become cookie cutter facsimiles of each other. The life has gone out of them. They don’t have the same connection to the communities that they once had. It’s the same with Fairfax’s community papers: while still strong in some ways, they are really now only vehicles for display ads for houses. And let us not forget just how out-gunned Australian journalists are against the onslaught of the public relations industry.
But despite the doom and gloom, I’ve sent messages to my very talented pool of soon-to-be journalism graduates to “chillax”. These announcements are part of trend that has been happening in the mass media for some time – perhaps as much as 30 years. Clever young people who want to work in the modern media environment understand they need to do better than their predecessors, in particular the antics exposed by the Leveson Inquiry in the UK and our own Cash for Comment scandal in Australia. Young people know that the papers which are surviving and thriving – are either incredibly in touch with their local communities or ones which are doing great journalism.
Frankly, the legacy media have given few opportunities to journalism graduates in the past few years – smart young people have been snapped up by new media. For the sake of democracy and our country we need to support these new digital providers.
Let’s hope that Communications Minister Stephen Conroy and his colleagues remember one important thing as they read of Business Spectator – run by heavy-hitting journos Alan Kohler, Stephen Bartholomeusz and Robert Gottliebsen – being swallowed up by News Limited:
“The media are the principal carriers of the life blood of democracy: information. It is their responsibility, therefore, to maximise the opportunities for citizens to make political decisions and cast ballots on the basis of informed choice – retrospectively, about the extent to which the government has kept its promises in office, and prospectively, about how rival candidates will act if (re)elected to office.” (Gunther and Mughan, 2000.)
Or in more home-spun terms, the words of the late Queensland premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen: “The greatest thing that could happen in the state and the nation is when we get rid of the media. Then we would live in peace and tranquillity and no one would know anything.”
Michael Brown
Professional, academic, company director
Chillax is exactly right - politicians and voters have been getting excited about the media ever since printing presses were invented. With barriers to entry now so low in the digital world, the free market will deal with these issues even more efficiently than in the past. Your undoubtedly well-taught students will find limitless niche and mainstream opportunities.
Chris Harper
Engineer
Fewer voices be damned. The problems print faces are the direct result of the proliferation of voices, growth in diversity and the dispersion of control.
Fairfax is further challenged by the progressive dominance of the free media, such as the ABC, SBS and other free to air broadcasters. They are providing free what Fairfax must needs charge for.
Bruce Waddell
logged in via LinkedIn
Indeed Fairfax and News must pay their staff but the trouble with these companies is not the cost of news content, it is the loss of advertising $$$ that has hurt them. Any reader will have noticed that the dailies are not much bigger than a church notice sheet now. The missing space was once advertising. As the electronic media has grown so has the print media advertising shrunk. I think we have to be proud of our free media and protect the ABC and SBS because they are at least disseminating unbiased news.
Chris Harper
Engineer
<i>I think we have to be proud of our free media and protect the ABC and SBS because they are at least disseminating unbiased news. </i>
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Oh dear (wiping tears of mirth from his eyes), and I would lay a penny to a pound that you really believe that as well.
Am I right that, to you, progressives are unbiased by definition? Tell me, how many programs are presented regularly by conservatives or libertarians?
I think all this means is that the biases of the ABC and SBS match your own.
Doug Green
logged in via email @gmail.com
I think you will find that, certainly in the case of the ABC, it is the most balanced broadcaster in the country. This isn't much of an achievement relative to, say, News Ltd nor, I'm sure, to any future Reinhart-led Fairfax. Unfortunately if you like, and are used to, all of your news with a right-wing slant then a position of balance is going to seem very much like bias to you.
There is no news organisation in the country that has a more comprehensive complaints procedure than the ABC. The ABC…
Read moreMark Chambers
Business & Marketing Consultant
Hi Bruce,
Not that I want to buy into the discussion between you and Chris, and please don't be offended, but I think your argument would go a lot better if you don't use the words 'unbiased' and 'media' in the same sentence. Quoting ABC as disseminating and unbiased was probably the real low point, but to be fair, I do remember a time when that statement would have been reasonably accurate. I think it all started going down hill when John (Fairfax) passed away. Cheers.
Chris Harper
Engineer
"The ABC has a complete Charter of Practice. News Ltd does not."
Conservative and libertarian commentary? At least fifty percent of the population do not support progressive solutions and interpretations, where are they represented at the ABC? As to the cartoonish leftism of SBS, please refrain from insulting my intelligence with any claims it is balanced. The only balance is between Keynsians, Trotskyites and Gramsci'ites. Where are the von Meises, Hayekists and Friedmanites? I am afraid your…
Read moreDoug Green
logged in via email @gmail.com
I remember when the ABC was under constant unrelenting attack from the Howard Liberal government over many years. There were 2 Liberal senators bombarding it with hundreds of complaints (mostly of an unbelievably trivial and bogus nature) that all required time and manpower to investigate because of the ABC's rigorous complaints procedure. The gist of most of them was that the Liberals were very unhappy with the ABC's coverage of the Iraq war.
The Liberal government, along with the US government…
Read moreChris Harper
Engineer
So?
The ABC, like most media organisations tells the truth? Sure. The whole truth? Not on your nelly. Nothing but the truth? snigger.
The ABC has a progressive agenda and pushes it. Those who work for it, in the main, have a common purpose and, to those who don't share that purpose, it shows.
The ABC is neither objective nor unbiased, and to claim otherwise is absurd.
Doug Green
logged in via email @gmail.com
Firstly, the ABC, in the case of the Iraq war, told the truth in a situation where the rest of our media were largely not telling the truth and were falling in with the government line in propaganda. A huge difference! Secondly, the ABC told the truth, despite its being to their detriment. As they were before, and thereafter, pursued by the Liberal govt with a vengeance for daring to deviate from the official line. That is, they were courageous and actually doing the job that real journalists, as…
Read moreAdam Suess
logged in via Twitter
History has never seen more 'diversity of voices' with social media and internet. As a child I only had access to the editorial commentary of a small group of people through limited media, today I can read about anything anywhere anytime from anyone. I agree with George Negus when he said on the ABC that the future of digital media is all about content or quality of content. But with time and innovation we will see instant aggregation of content where we'll be able to broaden or narrow our news…
Read moreTaso Hatzi
undefined
Aren't we overreacting to a non-existent problem here? We are only witnessing the death of a communication medium, not communication per se.
If anything, the rise of eNews has put the power to manipulate public opinion beyond the reach of wealthy private interests. Unfortunately, it has left Government as the only entity with the means to manipulate eNews, and that to me, is a far more worrying prospect than Gina Rhinehart moving in on Fairfax.
Mark Chambers
Business & Marketing Consultant
You know what Taso ... I agree with you.