tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/news-ltd-397/articlesNews Ltd – The Conversation2023-05-29T20:07:48Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2049142023-05-29T20:07:48Z2023-05-29T20:07:48ZRupert Murdoch: how a 22-year-old ‘zealous Laborite’ turned into a tabloid tsar<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527924/original/file-20230524-10299-l4fgym.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=23%2C17%2C3970%2C1976&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The successor: Rupert Murdoch, on right, with his parents Sir Keith and Elisabeth Murdoch around 1950.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">New South Publishing</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In September 1953, Rupert Murdoch arrived in sleepy Adelaide to take up his inheritance of News Limited. He was only 22 and had little experience of working at a newspaper, let alone running one, but his family had inherited a majority stake in the company following the death of Rupert’s father, the well-known journalist, editor and media executive <a href="https://theconversation.com/book-review-before-rupert-keith-murdoch-and-the-birth-of-a-dynasty-49491">Keith Murdoch</a>. </p>
<p>After Rupert had completed his matriculation at Geelong Grammar in 1949 with marks that had not impressed his parents, he had worked briefly as a cadet reporter at the Melbourne Herald under his father’s watchful eye, spending a few months at the police courts with a friend from school before heading off to the United Kingdom.</p>
<p>Keith had accompanied him to London in early 1950 and introduced Rupert to leading figures in Fleet Street, helping his son land a summer stint as a junior reporter on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham_Gazette">Birmingham Gazette</a> – where Rupert made an impression when he told the proprietor the editor was so incompetent he should be sacked.</p>
<p>Rupert had then studied at Worcester College, Oxford. Again, he did not excel academically, but his contemporaries noticed he was financially astute and a shrewd problem-solver and risk-taker. Like Rupert Greene, his namesake grandfather on his mother’s side, Rupert dabbled in gambling and drinking beer more than his parents felt was good for him. And, like his father had been as a young man, Rupert was attracted to Labour politics. He famously kept a bust of Lenin in his room at Oxford. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528502/original/file-20230526-25-5faty3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528502/original/file-20230526-25-5faty3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528502/original/file-20230526-25-5faty3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528502/original/file-20230526-25-5faty3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528502/original/file-20230526-25-5faty3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528502/original/file-20230526-25-5faty3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528502/original/file-20230526-25-5faty3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528502/original/file-20230526-25-5faty3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Keith Murdoch was confident son Rupert would ‘outgrow his socialist ideals’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
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<p>Keith tolerated Rupert’s excursion into left-wing politics and, in earlier years, had put him in touch with Labor prime minister <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Chifley">Ben Chifley</a>, who always replied courteously to Rupert’s letters. Keith told Chifley his 18-year-old son “is at present a zealous Laborite but will I think (probably) eventually travel the same course of his father”.</p>
<p>In the last months of his life, Keith was confident that Rupert was on the right track and would outgrow his <a href="https://theconversation.com/socialism-is-a-trigger-word-on-social-media-but-real-discussion-is-going-on-amid-the-screaming-113507">socialist</a> ideals. After finishing his studies at Oxford, Rupert worked on the subeditor’s desk at Lord Beaverbrook’s Daily Express, edited by the legendary <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Christiansen">Arthur Christiansen</a>, considered one of Fleet Street’s greatest editors.</p>
<p>Christiansen was obsessed with detail and worked up to 18 hours a day for more than 20 years. His memorable instructions to staff were handed down through the ages, including his exhortation to “always, always tell the news through people”.</p>
<p>The Daily Express was chosen for Rupert because it was one of the toughest and most prestigious schools in journalism. Keith had personally asked Beaverbrook to arrange this work experience for his son and Rupert trained as a down-table sub (a junior subeditor).</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528516/original/file-20230526-23-lgkmj9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528516/original/file-20230526-23-lgkmj9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528516/original/file-20230526-23-lgkmj9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528516/original/file-20230526-23-lgkmj9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528516/original/file-20230526-23-lgkmj9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528516/original/file-20230526-23-lgkmj9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1122&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528516/original/file-20230526-23-lgkmj9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1122&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528516/original/file-20230526-23-lgkmj9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1122&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The Daily Express was ‘one of the toughest and most prestigious schools in journalism’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Gillfoto">gillfoto</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>When Rupert took up the reins at News Limited, that was the extent of his experience – a few months each at the Herald, the Birmingham Gazette and the Daily Express, plus all he had picked up from his father’s shop talk at home and the detailed letters Keith sent Rupert during his school years.</p>
<p>As part of the grandeur surrounding his rise, it is often said that Rupert built an empire out of just one tired Adelaide newspaper. To be pedantic, that is not quite true. When he inherited a controlling interest in News Limited, it published the News (Adelaide’s afternoon newspaper), the (Sunday) Mail (also in Adelaide) and the Barrier Miner (in Broken Hill). It also had a large stake in Southdown Press, which was housed in West Melbourne and published the national women’s magazine <a href="https://www.newidea.com.au/">New Idea</a>. </p>
<p>The company also controlled radio station 2BH Broken Hill and had a minor holding in 5DN Adelaide. Certainly, it was a small company by comparison with the then giant of the media industry, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Herald_and_Weekly_Times">Herald and Weekly Times</a>, but it was still a substantial start for a 22-year-old. It is true that the News was a tired and insignificant paper. It had a stagnant circulation and was drained of resources and revenue. </p>
<p>When Rupert arrived in Adelaide, he set about changing that and gave himself the unusual title of “publisher”. Old-timers raised their eyebrows and expected Rupert would sit in a corner at the News for a few years until he knew enough to contribute. They were misjudging him.</p>
<p>Rupert was a hands-on proprietor from the beginning. Editorially, he initially relied on, and gave a good deal of leeway to, <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/rivett-rohan-deakin-11533/text20575">Rohan Rivett</a>, who had been editor of the News for almost two years. </p>
<p>Rupert and Rivett were already close friends because Keith had sent Rivett to report from London between 1949 and 1951, with a side instruction to keep an eye on the boss’s son. Rivett, the grandson of <a href="https://theconversation.com/alfred-deakin-provides-a-contrast-to-an-abbott-lost-for-words-37900">Alfred Deakin</a>, had been a war correspondent, and for three and a half years a prisoner of war, including on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/world-war-ii-ended-70-years-ago-while-the-forgotten-death-railway-was-completed-45612">Burma–Thailand Railway</a>.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/c2jSxlORxiM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">News editor Rohan Rivett was the grandson of Alfred Deakin.</span></figcaption>
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<p>From Keith’s perspective, Rivett had some radical views but he was satisfied that Rivett was no <a href="https://theconversation.com/still-under-the-bed-red-baitings-long-history-in-australian-politics-and-why-its-unlikely-to-succeed-now-177543">communist</a>, and in the early 1950s he was a favourite Murdoch confidante. Rivett even named his son after Keith. </p>
<p>When Rupert arrived in Adelaide, Keith’s older protégé turned nemesis, Lloyd Dumas, chairman of the Advertiser, gave Rupert a memorable welcome by trying to push him out of business before Rupert even got started. On October 24 1953, the Advertiser launched the Sunday Advertiser.</p>
<p>It was designed to crush News Limited’s weekend paper, the Mail, which was the biggest-circulation paper in the state and a solid earner. The intention was to force Murdoch’s heirs to sell out so the Herald Weekly Times could reclaim the News. Dumas was a knight, a pillar of society in Adelaide, a city renowned for its “luminous and eccentric” establishment, its British-style manored estates, and blue-blood <a href="https://adelaide-club.asn.au/">Adelaide Club</a> members.</p>
<p>But Rupert showed immediately that he was not going to play by the usual rules of conduct, including the unwritten rule that newspaper owners did not publish stories about each other. A month after the Sunday Advertiser launched, Rupert’s Mail published a front-page story airing some industry dirty linen. </p>
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<span class="caption">Adelaide was renowned for its ‘luminous and eccentric’ establishment and manored estates. Pictured: St Peter’s Cathedral.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
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<p>It reported that, after Keith Murdoch’s death, Dumas had gone to his widow, bound her to secrecy so she could not consult anyone, and told her to sell the family’s controlling stake in the company to him. When Elisabeth refused, he gave her an ultimatum: either sell him the Mail, or the Advertiser would start a new weekend paper and drive the Mail out of business. The article included excerpts from a private letter Dumas had sent to Elisabeth.</p>
<p>Dumas and Rupert fought a “nasty circulation war”. The challenger Sunday Advertiser was the better product but many of the Mail’s readers stayed loyal and it remained in front. As Adelaide was not large enough to support two Sunday papers, both companies bled money for nearly two years before the opponents called a truce and agreed to merge. Both took 50% of the newly merged Sunday Mail from December 1955. With no competition, it was very profitable. Rupert considered this co-venture a great victory and let it be known that Dumas had backed down.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-secret-history-of-news-corp-a-media-empire-built-on-spreading-propaganda-116992">The secret history of News Corp: a media empire built on spreading propaganda</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Liberalism and sensationalism</h2>
<p>Rupert let Rivett develop the News into the most liberal daily paper in the country, one with a social conscience that published very different views to
the establishment Advertiser. </p>
<p>Murdoch learned all he could by working in various roles at the paper and developed a reputation for his overwhelming energy and for rolling up his sleeves and observing every phase of the production process. He was also becoming known for criticising and trying to make constant changes. One overwhelmed staff member called them “Rupertorial interruptions”.</p>
<p>Rivett focused on editorial while Murdoch focused on increasing advertising revenue, improving circulation, cutting costs and making production more efficient. Murdoch was particularly good at gaining retail and some new classified advertising for the News. News Limited’s profits jumped from $62,000 when he began in 1953, to $432,000 in 1959.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Rupert Murdoch was known from the start for being very involved in his media properties.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Murdoch had his eye on expansion immediately. His first move was to expand News Limited’s interest in magazine publisher Southdown Press. His next move,
in October 1954, was to acquire Western Press Ltd, publisher of Western Australia’s only Sunday paper, the Sunday Times, in Perth. (It also owned a Saturday publication called the Mirror, and 20 country newspapers.)</p>
<p>The Sunday Times was where Murdoch honed his <a href="https://theconversation.com/rupert-murdoch-and-the-news-international-tabloid-grotesquerie-2330">tabloid techniques</a>. The paper was “tawdry” even before Murdoch bought it, but <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/902842.Murdoch?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=GwPBFNOkUt&rank=1">he made it</a> more “sparkily so”. </p>
<p>Murdoch began flying to Perth every Friday to personally hammer the paper into a more sensational style to increase its sales. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2298216.Citizen_Murdoch">Murdoch biographer, Thomas Kiernan</a>, said the Sunday Times was the birthplace of Murdoch journalism, “the exaggerated story filled with invented quotes; the slavishly sensationalised yarns; the eye-shattering, gratuitously blood-curdling headline”. </p>
<p>An infamous early one was “LEPER RAPES VIRGIN, GIVES BIRTH TO MONSTER BABY”. He also used competitions and zealous promotion to sell the paper. These became some of the other hallmarks of Murdoch’s tabloid approach.</p>
<p>The Sunday Times purchase was funded by a loan. Rupert’s new bank was the Commonwealth Bank in Sydney. It was then relatively small and had become a trading bank only in June 1953. Its general manager, Alfred Norman “Jack” Armstrong, and Vern Christie, who later became a managing director, thought Murdoch was a good risk, commercially savvy and always met his repayments.</p>
<p>The Commonwealth Bank’s willingness to lend Murdoch huge sums would prove crucial to the growth of his media empire. </p>
<p>Rupert stayed in Adelaide for seven years, from 1953 to 1960. Aside from newspaper production, he was also learning everything he could about radio and television, including on trips to the United States. It was a crucial turning point when Murdoch’s Southern Television Corporation Ltd (60% owned by News Limited) <a href="https://televisionau.com/2019/09/tv-at-60-tv-comes-to-adelaide.html">was granted</a> one of two commercial television licences in Adelaide in 1958.</p>
<p>After a visit to the Philadelphia office of the popular US magazine TV Guide, Murdoch launched an Australian weekly television magazine. Southdown Press began publishing <a href="https://televisionau.com/feature-articles/tv-week">TV-Radio Week</a> in December 1957, 14 months after Australian television had begun (it was called TV Week from 1958). Murdoch was also buying up small papers in remote towns across the country. He acquired the Cold War–born NT News and the Mount Isa Mail at the end of 1959. </p>
<p>Murdoch would fly into town in a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_DC-3">DC-3</a> and haggle with the owner. Former News Limited executive Rodney Lever said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>His technique was simple: he would bully the owner into selling his paper with a threat that he would start a competing paper in the town.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Murdoch soon turned the NT News into a tri-weekly, and the Mount Isa Mail into a bi-weekly. By 1965, both were daily papers.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-irreverence-to-irrelevance-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-bad-tempered-tabloids-113656">From irreverence to irrelevance: the rise and fall of the bad-tempered tabloids</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Bold moves</h2>
<p>Murdoch made two bold moves in Adelaide in 1958–59. One was political
and the other commercial, and as journalist and author George Munster noted, these moves were not well coordinated; they ran in opposite directions.</p>
<p>The News took a strong stance on the trial of <a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/catalogue_resources/92649.pdf">Rupert Max Stuart</a>, an Indigenous carnival worker who had been convicted in 1958 of the rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl. </p>
<p>After a confession to police over which there hung significant doubt, Stuart was sentenced to death and his conviction was upheld by the Supreme Court of South Australia. Rivett was convinced Stuart had not had a fair trial and the News campaigned fiercely for the case to be reopened. The paper’s attacks on authorities in South Australia’s police force and courts were the talk of the city.</p>
<p>Murdoch supported Rivett “wholeheartedly” and saw the case as a way to attack both the Adelaide establishment and the conservative <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Playford_IV">Playford government</a>, which had been in office since 1938 as the beneficiary of a ruthlessly gerrymandered election system.</p>
<p>Labor politician <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clyde_Cameron">Clyde Cameron</a>, who was dining and socialising with Murdoch at this time, found Rupert “was much further Left than me”. When the case was at its height, Murdoch said to him: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’m in a spot, Clyde. Myers [sic] have phoned to say that unless we drop our campaign in favour of Stuart, they are going to withdraw all of their advertising from the News and that means a lot to us … I told them to go to hell.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Playford was forced to set up a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commission_in_regard_to_Rupert_Max_Stuart">Royal Commission</a> to examine <a href="https://sahistoryhub.history.sa.gov.au/events/stuart-case">the Stuart case</a> and the News ran fierce attacks on it too, including lambasting royal commissioners for improperly sitting in judgement of their own earlier decisions. The <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-18/max-stuart-rupert-murdoch-true-crime-case/10614666">News’ coverage</a> landed Rivett, Murdoch and other employees in court on a string of charges, including the archaic, rarely used charge of seditious libel, which could have seen them imprisoned. </p>
<p>Rupert was said to be deeply shaken by the potential risks and how far matters escalated. Eventually, the charges were dismissed and the News ran an editorial apologising and disavowing criticism of the judiciary members. There was
speculation that Playford had dropped the charges in return for the News halting its campaign against his government.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527678/original/file-20230523-19-t87qwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527678/original/file-20230523-19-t87qwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527678/original/file-20230523-19-t87qwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527678/original/file-20230523-19-t87qwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527678/original/file-20230523-19-t87qwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527678/original/file-20230523-19-t87qwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527678/original/file-20230523-19-t87qwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527678/original/file-20230523-19-t87qwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">US President John F. Kennedy meets a young Rupert Murdoch (on right) in the oval office in 1961.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>An old friend sacked</h2>
<p>While the Adelaide establishment was still buzzing about the Stuart case, Murdoch made an audacious bid to gain control of the Advertiser. Backed by the Commonwealth Bank, Murdoch made an offer of more than £14 million in shares and cash to Advertiser Newspapers Ltd. At a time when News Limited had less than £1.8 million in shareholders’ funds, it was one of the biggest corporate takeover bids in Australian history.</p>
<p>Dumas quashed the bid. The Advertiser announced in its pages that its board rejected the takeover bid and Dumas announced that the holders of more than 50% of Advertiser shares refused to accept Murdoch’s offer. </p>
<p>Dumas added tartly that the South Australian community and the paper’s shareholders have a “real pride in the Advertiser and would never agree to its being modelled on the News”, nor let Murdoch, as head of Cruden Investments, “a Victorian company”, exercise “complete individual control” over the Advertiser as he did with the News.</p>
<p>The Herald Weekly Times’ old hands had blocked Murdoch but he had made a strong impression and provided a bold declaration of his ambitions. He had also shown the business world he could muster significant capital and it was becoming obvious he would not easily be bought or driven out.</p>
<p>Five weeks after the last charges over the Stuart Royal Commission were withdrawn, Murdoch wrote a curt note from Sydney that “summarily dismissed” Rivett as editor.</p>
<p>This was a man Murdoch had considered “like the brother he never had”. Some speculated that Rivett’s sacking may have been part of the deal with Playford. Others believed it was inevitable because Murdoch was asserting himself more and his priorities were changing. Either way, it was strong evidence that Murdoch was not going to let friendship get in the way of business.</p>
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<p>The Stuart case had happened at a formative time for Murdoch, when his political views were still developing. Back in 1953, with a state election imminent in South Australia, he had written to Rivett, “I implore you not to speak out too loudly on either side.” </p>
<p>Personally, Rupert had strong views on <a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-politics-explainer-robert-menzies-and-the-birth-of-the-liberal-national-coalition-74533">Robert Menzies</a> though. He was said to loathe the prime minister because he was part of the Melbourne business establishment that had rejected him after his father’s death. Menzies had essentially chosen Jack Williams at the Herald and Weekly Times over Murdoch. Murdoch also thought Menzies was holding Australia – and himself – back.</p>
<p>In 1958–59, Murdoch had tried taking on the establishment in Adelaide by bringing on a showdown with the premier and the Adelaide Club, but had to back down. The experience seemed to chasten him and turn him away from advocacy journalism for the moment, and toward safer forms that did not clash with his commercial goals.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This is an edited extract from <a href="https://unsw.press/books/media-monsters/">Media Monsters: The Transformation of Australia’s Newspaper Empires</a> by Sally Young (New South Publishing).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204914/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sally Young received funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC) future fellowship scheme to study newspaper history and press power. Since 2019, she has been a research committee member of the Centre for Public Integrity which conducts research aimed at strengthening Australian democracy.</span></em></p>Young Rupert took up his inheritance in Adelaide in 1953 with minimal journalistic experience. He quickly revealed himself to be a ruthless rule-breaker and hands on, expansionary proprietor.Sally Young, Professor of Political Science, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1158452019-04-25T20:14:01Z2019-04-25T20:14:01ZLies, obfuscation and fake news make for a dispiriting – and dangerous – election campaign<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270857/original/file-20190425-121249-10fvr9y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=479%2C0%2C3197%2C2000&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The integrity of Australia's election process is under unprecedented pressure during this election.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wes Mountain/The Conversation</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The integrity of Australia’s electoral processes is under unprecedented challenge in this federal election.</p>
<p>The campaign has already been marred by fake news, political exploitation of social media falsehoods and amplification by mainstream media of crude slurs made on Facebook under the cover of anonymity.</p>
<p>We have seen our first recorded instance of Facebook running Australian fake news. </p>
<p>It was <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/federal-election-2019/it-is-a-lie-bill-shorten-targets-liberals-for-death-tax-fake-news-on-facebook-20190420-p51fu6.html">a false post</a> about the Labor Party’s tax policies, wrongly saying Labor intended to introduce a 40% inheritance tax.</p>
<p>It was interesting to trace how this fakery was created.</p>
<p>The false post had a link to <a href="https://joshfrydenberg.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Treasurer-Media-Release-Death-taxes-you-dont-say-Bill.pdf">a press release</a> issued in January by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg.</p>
<p>It said Labor’s assistant treasury spokesman, Andrew Leigh, had written an article 13 years ago – when he was an academic – that favoured introducing an inheritance tax. Thirteen years ago – before he was even in politics.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/fake-news-is-already-spreading-online-in-the-election-campaign-its-up-to-us-to-stop-it-115455">'Fake news' is already spreading online in the election campaign – it's up to us to stop it</a>
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<p>Then to add to the fakery, and seemingly by coincidence, the Liberal Party had a <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/federal-election-2019/labor-demands-facebook-remove-fake-news-posts-about-false-death-tax-plans-20190419-p51fpk.html">black van driving around city streets</a> with large signs saying “Labor will tax you to death”.</p>
<p>The Liberals have denied being involved in the duplicity and there is no evidence to suggest they were. But the false post had just enough of an impressionistic link to the Liberal attack to make its message plausible: a tincture of “truthiness”.</p>
<p>Then the Coalition made mischief with it.</p>
<p>George Christensen, Nationals MP for the Queensland seat of Dawson, put up a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=George%20Christensen%20labor%20union%20bosses&epa=SEARCH_BOX">Facebook post</a> three days after the original, saying:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Labor does the bidding of their union bosses [and] the union bosses have demanded Bill Shorten introduce a death tax.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The original post also generated memes from far-right political groups, piling new lies on top of the old.</p>
<p>Labor has demanded Facebook take down the original, but there is no sign it has done so.</p>
<p>The delay is not only unconscionable, but has given the likes of Christensen and others the opportunity to cloak the original falsehood in political commentary, creating the basis for a specious circular argument. It goes like this:</p>
<p>Facebook posts a lie. It generates political reaction. The political reaction absorbs the lie into political speech. Political speech should not be censored. Therefore taking down the original lie would be censorship.</p>
<p>This is yet one more way in which Facebook’s irresponsibility taints the democratic process.</p>
<p>So much for the fine promises made by Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, last year on what became known as his “<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/16/mark-zuckerbergs-apology-tour">apology tour</a>” of Washington and Brussels.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.harpersbazaar.com.au/mark-zuckerberg-says-he-will-end-fake-news-on-Facebook-following-the-US-election-result">He told officials</a> he would stop the spread of fake news and voter manipulation on Facebook. </p>
<p>He <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/04/10/transcript-of-mark-zuckerbergs-senate-hearing/">told a US Senate committee</a> that every advertiser who wanted to run political ads would need to be authorised, and that would mean confirming their identity and location.</p>
<p>Yet the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-26/facebook-electoral-commission-emails-reveal-political-ad-concern/10834736">ABC is reporting</a> that just months after Zuckerberg’s “apology tour”, Facebook was playing ducks and drakes with the Australian Electoral Commission over precisely this question of authorisation.</p>
<p>The ABC reports that it has obtained documents under freedom-of-information that show a prolonged battle last year between the commission and Facebook over unauthorised political ads from a mysterious outfit called Hands Off Our Democracy, which was paying for sponsored posts attacking left-wing groups and political parties.</p>
<p>The posts eventually disappeared, but only after Facebook tried to give the commission the brush-off.</p>
<p>The ABC is also reporting that almost a year after Zuckerberg made his promises to clean up Facebook’s act, and with Australia’s federal election only three weeks away, Facebook still has not brought its new authorisation rules to Australia. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, the Electoral Commission is on the front foot about fake news.</p>
<p>A Google search for “Facebook carries fake news about Labor’s tax policy” brings up as its top item an ad from the commission warning people not to be misled by disinformation.</p>
<p>The commission has set up a special <a href="https://www.itnews.com.au/Electoral-commission-spins-up-cyber-op-centre">electoral integrity taskforce</a>, which includes the Australian Signals Directorate and ASIO, to try to head off potential threats to the democratic process.</p>
<p>A further threat to the integrity of Australia’s electoral process is the interplay between Facebook and elements of the mainstream media.</p>
<p>A few days ago, <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/adani-convoy-reliant-on-coal-miners">the convoy protesting</a> against the Adani coal mine arrived in Queensland, led by environmental activist and former Greens leader Bob Brown.</p>
<p>Simultaneously, a private Facebook group called Stop Adani Convoy posted a number of repugnant messages, including a reference to gas chambers.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-governments-have-a-long-history-of-trying-to-manipulate-the-abc-and-its-unlikely-to-stop-now-110712">Australian governments have a long history of trying to manipulate the ABC – and it's unlikely to stop now</a>
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<p>The post was anonymous, but it was picked up and amplified by Brisbane’s Courier-Mail newspaper under the heading: “Bob Brown’s mob of revolting protesters liken coal mines to gas chambers”. </p>
<p>Well down in the story, the newspaper said it was not suggesting Brown had anything to do with this statement, an inclusion that was all about avoiding a writ for libel.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/apr/22/bob-brown-accuses-news-corp-of-disgraceful-coverage-of-stop-adani-convoy">Brown said</a>: “Some of the headlines in the Murdoch media are simply disgraceful. They’re a disgrace to journalism”.</p>
<p>This interaction of social media and elements of the mainstream media, in which extremist language and feverish controversy are exploited as a means of dividing the community and of promoting a reactionary political worldview, was a potent feature of the 2016 US presidential campaign and the Brexit referendum the same year.</p>
<p>Where the issue is highly controversial and emotive – as with climate change, immigration or Brexit – the extremism expressed on social media makes headlines in the mainstream media, raising the political temperature and fuelling further partisanship.</p>
<p>There is a lot of research that shows how these effects are damaging democracies around the world. The findings are laid out in books such as those by Cass Sunstein (<a href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10935.html">#republic</a>), Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/562246/how-democracies-die-by-steven-levitsky-and-daniel-ziblatt/9781524762940/">How Democracies Die</a>) and A.C. Grayling (<a href="https://oneworld-publications.com/democracy-and-its-crisis.html">Democracy and Its Crisis</a>).</p>
<p>An important long-term issue in the 2019 federal election is how robust Australia’s democratic institutional arrangements turn out to be in the face of these pressures.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115845/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denis Muller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>With a fake news scandal already marking this election campaign, questions remain about how well our democracy can cope with it.Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/705992016-12-20T12:10:01Z2016-12-20T12:10:01ZMurdoch Sky bid is a nasty Christmas headache for the culture secretary<p>Six years after his first frustrated bid to take full ownership of Sky, Rupert Murdoch is seeking once again to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/dec/12/rupert-murdochs-sky-takeover-pass-public-interest-test">capture the 61% he doesn’t already own</a>. In 2011, the bid from Murdoch’s News Corporation (for what was then BSkyB) was first referred to Ofcom, then derailed by the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/phone-hacking-2415">phone hacking scandal</a>. As soon as the Conservatives unexpectedly won the 2015 general election, it was always a matter of “when” rather than “if” his full takeover bid would be renewed.</p>
<p>Never mind that the vehicle this time is Murdoch’s <a href="https://www.21cf.com/">21st Century Fox</a>, which <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/business/21579840-media-mogul-promises-do-it-all-over-again-murdoch-20">he created</a> after splitting his film and TV business from his news publishing business. For the purposes of ownership concentration and media power, the issue is ultimate control. And there is certainly no debate over who controls both News Corp and Fox.</p>
<p>Despite being perfectly timed to hit the festive period – and therefore slip quietly between the Christmas shopping and the New Year hangover – Murdoch’s bid has provoked a storm of protest and a massive Christmas headache for culture secretary, Karen Bradley. As soon as the bid is formally notified to the European Commission (likely to be imminent), she will have 10 working days to decide whether or not to refer it to Ofcom on plurality grounds, by issuing a <a href="https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0013/7204/pit_guidance_note.pdf">Public Interest Intervention Notice</a> (PIIN).</p>
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<p>Murdoch’s supporters are urging Bradley to let it through without referral. They argue that the media landscape has been transformed since 2010, and that the proliferation of online news publishers, the arrival of entertainment players including Netflix and Amazon, BT’s entry into the sports rights market, and the burgeoning power of social media sites such as Facebook and news aggregators such as Google generate more than enough competition to satisfy plurality imperatives. They are completely wrong, for three reasons.</p>
<h2>Reasons to be wary</h2>
<p>First, Murdoch’s power in the news market remains undiminished. His papers still command <a href="https://www.nuj.org.uk/news/media-ownership-power-and-influence-belongs-to-few/">more than a third of national newspaper circulation</a> and, more importantly, are as instrumental as the Daily Mail in setting the news agenda. Ofcom’s <a href="https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0024/23775/measuring-online-news.pdf">news consumption metrics</a> – frequently quoted by Murdoch’s allies to demonstrate the “dominance” of the BBC – fail to account for the impact of press headlines, commentators and partisan editorialising on the nation’s news agenda (including broadcasters).</p>
<p>Impartiality requirements will not be enough to protect Sky News from the undiluted attention of Murdoch ownership. Reporting can be perfectly balanced while owners still exercise a subtle and decisive influence over news running orders or the balance between celebrity and serious news. When Murdoch told the <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200708/ldselect/ldcomuni/122/122i.pdf">House of Lords select committee</a> in 2007 that he would like to see Sky News become more like Fox News, he did not mean turning it into a Conservative Party cheerleader, rather that he’d like to see it adopt more of Fox’s energetic presentational features.</p>
<p>Second, there is the enhanced capacity to mobilise editorial support for his own commercial interests, whether it be new TV programmes, pricing innovations, major sports contracts, or Fox movie premieres. <a href="http://www.private-eye.co.uk/">Private Eye</a> provides constant reminders of both blatant and more subtle approaches to cross-promotion, which can include distorting or removing coverage of rival initiatives.</p>
<p>Finally, Murdoch’s power will be entrenched through disproportionate influence over the regulatory environment. Lengthy and costly litigation drains the resources of both regulator and competitors. In a rare interview after stepping down as Ofcom chief executive, Ed Richards <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/government-favoured-rupert-murdochs-media-empire-says-outgoing-ofcom-chief-9947518.html">described</a> the “intense pressure from the participants” during the 2010 bid and the “unhelpful” and costly legal battles which BSkyB fought through the courts whenever its dominance was challenged. However tough its senior executives, Ofcom will be battered, bruised and intimidated by an expanded and wealthier Murdoch empire.</p>
<h2>Backdoor pressure</h2>
<p>There is another, intensely political reason why Bradley should refer the bid. Theresa May’s pitch to the electorate in her <a href="https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/political-parties/conservative-party/news/79600/theresa-may-vows-take-rich-and-powerful-war">conference speech</a> in October was that she would stand up to the “rich and powerful” on behalf of ordinary people. Her low-key but widely reported <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/sep/29/theresa-may-meeting-rupert-murdoch-times-sun">meeting</a> with Murdoch during her 36-hour trip to New York in October smacks of precisely the kind of backdoor assignations associated with David Cameron and Tony Blair. Despite Murdoch’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/dec/19/rupert-murdoch-ive-never-asked-any-prime-minister-for-anything">recent protestations</a> that: “I’ve never asked any prime minister for anything”, British voters will not be impressed by yet another prime minister canoodling with the very embodiment of wealth and power. A referral to Ofcom will give her political cover.</p>
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<p>Adding to the political turmoil, the bid has created more pressure on the government to launch the second part of the Leveson Inquiry, which was specifically designed to investigate the relationship between senior Metropolitan police officers and executives at Murdoch’s newspapers. Former prime minister Gordon Brown has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/dec/14/gordon-brown-delay-murdoch-sky-takeover-leveson-part-2">written</a> to the culture secretary arguing that a “new body of evidence” raises unanswered questions about allegations of malpractice in Murdoch’s companies (which have consistently been denied by Murdoch), demanding that any takeover must be delayed until this the truth is established.</p>
<p>For the same reason, Ofcom is coming under renewed pressure to apply a second regulatory test, which does not require government referral: to establish whether James Murdoch, chairman of 21st Century Fox and Sky, is a “<a href="http://obiterj.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/broadcasting-fit-and-proper-person-what.html">fit and proper person</a>” under the terms of the 2003 Communications Act to hold a broadcasting licence.</p>
<p>Whether Murdoch underestimated the political furore that his bid would unleash (unlikely) or made a political calculation that a government mired in Brexit turmoil would be desperate for his support (more likely), he has ignited a political firestorm that both the prime minister and the regulator could do without. If the culture secretary really does wave the transaction through, she would destroy all credibility in Theresa May’s claim to be working for “ordinary people”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70599/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Barnett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The renewed takeover bid for one of Europe’s biggest broadcasters must be referred to Ofcom.Steven Barnett, Professor of Communications, University of WestminsterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/678642016-10-28T11:18:38Z2016-10-28T11:18:38ZIan Hislop’s right: Murdoch’s cosy relationship with Tories should be investigated<p>The reciprocal closeness in the relationship between journalism and power is a prominent feature of British political history. In times of war or national crisis, media organisations are expected more often than not to behave as if they were an <a href="https://theconversation.com/press-baron-and-propagandist-who-led-charge-into-world-war-i-29855">arm of government</a> – but, for the newspapers of Rupert Murdoch, this close relationship seems to have become business as usual, whoever is living in Number 10 . And the willingness of various governments to yield to Rupert Murdoch’s news empire has been exhaustively documented.</p>
<p>We know by the media mogul’s own admission that he often entered Downing Street “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-14206371">by the back door</a>” and, as journalist <a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/anthony-hilton-stay-or-go-the-lack-of-solid-facts-means-it-s-all-a-leap-of-faith-a3189151.html">Anthony Hilton</a> noted in February of this year:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I once asked Rupert Murdoch why he was so opposed to the European Union. “That’s easy,” he replied. “When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is increasingly clear that the influence of <a href="https://www.news.co.uk/">News UK</a> (the rebranded News International whose titles include the Sun, the Sun on Sunday, The Times and the Sunday Times) has not diminished in the aftermath of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/hacking-affair-is-not-over-but-what-would-a-second-leveson-inquiry-achieve-29715">Leveson Inquiry</a> or the phone-hacking scandals. Far from it. When Theresa May visited New York in late September (mere months after becoming prime minister) she found time in her hectic 36-hour schedule to meet with Murdoch. </p>
<p>Perhaps, as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/sep/29/theresa-may-meeting-rupert-murdoch-times-sun">The Guardian hinted</a>, the previously media reticent May was just performing a realpolitik quid pro quo because in the Conservative leadership battle <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1396848/the-final-choice-for-who-will-be-our-next-prime-minster-must-be-between-theresa-may-and-michael-gove/">The Sun had backed her</a> and Michael Gove – instead of, as had been expected, prioritising Gove as a former News employee. The <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1396848/the-final-choice-for-who-will-be-our-next-prime-minster-must-be-between-theresa-may-and-michael-gove/">Sun’s leader of July 6</a> stated:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The final choice for who will be our next prime minister must be between Theresa May and Michael Gove.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The Eye has it</h2>
<p>So what happened to Michael Gove after his personal leadership debacle? He’s (back) working for the Times. Let’s not forget that at the Leveson Inquiry, Gove <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/rupert-murdoch-is-a-great-man-says-michael-gove-7800683.html">described his boss</a> as “one of the most significant figures of the last 50 years” a “force of nature, a phenomenon and a great man”.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143643/original/image-20161028-15816-5q8xua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143643/original/image-20161028-15816-5q8xua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=760&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143643/original/image-20161028-15816-5q8xua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=760&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143643/original/image-20161028-15816-5q8xua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=760&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143643/original/image-20161028-15816-5q8xua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=955&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143643/original/image-20161028-15816-5q8xua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=955&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143643/original/image-20161028-15816-5q8xua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=955&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Connections: Michael Gove and Sarah Vine.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Yui Mok PA Archive/PA Images</span></span>
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<p>The fact that Gove has returned so quickly to a position at the Times has irked the editor of Private Eye, Ian Hislop. Hislop recently told the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee that Gove’s reappointment <a href="https://www.totalpolitics.com/articles/news/ian-hislop-urges-investigation-michael-gove-and-rupert-murdoch">should be investigated</a> because of his past closeness to Murdoch while in government. There was the possibility, posited Hislop, that the relationship may have influenced political decisions. Hislop told the committee:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I sat through the entire proceedings of Leveson in which one of the main points was the closeness of the relationship between senior members of the Conservative party and Mr Murdoch. And Mr Gove has had a number of meetings with him when he was in various of his departments. So I think there is a question there about when you are in office … imagining a future when you might need the generosity of say Mr Murdoch to sustain your career and whether that would influence the decisions you’ve made.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Blurring the lines</h2>
<p>That’s as maybe – and Hislop is no doubt also aware of Daniel Finkelstein, now <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/biographies/lords/lord-finkelstein/4283">Lord Finkelstein OBE</a>. In 2013, when the Times columnist was elevated to the Lords, <a href="http://www.spectator.co.uk/2013/09/daniel-finkelstein-lord-of-journalism/">Peter Oborne wrote</a> about the collapse of the boundaries between politics and media and cited Finkelstein – a man he also described as “a decent, highly intelligent man, who lacks an ounce of malice” – as an example. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143645/original/image-20161028-15810-gbivpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143645/original/image-20161028-15810-gbivpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143645/original/image-20161028-15810-gbivpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143645/original/image-20161028-15810-gbivpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143645/original/image-20161028-15810-gbivpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143645/original/image-20161028-15810-gbivpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143645/original/image-20161028-15810-gbivpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Daniel Finkelstein.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">http://www.acumenimages.com</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Finkelstein is a Times political journalist who in 2011 became chairman of the Conservative Think Tank, Policy Exchange, and enjoyed a strong relationship with the chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, speaking on the phone to the latter “six or seven times a day. Probably more”. In his fascinating essay, Oborne stated:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As any newspaperman will recognise, Daniel Finkelstein has never in truth been a journalist at all. At the Times he was an ebullient and cheerful manifestation of what all of us can now recognise as a disastrous collaboration between Britain’s most powerful media empire and a morally bankrupt political class.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Club class</h2>
<p>In terms of political journalism, it is very easy to be cynical and view politicians and journalists as being part of one exclusive Westminster club which makes decisions based solely upon the needs of its membership. It may be the case that the hierarchy of the media – the <a href="http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/1992----02.htm">cultural managers</a> that Chomsky and Herman refer to: the editors, the leading columnists and so on – share a class interest with the political establishment. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"790845541685063680"}"></div></p>
<p>So there exists within the news media an institutional bias that guarantees the mobilisation of certain campaigns on the behalf of the elite few. And this never changes.</p>
<p>In all the column inches around the <a href="https://theconversation.com/press-regulation-in-britain-a-step-forward-and-a-step-back-67582">Impress verdict by the The Press Recognition Panel (PRP)</a> this week, one thing struck me as significant. In The Sun, the culture secretary, Karen Bradley, was quoted as saying the government was preparing for a “<a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2042988/government-signals-major-u-turn-in-its-war-on-press-freedom/">major U-turn in its war against press freedom</a>”. Her special adviser? <a href="http://order-order.com/2016/08/10/craig-woodhouse-to-be-dcms-spad/">Craig Woodhouse</a> – former chief political correspondent of the Sun.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67864/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Jewell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There appears to be a revolving door between Rupert Murdoch’s papers and the Conservative Party.John Jewell, Director of Undergraduate Studies, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/642902016-08-23T08:01:41Z2016-08-23T08:01:41ZA pub brawl over research funding doesn’t benefit any of us<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135125/original/image-20160823-30257-152s889.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Is this really how we want to decide where research funding should be allocated?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Here we go again. On Monday, we were interested to see The Daily Telegraph’s Natasha Bita and 2GB broadcaster Ray Hadley making a strong fist of implying they would make good directors of Australia’s research funding system, supported by a college of experts in suburban pubs.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/taxpayer-dollars-wasted-on-absurd-studies-that-do-nothing-to-advance-australian-research/news-story/c0c20e651da84b3f249f6e77405cfc7c">this piece in the Telegraph</a>, Bita provides us with some examples of what are headlined “‘absurd’ studies that do nothing to advance Australian research”. </p>
<p>Studies lined up for ridicule included a project to “investigate warfare in the ancient Tongan state through a study of earthwork fortifications”; another on “whether colleagues chatting in open-plan offices ‘creates annoyance’ and affects productivity”; and an investigation of the “post World War II evolution of the Australian university campus”. </p>
<p>Hadley <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/research-funding-for-obscure-projects-needs-closer-examination-morrison-warns/news-story/602d7b2ecdba18fd1b1dbc4d41c763a6">joined in the ruck</a>, suggesting that the Australian Research Council (ARC) should be forced to “justify its grants in the front bar of a pub in western Sydney or northside Brisbane”.</p>
<h2>Get a new hobby horse folks, this one’s dead</h2>
<p>It’s all so sadly familiar: lazy swipes by lazy blowhards at lazy academics lazing their way through granting procedures (notwithstanding the fact that these procedures are hyper-competitive). It seems like this has happened nearly every year since taxpayer dollars started being spent on science and research.</p>
<p>In 2014, Fox News joined with Texas Republican Representative Lamar Smith in <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/09/28/feds-spend-300k-on-study-on-how-to-ride-bikes.html">lambasting “wasted” US National Science Foundation money</a>. In 2013, while in opposition, Australian Liberal MP Jamie Briggs condemned <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/education/pyne-steps-back-on-grants-audit/news-story/a2c86e334b8c560ad45c8419ffde759d">“completely over-the-top” and “ridiculous”</a> grants. </p>
<p>As is now standard, these attackers often stress that they’re not against science and research <em>per se</em>; they’re just upset that research they don’t value is taking money away from the research they reckon really matters. </p>
<p>It seems all such commentators really <em>know</em> <a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/taxpayer-dollars-wasted-on-absurd-studies-that-do-nothing-to-advance-australian-research/news-story/c0c20e651da84b3f249f6e77405cfc7c">what valuable research looks like</a> and what it does not. And in Australia they apparently also know exactly whom to call on to back them up.</p>
<h2>All roads lead to a western Sydney pub</h2>
<p>If you’re Ray Hadley, for example, the only way to collect genuine, representative views on things we should value – and therefore fund – is to go to a pub in western Sydney. It’s as if these pubs are populated by the most genuine Australians: people united in a single dream of how the perfect Australia should look, and moreover that it’s the <em>right</em>, perhaps <em>only</em>, dream.</p>
<p>In Ray’s view, discourse in these Utopian drinking establishments represents the true north of Australian public opinion, which naturally includes how best to prioritise research funding. </p>
<p>But why on earth would this be our yardstick for measuring value? </p>
<p>If we’re going to talk about what people do and don’t value, ask us what we think about motor sport, AFL, or hipster poetry slams. We’re not huge fans. But saying that doesn’t mean we think they are without some intrinsic value, or aren’t incredibly important to others, or shouldn’t be supported by the government or community at large. </p>
<p>You see, people differ. Sometimes we are interested in things that others aren’t, and that’s OK. That’s part of living in societies and agreeing to hand over a proportion of our income in order to maintain, and nurture, these societies. And it’s not as if the government doesn’t fund things like <a href="http://www.ausport.gov.au/supporting/funding">sport</a>. </p>
<h2>Being different is damned useful</h2>
<p>Over the last ten thousand years or so, humans have come up with this great thing called specialisation. Instead of everyone being a food-collecting, house-building, animal-husbanding generalist, we’ve discovered that having some people excel at spouting confected rage on the radio, and other people being good at assessing the quality of research, is a good thing for us as a society. </p>
<p>So for Australian society, how could an idealised, homogeneous subset of working-class (and typically white male) pub-goers be the ultimate litmus test for deciding if something is of value <em>to the whole country</em>? </p>
<p>In what possible world would they be the sole, and best, representatives of all Australian people – all taxpayers, all parents, all community groups, everyone? In what possible world is <em>any</em> single demographic group going to be?</p>
<p>There are innumerable potential problems out there, so many that we can’t be sure we even know what all of them are, better yet which are most important to invest money and research effort in.</p>
<p>And it’s impossible to tell which individual idea or piece of research might trigger the next revolutionary breakthrough. Few people anticipated that optimising radio telescopes would yield <a href="http://www.csiro.au/en/About/History-achievements/Top-10-inventions">Wi-Fi</a>, or that bird watching would lead to an understanding of <a href="http://australianmuseum.net.au/gould-and-his-contribution-to-science">evolution</a>, or that the musings of a few philosophers would transform our <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations">economy</a>.</p>
<p><em>We</em> don’t know precisely what research should be funded today, and neither do Hadley, or Bita, or the individual researchers submitting their research grants, “absurd” or otherwise. We’re sure we would all agree that investing in anything is risky, so like any sensible investor, society diversifies when allocating its collective research dollars. </p>
<p>And to the degree that anyone decides where the money should be spent, it should be people who have the knowledge and expertise to <a href="https://theconversation.com/if-youre-going-to-ridicule-research-do-your-homework-64238">understand</a> and judge the relative merits of research proposals.</p>
<p>Of course, we prioritise a sizeable chunk of the total research kitty to certain areas, pursuits, problems and interests. But to arbitrarily decide that a research area is literally of no value because five guys in a pub in a particular part of the country <em>might</em> laugh at the grant proposal title? Who’s being absurd now?</p>
<h2>Is this really just about exchanging cathartic rants?</h2>
<p>It’s fair to say that some of our colleagues in academia are unquestionably as dismissive of the priorities of Ray Hadley’s mythical, homogeneous, working class pub-goer as those pub-goers allegedly are of them.</p>
<p>It’s also fair to say that we from the research side of town could do more to be available, relevant and intelligible to people who would like to ask questions of us, to know more about what we do, and perhaps to make suggestions about what we <em>should</em> do. This is, at least in part, a failure of the research class to reach out beyond its own borders.</p>
<p>But we also have to ask: how much do people want to be reached out to? We ourselves wouldn’t want people constantly cluttering our Facebook timelines, inboxes, Twitter feeds and pub chats with attempts to make us like motor sports, AFL, hipster poetry slams or Donald Trump. </p>
<p>Honestly, we’re happy for other people to prioritise spending money (yes, even sacred taxpayer money) on things even if we don’t personally value them. We also hope that in turn perhaps they might be able to be accept us wanting to know more about the post World War II evolution of the Australian university campus.</p>
<p>In the end, perhaps the solution to this constantly rehashed problem of conflicting priorities is simply to acknowledge that people will always have conflicting priorities, and think about how best to live alongside each other: mythical, homogeneous pub-goer and irrelevant, out-of-touch academic alike? </p>
<p>Not all differences of opinion are problems that need to, or even <em>can</em>, be solved.</p>
<p>Perhaps instead of periodically lobbing abusive word-bombs at each other via our media outlet of choice, we could all occasionally go to a pub halfway between <em>Western</em> Sydney and the <em>University</em> of Sydney, ask each other a few questions, and raise a glass to the wonder that is the diversity of Australian culture. Surely we’d agree we’ve all benefited from that. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Will Grant will be online for an Author Q&A between 10 and 11am AEST on Wednesday, 24 August, 2016. Post any questions you have in the comments below.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64290/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rod Lamberts has in the past received funding from the ARC. He is also an avid pub-talker about research as co-host of The Wholesome Show </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Will J Grant receives funding from the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science. He also communicates possibly obscure research in a pub via The Wholesome Show. </span></em></p>Well, here we are again. Lazy swipes by lazy blowhards at lazy academics lazing their way through hyper competitive granting procedures.Rod Lamberts, Deputy Director, Australian National Centre for Public Awareness of Science, Australian National UniversityWill J Grant, Researcher / Lecturer, Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/553822016-02-25T23:47:27Z2016-02-25T23:47:27ZEnd of an era in regional publishing as APN puts papers up for sale<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112987/original/image-20160225-15160-9se4w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">APN's regional arm includes 12 daily newspapers.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Twitter</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This week <a href="http://mumbrella.com.au/apn-news-media-australian-regional-media-sell-revenues-348949">APN News & Media announced</a> it planned to sell off its regional newspaper business. </p>
<p>It signals the end of an era. Regional publishing has been at the heart of APN since <a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/collapse-the-fall-of-tony-o-reilly-1.2348585">Tony O’Reilly</a> bought the Queensland newspapers from Rupert Murdoch in the late 1980s.</p>
<p>The sale paves the way for Murdoch’s News Corp to buy them back. As well as being a 14.9% shareholder of APN, News Corp already has dailies in <a href="http://www.cairnspost.com.au/">Cairns</a>, <a href="http://www.townsvillebulletin.com.au/">Townsville</a> and the <a href="http://www.goldcoastbulletin.com.au/">Gold Coast</a> so the additional Queensland papers could complement those. APN also has a <a href="http://mumbrella.com.au/apn-bolsters-its-new-regional-paywalls-offering-readers-access-to-a-slew-of-news-corp-assets-313385">bundling arrangement</a> with News to give paid regional newspaper subscribers access to News Corp titles. Added to that News Corp’s Executive Chairman, Michael Miller, is a former CEO of APN News & Media. It’s clear they would know how to value the business for a purchase.</p>
<p>APN’s newspapers comprise twelve daily papers and more than 30 community papers and specialist publications. They cover an area from <a href="http://www.coffscoastadvocate.com.au/">Coffs Harbour</a> in Northern NSW to <a href="http://www.dailymercury.com.au/">Mackay</a> in North Queensland. </p>
<p>Most of the papers were originally founded as family or local concerns, often with their own printing press. But under the management of APN in recent years a lot of the production was centralised to the offices of the “flagship” <a href="http://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/">Sunshine Coast Daily</a>.</p>
<p>That proved to be a hard sell, as editors in North Queensland or New South Wales felt their pages were losing the local touch readers demanded.</p>
<p>For city dwellers it’s difficult to register the sheer size of the geography APN’s regional publishing covers. And from a commercial perspective it seems the logistics and costs of running a collection of small newspapers across such a spread has just become too painful.</p>
<p>The inside joke about APN has always been that it is the biggest media company no one has ever heard of. That might have been true before the company rebranded its outdoor business and highly visible billboards in Melbourne and Sydney suddenly appeared bearing the APN name.</p>
<p>But in regional Queensland and Northern New South Wales it has been well known for years, a vital part of the local economies and a key training ground for young journalists.</p>
<p>Some of the titles are over 150 years old. <a href="http://www.dailyexaminer.com.au/">The Daily Examiner</a> in Grafton and <a href="http://www.qt.com.au/">The Queensland Times</a> in Ipswich were both founded in 1859. Five of the other dailies are more than 140 years old. That represents an enormous amount of history and an incredibly valuable connection to regions such as Rockhampton, Mackay, the Fraser Coast and Lismore.</p>
<p>But the web has well and truly arrived in these places, and despite holding out until 2006, APN did eventually join the digital race. </p>
<p>With such a long print tradition it was inevitable that a digital transition would not be smooth. In addition to the same challenges that metro publishers face in becoming digitally focused, APN also had to deal with a unique set of issues such as local advertiser expectations.</p>
<p>From this week’s news it appears perhaps the corner has been turned. The company reported consistent digital audience growth and, after introducing paywalls, 86% conversion to subscriptions of those who trialled the offer. </p>
<p>But it seems the effort has been too much and it’s time to get out.</p>
<h2>Potential buyers</h2>
<p>So who might the buyers be for a network of newspapers with shrinking print sales and some digital growth, where costs have been stripped to the bone, but where the footprint covers a potent mix of rural, mining and tourism based regional economies?</p>
<p>The two obvious starters are News Corp and Fairfax Media. Either company could roll its digital technology into the APN network and bolster the sales teams for network advertising sales. </p>
<p>Fairfax might be interested, to help support its Domain business. Domain struck a resell deal with APN in 2009 which gave it reach into northern property markets it otherwise couldn’t get to. At a very low price it might be interested. But it’s hard to see Fairfax getting involved in the slog of local publishing in those regions.</p>
<p>A dark horse might be The West Australian. It showed some interest a few years ago because of the Queensland mining jobs boom and the chance of joining east coast mining job ads to its west coast listings. But mining is on the wane and The West’s digital platforms are now all sourced from Yahoo. So a purchase like this is probably unlikely. </p>
<p>That leaves a possible break up and a series of smaller sales to independents and local groups. In the long run that might be best for local markets, but it would be a slow and difficult process for APN unless there was a conglomerate of small groups ready to go and with a network ad sales plan to execute.</p>
<p>So while Fairfax probably has the cleanest balance sheet of the big players, my bet would be on News Corp picking up a bargain by buying back the papers it sold in 1988.</p>
<p>Under that scenario the winners - apart from News - would be readers and their communities. It might seem counter-intuitive that further reduction in the number of news providers through a purchase by News Corp would be a good thing for readers, but in this case the alternative might be that the papers actually cease publishing in any form. News Corp would offer welcome stability, publishing expertise in all formats and a solid commitment to the regions. </p>
<p>There might, however, be some consolidation of titles particularly around the Sunshine Coast, where The Sunshine Coast Daily and the Noosa News compete directly with existing News Corp publications.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55382/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hugh Martin was General Manager of APN Online from 2007-2010.</span></em></p>The sale of APN’s regional newspaper arm could see Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp buy back the papers it sold in the ‘80s.Hugh Martin, Lecturer in Journalism, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/342582014-11-14T13:33:30Z2014-11-14T13:33:30ZPanorama and the Fake Sheikh: trawling tabloid excesses<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64584/original/cj5mfrp7-1415968748.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The picture Mazher Mahmood's lawyers didn't want you to see.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC Panorama.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Well, there was a lot of mucking about, but <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04p1zlb">Panorama</a> has finally broadcast its exposé of Sun on Sunday journalist Mazher Mahmood, widely known as the “Fake Sheikh”. The programme had been scheduled for Monday November 10, but – just one and a half hours before it was due to go out – the BBC decided<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/nov/11/bbc-panorama-fake-sheikh-expose-james-harding-mazher-mahmood"> not to air</a>.</p>
<p>Mahmood’s lawyers had wanted to protect his anonymity – seeking to prevent any images of him post 2006 being broadcast, but this was rejected by the High Court and leave to appeal was refused by the Court of Appeal. It seemed that it was all systems go until Mahmood’s legal team expressed <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/fake-sheikh-bbc-panorama-show-not-shown-after-legal-challenge-1474174">eleventh hour concerns </a>about the content of a section in the documentary involving one of Mahmood’s high-profile stings.</p>
<p>But this was a delaying tactic and on Thursday the BBC went ahead and transmitted what turned out to be a damning indictment of the journalistic practices of the man responsible for, in his own words to the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/leveson-inquiry-fake-sheikh-mazher-mahmood-exposed-wrongdoing-6275958.html">Leveson enquiry</a>, more than 500 tabloid revelations leading to 260 criminal convictions.</p>
<p>There is some poetic justice, I suppose, in a man who has gained such success from pretending to be someone he is not, being revealed for who he really is. And let’s not forget how Mahmood made his name.</p>
<p>In a vastly successful career, including 20 years at the News of the World where he rose to be investigations editor, Mahmood exposed the follies and greed of the rich, famous and, to be sure, the downright criminal. His investigations led to the imprisonment of actors for the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2707306/Former-London-s-Burning-star-reveals-Fake-Sheikh-destroyed-Tulisa-style-cocaine-sting-left-without-job-benefits.html">purchase of cocaine</a>, the exposure of corruption in <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15573463">Pakistani cricket</a> and the tricking of then England manager <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2006/jan/16/pressandpublishing.football">Sven Goran Erikson</a> into saying he would quit his England role if the team won the World Cup and was prepared to become the £5m-a-year manager of Aston Villa.</p>
<p>It was at the News of the World where the “fake sheikh” persona was cultivated. Mahmood would dress as an Arab noble and appeal to the vanities of his targets. In one of his most famous stories, Sophie Wessex was enticed to the Dorchester hotel by the prospect of handling the £20,000 a month PR account for a Saudi Prince. Once there, Prince Edward’s wife described “President Blair” (this was 2001) the “frightening” tax rises and “pap budget” presided over by Gordon Brown. The News of the World of gleefully reported all the details.</p>
<p>No expense was spared on creating the façade, as the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/the-fake-sheikh-and-his-greatest-hits-310570.html">Independent</a>reported in 2005:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The sheikh routine is well rehearsed. The white jalabia is accompanied by a flowing robe and the agal, or headdress. Then there is a special black and gold robe, only worn by members of the 25,000-strong House of Saud. Expensive shoes and a Rolex watch complete the routine, along with a Ferrari or a helicopter. He also likes to puff away on a hubble-bubble pipe as he coaxes the story out of his victim.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is these techniques that led to previous accusations that Mahmood is an <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-28403821">agent provocateur</a> who preys on the foibles of the otherwise innocent, tempting them to commit acts in any other circumstances they would not. In 2006, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/why-i-am-out-to-nail-mazher-mahmood-474264.htm">Roy Greenslade</a>, who was once boss of Mahmood at The Sunday Times, wrote: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I want to put an end to his regular use of subterfuge, the most controversial weapon in journalism’s armoury. I want him to mothball the fake sheikh’s robes. And I want his paper, the News of the World, to take a long, hard look at its journalistic ethics and to reconsider its editorial agenda.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Mahmood told Panorama that he had spent his career investigating crime and wrongdoing and had used legitimate methods that brought individuals to justice. He said any criticism of him usually came from those with “an axe to grind”.</p>
<h2>Only way is ethics</h2>
<p>Panorama certainly examined journalistic ethics – that and much more. John Sweeney’s 30-minute programme heard from many of Mahmood’s alleged victims and his former colleague, Steve Grayson, who candidly admitted to setting up model Emma Morgan as a cocaine dealer. Grayson <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04p1zlb">told Sweeney</a>: “He [Mahmood] is a drug dealer, we’re drug dealers, we have paid this guy to supply the drugs to give to her.”</p>
<p>More importantly, perhaps, the programme referred to the alleged relationship between Mahmood and the Metropolitan police. It was stated that he had links with corrupt police officers and a private detective firm called Southern Investigations. One document highlighted by Panorama said: “Source met Maz, a News of the World reporter … on this occasion Maz was with a plainclothes officer … The officer was selling a story to Maz.”</p>
<h2>Perjury investigation</h2>
<p>All this is complicated by the fact that Mahmood is now under investigation by the Met for perjury and suspended from the Sun on Sunday following the collapse of the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-28403821">Tulisa Contostavlos trial in July</a>. X Factor star Tulisa, who also appeared on the Panorama programme, faced charges of intent to supply cocaine after being filmed by Mahmood who was posing as a Hollywood movie executive. Appearing as a prosecution witness the judge threw the case out saying that the trial could not go any further because, said Justice Alistair McCreath, there were “strong grounds to believe” that Mahmood had “lied” at a hearing before the trial started.</p>
<p>For former attorney-general Lord Goldsmith this means that convictions which occurred as a result of Mahmood’s evidence in previous cases now need examination. He told Panorama:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The fact that somebody who has been accused by a judge of apparently of not telling the truth may be instrumental in those convictions would certainly be a reason to look at those convictions again and to examine them to see whether they are safe.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>John Alford, an actor jailed following a Mahmood sting in 1997, would certainly welcome any investigation at all. He appeared at the end of Panorama, on the verge of tears, to exclaim: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>No one can give me the 18 years I’ve lost, no one can give me that back. </p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.superlawyers.com/london/article/One-Rogue-Solicitor/2320f264-f989-4888-9cbb-bd3d43703ba9.html%20i">Mark Lewis</a>, a media law, libel and privacy lawyer who filed the first phone-hacking civil case against News of the World is in no doubt about the severity of Mahmood’s alleged actions he said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The damage that’s caused, the damage for people’s livelihoods, the amount of people sent to prison, it’s a far more serious thing than phone hacking ever was.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Of course, the phone hacking scandal hasn’t gone away, either. On November 7 the former editor of the News of the World, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/nov/07/ian-edmondson-jailed-eight-months-phone-hacking-news-of-the-world">Ian Edmondson</a> was sentenced to 8 months in prison whilst Operation Elveden, the investigation by the Metropolitan Police into alleged payments to public officials for information by journalists, currently has three trials in the criminal courts. </p>
<p>On trial in in Kingston Crown Court are journalists and senior newspaper executives comprising the <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/trial-six-sun-journalists-accused-paying-public-officials-set-start-kingston-crown-court">“Sun Six”</a>. These are still dark days for tabloid news journalism and there’s more to come. With more <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/nov/13/mazher-mahmood-potential-victims-bbc-panorama-fake-sheikh">potential victims</a> of Mahmood’s set to come forward in the wake of Panorama, it may be a long time before we see the light.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34258/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Well, there was a lot of mucking about, but Panorama has finally broadcast its exposé of Sun on Sunday journalist Mazher Mahmood, widely known as the “Fake Sheikh”. The programme had been scheduled for…John Jewell, Director of Undergraduate Studies, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/277532014-06-24T11:30:44Z2014-06-24T11:30:44ZHacking trial verdict: Coulson guilty and Brooks cleared, but end of an era for the red tops<p>So, Andy Coulson has been found guilty of plotting to hack phones – but former colleague Rebekah Brooks walked free after the jury in the hacking trial cleared her of all criminal charges. The verdicts mark more than the end of the case which has unfolded at the Old Bailey <a href="http://inforrm.wordpress.com/2014/06/11/phone-hacking-trial-jury-retire-to-consider-their-verdicts-martin-hickman/">for the past eight months</a>. They also come at the end of an era in British popular journalism.</p>
<p>Not a golden age, certainly, but a distinct period during which tabloid or “red-top” journalism walked tall, looking down on more serious newspapers and their scruples. For the past half century, the mass-selling papers with red mastheads (or logos) had defied the logic of media history and swaggered at the centre of the stage.</p>
<p>That they reached this position at all was something of a miracle achieved against logic and the odds. The coming of television in the 1950s changed the landscape of news media, but not in the way that most predictions expected. Newspapers were not put out of business by television news, just as they had not been abolished by radio in the 1920s. But all the same, broadcasting undermined the foundations on which popular print journalism had been built. </p>
<h2>Irreverent, snappy, noisy</h2>
<p>Papers cheap enough to be afforded by millions had been published in Britain since the late 19th century. They were irreverent, snappy and noisy, drawing much of their inspiration and style both from working-class Sunday papers devoted to crime and sensation and from (then) brasher American papers. But at the start of the 20th century, British popular papers carried plenty of politics and social commentary alongside. They scorned long-winded writing and established pieties and did so with relish. <a href="http://www.athlone.ie/people-of-note/tp-o-connor">T P O’Connor</a>, editor of the swashbuckling Star (founded in 1888), once casually dismissed one of the major events in the political calendar as “<a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=w2t_AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA122&lpg=PA122&dq=the+few+dozen+lines+of+drivel+known+as+the+Queen%E2%80%99s+Speech&source=bl&ots=ursrhM0cs4&sig=e501ERuYltH1QDca9jTQ_GZXjfQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=RmSZU6_ROcjYPIvzgfAM&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=the%20few%20dozen%20lines%20of%20drivel%20known%20as%20the%20Queen%E2%80%99s%20Speech&f=false">the few dozen lines of drivel known as the Queen’s Speech</a>”. </p>
<p>But by the start of the 21st century, that mixture of silly and serious no longer worked. First radio and then television began a long, gradual process of cramping the style of popular papers. They could no longer mix education and entertainment delivered with brio: they could only entertain. By the time phone-hacking was rife ten years ago, truly investigative stories were unusual.</p>
<p>But they still had huge circulations, which promised profits if only publishers and editors could colonise new parts of the market which broadcasters could not reach. Politicians still paid court to titles with readerships in the millions and cared about which way they spun coverage of politics. Cosy relationships with politicians of all parties left editors, particularly of Rupert Murdoch’s London popular papers, feeling that they were invulnerable.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/50939/original/x35v6c9x-1402561698.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/50939/original/x35v6c9x-1402561698.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/50939/original/x35v6c9x-1402561698.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50939/original/x35v6c9x-1402561698.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50939/original/x35v6c9x-1402561698.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50939/original/x35v6c9x-1402561698.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=981&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50939/original/x35v6c9x-1402561698.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=981&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50939/original/x35v6c9x-1402561698.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=981&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Not true - but who cared?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.bandt.com.au/news/media/could-it-be-the-tele-wot-won-it">B&T</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“It was The Sun Wot Won It” was an arrogantly arresting headline after the unexpected Conservative victory in the General Election of 1992. The fact that the claim was almost certainly wrong did not stop a lot of people believing it. The diaries of Piers Morgan, made editor of the News of the World at the age of 28 and later editor of the Daily Mirror, are an entertaining string of encounters with deferential politicians and trivial disclosures with occasionally life-wrecking consequences. The high point of the Daily Mirror’s circulation had been 1966; Morgan was sacked for presiding over the publication of faked pictures of British soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners.</p>
<h2>Leveson pressure</h2>
<p>The state of the popular papers was laid bare by the long <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140122145147/http:/www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/about/the-report/">Leveson report</a> after the inquiry into phone-hacking. By the time the report was published in 2012, there were three separate Scotland Yard inquiries into phone interception, computer hacking and bribery of civil servants. The trial just ended is the largest case brought after those inquiries but it is not the only one; others are still to come.</p>
<p>Lord Leveson described a “press” which no longer dominated news but which had become increasingly devoted to finding ways round law and regulation in order to keep up a level of intrusion which would keep circulation-raising stories coming. His report describes the fury of the popular papers when a public agency was created with the job of enforcing data protection laws. The man once in charge of that agency told Leveson how angry newspapers had been when he <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16108643">tried to restrict “blagging”</a>, the use of private detectives to get hold of ex-directory phone numbers, mobile phone bills and home addresses:</p>
<p>“Although they rested their case … on threats to investigative journalism, I was surprised by how hard they were fighting, and it really left me with a message that we were challenging something which went to the heart of much of the – certainly tabloid press activity. Someone once said to me: ‘You do realise that you are challenging their whole business model?’”</p>
<p>That was not the only pressure on the business of popular papers. By the 1990s, circulations were declining slowly but steadily. Advertising revenue remained healthy, but long-term prospects were poor. It was not obvious – and still isn’t today – how the popular paper formulas could take advantage of online publishing. There was plenty of demand for gossip, but the market was being won by agile digital natives with sites like Gawker in the US or Popbitch in Britain.</p>
<h2>Kiss and tell</h2>
<p>Celebrity scandal had become a specialised business in which journalists operated as traders in a market for revelation and editors negotiated obstacle courses erected by equally specialised lawyers engaged to protect the reputation of their clients. As markets usually do, a new breed of brokers and middlemen emerged to make sure that supply and demand were matched. As privacy laws tightened around the world over the last 15 years, these stories became riskier.</p>
<p>Max Clifford was the acknowledged king of “kiss-and-tell”. If you had slept with someone famous, or even slightly well-known, and you wanted to make money, you told Max Clifford. Clifford, on first name terms with editors and celebrities, well-known for his charity work, would cut a deal. </p>
<p>But Clifford had another life. As controversies still swirl around the failure to prevent sexual abuse of children by the celebrity disc jockey Jimmy Saville, the 71-year-old Clifford <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16108643">was convicted in April</a> of eight indecent assaults on girls as young as 15. He was sentenced to eight years in jail.</p>
<p>The abrupt closure of the News of the World by Rupert Murdoch in 2011 when the phone-hacking scandal turned into a storm opened the last act of the drama which saw a small group of once-potent papers stripped of most of their power. This does not mean that demand for celebrity gossip has gone, merely that it is being supplied by other sources. The internet has brought back tabloid sensibility to the American news media: it’s not being done by newspapers but by a new generation of snarky, revelatory and unashamedly trashy websites.</p>
<p>“Tabloid” stories will be with us as long as there is human curiosity about other peoples’ private lives. But the British “tabloids” have had their day.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/27753/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>George Brock worked for The Times, owned by News International, 1981-2009.</span></em></p>So, Andy Coulson has been found guilty of plotting to hack phones – but former colleague Rebekah Brooks walked free after the jury in the hacking trial cleared her of all criminal charges. The verdicts…George Brock, Head of Journalism, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/202572013-11-14T19:46:14Z2013-11-14T19:46:14ZA New Daily, new models and new hope: journalism’s silver lining<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/35287/original/5cck3hf5-1384407097.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">New digital media entrant The New Daily injects a hopeful note into the media landscape. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">A screenshot of The New Daily.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>November is a month of two tales for the Australian media industry: one of hope, the other of despair.</p>
<p>The arrival on Wednesday of the online news site The New Daily, and <a href="http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/11/07/saturdays-with-morry-schwartz-to-launch-new-newspaper/">reports</a> that The Monthly’s publisher Morry Schwartz is set to launch a new Saturday newspaper, are the industry’s good news stories. In a boost for democracy, the new startups add diversity to Australia’s highly concentrated ownership of news media, and provide experienced journalists with full-time jobs.</p>
<p>But first, the industry’s bad news. Last week’s annual general meetings and financial market disclosures revealed a grim advertising market for Australia’s two largest print media owners. Fairfax Media’s total group revenues fell 8.2% compared to the year before. Its larger rival, News Corp Australia, reported even sharper revenue falls of 22% for its Australian mastheads. Advertising shortfalls also struck a blow to free-to-air television. In October, Channel Ten <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2012/s3613583.htm">reported a A$285 million loss</a>. In 2012, these three proprietors between them <a href="http://lib.oup.com.au/he/media_journalism/samples/tanner_journalismresearch_sample.pdf">shed 3000 jobs</a>.</p>
<p>The latest <a href="http://mumbrella.com.au/abcs-newspapers-3-188553">print circulation figures</a> are also gloomy. The recently turned tabloid Monday-to-Friday editions of Fairfax’s The Age and Sydney Morning Herald fell 15% compared to the same quarter the year before. News Corp’s Sydney tabloid The Daily Telegraph also fell 15%. The broadsheets from both companies fared slightly better. The Australian slipped almost 8%; the broadsheet Saturday editions of The Age and Sydney Morning Herald dropped around 12%. On the upside, digital paywalls’ revenues increased, but not enough to offset print losses.</p>
<p>Now, the good news. Australian journalism is flourishing despite print newspapers’ decline. Not only are new start-ups appearing, they are showing that journalism does not need to be funded through a traditional market model. Non-market and mixed-market models, as well as cross-media collaborations, offer high hopes for quality journalism.</p>
<p>Look at the latest entrant, The New Daily. With significant start-up funding of A$6 million, together with online advertising, the digital news website has hired 11 skilled journalists — many from the news desks of established newspapers — but unlike most mainstream media sites The New Daily is not reliant on hardcopy advertising, masthead sales or paywalls to subsidise its journalism. This is not unprecedented in Australia, but it is significant.</p>
<p>Unlike the United States, there are still relatively few Australian online news sites that employ journalists to produce original journalism, which are not dependent on traditional media’s resources and revenues.</p>
<p>Crikey, New Matilda, the Australian edition of the Guardian, the Global Mail and The Conversation are among the small number of Australian digital news sites that employ journalists without a local hardcopy version to attract advertising revenue.</p>
<p>Each of these news sites provides hope for Australian journalism, offering quality reporting, and each is funded slightly differently with a mix of market and non-market mechanisms to pay its journalists.</p>
<p>While it is early days, and there should be no pretending that starting up a digital-only news site is easy, it can be done.</p>
<p>The Sydney-based Australian Guardian, which launched earlier this year — admittedly funded in part by its British parent — also attracts philanthropic support from Wotif founder Graeme Wood and through local advertising. Its Australian editor-in-chief Katharine Viner has flagged its newsroom will expand to Melbourne soon.</p>
<p>In 2012, Wood also donated A$15 million to start Australia’s first philanthropically funded news site, the Global Mail. Like the philanthropically funded US public interest website ProPublica, the Global Mail is a not-for-profit news and features website offering independent journalism. But in 2013 — proving that the startup path can be difficult — shed 20% of its journalists.</p>
<p>Crikey, another influential Australian online news site, relies on the traditional market model of advertising and subscription. New Matilda, which has had its share of tumult, closing and reopening due to financial woes, has managed to survive through crowd sourcing donations. </p>
<p>Since 2011, The Conversation has operated with mixed funding from academia, industry and government and public donations. It employs professional editors and collaborates with academics to provide Australians with expert opinion, analysis and reporting. More than a million readers visit the site each month.</p>
<p>My research into who will pay for expensive journalism such as investigative reporting in an era of declining newspaper revenues to support it, found investigative journalism was in fact thriving partly because online and print media were engaging in cross-media and institutional collaborations to produce it. We saw this when The Age’s Nick McKenzie returned to his former employer the ABC to broadcast on 7.30 his print story about corrupt custom officers at Sydney Airport. The two media organisations have collaborated on several stories since.</p>
<p>Three points are particularly innovative about the latest entrant, The New Daily: its <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-13/new-daily-launches/5087940">novel source of funding</a> (backed by three of Australia’s largest superannuation funds which have contributed A$2 million each), its ready-made audience and its commercial agreement with the ABC to share audio and video news content. My research found cross-media collaborations with established media deliver larger audiences and boost story impact.</p>
<p>The three industry super funds, United Super (CBus), Australian Super and Industry Super Holdings are understood to be using their administrative budget (rather than investment portfolios) to contract Motion Publishing to produce The New Daily. Motion Publishing’s directors include experienced media proprietors and editors: Eric Beecher, Paul Hamra and Bruce Guthrie. Guthrie, The New Daily’s managing editor, says the site will provide the latest news plus financial stories directed at improving Australians’ financial literacy. Guthrie has signed an agreement of editorial independence with the superannuation fund owners to guard against editorial interference. And, if all goes to plan, the next step for this new media entrant is investigative reporting.</p>
<p>If there is a lesson to be learned this month it is that print media’s grim future should not be conflated with the outlook for Australian journalism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/20257/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrea Carson has previously worked as a journalist at Fairfax Media for The Age and as a radio producer for the ABC at 774.</span></em></p>November is a month of two tales for the Australian media industry: one of hope, the other of despair. The arrival on Wednesday of the online news site The New Daily, and reports that The Monthly’s publisher…Andrea Carson, Honorary Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism , The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/139952013-05-19T20:18:55Z2013-05-19T20:18:55ZWhose views skew the news? Media chiefs ready to vote out Labor, while reporters lean left<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/23894/original/g7286hd7-1368661594.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">While reporters' political biases are always hotly debated, other biases remain - including too few voices from diverse backgrounds.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Most Australian journalists describe themselves as left-wing, yet amongst those who wield the real power in the country’s newsrooms, the Coalition holds a winning lead. </p>
<p>But while the media’s political leanings will no doubt be debated in the lead-up to September’s federal election, our study has also found other largely unscrutinised biases remain - particularly whose views disproportionately shape the news.</p>
<p>Conducted between May 2012 and March this year, the University of the Sunshine Coast’s representative survey of 605 journalists around Australia found that more than half (51.0%) describe themselves as holding left-of-centre political views, compared with only 12.9% who consider themselves right-of-centre.</p>
<p>It is the first study of its kind in more than 20 years to involve such a large number of journalists, and follows on from the <a href="http://www.cios.org/EJCPUBLIC/003/3/00337.HTML">work of John Henningham</a> in the early 1990s.</p>
<p>Our survey was conducted by telephone with carefully selected journalists from newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations, online news sites and news agency AAP, as a sample of the 8000 to 10,000 journalists in Australia today.</p>
<p>When asked about their voting intentions, less than two-thirds of the journalists we surveyed revealed their voting intention. Of those 372 people, 43.0% said they would give their first preference vote to Labor; 30.2% would vote for the Coalition; and 19.4% said they would choose the Greens - about twice the Australian average.</p>
<h2>Media bosses more in sync with voters</h2>
<p>Yet, among those who arguably matter most – the journalists in senior editorial ranks who have the most power to decide news agendas – a dramatically different picture emerged.</p>
<p>Among the 83 senior editors who took part in the survey, the Coalition was the party of choice on 43.2%, followed by Labor (34.1%) and the Greens (11.4%). </p>
<p>This suggests that Australia’s media bosses are more in line with the broader electorate, at least according to <a href="http://www.skynews.com.au/topstories/article.aspx?id=869918">recent Newspoll results</a>. </p>
<p>It is important to note that there is little research showing that journalists’ personal political biases affect their work.</p>
<p>When asked in this survey about a range of influences on their work, many journalists said their superiors have a much stronger influence than their personal values and beliefs. </p>
<h2>Aunty leans to the Greens</h2>
<p>An interesting finding emerged when we compare journalists from the three biggest news organisations in the country – <a href="http://www.news.com.au">News Limited</a>, <a href="http://www.fairfaxmedia.com.au/">Fairfax Media</a> and the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au">ABC</a>.</p>
<p>The national broadcaster has repeatedly been attacked for having a seemingly leftist bias, while others have accused News Limited - and particularly its flagship newspaper <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au">The Australian</a> - of being overly conservative in its political views. </p>
<p>At first glance, the findings do not support this assumption, with no significant differences in the way journalists from the ABC and News rate their political views on a scale of 0 (left) to 10 (right). </p>
<p>However, 41.2% of the 34 ABC journalists who declared a voting intention said they would vote for the Greens, followed by 32.4% for Labor and 14.7% for the Coalition. </p>
<p>In contrast, 46.5% of 86 News Limited journalists who answered this question said they would vote for Labor, 26.7% for the Coalition, and only 19.8% for the Greens. As well as The Australian, the News stable includes some of the country’s best-selling tabloids such as the Herald Sun, Daily Telegraph, Courier-Mail, Northern Territory News and the Adelaide Advertiser, and some suburban newspapers. </p>
<p>Among the 86 Fairfax Media journalists who responded, Labor was by far the most popular party at 54.7% support, followed by the Coalition and the Greens, both on 19.8%. The Fairfax journalists came from outlets including the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Canberra Times, a range of regional and suburban newspapers, and metropolitan radio stations.</p>
<p>If we disregard the 42.8% of journalists who are undecided, refused to answer or would vote for a party or candidate other than the major three, this is a statistically significant result.</p>
<p>It means that even though only a smaller number of journalists answered the voting intentions, which does increase the margin of error, it is still reasonable to conclude that there is a marked difference between the voting intentions of journalists at the three major media organisations.</p>
<h2>Australian stories that go untold</h2>
<p>Where in the country journalists work also seems to make a major difference. Journalists at metropolitan news media are significantly more left-wing in their political views. Labor would receive 52.6% of the metropolitan journalist vote, while in regional areas, 44.4% would vote for the Coalition.</p>
<p>Our study also found that while journalists recognise their own political biases, they may be less aware of their cultural bias.</p>
<p>An overwhelming majority of journalists in this country still come from a white, Anglo-Saxon background, with minorities very few and far between in mainstream journalism.</p>
<p>Three out of four journalists give their ethnicity as at least partly Anglo-Saxon. Only 4.7% said they have an Asian or Middle Eastern background, which is around half of what it should be to reflect the make-up of the Australian population.</p>
<p>Journalists identifying as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders representing just 1.8% of Australian journalists - again, disproportionately lower than the 2.5% of Australians with an Indigenous background.</p>
<p>This is further evidence to support the argument that Australian journalists’ worldviews and cultural backgrounds are still not representative of the general population. </p>
<p>And it is an aspect that many argue is reflected in Australian media reporting of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues, as well as in stories related to race and ethnicity.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Note: This research has been accepted for publication in the June edition of the Australian Journalism Review. The margin of error for the entire study sample is 4%. Sub-samples of journalists’ responses to some questions - such as voting intentions - are likely to have a higher margin error, however, appropriate statistical methods were used in testing for differences between sub-samples to take account of the smaller sample sizes. The survey response rate was 89.5%.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/13995/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Folker Hanusch does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Most Australian journalists describe themselves as left-wing, yet amongst those who wield the real power in the country’s newsrooms, the Coalition holds a winning lead. But while the media’s political…Folker Hanusch, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, University of the Sunshine CoastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/134112013-04-11T04:24:52Z2013-04-11T04:24:52Z‘Soccer hooligans’ of the Herald Sun’s making<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/22336/original/t2czfbn4-1365651179.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Herald Sun has described fans of A-League soccer club Melbourne Victory as 'soccer hooligans', a label many fans feel is unfair.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Martin Philbey</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 2011, I attempted <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-league-fans-dont-label-them-football-hooligans-3355">to warn</a> then-Victorian Police Superintendent Rod Wilson and Australian soccer’s governing body, Football Federation Australia, from “amplifying the actions of a few unruly football fans by inappropriately labelling them as hooligans in the media”.</p>
<p>In particular, I drew attention to the widespread “outsider image of football” within Australia as well as my unease at how all acts of spectator disorderliness at soccer matches were being labelled as “hooliganism”. I also took care to describe how such characterisations may help create, escalate and sustain violence at football matches.</p>
<p>My advice was informed by years of research into related problems in Europe in the period from 1863 to the present day. I concluded by pointing a way forward for the authorities:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Here’s hoping the Victoria Police rethink their policing strategy for the A-League 2011/12 season – for to do so would recognise that collective violence is a sort of conversation among and between its participants, which cannot be combated by merely suppressing violent ideas and punishing loutish behaviour.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Many things appear to have changed since 2011. Those soccer fans that are violent are now displaying a higher level of coordination, especially in ways that seek to mythologise past escapades both within the group and more widely through social media.</p>
<p>However, a number of things haven’t changed. The problem persists, at roughly the same level as it did in 2011 – perhaps tens, not hundreds, of fans are <a href="http://www.news.com.au/news/law-order/police-officer-hit-at-a-league-match-as-soccer-fans-erupt-at-aami-park/story-fnat79vb-1226579479112">arrested or evicted each game</a>. And the clubs, the governing body, and Victorian police are <a href="http://www.news.com.au/news/law-order/police-slam-fans-after-soccer-derby-leaves-trail-of-destruction/story-fnat79vb-1226567745753">making comparable statements</a> to those that were made in 2011.</p>
<p>What we are seeing is a discernible shift in the editorial agenda of Melbourne’s Herald Sun newspaper.</p>
<p>Whereas The Age and (to some degree) The Australian have stayed relatively quiet on the matter, or have <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/sport/soccer/hooliganism-at-derby-clash-was-worst-ever-20130204-2duj6.html">gone to pains</a> to emphasise how the problem is isolated to a select few supporters, the Herald Sun appears intent on manufacturing an image of the world game that isolates soccer and its supporters from Australian culture. As one Herald Sun opinion columnist, Rita Panahi, so passionately <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/ugly-soccer-fans-spoil-the-games-image-with-bad-behaviour-at-heart-victory-match/story-e6frfkp9-1226570283991">put it</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>And let’s set the record straight: it is called soccer in this country. Football is played with an oval ball on an oval ground.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/hostages-to-fan-violence/story-e6frfhqf-1226617676843">One editorial</a> tries to cause a rift between soccer and Australian rules football by referring to soccer’s “violent culture” in contrast to “other football codes”. We are led to believe that this behaviour is so unique to soccer’s A-League that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A football fan who enthusiastically barracks for his team at an AFL match one day may turn into an abusive and aggressive thug at a soccer match the next.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Herald Sun readers are <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/ugly-soccer-fans-spoil-the-games-image-with-bad-behaviour-at-heart-victory-match/story-e6frfkp9-1226570283991">routinely told</a> that soccer is replete with “simpleton fans” and “dim-witted semi-literates”, who employ “harebrained irrationality” because their “perpetual state of outrage” forever leads to “the type of aggressive ugliness that must be rooted in a deep sense of inadequacy”. And all that from someone who self-identifies herself as a “quintessential soccer mum”.</p>
<p>All this hateful speech because at Melbourne Victory soccer games we’re told, “the stadium sustained damage that simply doesn’t occur at AFL, NRL, Super Rugby or cricket games”. </p>
<p>Indeed, by Rita Panahi’s account: “you simply don’t see other fans behaving in such a manner. When someone causes trouble during an AFL game, the majority tend to turn on them”.</p>
<p>Really? Fox Sports soccer commentator Simon Hill <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/fox-sports-simon-hill-launches-empassioned-plea-for-fair-coverage-of/story-e6frf7jo-1226595870003">has tallied</a> the numbers, and found that actually:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>At [Melbourne] Victory matches this year…there had been a total (at all home games) of 36 evictions. An average of 3.25 per game. In an average attendance of 23,610. Doesn’t sound much like an epidemic to me. Those figures are roughly similar to the ejection figures for all AFL games at Etihad Stadium last season. In 2012, there were a total of 210 evictions over 47 games - an average of just over 4 per game.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Whatever your “opinion”, it seems when it comes to soccer the Herald Sun don’t value their readers by giving them historically, factually or conceptually informed ones.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/13411/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>N.A.J. Taylor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In 2011, I attempted to warn then-Victorian Police Superintendent Rod Wilson and Australian soccer’s governing body, Football Federation Australia, from “amplifying the actions of a few unruly football…N.A.J. Taylor, Honorary Research Fellow, Centre for Dialogue, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/81232012-07-18T00:39:24Z2012-07-18T00:39:24ZHow to measure influence: using Twitter to rate Australian news sites<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12831/original/z5gjrh9v-1341987860.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=36%2C18%2C4035%2C2371&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">If Twitter allows us to follow (and share) our interests, then can it make a reliable measure of influence for media groups?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Tracey Nearmy/Twitter</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>News of <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/business/fairfax-to-shed-1900-staff-erect-paywalls-20120618-20ix1.html">significant job losses and organisational restructuring at Fairfax</a> has thrown new spotlight onto the continuing transformation of the Australian media landscape. </p>
<p>It’s clear that newspapers in their traditional form are approaching a point of no return, as news consumption habits are changing for good. </p>
<p>It’s all too easy to blame (or praise) the internet for this transformation of the media landscape; the simple fact is that it now plays an important role as a medium through which news is accessed and shared by the general public. </p>
<p>One side effect of this shift is that traditional metrics for tracking the market share and influence of media companies no longer provide the full picture. Newspaper circulation figures are no longer a relevant or reliable metric (<a href="http://terryflew.com/2012/06/australian-newspapers-fudging-the-figures.html">if they ever were</a>). </p>
<p>But what measures of importance are really available to us in the online space? Particularly when news is now distributed across a variety of platforms from aggregators like <a href="http://news.google.com/">Google News</a> and <a href="http://flipboard.com/">Flipboard</a> to social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter? </p>
<p>Indeed, how do we understand “importance” in this context - is it important for a website simply to <em>attract</em> visitors, or should we also take into account how those visitors <em>react</em> to what they encounter, for example by sharing links to the content through their own social networks?</p>
<h2>New measures</h2>
<p>Only a very limited amount of independently verified information is available on how Australian news websites perform in this context; what internal click-through data they may gather is rarely available to the general public. </p>
<p>To add to the mix, and to generate a reliable, comparative index of the resonance for the major Australian online news and commentary sites, my colleagues and I at the <a href="http://cci.edu.au/">ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation</a> at Queensland University of Technology have developed a tool which tracks the circulation of links to these sites on the social media platform Twitter.</p>
<p>Day by day, we track all tweets which contain links to any of the country’s leading national and regional news sites, as well as to the various opinion and commentary sites such as Crikey and The Conversation; we capture those tweets even if the original link has been converted into a short URL (using <a href="https://bitly.com/">bit.ly</a>, t.co, or any other shortening service). </p>
<p>The only tweets we are unable to capture at this point are “button” retweets, but we do track “manual” retweets (e.g. “RT @user …”), which serve as a reasonable basis for extrapolation. </p>
<p>Counting these links for each of the sites is a measure half-way between newspaper circulation figures and TV ratings: link circulation figures on Twitter don’t simply indicate the size of these sites’ audiences (as paper circulations do), but also point to readers’ levels of engagement with the content they encounter (as TV ratings can). It’s one thing to <em>read</em> a story on a news Website - it’s another to go to the trouble of <em>sharing</em> it with your social media followers. </p>
<h2>A measure of engagement</h2>
<p>As with print circulations and TV ratings, though, there remains room for interpretation here, too: what users share and what they read may diverge to some extent. As a professional on Twitter, for example, I may not want to let my followers know about all the sports news I read; conversely, I may pass on links to stories which I haven’t read fully (or at all) myself, just because they sound interesting. </p>
<p>But such margin of error exists in most ratings systems - the newspaper we buy to put under the cat’s litter tray still adds to The Sunday Mail’s circulation figures; the TV running while we make dinner still adds to the ratings for ABC News.</p>
<p>What’s unique about our Twitter news circulation index, though, is that it’s neither based on simple sales figures (like print circulations), nor on an extrapolation from the media consumption patterns of a small number of more or less representative households (like ratings). </p>
<p>Rather, apart from “button” retweets, we capture <em>all</em> tweets that contain links to Australian news and opinion sites - that is, we track active, visible, deliberate engagement with Australian news content. </p>
<h2>18-25 June 2012</h2>
<p>The first weeks of this <a href="http://mappingonlinepublics.net/tag/atnix/">Australian Twitter News Index (ATNIX)</a> were momentous for the Australian media industry, of course; Fairfax announced some major job cuts, and News Ltd revealed plans to follow suit. </p>
<p>This may well have boosted the circulation of links to Australian news sites on Twitter - and especially perhaps to Fairfax properties themselves. Over the course of the week from 18 to 25 June, we captured some 150,000 tweets:</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12679/original/77ymjbvp-1341560677.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12679/original/77ymjbvp-1341560677.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12679/original/77ymjbvp-1341560677.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12679/original/77ymjbvp-1341560677.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12679/original/77ymjbvp-1341560677.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12679/original/77ymjbvp-1341560677.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12679/original/77ymjbvp-1341560677.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12679/original/77ymjbvp-1341560677.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">ATNIX week 25/2012 - news sites.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">CCI; http://mappingonlinepublics.net/</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a week of bad news for Fairfax, that’s a very strong result for its two major sites, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. The marketshare of News Ltd sites is also interesting: individually, these sites don’t command positions as prominent as those of the two leading Fairfax papers, but in combination, the four top News Ltd sites <a href="http://news.com.au">news.com.au</a>, <a href="http://theaustralian.com.au">The Australian</a>, <a href="http://heraldsun.com.au">The Herald Sun</a>, <a href="http://dailytelegraph.com.au">The Daily Telegraph</a> still account for almost exactly 25% of the news links shared. </p>
<p>Finally, I’m also somewhat surprised that Fairfax’s online-only news site <a href="http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/">Brisbane Times</a> outperformed its local News Ltd rival, the print-and-online <a href="http://couriermail.com.au">Courier-Mail</a>, by some 900 tweets – although it remains to be seen how much of this is due to the news about Fairfax itself this past week. If it is able to hold its own against the long-established News title, though, that would be an indication that Fairfax’s future “digital first” strategy <em>can</em> indeed work, at least in the absence of a paywall. </p>
<p>(And a quick note on the ABC and SBS figures: we’re counting <em>only</em> links to broadly news-related sections of these sites here - clearly, both public broadcasters’ sites cover a lot more than the news alone.) </p>
<p>Let’s also have a look at the attention share of opinion and commentary sites, then:</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12680/original/p9dyyf8s-1341560678.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12680/original/p9dyyf8s-1341560678.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12680/original/p9dyyf8s-1341560678.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12680/original/p9dyyf8s-1341560678.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12680/original/p9dyyf8s-1341560678.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12680/original/p9dyyf8s-1341560678.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12680/original/p9dyyf8s-1341560678.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12680/original/p9dyyf8s-1341560678.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">ATNIX week 25/2012 - opinion sites.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">CCI; http://mappingonlinepublics.net/</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Here, too, the opinion pages of <a href="http://smh.com.au">Sydney Morning Herald</a> and <a href="http://theage.com.au">The Age</a> play a significant role - but The Conversation also put in a remarkable performance that week. This, too, is due in good part to the Fairfax upheavals – stories addressing the job cuts at Fairfax and their impact on the Australian media (<a href="https://theconversation.com/malcolm-fraser-does-it-matter-who-owns-our-papers-yes-it-does-7738">including an article by former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser</a>) accounted for a very significant chunk of the Conversation links being shared on Twitter that week. </p>
<p><a href="http://crikey.com.au">Crikey</a> and the ABC site <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/thedrum/">The Drum</a> round out the leading sites, which together account for more than three quarters of the opinion and commentary links in our dataset. (Note, though, that URLs for The Drum are difficult to detect comprehensively, because of how they are formatted; we may well be undercounting The Drum, therefore.)</p>
<h2>26 June - 1 July</h2>
<p>The following week was a slightly slower news week – we tracked some 140,000 tweets containing URLs, compared to over 150,000 the previous week. Here’s now the mainstream news sites compared:</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12678/original/b42gmnzf-1341560678.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12678/original/b42gmnzf-1341560678.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12678/original/b42gmnzf-1341560678.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12678/original/b42gmnzf-1341560678.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12678/original/b42gmnzf-1341560678.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12678/original/b42gmnzf-1341560678.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12678/original/b42gmnzf-1341560678.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12678/original/b42gmnzf-1341560678.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">ATNIX week 26/2012 - news sites.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">CCI; http://mappingonlinepublics.net/</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>No great changes from the previous week. The Australian overtakes the Herald Sun, and there is some reshuffling of the minor places. But at the top of the leaderboard, placings and proportions of marketshare remain remarkably stable. </p>
<p>Could this be a sign that – for all the talk that social media (<a href="http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/03/rupert-murdoch-google-business-media-murdoch.html?feed=rss_news">and aggregators like Google News</a>) are “cannibalising” masthead sites – there still is considerable brand loyalty amongst those who read (and share) the news? We’ll keep an eye on this.</p>
<p>On to the opinion and commentary sites:</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12681/original/sxp8wmnq-1341560680.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12681/original/sxp8wmnq-1341560680.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12681/original/sxp8wmnq-1341560680.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12681/original/sxp8wmnq-1341560680.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12681/original/sxp8wmnq-1341560680.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12681/original/sxp8wmnq-1341560680.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12681/original/sxp8wmnq-1341560680.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12681/original/sxp8wmnq-1341560680.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">ATNIX week 26/2012 - opinion sites.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">CCI; http://mappingonlinepublics.net/</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Here, too, the top of the leaderboard remains relatively stable, with one major exception: The Conversation falls back from second to fourth place, losing five percentage points in marketshare amongst the opinion sites. Note that the percentages of the other leading sites don’t vary much at all from the past week – it really is the dissipation of the Fairfax factor which accounts for The Conversation’s slide. </p>
<h2>Starting point</h2>
<p>These first weeks of ATNIX data point to some interesting patterns, but to what extent they were overshadowed by the events surrounding Fairfax remains to be seen.</p>
<p>Over the coming weeks and months, as we see a picture emerge of the Twitter link circulation marketshare for major Australian news sites, it will be worth it to further reflect on what these figures mean. </p>
<p>Clearly, we cannot assume that these observations translate straightforwardly into an indication of hits on these sites – the Twitter userbase is too unrepresentative of the wider Australian population for this. </p>
<p>In future, we hope to connect and compare these ATNIX metrics with other information available to us, to generate an even more comprehensive picture - to begin with, perhaps, with the number of followers each sharing user has: a link shared by a users with a few dozen followers will necessarily have less impact than one shared by a leading account in the Australian Twittersphere.</p>
<p><em>Read more at Axel Bruns’ column <a href="https://theconversation.com/columns/axel-bruns-1433">Social media and society</a></em> </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/8123/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Axel Bruns receives funding from the Australian Research Council for a major study of public communication through social media in Australia.</span></em></p>News of significant job losses and organisational restructuring at Fairfax has thrown new spotlight onto the continuing transformation of the Australian media landscape. It’s clear that newspapers in their…Axel Bruns, Associate Professor, Creative Industries, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/80592012-07-05T04:02:07Z2012-07-05T04:02:07ZDear media CEOs, stop meddling in our democracy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12624/original/yqpnm4xw-1341450767.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Media proprietors have complained about Federal Government plans for a public interest test - but are they using freedom of speech arguments to protect their commercial interests?</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Dear media CEOs,</p>
<p>Thanks for your <a href="http://www.crikey.com.au/2012/07/04/media-ceos-letter-to-government-a-danger-to-free-speech/">recent letter to Prime Minister Julia Gillard</a> outlining concerns <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/media/fairfax-goes-it-alone-on-fightback-for-free-speech/story-e6frg996-1226417257303">some of you</a> have about regulation of the news media industry.</p>
<p>First a question regarding your views of a proposed “public interest test”: What are you afraid of?</p>
<p>Your letter suggests that any public interest requirement would be a “massive” increase in regulation. But your evidence for this is very slight and even misleading.</p>
<p>For example, you mention the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) rules on media ownership, but these do not apply to the print media. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) powers and the Trade Practices Act are in place to protect the interests of news consumers, but they are not a protection of our rights as citizens.</p>
<p>It is also hard to make an argument that these regulatory systems have been a resounding success.<a href="http://www.law.uts.edu.au/comslaw/factsheets/media-ownership.html">This legislative armoury</a> has not prevented the Australian news media being <a href="http://cpd.org.au/2011/08/media-ownership-and-regulation-in-australia-discussion-paper/">one of the most concentrated</a> in the world.</p>
<p>In print most of us have only <a href="http://theconversation.com/media-ownership-matters-why-politicians-need-to-take-on-proprietors-3425">a very limited a choice</a> between two giant corporations and in the broadcast media similar conditions apply.</p>
<p>Nor has 40 years of so-called self-regulation been particularly effective. Even your new <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-04-05/press-council-announces-overhaul/3935848">Press Council chief</a> admits this and he’s also prepared to accept government funding to help fix the problem. Why don’t you mention this?</p>
<p>Your letter states your objections to an “unacceptable” public interest test because it could “compromise” the “asset value” of your businesses and have a negative impact on “Australian and international equity holders”.</p>
<p>This is the real interest that you are defending. And rightly so. As CEOs responsible for billions of dollars of investment, you are obliged to put the interests of your shareholders first.</p>
<p>I’d also like to address your point about low barriers to entry in the news media business. On paper this may seem a fine argument, but the reality is that for anyone entering the market to match the scale and scope of audience reach that your companies currently have, would take an investment of a billion dollars or more.</p>
<p>That is why one of the world’s richest people, Gina Rinehart, and not Josephine Blogger of Wentworthville, is able to buy a significant stake in the Fairfax company alongside her substantial holding in the Ten Network.</p>
<p>You cannot seriously expect us to agree that Ms Blogger’s vanity project is any match for the power of the near-monopoly position of the commercial news industry in Australia.</p>
<p>At least, I must congratulate you for being up front about your real interests and for being frank about this matter.</p>
<p>But, please, do not confuse these private and financial interests with those of ordinary Australians who do not hold equity in the companies you represent.</p>
<p>You see, the news media is not really “just another business”.</p>
<p>Yes, news is a commodity and in that respect it behaves and is managed like any other item for sale in a capitalist market economy. But the news is a commodity with a dual nature unlike any other.</p>
<p>Unlike widgets, news is an information commodity and it is the currency of democracy today.</p>
<p>This is why there is a greater public interest in managing and regulating this commodity and why there is a role for governments - representing the public interest - to give oversight to your business.</p>
<p>It is legitimate for governments to make rules in this area just as it is in health and other matters in which there is a public benefit and a public interest.</p>
<p>Let me provide a useful analogy.</p>
<p>If governments did not regulate the sale of tobacco products, for example by banning most forms of cigarette advertising, we would still have Paul Hogan imploring us to have another Winfield “anyhow”, despite the overwhelming evidence that smoking is the number one cause of premature death in the world.</p>
<p>There is an overwhelming public interest in governments stepping in to regulate tobacco products. But let’s be clear this only occurred because of public pressure and public agitation. In other words, government acted because we, the people, demanded it.</p>
<p>Now we are asking that the government look at your industry with the same principles in mind.</p>
<p>Which brings me to your objections on the grounds that a public interest test or stronger management of complaints handling are “dangerous to free speech”.</p>
<p>Again a comparison with the tobacco industry is relevant.</p>
<p>Late last year <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/plain-packaging-is-an-infringement-of-free-speech/story-e6frgd0x-1226206359428">one of the senior columnists employed by you</a> defended tobacco companies against Australia’s plain packaging laws on the grounds that they infringed the free speech rights of the tobacco companies.</p>
<p>At the time I wrote that it is actually <a href="http://ethicalmartini.wordpress.com/2011/11/26/up-in-smokes-free-speech-fundamentalist-shows-true-colours-and-logical-confusion/">the tobacco companies that have a long history of denying the free speech rights</a> of their opponents through dirty tricks campaigns and by paying millions of dollars to lobbyists or to bury damaging research.</p>
<p>To defend the commercial interests of big tobacco on the grounds of free speech is insulting to the victims of smoking.</p>
<p>You are in danger of making the same mistake because you too have confused the property right of ownership with the individual’s <a href="http://www.article19.org/">human right</a> to freedom of expression.</p>
<p>As the great American journalist A J. Liebling noted during his long career at The New Yorker and other publications: “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.”</p>
<p>This is not a guarantee of freedom of speech for the rest of us. Quite the opposite in fact. All that is guaranteed is the right of your editors - hired to reflect and promote your corporate interests - to select and promote viewpoints that accord with your commercial desires.</p>
<p>The result is not freedom of speech for all. Instead we - the consumers in your view - have a limited choice of viewpoints ranging from the Labor right (Graham Richardson) to the hard right of Australia’s political spectrum (the Institute of Public Affairs, Judith Sloan and those of a similar ideological bent). Conversely, the views of “the Left” are rarely given space, never defined and only ever ridiculed in their absence.</p>
<p>At the end of the day the democratic interests of Australians as political citizens are not well represented by the material served up to us as consumers of the news commodities you collectively produce.</p>
<p>After all, numerous studies <a href="http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/03/15/over-half-your-news-is-spin/">from Australia</a> and <a href="http://www.spinwatch.org/">around the world</a> demonstrate time after time that more than half the information you dish up as “news” each day is sourced from PR operatives and government spin doctors.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, it is not labelled as such and it is certainly not vetted by your editors for its public interest value. In some cases it is even knowingly foisted on us because to tell the truth would clash with your commercial interests.</p>
<p>Finally I think you are being very cheeky to complain about the tone of the news coverage of the Finkelstein and Convergence reviews.</p>
<p>You are right that much of the coverage has been “egregious with little comment…on the important principle which is at stake here”.</p>
<p>But whose fault is that?</p>
<p>It is actually yours. It is in the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/media-barons-slam-regulation-20120703-21fjz.html">news</a>, <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/opinion/thanks-for-the-answers-but-questions-remain/story-e6frg9tf-1226407053362">opinion</a> and <a href="http://www.watoday.com.au/opinion/editorial/the-unnecessary-media-inquiry-20111106-1n1ym.html">editorial</a> columns of the newspapers and on talkback radio that the tone of hysterical outrage and fear-mongering has been promoted.</p>
<p>The recommendations of both inquiries have been misrepresented and attacked. There has not been a reasonable debate.</p>
<p>And yes, the important principle at stake here has been studiously ignored.</p>
<p>The important principle is not a slight imposition on your commercial interests, no matter how you try to dress them up with talk of freedom of the press.</p>
<p>The principle is that we - citizens - elect governments to carry out our wishes. The system does not always work perfectly, but it is democracy in action. We are ultimately in control. If we don’t like what our elected representatives are doing we can throw them out. They are subject to popular recall.</p>
<p>But who are you responsible to? Not to us that’s for sure.</p>
<p>We did not elect you, so stop interfering in our democratic processes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/8059/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Hirst is a member of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance.</span></em></p>Dear media CEOs, Thanks for your recent letter to Prime Minister Julia Gillard outlining concerns some of you have about regulation of the news media industry. First a question regarding your views of…Martin Hirst, Associate Professor Journalism & Media, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/80042012-07-02T20:43:11Z2012-07-02T20:43:11ZThere’s life in them yet: why it’s too early to call the death of print<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12418/original/29qcwn3v-1340953485.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=32%2C41%2C1940%2C1260&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The problems facing the Australian news media are global; our companies must start providing solutions that their readers are prepared to pay for.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It took a while, but the Australian news industry has finally caught up with the crisis of journalism which has been affecting the rest of the world for quite some time.</p>
<p>I say “crisis”, but let’s be clear: news organisations are still making profits. Maybe not as much as they used to in the pre-internet days of “rivers of gold” and “licenses to print money” (as one UK boss once referred to commercial TV many years ago); and maybe not in every sub-sector and division (though cross-subsidy has always been part of the news business). </p>
<p>But money they continue to make, even in print, most of them. News Ltd sells 11 million papers a week in Australia; Fairfax nearly five million. These are significant numbers, and the resilience of the paid-for subscription model should not be underestimated, even as print struggles and pessimistic rhetorics of journalistic decline proliferate.</p>
<p>Those suffering in the short term are the foot soldiers in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, sacrificed in an effort to maintain the relatively high profit margins which news organisations have traditionally enjoyed, and shareholders have come to expect. </p>
<p>At Fairfax, 1900 jobs are going; up to 1500 reported to be on the line at News Ltd. Those men and women of what used to be called “the press” deserve our support and sympathy, and no one underestimates the scale of the disruption to careers and lives represented in those announcements. </p>
<p>But they are casualties not of the death of news, nor even of paid-for journalism, but of adaptive management strategies designed to protect enterprises which have a lot of life in them yet, if only the right decisions are made now. </p>
<p>They parallel structural shifts of similar and often larger scale in many other sectors of industry and culture, in Australia and across the world.</p>
<p>Cold comfort to those losing jobs in the Australian media in 2012 right now, but some perspective on what is happening, and why, is needed before we all descend into outright despair.</p>
<p>Australia’s newspaper circulations have been in decline for some time, it’s true, but falling less rapidly than in the United States and the UK. There have been fewer newspaper closures, and fewer job losses in Australian journalism than in many other comparable markets. </p>
<p>That we have now reached a tipping point of what looks like structural collapse in the traditional models of news production in this country is a consequence of long standing dysfunction in Fairfax, on the one hand and the collapse of News Corp’s global reputation and ethical standing on the other.</p>
<p>In the case of Fairfax, commentators and longstanding industry players frequently assert the company has not been well-managed in this era of digital transformation and transition; that there has been an internet-resistant conservatism amongst the old school hacks reared on print and ink, while key decisions have been made over many years by executives who are not journalists, and who have lacked the deep understanding of how newspapers work of, say, Rupert Murdoch.</p>
<p>As for News Ltd, Mr Murdoch of course denies that the restructuring of the Australian journalism business, followed now by the split of News Corp at the global level into news and publishing divisions, has anything to do with the phone-hacking scandal. </p>
<p>But we all know that the News Corp decision at least has everything to do with that unfolding train wreck of a story in which, for the first time in their history, the Murdoch family’s managerial competence and personal as well as business ethics are exposed to forensic scrutiny day after day, week after week, month after month. The restructuring of News Corp announced on Thursday is an attempt to preserve the Murdoch family’s role and influence within a corporation which is now about much more than just journalism, and whose shareholders are no longer prepared to turn a blind eye to the unethical and often criminal goings on at Wapping, England. </p>
<p>Separate the two, it has been decided, and let Rupert and his kids run the one that causes all the bad publicity while generating the least profits. This may actually suit Rupert very well as he looks to retirement and maybe a permanent return to the lucky country, ending his career where it began, and with the same focus on his journalism business.</p>
<p>We’ll see in due course how that plays out. </p>
<p>Meantime, the fact that Rupert Murdoch knows journalism so well, and genuinely loves the news business, has made the News Ltd restructuring seem both more reasonable, and attracted less rancour from staff and commentators, than Fairfax’s announcement a few days before, complicated as the latter was by the various demands and threats of its largest shareholder Gina Rinehart. </p>
<p>So where does Australian journalism stand after these eventful two weeks? First, the digital transformation is now on for real, as the two big commercial news brands move to complete the shift from print to online which has been gathering momentum, but held back by the aforementioned conservatism and dysfunctionality of the sector. </p>
<p>Some compare Fairfax and The Age to the Guardian in the UK, and rightly wonder how it could be that one left-liberal title could be so pioneering in its engagement with the internet; the other so half-hearted and half-baked. </p>
<p>It may already be too late to change that narrative at Fairfax, but let’s hope not. Australia needs it. Whether Fairfax survives as a liberal alternative to News Ltd, or becomes a megaphone for one or other member of the Australian super rich, one thing is certain. </p>
<p>The future has arrived; not the long foretold death of news, but the end of the beginning of the digital age for Australian journalism. </p>
<p>Merged newsrooms, multiplatform-capable journalists (who of course will have to do more with less), fewer titles, the disappearance of boundaries not just between platforms, but between reportage, commentary and all the other fact-based content forms which make up the online package.</p>
<p>All of this brings with it an emerging agenda of how to preserve Australia’s already limited media pluralism, how to monetise online content and ensure the survival of what we still call “quality” journalism; how even to define what journalism is anymore. </p>
<p>These are global problems, and now the Australian news media must start to provide solutions that their readers are prepared to pay for.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/8004/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian McNair has received ARC funding.</span></em></p>It took a while, but the Australian news industry has finally caught up with the crisis of journalism which has been affecting the rest of the world for quite some time. I say “crisis”, but let’s be clear…Brian McNair, Professor of Journalism, Media and Communication, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/79782012-06-29T00:56:59Z2012-06-29T00:56:59ZNews Corporation is breaking itself up. Why?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12369/original/n8bmrc5y-1340928431.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">News Corporation will split its publishing assets from its entertainment arm - with the exception of its Australian operations.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>News Corporation is breaking up. The process will take about 12 months and is subject to shareholder approval. The de-merger will separate News Corporation’s publishing assets from its media and entertainment assets. It is not an even split. The entertainment division will have about <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/business/world-business/news-corp-board-approves-split-wsj-20120628-21406.html">ten times the revenue</a> of the publishing company and more than ten times the value.</p>
<p>The key question to ask about the News Corporation de-merger is: why?</p>
<p>Often, a corporate break-up is a sign that things are going badly within the company. The break-up may be driven by a perception that one poorly performing division is dragging the rest of the company down. The obvious answer is to sell the poorly performing division – as long as someone can be found to buy it. If no buyer can be found, then a de-merger is the alternative.</p>
<p>The News Corporation <a href="http://www.newscorp.com/news/news_535.html">press release</a> suggests that this is the reason for the de-merger. The aim is to “enhance strategic alignment and increase operational flexibility”. This is business-speak for “cutting off an infected limb before it kills us all”.</p>
<p>This “separate out the poor performers” reason has some merit. News Corporation’s share market performance has been weak in recent years, but it is not alone. Its share price fell sharply during the global financial crisis. However, its recent pre-speculation share price of $US20 is not far off its 2007 highs of $US24 and a long way from its price of around $US6 in 2009. However, the publishing part of News Corporation has faced a significant drop in advertising revenue and faces harsh competition from internet-based media. The newspapers are trying to reinvent themselves behind electronic pay walls but it is unclear if this will be successful. So the de-merger might be News Corporation’s way of separating out its newspapers so they can have a quiet and peaceful death.</p>
<p>If this is the strategy, what are we to make of recent moves by News Limited, News Corporation’s Australian arm, to bring its publishing and media assets closer together? News Limited appears to be following the exact opposite strategy to News Corporation. News Limited will be kept as a single entity but as part of the “publishing company” despite its Foxtel media assets being aligned with the “media and entertainment” company. </p>
<p>Keeping News Limited together should make its CEO, Kim Williams, happy. However, it should also make him nervous. The Australian assets will provide about <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/media/local-news-assets-to-stay-together-as-directors-approve-historic-split-of-the-global-media-giant/story-e6frg996-1226411572734">25% of the revenue</a> for the new publishing business, with the UK providing another 25% and the remainder from the US assets. So News Limited will be an integrated media business that is part of a global newspaper business and it will not be calling the shots.</p>
<p>The different strategies – integration for News Limited and separation for News Corporation – raise a second question. Who is right, Murdoch or Williams? Personally, I put my money on Williams. At a time when the divisions between video, entertainment, movies, and publishing are being blurred by digital communications and the internet, it seems odd that News Corporation is dividing itself along traditional lines. If the benefits from integration are increasing why would News Corporation choose separation?</p>
<p>Perhaps there is another answer. There has been speculation that the de-merger is an attempt to distance the majority of News Corporation from the UK phone-hacking scandal. If this is the case, then the cure appears worse than the disease. The publications division will include some of the world’s best-known newspapers, such as the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal. If the UK newspapers are so tainted that they need to be separated from the rest of the company, then a sale would have been appropriate. In this case, the de-merger may signal two things. First, the damage to the UK newspapers may be so bad that no buyer is likely to be found, leaving de-merger as the only alternative. Or, News Corporation expects the scandal to widen to its US newspapers and it is divesting them before the scandal grows. Either of these conclusions is bad news for the Australian part of the company that will be tied to these overseas newspapers.</p>
<p>In my opinion, however, the most likely reason for the de-merger is much simpler. News, entertainment, publishing, movies, and pay-TV are all going through a technological revolution. Nobody is quite sure which way to jump or what the industry will look like in 10 or 15 years. Corporate leaders are making their bets. After the disastrous bet on MySpace (bought for $580m and sold for $35m five years later) the de-merger is simply News Corporation’s latest attempt to try and work out how to survive. </p>
<p>It may or may not work, but the break-up is probably driven by fear and uncertainty. It has tied News Limited, which is betting on integration, into the exact opposite strategy at a global level. Murdoch has made a gamble one way. Williams has taken the opposite bet. Only time will tell if either is correct.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/7978/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen King does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>News Corporation is breaking up. The process will take about 12 months and is subject to shareholder approval. The de-merger will separate News Corporation’s publishing assets from its media and entertainment…Stephen King, Professor, Department of Economics, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/79562012-06-28T20:04:17Z2012-06-28T20:04:17ZAs the ‘rivers of gold’ dry up, what business model will save media?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12303/original/jq4h4q5v-1340847513.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=41%2C35%2C1922%2C1209&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">As the "rivers of gold"- classifieds - dry up, there are alternative revenue models emerging - although none offer a simplistic panacea to the media industry.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Journalists have never been particularly fond of advertising or advertisers – to most journalists, advertising was space and time taken away from good stories and advertisers were commercial interests trying to bribe or subvert them. Ironically, now journalists are wishing there were more advertisers with deep pockets – and so are media proprietors, as they watch their audiences and share prices tumble.</p>
<p>Not only have the “rivers of gold” that flowed from classified ads dried up, but print display and broadcast advertising volume and rates are falling, as mass audiences fragment into myriad micro-audiences and grazing information consumers roaming the internet.</p>
<p>Some observers and commentators cannot resist the “I told you so” reaction, as warning signs of transformative change in media production and consumption have been evident for some time. Rupert Murdoch admitted in a <a href="http://www.newscorp.com/news/news_247.html">speech</a> to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in New York in 2005 that he and his massive media empire were slow to recognise the importance of the internet. In the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/corp/pubs/media/s2714080.htm">2009 A.N. Smith Memorial Lecture in Journalism</a>, managing director of the ABC, Mark Scott said “We have reached a point that we should perhaps have seen was coming, yet largely we did not”.</p>
<p>But pointing fingers and 20-20 hindsight are of no more use than the head-in-the-sand approach of the 1990s and early 2000s. The multi-billion question now is “what business model can sustain commercial media in future”? Not only is that question on the minds of media proprietors and shareholders, but the careers of many journalists and quality journalism – long recognised as integral to a healthy democracy – are also on the line, as they have long been dependent on their love-hate relationship with advertising.</p>
<p>So, what will be the business model of commercial media in future?</p>
<p><strong>“She’ll be right – it’s just an adjustment”</strong></p>
<p>One thing for sure is that things won’t right themselves. Media belong to an industry undergoing major structural change. While reducing costs is a necessary step, even <a href="http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-business/fairfax-overhaul-to-cost-1900-jobs-20120618-20ixe.html">Fairfax’s</a> recent slashing of 1,900 jobs over the next three years and closure of two printing plants will not solve the problems that traditional media organisations face. A 2009 <a href="http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/entertainment-media/publications/outlook-newspaper-publishing-in-digital.jhtml">PriceWaterhouseCoopers</a> study noted that newspaper publishers have responded to economic downturn by focusing on cost reduction. But the PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) report titled <a href="http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/entertainment-media/publications/outlook-newspaper-publishing-in-digital.jhtml">Moving into Multiple Business Models: Outlook for Newspaper Publishing in the Digital Age</a> concluded that “many have still to fully review their existing business models to take full advantage of the innovation in the marketplace and the demands of consumers”.</p>
<p><strong>Advertising 2.0</strong></p>
<p>A second key fact that needs to be recognised is that, despite all the crisis talk, advertising is still a major revenue stream for commercial media. While down compared with the “golden age” of mass media, advertising is likely to remain at least part of commercial media business models for some time to come. </p>
<p>Furthermore, advertising is evolving, particularly online. After some rather crude first steps with banners stuck across the top of Web pages and annoying “pop ups” that blocked viewing of content, new forms of advertising include rich media (advertising involving video, sound and even animation as well as graphics) that can be embedded in “newspapers” online; interactive advertising; user-generated advertising; and expanded product placement (including Photoshopping of branded products into existing media content).</p>
<p>The evolution of Web 3.0, the Semantic Web, will see further significant developments in advertising. Search engines will increasingly be replaced by “recommendation engines” which capture users’ profile data and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickstream">clickstreams</a> to target them with relevant advertising (referred to in the trade as “behavioural targeting”). Privacy advocates and some social scientists are concerned about these developments, but they offer benefits to advertisers and some consumers may even welcome them, as they reduce exposure to irrelevant content.</p>
<p><strong>Charging for content – the push for paywalls</strong></p>
<p>The gorilla in the room, potentially huge but unpredictable and even dangerous, is charging for content. This business model began in earnest in January 2010 when the publisher of the New York Times, Arthur Sulzberger Jr announced that America’s most prestigious newspaper would start charging for some content from January 2011. Rupert Murdoch announced that News Corporation would progressively introduce charges for accessing the content of its titles worldwide.</p>
<p>News Corporation’s Wall Street Journal began charging for content in 1996 and the UK’s Financial Times and the Australian Financial Review also have charged for content for some time. However, sceptics argue that this model has worked for business and financial media, but question whether media consumers will pay to access general content. At best, only premium content can be put behind a paywall, according to many analysts and industry leaders. They base this view on the experiences of a number of US, UK and New Zealand titles that have implemented paywalls, only to see circulation plummet even further as audiences turned to free internet content.</p>
<p>In Australia and the UK, the challenge is even greater because of the presence of substantial publicly-funded media such as the ABC and BBC which do not and most likely never will charge for content. In his A. N. Smith Memorial Lecture in Journalism in 2009, Mark Scott said that commercial media paywalls in the UK and Australia may simply drive up traffic to the BBC and ABC.</p>
<p>Studies by <a href="http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/entertainment-media/publications/outlook-newspaper-publishing-in-digital.jhtml">PriceWaterhouseCoopers</a> and the <a href="http://www.bcg.com/media/PressReleaseDetails.aspx?id=tcm:12-35297">Boston Consulting Group</a> suggest that paywalls will increasingly be part of the business model for commercial media, but that they will work only for some in-demand and specialist content. Also, research indicates that paywalls may only generate micro-payments rather than the “rivers of gold” of the past. Head of the Boston Consulting Group media group, John Rose, said the BCG study found “consumers are willing to pay for meaningful content. The bad news is that they are not willing to pay much”.</p>
<p>Other potential business models discussed and advocated include:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Public funding which already applies to some media such as the ABC and which some academics argue should be expanded to sustain quality journalism. However, economic pressures on government and competing demands such as health and education funding make this unlikely;</p></li>
<li><p>Sales commissions in which media take a percentage on sales of advertised products, including through classifieds, rather than simply charging for space and time. Major consulting firms such as Deloitte, KPMG and PWC have recommended this model for some time, but the horse may already have bolted now that vast quantities of advertising of properties, cars, consumer products and jobs have shifted from newspapers to sites such as eBay, Craiglist and Gumtree;</p></li>
<li><p>Diversification into consumer products. This has already been done to some extent with books (e.g. good food, dining, gardening and home decorating guides), directories and DVDs, but consumer products marketing could extend to mobile phone services (such as exclusive ringtones from popular programs and photos of its major stars as screen savers); food products, wine, clothing labels, luggage and holidays;</p></li>
<li><p>Archive reuse and repurposing. <a href="http://www.kpmg.com/cn/en/issuesandinsights/articlespublications/pages/impact-digitalization-o-200701.aspx">KPMG</a> has identified “potentially huge” business opportunities in media archives which include billions of articles, reports, photos, reels of film, sound files, and historical accounts of important events which could be re-used and re-purposed for research, corporate art, “reality” footage for the movie industry, and even fashion and home decoration;</p></li>
<li><p>The “attention economy” – a radical concept proposed by business analyst <a href="http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/issue/view/79">Michael Goldhaber</a> and also advocated by internet aficionados <a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/attention_economy_overview.php">Alex Iskold and Richard MacManus</a> in which advertisers pay citizens a small amount each time to give attention to their ads. Consumer attention is valuable, so advertisers should pay for it, rather than simply handing over their money to the media, is the argument behind this concept;</p></li>
<li><p>Endowments, a philanthropic system common in the US, although not in Australia;</p></li>
<li><p>Foundation grants, also common in the US, but again not widely practised in Australia;</p></li>
<li><p>Establishment of media as not-for-profit entities; and</p></li>
<li><p>Creation of hyperlocal Web sites and blogs.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>What will be the business model that saves our media and quality journalism? I don’t have a crystal ball, but research shows that all of these, and some other approaches, offer opportunities, but none offers a panacea. Therefore, the most likely scenario for the future will be a hybrid, a diversified approach. Diversification has always been a wise business strategy and perhaps the lack of it has been the problem all along.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/7956/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jim Macnamara does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Journalists have never been particularly fond of advertising or advertisers – to most journalists, advertising was space and time taken away from good stories and advertisers were commercial interests…Jim Macnamara, Professor of Public Communication, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/78992012-06-26T20:44:10Z2012-06-26T20:44:10ZAustralia’s newspaper crisis is a failure of the market, not journalism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12223/original/7mv89mw7-1340691867.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Most reporting still comes from a newspaper: Australia's media troubles come from a failing commercial model, not a journalistic one.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>“Perhaps the single most dishonest aspect of the New Right’s campaign has been its attempt to rubbish and discredit the public sector.”</p>
<p>That’s Keith Windschuttle in his excellent 1983 book, <em>The Media</em>, a volume that while obviously dated, offers important context for understanding the current crisis in Australian newspapers.</p>
<p>Democratic rule depends on an informed citizenry. The complexities of the modern world cannot be conveyed adequately through TV or radio soundbites, and so without the longer, more in-depth reports currently provided by broadsheet papers, we’ll lack information necessary to participate in political life. The internet might be awash with commentary and analysis but few websites can fund an old-style newsroom. Most online journalism still rests on reporting done elsewhere – and, very often, that elsewhere is a newspaper.</p>
<p>All of that is why the turmoil at Fairfax matters.</p>
<p>But most discussions of the current imbroglio fail to distinguish adequately between the social and the commercial function of newspapers, two quite different points. The business of broadsheets might be in crisis but there’s absolutely no crisis in the service they provide. It’s the owners of newspapers who are tied to print, not the journalists themselves. On the contrary, the digital revolution makes gathering and transmitting information easier than ever before in human history. There’s no necessary relationship between quality journalism and print – only an economic and historical one.</p>
<p>We’re faced, in other words, with a failure of the market, not a failure of journalism.</p>
<p>Business Spectator’s Alan Kohler puts it <a href="http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/media-industry-media-diversity-Aloca-Fairfax-News--pd20120625-VKRXL?OpenDocument&src=sph&src=rot">like this</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The fact is that the size of newsrooms is shrinking and in my view this is the issue that should be addressed. How many journalists are needed in Australia to properly report on national and local affairs? Unlike the production of aluminium ingots, everyone is agreed that this is a truly important function and that if it were not done, or were done less well, the nation would suffer. Yet it is being left entirely to the market to sort out how many people will perform this function.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Kohler, who announced last week that Business Spectator had been bought by News Ltd for an undisclosed sum (variously reported at between $22 million and $30 million) suggests - semi-facetiously - a bailout for journalists akin to that offered to Alcoa.</p>
<p>But, actually, that’s not a silly idea. The real problem is that it doesn’t go far enough.</p>
<p>After all, we’ve been here before.</p>
<p>Back in the early days of radio, it became apparent that commercial broadcasters would not use the medium to its full advantage. You could make money providing light entertainment to the cities but there was no profit in offering quality news to rural Australia. That’s how we ended up with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: to ensure all Australians could enjoy radio to its full potential.</p>
<p>Likewise with television. Everyone knows that, left to its own devices, the market would never deliver the broadcasting the ABC offers. Precisely because we think TV matters, we don’t simply trust the benevolence of commercial operators. Instead, we fund a public option, because we know we can’t rely on the market.</p>
<p>And, by and large, it works. Despite the efforts of hysterical ideological critics, nine out of ten Australians think the ABC provides a valuable service - about as close to a consensus as you’re ever going to get.</p>
<p>Why, then, are we so willing to leave journalism to the market’s tender mercies? Surely the obvious response to the current crisis is to expand the ABC, extending its operations to fund the quality journalism the newspapers can no longer provide. With extra staff and extra resources, the ABC could quickly and easily provide the kind of journalism for which we once relied exclusively on the press.</p>
<p>The advantages are manifold. The technology that so threatens the commercial logic of Fairfax and News Ltd poses no problem for publicly funded journalism. Where the commercial media companies see the internet as a problem, an expanded ABC could devote resources to devising new ways to spread information, rather than hamstringing the web via paywalls and the like. </p>
<p>A properly resourced ABC could provide material from regional Australia, embark on investigative reports and pursue stories that were important but not necessarily sexy. It could, in other words, do all the things the broadsheets are increasingly failing at, even as it offered some much-needed jobs for reporters.</p>
<p>This is neither a new idea, nor a particularly radical one.</p>
<p>For years, Federal Labor advocated an ABC-style newspaper – as Gough Whitlam put it, the party sought “national newspapers and journals which would share the news and cultural services of the Australian Broadcasting Commission and which would give Australians the same choice of news and views in their newspapers as they expect in their radio and television”.</p>
<p>Technological change makes Whitlam’s proposal much more viable than ever before. The infrastructure’s already there: the ABC website is one of the most popular in the nation. With no need for paper, the costs would largely lie in hiring new journalists – and, god knows, there’s enough unemployed reporters available.</p>
<p>The problems, of course, are not technical but entirely political. As Windschuttle was already arguing back in 1983, a sustained attack on public ownership has meant alternatives to private businesses seem politically toxic. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the world of media. In the UK, for instance, James Murdoch has publicly denounced the BBC on the basis that state-funded news provided freely to consumers posed a threat to online journalism because it undermined “commercial viability”, and thus let “independence and plurality wither”. Here, News Ltd CEO Kim Williams says he’s “troubled” by the ABC’s expansion online.</p>
<p>Their chutzpah is extraordinary.</p>
<p>As Windschuttle argues: “The Australian media are among the staunchest of this country’s defenders of private enterprise and the "free market”. Yet the great virtues that are claimed for this system – the sovereignty of the consumer, the efficiencies of competition, the market open to talented new entrants – are nowhere more lacking than in the structure of the media business itself.“</p>
<p>You and I cannot launch our own newspaper empires to compete independently with the Murdoch press. Media ownership in Australia is so concentrated to be almost feudal – all of the main players (the Murdochs, the Fairfaxes, Gina Rinehart) owe their status to a dynastic succession. Amidst these huge monopolies, an expanded state sector would offer more choice, not less.</p>
<p>Isn’t there something innately sinister about state-owned media? Well, we’ve had ABC TV and radio for decades, and we’re not living under totalitarianism just yet. Indeed, surveys show most people trust the ABC more than its commercial rivals, and for good reason. Whatever might be wrong with Auntie, no-one’s implicated ABC employees in a widespread campaign of phone taps and corruption.</p>
<p>Naturally, in a democracy, all media should always be closely scrutinised. But, actually, it’s far easier to hold the public sector to account than a newspaper published by a multinational corporation. Could you imagine News Ltd scrutinising itself with the intensity that Media Watch has sometimes gone after, say, the 7.30 Report?</p>
<p>In today’s world, information is a public good. It’s a service we need, just as much as we need roads and hospitals. If the private sector won’t provide it, the public sector must, however much that makes the self-interested media barons squeal.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/7899/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeff Sparrow has written for many publications, including Fairfax and the ABC.</span></em></p>“Perhaps the single most dishonest aspect of the New Right’s campaign has been its attempt to rubbish and discredit the public sector.” That’s Keith Windschuttle in his excellent 1983 book, The Media…Jeff Sparrow, Editor, Overland literary journal, Victoria UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/77922012-06-25T03:21:44Z2012-06-25T03:21:44ZThe new mantra of ‘not wrong for long’, churnalism and the role of AAP<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12118/original/j8xytbkb-1340583263.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C15%2C984%2C653&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Major media outlets predominantly use wire services such as AAP for their online breaking news. But this approach reduces media diversity and can perpetuate errors.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/Dulnan</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the swathe of important debate that’s occurred in the last week about the massive changes underway in the Australian media, there’s a piece of the puzzle that’s been ignored.</p>
<p>Indeed, it’s a piece that receives little analysis in media and journalism studies generally and yet, this organisation is one of the largest players in our media environment.</p>
<p>The news agency Australian Associated Press has always played a significant role in the generation of news content for the Australian media, but since the development of online news sites this role has become nothing short of pervasive.</p>
<p>Associate Professor Jane Johnston from Bond University and I have been examining the role of AAP in the Australian news media landscape for the past two years and in light of the discussion about Fairfax’s moves to digital, the reduction of newsrooms and journalists across major organisations and the increasing role for public broadcasters, this research seems particularly important.</p>
<p>One of the key issues is that current online news websites contain an enormous amount of untouched AAP copy. In particular, the “Breaking News” sections are usually comprised of 80-100% AAP copy.</p>
<p>This means that, regardless of whether you’re reading The Age website, news.com.au, or a particular News Ltd title (such as The Australian), you will be reading precisely the same copy in the Breaking News section, sometimes with an AAP byline but often running a journalist’s name (usually an AAP journo).</p>
<p>Problem is, the average reader isn’t aware of this convention – “Breaking News” implies this is news that the organisation is “breaking”, that there is a journalist on the job reporting this for The Age, The Australian and so on.</p>
<p>Indeed, the Breaking News section should more accurately be called “News from the Wires”, to reflect its true nature. </p>
<p>(Since conducting this research we note the Fairfax publications have changed their Breaking News section to be titled “News Wire: Breaking News” while the News Ltd publications continue to call the wire feed “Breaking News”).</p>
<p>A former online journalist from a major Fairfax metropolitan daily newspaper confirmed to us: “the Breaking News section is primarily wire copy because it’s coming through all the time, you just turn it around and put it up. You know the term ‘churnalism’? Well that’s what ‘churnalism’ is, getting the AAP story and just turning it around.”</p>
<p>And if news organisations are going to move more towards online, expanding their online presence (and indeed charging for it), we can assume we’ll see an even more significant use of wire copy.</p>
<p>The beauty of subscribing to the wire for a news organisation is this – they are already paying for full use of the copy through their subscription; it’s generally sound, factual news-style journalism; and it saves the cost of paying their own in-house journalist to follow up, conduct further interviews and then wait for their copy to come through.</p>
<p>The added bonus here is that AAP is majority owned (90%) equally by News Ltd and Fairfax, with minority interests from West Australian Newspapers and Rural Press.</p>
<p>This is even more reason for Fairfax and News Ltd to use AAP copy in their sites – it grows one of their own businesses to do so, and saves their individual mastheads money in the process.</p>
<p>In short, it makes significant business sense to use as much wire copy as possible, particularly AAP copy.</p>
<p>The second significant issue in this is that AAP holds a particular place in the Australian journalists’ psyche, and this becomes important when we examine the way it has permeated online news media content.</p>
<p>Copy from AAP is trusted like no other – it is assumed that the work has been through a rigorous journalistic and then editorial process which ensures its accuracy.</p>
<p>In most cases, this is probably true. However, our research has also revealed a number of key instances when errors from AAP were multiplied and repeated time and time again as more organisations published, and republished their errors.</p>
<p>A public relations consultant recently described AAP to me as “like a cluster bomb” – when she wants a story covered as widely as possible by as many news outlets as possible, she goes immediately to AAP.</p>
<p>The problem with the cluster bomb approach is, of course, that any errors are multiplied time and time again. And public relations-generated material is multiplied as well – there’s no evidence that AAP copy is any less likely to be based on public relations material than any other information coming through a newsroom.</p>
<p>But the different cultural approach to AAP copy – that it is genuine, objective, professionally gathered and edited news – means that journalists trust it far more than they would trust a press release or news copy from a lobby group.</p>
<p>So the scrutiny journalists apply to media relations material whether from corporate PR, political lobbyists or community groups is not applied to wire copy.</p>
<p>Again, our former metro online journalist explained both the authority of AAP and the nature of online news: “The basics of AAP is their brand, their credibility is in their brand and so you don’t necessarily question their copy. They have the resources to be out there getting the story, [our newspaper] doesn’t have those resources so, you don’t question them on it. But if they come up wrong … I mean the new catch cry in journalism is, ‘you’re not wrong for long’. So, if you’re wrong, you change it.”</p>
<p>Comments such as this were confirmed by the University of Melbourne’s <a href="http://caj.unimelb.edu.au/research/bushfire_project">study</a> of the Black Saturday bushfires coverage – journalists reported to researchers that the need to be first outweighed the need to be right while the tragedy was unfolding.</p>
<p>Commentary in recent days confirms that our publicly-funded media (and community and alternative media) will have to take on an enhanced place as the provider of trusted, independent news content given the changes afoot in News Ltd and Fairfax.</p>
<p>This holds even more water given the evidence surrounding AAP’s increasing role in filling a seemingly unlimited online news hole for commercial news providers.</p>
<p>The expanded use of AAP-provided copy simply means the same copy appearing on different news websites – audiences will soon be alert to the fact that, at least in the news sections, there is almost no difference from one masthead to the next.</p>
<p>We can only assume – and hope – this will mean larger audiences for news content produced outside the News Ltd and Fairfax stables.</p>
<p><strong>Editor’s disclosure: AAP is a media partner of The Conversation. This is a non-financial arrangement.</strong></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/7792/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Susan Forde does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the swathe of important debate that’s occurred in the last week about the massive changes underway in the Australian media, there’s a piece of the puzzle that’s been ignored. Indeed, it’s a piece that…Susan Forde, Associate Professor of Journalism, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/78592012-06-24T20:39:34Z2012-06-24T20:39:34ZChurnalism on the rise as news sites fill up with shared content and wire copy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12086/original/w44vpckf-1340340383.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Newsrooms across the country are emptying fast.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/hellvetica</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This week’s unfolding print news crisis may have taken newspaper workers by
surprise, but it has an inevitable feel to those who’ve been studying the latest
phase of restructuring in our digital media industries.</p>
<p>Australia’s print media companies have been preparing for a leaner, cross-platform future since as far back as 2006, when the Howard government, after at least a decade of aborted attempts, finally succeeded in watering down Paul Keating’s 1987 media ownership laws.</p>
<p>Under Howard, Australia cut foreign ownership restrictions and liberalised cross-media limits, allowing commercial media groups to own two out of three print, television or radio media operations in a metro or regional market. Howard ministers argued the rule changes would introduce greater competition into media markets and more ownership diversity.</p>
<p>Up to that point, Australia’s media had been dominated for two decades by companies that specialised in the big reach legacy markets: TV, print and radio. A few companies, like PBL and APN News and Media, had managed to build more multiplatform profiles where cross-media laws failed to address the control of magazines, national newspapers and regional non-dailies, subscription TV and online networks.</p>
<p>But the astonishing popularity of the internet and World Wide Web was the game changer, forcing the media to collapse and reconfigure itself - to be more interactive, agile and specialised. As Jock Given’s <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/UNSWLJ/2007/15.html">history of cross media laws notes</a>, by 1999 even Labor’s Lindsay Tanner was arguing for legislative reform, saying that the dominance of newspaper and TV empires “would soon end” because of decreasing barriers to information publishing.</p>
<p>After the 2007 ownership rules shakeup, Fairfax Media was a first mover in the convergence stakes, acquiring Southern Cross Media’s radio interests, and then merging with Rural Press (even though that move would have been permissible under the previous ownership rules). News Corporation made a foray into television, buying a 10% stake in Network Ten, thanks to an arrangement with its co-acquirer, the Packer group. Kerry Stokes then engineered a move on West Australian Newspapers to subsume it in Seven West Media, after tricky boardroom manoeuvring - a play Gina Rinehart no doubt filed for future reference.</p>
<p>Yet while we saw some testing of cross-media legislation waters at that stage, and the movement of private equity into media ownership, there were no major shakedowns in what was already the most concentrated print media sector in the OECD countries. Then across the Pacific, in 2008, US newspaper revenues started collapsing as online competition stepped up, readers migrated and advertising revenues plummeted.</p>
<p>Locally the initial impact was relatively fast. Fairfax axed 550 positions across the company, and later cut the equivalent of a further 75 full-time positions. In 2009 the magazine industry started to experience lay-offs, with ACP and Newsmags slowly dropping people and titles.</p>
<p>At the same time News and Fairfax started to look for ways to save money by sharing information across their empires. In 2009 Murdoch established Newscore, the global News Corporation’s wire service, in New York. Both companies rolled out standardised web templates for their suburban and community newspapers, enabling them to share information between hundreds of small publications.</p>
<p>Both also began to outsource hardcopy editing, layout and production - News Limited in Queensland, with a centralised subbing hub, and Fairfax to PageMasters in News Zealand (and later Brisbane), which it co-owns with News Limited through their shared equity in Australian Associated Press.</p>
<p>It’s true that some new “print” jobs have emerged online during recent years, particularly in social media, web production, video journalism and production, and in front and back end development areas (user experience, web design, web and application development). Yet growth in these areas has been difficult to track, as it is incremental and in areas not traditionally unionised.</p>
<p>In comparison, the cuts at Fairfax Media and News Corporation’s reduction of 19 operational centres to 5 are the most serious manifestations yet of the changes wrought by industry digitalisation and convergence. If previous restructuring trends are anything to go by, the consequences can only be a massive loss of source diversity.</p>
<p>So if the Gillard government goes ahead and implements the main recommendation of its Convergence Review, to remove the last of the post 2007 media ownership restrictions, it will be a very slippery slide to greater media concentration and a generally impoverished news sector. </p>
<p>For a glimpse into that future, you only have to examine how the diminishing fourth estate will manage to supply the media’s multiplying, always-on channels. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12087/original/3hvhdrqk-1340340445.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12087/original/3hvhdrqk-1340340445.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12087/original/3hvhdrqk-1340340445.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12087/original/3hvhdrqk-1340340445.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12087/original/3hvhdrqk-1340340445.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12087/original/3hvhdrqk-1340340445.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12087/original/3hvhdrqk-1340340445.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">Churning is on the rise at news websites, where squeezed staff are forced to share content, rewrite press releases and run wire copy to fill space.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/edwardkimuk</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Within days of news breaking about impending lay-offs at News Limited and Fairfax, one <a href="http://mumbrella.com.au/how-prs-will-need-to-adapt-to-the-fairfax-and-news-%0Alimited-upheavals-98657">junior PR was already salivating</a> at the prospect of lower editorial barriers to getting campaign messages out across multiple channels. </p>
<p>“Less [sic] journos will also mean that publications will be looking for content they can syndicate across the networks,” burbled Tina Alldis in Mumbrella, exhibiting the standard of expression we might expect of a young flack.</p>
<p>Her article was a remarkable example of hubris, given the possible squeeze impending in PR work as hundreds of journalists hit the job market. However you can certainly expect to see an increase in the republishing of press release and wire service copy as editorial jobs vanish. And the impact on media diversity is already a cause for concern.</p>
<p>In research we undertook in 2009-2011 we found evidence of narrowing source diversity in Fairfax and News Digital’s online news services. Interviews and content analysis suggested firstly that media content-sharing between co-owned-titles and platforms, affiliate publishers, licensees and users had accelerated with digitalisation and the internet.</p>
<p>News sharing, for example, enabled Fairfax to create two new metro news websites - <a href="http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/">Brisbane Times</a> and <a href="http://www.watoday.com.au/">WAtoday</a> with editorial staff of under 20 at each site. Compare this to the roughly 800 editorial jobs now spread across newspapers and digital in Sydney and Melbourne.</p>
<p>When you then look at the increased recycling of news through social media, aggregators, and <a href="http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/%0A04/can-an-algorithm-write-a-better-news%0A-story-than-a-human-reporter/all/1">news writing robots</a> you can see how media sharing has started to underpin the economic sustainability of a multichannel mediascape.</p>
<p>Print news organisations in particular have seen an intensification of content syndication between print, web and mobile platforms. Our data analytics model tracked the recycling of top and national news between four metropolitan Fairfax, and four News Digital, websites based on a sample of 29,000 news stories over a three-month period.</p>
<p>What we found was that Fairfax - the company under most economic threat and with two online-only titles - was doing far more internal sharing of copy than News Limited.</p>
<p>Fairfax sites <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/">theage.com.au</a> and <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/">smh.com.au</a> shared a monthly mean of around 97% of their content with at least one other metro, while at Brisbane Times mean sharing was 88% and at WAtoday, 95%. In comparison Melbourne’s <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/">heraldsun.com.au</a> was the highest average news-sharing site studied in the News Digital network at 13.6% monthly. The <a href="http://www.couriermail.com.au/">couriermail.com.au</a> was next highest at 7.2%, the <a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/">dailytelegraph.com.au</a> at 5.1%, and <a href="http://www.perthnow.com.au/">perthnow.com.au</a> shared a mean of 3.5% of its stories in our two categories of top and national news.</p>
<p>Fairfax’s Sydney and Melbourne newsrooms also took the lead in republishing news agency content: 79% of the smh.com.au shared top and national stories were from AAP. The figure was 87.5% for theage.com.au. News Ltd sites republished less than 2% each of AAP content during the study period.</p>
<p>These findings are not cause for global criticism of change in the print industry. Production restructuring and platform cooperation are essential to producing richer multimedia content. Journalists can now more easily access and share digital archives and cooperate nationally on big stories like natural disasters and political upheavals.</p>
<p>We also found potential diversity gains of online news networking and reuse. Regional consumers appeared to have far more access to urban and interstate news than before thanks to syndication across web, mobiles, and tablets.</p>
<p>Editors also argued that re-use of more copy across publications and markets left journalists free to focus on what was happening locally. However we think this claim needs to be tested by measuring levels of locally generated content prior to online production.</p>
<p>We also need further study of diversity before and after the web - comparing news in online and hardcopy titles to assess the variety of genres, sources and viewpoints.</p>
<p>All the indicators so far are that as editorial jobs have fallen, media industry sources of original, first-run news and analysis are declining. How access to local news content will play out with the widespread rollout of paywalls and subscription apps will require ongoing monitoring by media regulators.</p>
<p>It is blindingly clear though that if restructuring proceeds as it is, editorial charters will be a bandaid solution to the rise of multi-platform churnalism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/7859/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>This week’s unfolding print news crisis may have taken newspaper workers by surprise, but it has an inevitable feel to those who’ve been studying the latest phase of restructuring in our digital media…Fiona R Martin, Senior Lecturer in Convergent and Online Media, University of SydneyTim Dwyer, Senior Lecturer, Department of Media and Communications, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/77982012-06-20T07:06:48Z2012-06-20T07:06:48ZFewer voices, less democracy - is this really the media we want?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11956/original/ntp7b77g-1340174518.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C38%2C1940%2C1257&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Journalists are the principal carriers of the lifeblood of democracy - but having fewer voices means we are vulnerable to vested interests.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“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.</p>
<p>That quote is particularly poignant this week as News Limited follows Fairfax in <a href="https://theconversation.com/news-ltd-to-centralise-media-business-axe-jobs-7796">shedding staff and restructuring its business activities</a>. 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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”.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a href="http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Business-Spectator-News-Ltd-Alan-Kohler-AIBM-Busin-pd20120620-VF7P2?OpenDocument&src=sph">swallowed up by News Limited</a>:</p>
<p>“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.” (<a href="http://adamjones.freeservers.com/gunther.htm">Gunther and Mughan, 2000</a>.)</p>
<p>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.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/7798/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexandra Wake did her cadetship at APN.</span></em></p>“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…Alexandra Wake, Lecturer, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/77212012-06-17T20:39:49Z2012-06-17T20:39:49ZFairfax or Gina-fax? Let’s have the debate before it’s over<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11810/original/psqsq2z2-1339927554.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=126%2C113%2C4234%2C2996&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gina Rinehart is poised to seize control of Fairfax.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The next two weeks will be defining moments for Australia. It’s when Fairfax is likely to morph into Gina-fax.</p>
<p>On Tuesday Gina Rinehart, the world’s richest woman, is expected to confirm that she has acquired up to 19.9% of Fairfax. The current Board, led by ex-Woolworths and now <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Corbett">Walmart</a> director Roger Corbett, is expected to raise the white flag in their efforts to ward off Rinehart’s bid for control. Rinehart is believed to want two or three seats on the board, and control of the Fairfax’s editorial positioning. And what she wants she can afford to buy.</p>
<p>Running in parallel, Fairfax will announce this week one of the most radical restructuring of its metropolitan mastheads, The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. From July 1 the two papers will be nationalized, that is, converted into one newsroom across both titles. There will be some local differences to allow the content to be rebranded for the Melbourne and Sydney audiences, but two voices in our shallow pool of diversity will become one.</p>
<p>And Fairfax will reduce its editorial workforce on the two papers by around 25% from roughly 800 to 600.</p>
<p>In tandem, Kim Williams, the chief executive of News Ltd, is expected to announce the most radical restructuring of the entire News Ltd workforce with a reduction of up to 1,500 staff.</p>
<p>This perfect storm has been brewing for some time. The decline and implosion of the media was seen as a European or American disease that Australia would avoid, much like the GFC. The seeds of Fairfax’s destruction were born in the mid 1990s when it failed to fully engage, understand and act on the disruptive threats of the internet.</p>
<p>The story of Fairfax’s decline is one of managerial failure. The company has been run by senior executives and boards with no direct experience running a media company. Instead, leaders at Fairfax have been property developers, management consultants, accountants, and rugby players. Those people did not have the experience or understanding of a people-media business to steer the ship into safe waters. Instead they allowed Fairfax to remain at sea while competitors savaged the business. One by one Fairfax was stripped of its classified advertising “rivers of gold”. The jobs went to Seek.com.au, Cars to Carsales.co.au, homes to Realestate.com.au.</p>
<p>And shorn of those easy revenues the only way Fairfax CEOs could “stay in the game” was to cut costs faster than revenues fell (all the while pocketing eye-watering salaries and bonuses). </p>
<p>Instead of having the foresight to embrace and invest in the digital age by bringing together mastheads to work collegiately, Fairfax leadership instead chose to separate the online team from the print team and run them as two distinct businesses, with “Fairfax Digital” competing for advertising revenues with the so-called “Fairfax Publishing”.</p>
<p>In 2007, I was asked to lead a team of three senior executives to visit the most progressive newspaper/media companies in the US and UK and report back to the then CEO, David Kirk. We went to the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, The London Telegraph, The Financial Times and The Guardian.</p>
<p>We reported back to Kirk that every one of these had brought together “print” and “digital” into one resource. That is one editorial team, one advertising team and one back office. Kirk flatly opposed doing the same on the grounds the two businesses were both very profitable. And he wanted to keep it that way.</p>
<p>Five years later, with the company’s market value slashed from $7bn to just over $1bn, this integration will finally be imposed next month. </p>
<p>And for the first time in living memory the change will be led by a former journalist and senior editor, the CEO, Greg Hywood, along with the advice of consultants <a href="http://afr.com/p/business/companies/bain_to_advise_fairfax_on_plan_FdHTDpYKsXTcRv21F8lNbM">Bain & Co</a> (Mitt Romney’s crew).</p>
<p>But it’s too late to save the Fairfax we know. The share price has collapsed from $5 to 60c or less because no one in the market believes there is a coherent strategy for the company. And that has left the company weak and defenceless to predators such as Rinehart.</p>
<p>Staff, meanwhile, have been living in denial. Though finally last week the penny dropped among the editorial staff that Gina’s tilt at Fairfax will happen. That has led to great despondency, and many rightly concerned about their future. And of course, once in, she is in control, and they will be told if they don’t like it, they can ship out.</p>
<p>What does this all mean? Rinehart is not an investor in Fairfax to earn a return like the rest of the company’s long-suffering institutional investors. She is making her play to change the climate of opinion in Australia. </p>
<p>Back in 2010 she and her fellow mining barons spent <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/business/a-snip-at-22m-to-get-rid-of-pm-20110201-1acgj.html">$22m to get rid of Kevin Rudd’s proposed mining tax</a>. </p>
<p>And so successful was the campaign that they got rid of Rudd and saved themselves an estimated <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3968928.html">$20bn in taxes</a>. </p>
<p>Rinehart’s appointment of Australia’s leading climate change sceptic, Ian Plimer, as an <a href="http://www.perthnow.com.au/business/local-business/rinehart-appoints-plimer-to-board-roles/story-e6frg2s3-1226259721980">advisor to her mining companies</a> is simply a taste of what’s to come. As one senior Fairfax editor remarked, expect this kind of front page once Rinehart gets control. “Exclusive: Climate Change is a Hoax”.</p>
<p>Rinehart aims to change the terms of debate in Australia for good. Her fellow Channel 10 director, “Hungry Jack” Cowin, the burger man, will likely join Rinehart on the board of Fairfax. Cowin has already made clear that the Fairfax Board <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/national/rinehart-aide-urges-editorial-influence-20120605-1zudb.html">has every right to set the editorial tone of the papers</a>. And that Andrew Bolt, who already has the Bolt Report show on Channel 10, would be welcome at a Rinehart dominated Fairfax to “balance the message that’s being communicated to the community”.</p>
<p>With such a program, Rinehart and Co may well tell staff and readers that if they don’t like it they can go elsewhere. The problem in Australia is where to? The media is in crisis elsewhere in the West, but usually there is a choice, somewhere else to go to get a job or to get your news and commentary. Right now if you live in Hobart, Adelaide, Perth, Darwin or Brisbane you have no choice, just the one paper. In Melbourne and Sydney, there was choice.</p>
<p>Readers who, like Rinehart, prefer the editorial tone and message of The Australian, with its line on mining tax little different to that run by BHP, will be spoilt for choice. And scepticism towards climate change will now be shared by all three quality mastheads. Those with different views will have limited options.</p>
<p>Is this the modern, open, progressive, democratic, tolerant, knowledge-based, clever country we aspire to be? Or are we seeing the same rise of the oligarch as in Russia where the resource-rich billionaires also dominate the media? Or Italy, where Silvio Berlusconi owned the majority of the TV stations and newspapers and imposed his right-wing agenda, and ultimately won control of the country as Prime Minister?</p>
<p>This is an important moment for all those who cherish democratic and pluralistic debate and a freedom to information that is factual and reliable to inform decision-making.</p>
<p>Given that both the Fairfax and News Ltd papers are “interested parties” in the outcome, you will be hard pressed to get a full and dispassionate account of the next few weeks’ momentous events.</p>
<p>That is what The Conversation will aim to provide. We will be leading a debate over the next few weeks, and keeping tabs on the media developments. We hope you will engage with us through your comments and suggestions for the coverage you would like to see us run. It’s important to have your say while the matter is live, rather than bleat about it afterwards.</p>
<p><em>Andrew Jaspan is editor of The Conversation and the former editor-in-chief of The Age.</em> </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/7721/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
The next two weeks will be defining moments for Australia. It’s when Fairfax is likely to morph into Gina-fax. On Tuesday Gina Rinehart, the world’s richest woman, is expected to confirm that she has acquired…Andrew Jaspan, FounderLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/73042012-05-30T20:16:26Z2012-05-30T20:16:26ZJob cuts, strikes, ‘structural change’: the uncertain future facing quality newspapers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11219/original/q2hzy9zd-1338366312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=50%2C32%2C1907%2C1173&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Strike action by Fairfax journalists show they are prepared to fight for quality journalism.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Journalists don’t like to strike. Their job is about working under pressure to deadlines. In their eyes, missing a deadline is sin. But last night journalists across several of Fairfax Media’s newspapers <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/national/fairfax-journalists-vote-to-go-on-strike-20120530-1zj7p.html">voted to abandon their post</a> for 36 hours.</p>
<p>The reason: management cost cutting will force 66 sub-editing jobs offshore to New Zealand. It is no secret that the newspaper business is facing tough times. There are also whispers that there might be more job cuts announced soon at Fairfax’s rival News Limited too.</p>
<p>You only have to look at the latest Australian circulation figures to see a snapshot of a general problem for metropolitan newspapers across the developed world. The local figures again confirm that the old business model for Australian print newspapers is in perilous decline. This is nothing new. The long-term trend has been downward for most metro print circulations since the early 1990s.</p>
<p>Owing to online migration, advertising revenues have weakened and with the plethora of free choices for sourcing news and information, so too have print circulations. The digital era and GFC have accelerated the falls. But other factors pre-dating the internet also account for the steady decline. Cultural and lifestyle changes eschew the leisurely daily read, and media law reforms have also played a role in the steady slide of Australian metropolitan newspaper circulations.</p>
<p>The latest <a href="http://www.auditbureau.org.au/">Audit Bureau of Circulation</a> figures released this month for the January to March quarter is a snapshot that further dispels the myth that Australia’s print newspaper industry is less vulnerable to the damaging trends affecting newspapers in the West.</p>
<p>The figures showed bigger than usual falls for Fairfax’s print broadsheets. <a href="http://mumbrella.com.au/abcs-smh-drops-12-rival-accuses-fairfax-of-abandoning-print-74083">The Sydney Morning Herald</a>’s print circulation fell by more than 13%, compared to more than 11% in the last audit. Its <a href="http://www.adcentre.com.au/the-sydney-morning-herald.aspx?show=audience">Saturday circulation</a> dipped below the psychological barrier of 300,000 for the first time to 293,234.</p>
<p>In Melbourne, <a href="http://www.adcentre.com.au/the-age.aspx?show=audience">The Age’s Saturday paper</a> fell 12.4% and is now reported to be 241,029. The masthead lost more than 13% on its Monday to Friday sales, bringing it to 165,091. Some weakening could be attributed to <a href="http://www.fairfax.com.au/">Fairfax</a> cleaning up its sales by ending freebies and giveaways, but it is still a long way from the heady days of the 1980s when its Monday to Friday sales peaked at 250,000.</p>
<p>A case can be made that Australia’s concentrated media ownership — the News Limited and Fairfax Media duopoly that controls 90% of Australia’s metro press — together with favourable government media policies have protected the industry from the closures and job losses experienced in Britain, USA and Canada.</p>
<p>But, in fact, as <a href="http://www.ssps.unimelb.edu.au/about/staff/profiles/syoung">Associate Professor Sally Young</a> and former Fairfax editor Max Suich have noted, the story of Australian print newspaper decline is a nuanced one. The recent US industry contraction is similar to what Australia experienced 20 years ago.</p>
<p>Due to media law reforms, Australian media takeovers in the late 1980s saw Australia lose all of its daily evening newspapers. This reduction in mastheads caused irreversible falls in newspaper penetration. Perhaps it was the lack of newspaper choice, or the loss of a favourite masthead, but whichever the case, many readers abandoned the newspaper buying habit. <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/arts/government_international_relations/staff/academic_staff/rod_tiffen.shtml">Rodney Tiffen</a> has found that newspaper penetration fell by almost 50% between 1980 and 2007. Australia’s overall print circulation decline was more dramatic than in most other advanced democracies because despite population growth, newspaper penetration fell sharply.</p>
<p>Interestingly, worldwide the number of mastheads has risen as developing nations such as India and parts of Asia, Africa and the Middle East embrace print newspapers as literacy increases.</p>
<p>The question for Australia remains: what do falling circulation figures mean for attracting advertising, which has historically provided the lion’s share of revenue to underwrite its journalism? The digital space of mastheads has attracted some new advertising revenue, but certainly not enough to restore newspapers to their zenith in the 1980s.</p>
<p>Mastheads have experimented with ways to get readers to pay online, through pay walls and tablet and mobile apps. So far digital sales remain modest. The Age reported its digital sales as <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/media/digital/digital-sales-makes-up-for-some-of-devline-in-print-newspaper-circulation/story-fna03wxu-1226352479777">just over 9300</a> for each of its issues. News Limited is yet to report digital sales, which is not a <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/media/media-to-report-digital-sales/story-e6frg996-1226308515591">mandatory requirement</a> until July 1, 2013. The Australian Financial Review has altered the <a href="http://inside.org.au/how-the-afr%E2%80%99s-%22disastrous%22-paywall-delivered-the-goods/">pricing of its pay wall</a>; but it has lost more than 30,000 hard copy readers since March 2008.</p>
<p>There are a few general points to make here. First, online advertising sells for a lower rate than the golden days of print advertising when media companies monopolised the advertising market and could charge accordingly.</p>
<p>Second, studies have shown that internet users do not spend the majority of time online looking at news websites. Non-news websites are successfully competing with news websites for advertisers, further driving down the pricing.</p>
<p>Third, during the GFC companies accelerated their shift out of Australian print advertising. According to one print analyst, “not only are circulation and readership numbers down, but the value of each of the readers has also dropped in the eyes of the advertisers.” This means that many companies now prefer loyalty programs and direct email marketing campaigns to personalise advertising messages rather than using newspapers.</p>
<p>Predictably, falls in advertising revenues have led to falls in other measures of performance such as share price and overall operating revenues. What is less clear is the consequence for “quality” journalism.</p>
<p>The digital mediascape has changed the media cycle and favours breaking news, brevity and speed over depth and sometimes accuracy. It has also seen a proliferation in low-cost opinion and commentary pieces. But, it does not automatically mean that quality journalism will suffer. US author and commentator <a href="http://www.unc.edu/%7Epmeyer/">Philip Meyer</a> says the economic pressures have led some newspapers to rethink their core journalistic values.</p>
<p>Meyer says print newspapers can remain viable with smaller audience share as long as they retain trust and influence. He says giving readers evidenced-based journalism, largely outside the domain of bloggers, allows quality newspapers to maintain community trust and to demand political accountability.</p>
<p>Meyer says investigative journalism is at the core of evidence-based journalism, but to afford its associated costs, newspapers should aim for “quality” readers who seek the truth as a defence against political and advertising spin. He advises newspapers to jettison resources used for frivolous news items, which in the current information-rich environment, fail to add value to a brand. </p>
<p>Interestingly, Fairfax Media seems to be in an internal tussle. Some of its management, such as the CEO of Fairfax’s Metropolitan Media division, Jack Matthews, favour high traffic to the websites through popular, downmarket stories, an approach known as tabloidisation or “newszak”. This is why the online versions of once serious broadsheet newspapers promote stories about pop starlets with paparazzi-style photographs. </p>
<p>A scan of the top five most popular stories of the day, which appears at the bottom of most newspaper sites shows celebrity gossip, sex stories, or both. They serve as “click-bait”. The other approach, favoured by some senior Fairfax editors, is to push quality journalism. A win for these editors can be seen in the bolstering of Fairfax Media’s combined investigative journalism unit with more staff and resources. </p>
<p>Another option seen across the globe for delivering quality journalism is cross-media collaborations. <a href="http://wikileaks.org/">Wikileaks</a> did not gain traction until it collaborated with established newspapers. Mastheads like the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/">New York Times</a> have also partnered with online newsrooms such as <a href="http://www.propublica.org/">ProPublica</a> to pursue investigative journalism.</p>
<p>The decline of print circulation is predictable, but not so the future of quality journalism. Last night’s vote shows that journalists are prepared to fight for it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/7304/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrea Carson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Journalists don’t like to strike. Their job is about working under pressure to deadlines. In their eyes, missing a deadline is sin. But last night journalists across several of Fairfax Media’s newspapers…Andrea Carson, Honorary Research Fellow Centre for Advancing Journalism , The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/67482012-04-30T04:30:35Z2012-04-30T04:30:35ZConvergence Review: the call for regulation will be unpopular with established media<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/10089/original/8mp77t5f-1335758003.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Communication Minister Stephen Conroy will oversee the government's response to the Convergence Review.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Dean Lewins</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I’m looking forward to the next few days.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/147733/Convergence_Review_Final_Report.pdf">Convergence Review’s key recommendation</a> to introduce a new body to “regulate” the activities of our major 15 media operators – including newspapers – is significant.</p>
<p>I expect the major media ownership groups, particularly those primarily invested in newspapers, will vehemently oppose this move given newspapers have been the one part of the media landscape that has, to date, operated with only the self-regulatory “toothless tiger” of the <a href="http://www.presscouncil.org.au/">Australian Press Council</a> to monitor their quality.</p>
<p>To a large extent this recommendation is an expected outcome given the changing nature of the media industry and the convergence that has occurred. We are overdue for a body that can regulate all news media, not just broadcast as the Australian Communications and Media Authority has done. </p>
<p>And as the review correctly points out, despite the great deal of hype about the diversity that new technology offers, in fact it is just the media through which the information is received that is changing, not the source or content. </p>
<p>The review report notes: “News and commentary consumed by Australians across all platforms is still overwhelmingly provided by the news outlets long familiar to Australians. What has changed most dramatically is how Australians access their news — the source largely remains the same. For example, someone may read a news story on Facebook, but the originator of the article is a newspaper publisher.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/10087/original/9424bk8w-1335757984.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/10087/original/9424bk8w-1335757984.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10087/original/9424bk8w-1335757984.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10087/original/9424bk8w-1335757984.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10087/original/9424bk8w-1335757984.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10087/original/9424bk8w-1335757984.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10087/original/9424bk8w-1335757984.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protestors in the UK where the phone hacking scandal has engulfed Rupert Murdoch’s News International operations.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Andy Rain</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Another issue which will also feed the controversy stands out. The recommendation to introduce a “public interest test” for any future media acquisitions and mergers.</p>
<p>The issue will further raise the ire (and indeed already has) of major media ownership groups. This recommendation was alluded to in the Review Committee’s interim report released in December so has already attracted some comment.</p>
<p>Media owners have always, in response to inquiry recommendations, run campaigns against any suggestion that their right to carry out their business as and how they see fit should be tampered with. </p>
<p>Their key complaint this time, suggested in <a href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/146283/News_Limited.pdf">News Ltd’s submission to the Convergence Review</a>, is that the application of a public interest “test” may be difficult to immediately define – in News Ltd’s words, the proposed public interest test is “flawed, entirely subjective, impossibly imprecise, vague and lacking in objective rigour”.</p>
<p>Too often, news media companies use the “public interest” claim when it suits them – when they discover an MP leaving a brothel late at night for example; or when they get wind that an ex-footballer might be having an extra-marital affair. Exposing such information is, apparently, “in the public interest”. It is also, of course, in their own commercial interests.</p>
<p>News Ltd stands by its coverage in recent years, for example, of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manning_Clark#Criticism_of_his_work">Brisbane Courier-Mail’s infamous pursuit of historian Manning Clark</a> as a communist; and also of the <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/hanson-photo-fraud/story-e6frf7kx-1225692406741">organisation’s publication of photographs of Pauline Hanson</a> which have since been proven (and it was obvious at the time), to be false.</p>
<p>These were great commercial decisions, as they spiked News Ltd’s newspaper sales – but terribly flawed, entirely subjective, impossibly imprecise, and certainly lacking in objective rigour. </p>
<p>These incidents raised significant questions about news media standards, but also about the public interest and what it comprises. The introduction of a public interest test on mergers will trigger significant discussion about this very issue. </p>
<p>The related debate about the establishment of a large regulator to cover all media platforms will also give rise to a more careful consideration of this most crucial democratic issue – and will be well worth the cost of the Convergence Review. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/10091/original/mjfgmxts-1335758510.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/10091/original/mjfgmxts-1335758510.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=345&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10091/original/mjfgmxts-1335758510.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=345&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10091/original/mjfgmxts-1335758510.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=345&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10091/original/mjfgmxts-1335758510.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10091/original/mjfgmxts-1335758510.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10091/original/mjfgmxts-1335758510.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Convergence Review reflects the fact that people now consume news in very different ways to in the past.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Julian Stratenschulte</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As a final point, the Review identifies another key point that focuses on the desperate need for more local content and “community” voices, something delivered increasingly by not-for-profit community and public broadcasters.</p>
<p>If we need one reminder of the need for a strong not-for-profit media sector which prioritises local information and strong journalism over business concerns, the abandonment of rural and regional communities by commercial radio over the past 10-15 years is evidence enough. </p>
<p>As expected, the Convergence Review doesn’t go far enough. It does not recommend measures which would see a strong independent media emerge and take an important place in our mediascape. </p>
<p>It softly recommends community broadcasting have “access to funding to drive innovation” in delivery of radio and television on digital platforms but offers no substantial policy recommendations to properly support more concrete development of these important local media.</p>
<p>This should be the next step in reviving Australia’s public sphere.</p>
<p>The growth of the internet and the “convergence” of media forms may make cross-media ownership regulation less of a priority now, but it does not remove the need for our news media to provide the public with informed, rigorous, responsible, quality news and current affairs.</p>
<p>This can only be achieved with a broad-ranging and diverse news media sector which has an overriding responsibility to serve the public interest.</p>
<p>The Convergence Review’s suggestion for a new regulator encompassing all media, and the introduction of a public interest test, will go some way towards achieving this provided the legislation developed properly reflects the reality and aims of these recommendations.</p>
<p>We now have months to wait to see the government’s response to this important document which will shape Australian media structures and content into the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/6748/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Susan Forde does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>I’m looking forward to the next few days. The Convergence Review’s key recommendation to introduce a new body to “regulate” the activities of our major 15 media operators – including newspapers – is significant…Susan Forde, Associate Professor of Journalism, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/62312012-04-10T20:54:36Z2012-04-10T20:54:36ZMark Scott on the future of your ABC<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/9243/original/tbtwpmmb-1333427382.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mark Scott, managing director of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Welcome to <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/in-conversation">In Conversation</a>, our series of discussions between leading academics and major public figures in Australian life.</p>
<p>In this instalment, Mark Scott, managing director of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, is in conversation with Rod Tiffen, Emeritus Professor of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney.</p>
<p>Scott was appointed to a five year term as managing director in July 2006. This was renewed in July 2011. Before taking the helm of the ABC, Scott was editor-in-chief of Fairfax newspapers.</p>
<p>This In Conversation touches on a wide range of themes including:</p>
<ul>
<li>Scott’s chances of running the BBC</li>
<li>the BBC and ABC compared</li>
<li>public broadcasting models</li>
<li>the ABC and commercial broadcasters</li>
<li>attacks on the ABC</li>
<li>government influence</li>
<li>the tender process for the Australia Network</li>
<li>the internet and the ABC’s pre-web charter</li>
<li>News 24</li>
<li>the future of the ABC</li>
<li>WH Auden</li>
</ul>
<p>We hope you enjoy it. </p>
<h2>On Scott’s chances of running the BBC</h2>
<p><strong>Tiffen</strong>: When I was down in Melbourne for Australia Day, I suddenly got a call from an Age reporter saying you’d been on a shortlist of possible candidates to become head of the BBC, and I’m afraid I immediately threw cold water …</p>
<p><strong>Scott</strong>: Good, so did I.</p>
<p><strong>Tiffen</strong>: And I said … there’s just no way the BBC would ever appoint a non-Brit. I wonder though if you did get such and opportunity what would appeal to you about running the BBC, and would it be just like running the ABC? What do you see as the key differences in the strengths and weaknesses of each of the organisations?</p>
<p><strong>Scott</strong>: Well, I think I should start by saying that my assessment of that story was exactly the same as yours, and I’ve said publicly I expect the next head of the BBC will be British. Being a very British institution, it’s almost inconceivable that it wouldn’t be, and I’m very happy here, and I have a very rare thing in media: I have a contract as the CEO of a media organisation with quite a long time to run.</p>
<h2>On the BBC compared with the ABC</h2>
<p>I’ve often reflected on the BBC, and I think of course there are similarities and we’re both founded in that <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/526855.stm">Reithian</a> [after John Reith, founder of the BBC] tradition to inform and educate and entertain and I think, particularly early on, the ABC owed a lot to the BBC but there are a few quite stark differences.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/9271/original/bg45c44d-1333459296.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/9271/original/bg45c44d-1333459296.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/9271/original/bg45c44d-1333459296.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/9271/original/bg45c44d-1333459296.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/9271/original/bg45c44d-1333459296.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=719&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/9271/original/bg45c44d-1333459296.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=719&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/9271/original/bg45c44d-1333459296.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=719&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A groundbreaking leader of public broadcasting.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/liits</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The key one is the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/insidethebbc/whoweare/licencefee/">license fee</a> and what the license fee means and does. It’s a tax in a sense on every household and it raises them a lot of money so it’s something like they get six times the money that we have, to deliver to three times the population, with geography the size of a postage stamp. But I think it means because every household is directly paying, the BBC has to deliver a value-for-money proposition to every house, and so that means that they do things that are vastly more populist than we do.</p>
<p>So <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/">Radio One</a> is a classic Top 40 radio format in the way that we don’t have. <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcone/">BBC One</a> has far more populist reality television, big entertainment shows in a way that we don’t.</p>
<p>I think the way we’ve emerged here and even the way we were at the beginning, far more like a public good, valued by the public, paid for by the public, we’ve got a 90% approval rating that’s very consistent, we reach over 70% of the population each week.</p>
<p>But we’ve always operated as part of a mixed model: there was private sector radio when we were on radio, private sector television when we’re on television, so we have a significant share but not a dominant share, and I think one of the things the BBC has to deal with is the fact that it’s still that giant in the UK media ecosystem: it’s a giant online, it’s a giant in television, it’s a giant in radio. We’re not a giant, we’re a significant part of the mosaic and the landscape here.</p>
<h2>On public broadcasting models</h2>
<p><strong>Tiffen</strong>: In the late 1990s McKinsey & Company did a <a href="http://www.kbs.co.kr/technopark/down/international/McKinsey.pdf">survey of public service broadcasters</a> around the world. They divided them into three types; there were some like Italy and New Zealand that had a sizeable audience but no distinctive programming - almost indistinguishable from a normal commercial broadcaster. There were some that had distinctive programming but only a very small share of the audience such as the US. And then there are some such as the BBC and <a href="http://www.nhk.or.jp/">NHK</a> which had both distinctive programming and a large share of the audience. Now it seems to me the ABC is not quite in that third category, it’s got distinctive programming but it’s not as central to the media mix in Australia as the BBC is in Britain. Does that constitute a difficult balancing act in setting priorities and programming?</p>
<p><strong>Scott</strong>: I think one of the reasons why, as a public broadcaster, we’ve been able to keep our place and our position is the fact that we haven’t taken advertising. I think if you start taking advertising and your revenues are really being driven by that advertising dollar, then you really are programming to attract the advertisers, and I think the choices become quite different in that respect. So we haven’t done that.</p>
<p>The charter talks about taking into account what’s happening in commercial media but lets you do programming of wide appeal <em>and</em> of specialist interest. ABC television is not simply meant to be Radio National on the telly, but there’s room for programming like Catalyst and Compass, just like there’s room for the new Andrew Denton and Adam Hills and a range of drama and the like. So, I think we try and find that sweet spot.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/9272/original/nsgctrf2-1333459585.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/9272/original/nsgctrf2-1333459585.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/9272/original/nsgctrf2-1333459585.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/9272/original/nsgctrf2-1333459585.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/9272/original/nsgctrf2-1333459585.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/9272/original/nsgctrf2-1333459585.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/9272/original/nsgctrf2-1333459585.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Overlapping but different to the television offerings: Radio National.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s where I think the funding reality hits us as well; even if you could make an argument that the BBC shows programs like Masterchef, [so] we should as well, there’s just no way we can afford to do those kind of big, blockbuster factual or family programs. … I’m comfortable with the mix that we run. I’m comfortable with serious news and current affairs, plenty of entertainment, some pioneering comedy, good mix of drama, good mix of factual, the best of the English language international stuff and a good domestic mix as well. … Ratings matter but they’re not the only thing that matters to us; you want stuff that’s going to engage your audience but you also want to make sure it’s high quality, distinctive, working under your charter and I think we get that balance pretty right.</p>
<h2>On the ABC and commercial broadcasters</h2>
<p><strong>Tiffen</strong>: It’s always been a media system with commercial dominance, for many years it was 2 to 1 commercial [Nine and Seven to the ABC] and 3 to 1 commercial [with the addition of Ten] now it’s about 3 to 2 [with the addition of SBS], does that constrain you, [or] liberate you, because in a sense the commercial dominance sets the norms of what people expect TV to be?</p>
<p><strong>Scott</strong>: I think we’ve got to be a little bit careful when we think about … our engagement with commercial broadcasting. I think commercial broadcasters are under enormous pressure, some of that pressure is self induced, with their borrowings and their leverage and part of it is the reflection of the competition that they’re after as well. So I think it’s important for our reference point not to simply be back to commercial television.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s controversial to say the Channel 9 investment in news and current affairs when [Kerry] Packer was there was significantly different to the kind of investment today and in a sense the kind of programming that they were doing then was closer to what the ABC offers now. A program like A Current Affair in its current incarnation is very different to the Jana Wendt or Mike Willesee A Current Affair of a couple of decades ago. So in a sense, we shouldn’t be referencing back there. We should have our own standards high and I sometimes say here that if commercial standards are falling and the gap between us and them remains the same then our standards are falling as well, we’re just not noticing as much, so you need to be quite vigorous and vigilant around that.</p>
<h2>On attacks on the ABC</h2>
<p><strong>Tiffen</strong>: … We’ve got just a couple of big newspaper companies in Australia, one of whom often has it in for the ABC. Does it make you more vulnerable to attack if your news priorities are different, because then people say the ABC is pursuing its own agenda?</p>
<p><strong>Scott</strong>: Yeah, I think you get that, but [if] you take a long view of it as I do … these things are perennial. If I look at recent times, I think we get attacked from portions of the right, sometimes we get attacked from segments of the left as well.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/9273/original/s3d2wq97-1333459840.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/9273/original/s3d2wq97-1333459840.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/9273/original/s3d2wq97-1333459840.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/9273/original/s3d2wq97-1333459840.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/9273/original/s3d2wq97-1333459840.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/9273/original/s3d2wq97-1333459840.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/9273/original/s3d2wq97-1333459840.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Attacks on the ABC roll on.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We have to run our own race and run our own standards and I think the evidence is still there that as we do that, there’s a strong and engaged audience for that. In Melbourne we’re regularly the top-rating news service with our seven o’clock news bulletin; we’re really encouraged by the audiences [that were] coming to News 24 the week of the leadership challenge. We had four million viewers tuning in to News 24 the week of the [Bob] Carr appointment - that’s pretty amazing 18 months into that service.</p>
<p>So we’ve got to keep our own standards and part of the challenge around news is the breadth we now feel we need to do. It’s a 24-hour service on television and on radio, up to the minute online at the same time as you’ve got Four Corners still going strong after 50 years doing the detailed long-form investigative work.</p>
<p>There’s no doubt that something like News 24 that gets a younger audience, [and] some of the programming we’re doing there, is deliberately attempting to target a younger audience quite successfully. But that’s not really to do with us imitating commercial networks; that’s us saying, “Well who’s our audience, what’s their need and how do we service them best?” and staying true to our own goals and aspirations rather than being shaped by them.</p>
<p><strong>Tiffen</strong>: When you get caught up in controversy, do you just have to take it on the chin and bear it?</p>
<p><strong>Scott</strong>: We debate that, frankly. Sometimes it can be like a three card trick: they’re almost trying to lure you out, and you read something egregious and outrageous and you wonder whether in fact you should be firing up an op-ed responding, or is it just a bit of theatrics? I think we don’t get too worried about their obsessions … Every now and again we’ll do something that will upset the tabloids and they’ll have a go at us, but that’s just the way it is.</p>
<p>But these storms seem to pass. There are a few critics who are quite carping and consistent. I’m not sure we can do anything to appease them, and you’ve just got to be realistic on that. One of the things I think I’ve learnt about bias is that the audience member brings so much to this bias conversation. We’d get these audience logs after Kerry O’Brien had done a vigorous or torrid interview and there’d be 200 phone calls, a hundred saying: “How dare Kerry O’Brien be so tough and rude to that political guest?” and the other hundred saying: “Why has Kerry O’Brien gone soft? Why won’t he go hard?” and you realise that the audience is bringing this kind of perspective.</p>
<p>I don’t think that The Australian is changing too many points of view on this, and you’ve got to give credit to the Murdoch institution, they’re consistent. We have audio tapes here of Keith Murdoch in the 1930s attacking the ABC, so it’s held through the generations except my one meeting with Dame Elizabeth, she went out of her way to talk about how much she enjoyed ABC programming.</p>
<h2>On government influence over the ABC</h2>
<p><strong>Tiffen</strong>: Well, that’s nice. The <a href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/146994/Report-of-the-Independent-Inquiry-into-the-Media-and-Media-Regulation-web.pdf">Finklestein report</a>’s essential recommendation was to strengthen the right of reply but there was a sort of mandatory agency, some government involvement to do that, and immediately this was hailed as a threat to freedom of the press. There was very little evidence in this coverage, I thought, and one of the things that they never paid attention to was that the one organisation in the country the government pays for is also by far the most trusted. How much influence does government have on the ABC? You’ve served a couple of years under the Coalition and now four years under Labor, has it changed in that time? </p>
<p><strong>Scott</strong>: I think it’s quite sophisticated really, these days. … The two ministers I’ve dealt with, Helen Coonan and Stephen Conroy, both quite different personalities but very similar, [showed] absolute respect for the editorial independence of the ABC. You knew at times that you did programming that didn’t make them happy or that they didn’t agree with, but it would be a passing reference but almost as a member of the audience - never with any intent or threat or anything like that at all. In fact, I find that the ministers I’ve dealt with have almost gone out of their way to reinforce their understanding of these norms that they have developed, and … one of the things I say when I’m in Canberra is that I hope we can get the conversation around the ABC to almost be a recognition that this is a really wonderful national asset that has [been] established for a long period of time. I’d like it to be viewed the way that we view the defence forces, the diplomatic corps, emergency services, in the sense that this is a real national asset.</p>
<p>That’s not to say we shouldn’t have debate around decisions that it makes and its level of performance, but it shouldn’t be sport just for the sake of being sport. In recent years we’ve done fairly well with that and I actually think it would serve as almost political risk for politicians to aggressively try and overcome some of these conventions that have developed around the independence of the ABC. We’re arguably the most popular organisation in the country, we have a consistent 90% approval rating, the public likes what we do and likes the way that the system works and holds the ABC together, and so you’d tinker with that at your peril … I think the public response to that would be significant.</p>
<p><strong>Tiffen</strong>: It seems to me though, that this is one area where there is a bit of a difference between the BBC and the ABC that there is more multi-partisan recognition of the BBC as a national institution, a national asset. In Australia it’s at a level where you couldn’t attack it frontally, no politician could, but in areas like board appointments you can sort of harass at the edges. It seemed to me that one of the big differences under the Howard government was not just that they appointed people who were more sympathetic to their view or other but appointed some people who didn’t believe in the ABC as an institution. Was that a problem and do you think that was a one-off? </p>
<p><strong>Scott</strong>: I don’t think I really want to critique the board and board appointments, I’m part of the board and I need to respect those board conferences but what I am happy to do though is say that I think this process that has been established around board appointees in recent years whereby people are not nominated, people are interviewed, recommendations go forward and it’s a very eminent panel who are doing those interviews. We’ve had some outstanding directors appointed who have a really good contribution to make and have a terrific mix and I think the board is working very well. Your broader statement is, of course, correct: where can the government influence? Well, the government influences the appointees to the board who appoint the managing director and that’s clearly a way an influence can happen, and the other one is around funding. So it’s not to say the government doesn’t have tools and mechanisms to influence the ABC - they do, and there might be a time in the future the government uses those mechanisms again, but I think just where we sit at the moment, and I hope for the foreseeable future, I think we’ve gotten to a point where we’re getting good board appointments and there’s a sense of a bipartisan acknowledgement of the leadership of the ABC in a whole series of areas in the Australian media sector at the moment.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/9408/original/gjb9sdx5-1333618971.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/9408/original/gjb9sdx5-1333618971.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/9408/original/gjb9sdx5-1333618971.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/9408/original/gjb9sdx5-1333618971.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/9408/original/gjb9sdx5-1333618971.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/9408/original/gjb9sdx5-1333618971.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/9408/original/gjb9sdx5-1333618971.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Some things you don’t put out to tender’: the Australia Network.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>On the tender process for the Australia Network</h2>
<p><strong>Tiffen</strong>: I worked on a few reviews of [the Australia Network] for the ABC, and it struck me then that … to get proper government funding you needed to show that there was value to the taxpayer, to the Australian national interest, but equally you had to assert and maintain total editorial independence. I wonder if in the tender processes initiated by Kevin Rudd there was sufficient recognition of the limits of what government involvement should be?</p>
<p><strong>Scott</strong>: We argued that whilst governments put some things out to tender there are some things you don’t put out to tender, because there are some things that governments should do, and that we thought you shouldn’t put your international broadcasting out to tender the same way you don’t put your diplomatic [representation]: “Who wants to run the embassy in Japan?” You don’t do it!</p>
<p>And that’s not to say there shouldn’t be robust questions around performance, around outcomes, around value for money but to make it contestable we argued it was unnecessary and it was questionable. And so we are pleased now with the outcome that we have got, we’re very happy to engage with Canberra around the outcomes and the performance of that network but a key to its strength and its credibility in the region is its independence and the fact that there are no conflicting stakeholders, there’s no other commercial imperatives driving the ABC, that we are an independent public broadcaster and they are the values that we are bringing. … This is not a trend that’s being followed around the world - that you would outsource your public broadcaster. No one else is doing it. In fact, we would run into other broadcasters around the world who were bewildered by the fact that there was a prospect of a tender process for this.</p>
<h2>On the internet and the ABC’s pre-web charter</h2>
<p><strong>Tiffen</strong>: Moving to the growth of the multimedia environment and the fragmentation of audiences and so forth, in the seemingly simple older days when there was just analogue TV and analogue radio it was quite clear the ABC was a radio broadcaster and a free-to-air TV broadcaster. Now in the age of the internet, media convergence, and so forth, it seems to me that your strategy - which is one that I also believe in as well - is what we might call a “big ABC strategy”, that you don’t want to be tied to a diminishing share of where people get their media. But on the other hand these growth strategies bring their own problems, and you’ve been criticised, for example … [by people saying that] your internet activities are trampling on smaller operators and things like that. What do you say to that?</p>
<p><strong>Scott</strong>: It’s a complicated area. <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/corp/pubs/ABCcharter.htm">Our charter</a> was written in 1982, so we’re interpreting that charter for a modern era, so we have great content paid for by the Australian people and we want to get it to them at a time they want, on a device they want, in a format they want, and our public has really embraced the ability to get our content in a more convenient form for them. The numbers that we’ve had, I mean two million iPhone apps downloaded, 800,000 iView apps on the iPad, hundreds of thousands of the Triple J Unearthed app - huge numbers, far bigger than we think anyone else in Australian media, so the public are embracing it and loving it. I think we just look at our charter and think of what it means, there was some criticism around The Drum, for example: should we have created The Drum? Well, my view is in this era … part of news is commentary and analysis. It always has been part of newspapers, to provide analysis is what we’ve always done, to have a website to be able to do that I think is hardly surprising. I think we handsomely staff it to the tune of one and a half people, but we leverage off a lot of the rest of what the ABC has got.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/9275/original/mjz7pxtx-1333460189.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/9275/original/mjz7pxtx-1333460189.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/9275/original/mjz7pxtx-1333460189.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/9275/original/mjz7pxtx-1333460189.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/9275/original/mjz7pxtx-1333460189.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/9275/original/mjz7pxtx-1333460189.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/9275/original/mjz7pxtx-1333460189.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A tiny staff leveraging off the rest of the ABC: the Drum.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I sometimes think we get criticised for some our activity but the reason some of our activity has performed well is that competitors have not performed as well. We started The Drum about the same time as Fairfax started the National Times. The Drum is a far more compelling proposition than The National Times. I think The Australian had some timidity really developing a strong opinion forum because they were protecting their print franchise, fine.</p>
<p>So we actually walked through the middle of a contested space. We hardly resourced up and muscled everyone else out of the way, but we found an audience and we engage with that audience. I think there were some criticisms around the funding we got for ABC Open but nobody is doing what we’re doing in regional Australia around providing opportunities for our audience to engage and respond and create content, the way <a href="http://open.abc.net.au/">ABC Open</a> happens. … If we were simply that grand old, somewhat sentimental haze or nostalgia around this old radio and TV service then we’d be fading off into the sunset. The fact that we’ve been out there and we created the great catch up television service in iView, when none of our competitors did, [is] very important, [in order] to be the real leaders in social media … in the Australia media landscape.</p>
<h2>On being overstretched</h2>
<p><strong>Tiffen</strong>: One of the particular issues is that you are funded by government and your funding is fixed through all sorts of formulas that have nothing to do with new challenges and expanding activities and so therefore you’ve got to meet these new challenges but with fairly severe resource constraints, are there issues of over-stretching…</p>
<p><strong>Scott</strong>: One of our frustrations with Canberra, a point we continue to make, is that they love the idea that we’re doing all the new stuff and they want us to trail blaze in ABC Open, terrific what we’re doing and the way our content will be used by the NBN but of course we’re still funded as if we only do radio and television, so we’re funded for the big television towers and the transmission but there’s no money really there for digital content, certainly not for digital distribution, [and] that’s quite expensive, so that’s a bit of a challenge. I think News 24 is a very virtuous story for the ABC, a number of things we’ve done in recent years have been specifically funded by government and we got extra money for the children’s channel and the drama money and ABC Open, but a number of other important things that we’ve done in recent years like News 24 and iView and the iPhone and the iPad apps, no extra money for that.</p>
<p>So what we had to do with News 24 is that we implemented really a very big overhaul of our television production model, changed the way we work, implemented new technology, there were a significant number of redundancies through the organisation and really reengineered it, probably a process that was overdue, and the bulk of the money that we saved, we reinvested in ABC News24. Here’s where I think you’ve got to be sophisticated in your engagement with the government. It’s not as though we didn’t ask for money for a news channel, but either the money wasn’t there or they weren’t willing to fund it. I think the prospect of more tough questioning from more ABC journalists was not something that they relished the prospect of handing over dollars for, but it was almost like “Well, if you want to do it that’ll be your call.” We did want to do it, I think we would have weakened the organisation if … we had said, “If you are really interested in breaking news, you have to sign up to pay TV and go to Sky”.</p>
<p>In this era there’s an expectation that the news will be there around the clock and we have to be able to deliver that and deliver that on free to air television, so we saved the money, we reinvested it, and we delivered a dividend back to the Australian public.</p>
<h2>On News 24</h2>
<p><strong>Tiffen</strong>: Just one follow up on that, especially in regards to News 24, this isn’t about the ABC in particular but about these all-news channels generally, and the speed of news and that sometimes is described as more mistakes more quickly, is there an adequate build up of quality control to go along with the increased productivity and output that such ventures demand?</p>
<p><strong>Scott</strong>: I think so. We don’t lower the bar for News 24; we expect to be accurate and authoritative and to make sure that story is fair, balanced and right. We do program reviews, we do train and develop our staff. I think it’s a different kind of narrative; I think the audience expects that - it’s not like a long-form documentary that you’ve spent six weeks curating for Four Corners. It’s live, it’s the best information we have at the moment, but I think our audience expects that. The people who are working on News 24, the leadership there is senior, serious, they’ve worked, many of them, across the gamut of our programs and we’re bringing all those values to bear.</p>
<p>On News 24 one of the things I’m pleased about is that we can demonstrate the breadth of our coverage around the country and the breadth of our correspondents around the world. … There will be really good stories done from our Hobart newsroom that would have only ever made the 7 o’clock news in Hobart that now you can bring to a national audience. There will have been days when our correspondent in Moscow or Johannesburg will have had a good story that will have not made a run for 7 o’clock, but we have an appetite for that content, and often that longer content [runs] on News 24.</p>
<p>We have all this wonderful resource that’s happening on radio and one of the things that delighted me was one of those plans we had, and it was “Let’s just put TV cameras in those radio studios,” and there’s the finance minister being interviewed by Fran Kelly, there’s the camera, [and] we cross live to that.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/9317/original/g27yh388-1333513876.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/9317/original/g27yh388-1333513876.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/9317/original/g27yh388-1333513876.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/9317/original/g27yh388-1333513876.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/9317/original/g27yh388-1333513876.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/9317/original/g27yh388-1333513876.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/9317/original/g27yh388-1333513876.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">“We don’t lower the bar for News 24.”</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>On the future of the ABC</h2>
<p><strong>Tiffen</strong>: It has been an era of change but there’s no prospect of the change ever slowing down, let alone stopping. You’ve been the head of the ABC for about six years now, looking back on those six years, how different are things now? And looking forward six years, how different do you think things will be?</p>
<p><strong>Scott</strong>: Time’s gone by really quickly. Really, really, stunningly quickly. … When I was appointed, there were so many people that were in my ear kind of just pronouncing doom: it’s a defeated broken place, shadow of its former self, the tide is running out. I got here, and started wondering around and chatting with people, I decided the place was in far better nick than I thought and that morale was actually higher than anyone had led me to believe.</p>
<p>But I did think pretty early on that the potential was great, but we needed to have a clarity around being multi-channel, multi-platform, being a public broadcaster in the digital era and work towards that and I think we have, we’ve worked pretty well as a team and an executive and support from the board and support from governments around that. I think there’s a lot of hard work ahead.</p>
<p>I gave a speech a few years ago called <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/0937_ansmith.pdf">The Fall of Rome</a> and I used WH Auden’s poem. It was about what happens to media empires and why they fall, and the last lines are:</p>
<p><em>Altogether elsewhere, vast</em><br>
<em>Herds of reindeer move across</em><br>
<em>Miles and miles of golden moss,</em><br>
<em>Silently and very fast.</em></p>
<p>It’s that sense of ominously, quickly, big things are happening out there and I think one of the things we will deal with here is life with fast broadband delivering seamlessly acres of global content and the fact that our competitors were once Seven and Nine, the Macquarie radio network and Aus Stereo, Fairfax and News, but now it’s going to be Google, it’s going to be Apple TV, it’s going to be Spotify, it’s going to be these global giants sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars cash, moving right into the content play with audiences able to dramatically personalise their viewing experience and a real transformation.</p>
<p>There’s that law that says around technological change, the impact of changes are overestimated in the short term and underestimated in the long term, I think we’re just getting that underestimated kind of thing now. And so what will the place of the public broadcaster be in this era? What are the content areas where we will still have a unique competitive advantage to be able to provide something that nobody else can or will, or will be able to afford to? Where will be our space? And how do you prepare now to lock down and secure those spaces for yourself and this vastly different media landscape?</p>
<p>Now it’s quite a lot of hard work and hard thinking … I think we can see some of those areas now but it’s going to be dramatically different and we are part of an ecology that’s going to be undergoing change. Those newspapers are hammered, commercial television is under pressure, it’s all swirling around us and that’s just what makes media such a fascinating industry to work in, that you’re in the midst of all of that. </p>
<p><em>This is an edited transcript of the conversation between Mark Scott and Professor Rod Tiffen. Please leave your comments and opinions below.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/6231/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rod Tiffen received funding in the past for consultancy work with the ABC. </span></em></p>Welcome to In Conversation, our series of discussions between leading academics and major public figures in Australian life. In this instalment, Mark Scott, managing director of the Australian Broadcasting…Rodney Tiffen, Emeritus Professor, Government and International Relations, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/58332012-03-13T22:26:30Z2012-03-13T22:26:30ZHackgate: the impact of Rebekah Brooks’ arrest<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/8572/original/wt4crthj-1331676213.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rebekah Brooks travels to News International headquarters last year.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Kerim Okten</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks and her husband Charlie were among a number of <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/mar/13/rebekah-charlie-brooks-released-bail">people arrested yesterday</a> UK time on charges of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. She was released without charge this morning.</p>
<p>The arrests are a dramatic new step in the ongoing “Hackgate” scandal that has enveloped British media and politics. British Prime Minister David Cameron, neighbour to the Brooks and former schoolmate of Charlie, will be particularly concerned that his government is being increasingly linked to a serious, ongoing criminal investigation.</p>
<p>The Conversation spoke with Ivor Gaber, professor of political journalism at City University (London), about the implications of these latest arrests of News International staff and their family members.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>How much does the arrest of Rebekah Brooks and her husband Charlie move the phone hacking scandal along?</strong></p>
<p>They are not the first people to be arrested for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice in this matter, but they are the most senior.</p>
<p>I think it moves it along significantly. Firstly because of Rebekah Brooks’ position both and the News of the World (NOTW), The Sun and News International and because of her close links with David Cameron, revealed ever closer last week with the issue of the horse.</p>
<p>So the fact that the chief executive, and as it happens her security person, have been arrested under conspiracy to pervert the course of justice means this is serious, the thing is moving. And if Rebekah Brooks is charged then she has potentially very serious matters to face in court.</p>
<p><strong>What are the political implications for David Cameron?</strong></p>
<p>David Cameron has a reputation as the Teflon Man; in other words he’s able to get out of most scrapes unharmed. The most serious issue he faced in the course of what we call Hackgate was his connection with Andy Coulson, the former editor of the News of the World that he made his press secretary.</p>
<p>His connections with Rebekah Brooks were supposedly social – they are neighbours and he went to school, Eton no less, with her husband Charlie. However, there have been revelations about the closeness of their relationship on a political level.</p>
<p>Over the course of Cameron’s first year in office, he met with Rebekah Brooks and other News International executives fairly frequently. I don’t think it will be fatal to David Cameron, but it certainly undermining and placing yet another question mark over his judgement.</p>
<p><strong>Is the investigation heading slowly but inexorably towards James Murdoch. Is that a fair reading?</strong></p>
<p>Yes and no. James Murdoch was chairman. But from what I can gather and my own knowledge of the News International operation, Rebekah Brooks was much more actively at the helm, and James Murdoch was never that interested in newspapers.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/8573/original/52kc325s-1331676401.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/8573/original/52kc325s-1331676401.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=816&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/8573/original/52kc325s-1331676401.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=816&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/8573/original/52kc325s-1331676401.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=816&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/8573/original/52kc325s-1331676401.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1025&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/8573/original/52kc325s-1331676401.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1025&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/8573/original/52kc325s-1331676401.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1025&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">James Murdoch could yet find himself further embroiled in the phone hacking scandal.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Facundo Arrizabalaga</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He was chairman of the holding company, and the buck would certainly stop with him. And it is no coincidence that he has been removed from that position by his father. I would say that the finger of suspicion if you like, and we’re aware of the legal niceties, is pointing more towards Rebekah Brooks because it will probably turn out that if there was a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, she was actually involved while James Murdoch was perhaps turning a blind eye.</p>
<p><strong>Does the arrest of Rebekah Brooks trigger the <a href="http://www.justice.gov/criminal/fraud/fcpa/">Foreign Corrupt Practices Act</a> in the USA, which could provide the wider News business with severe problems?</strong></p>
<p>In theory it is. But in practice, I’m not sure it would be because there doesn’t seem to be much evidence that Rebekah Brooks was actually in News Corp’s activity in the US, she was very much focused on News International here and the activities of The Sun and the News of the World.</p>
<p>However, there is undoubtedly serious concern in News Corp that there might be other aspects to this scandal that would involve them in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.</p>
<p>That is, if in the course of their investigations the police discover that journalists working for News International were attempting to bribe or hack in a way that would affect either people working for US Federal authorities or other state authorities.</p>
<p>There has been some suggestion that there were stories that involved that. If that were to happen, then I think the ramifications for News Corp would be serious. But I’m not sure that the arrest of Rebekah Brooks per se takes us much further forward on that issue.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/5833/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ivor Gaber does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks and her husband Charlie were among a number of people arrested yesterday UK time on charges of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. She…Ivor Gaber, Professor of Political Journalism, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.