The decline in great journalism is bad news for not-for-profits

In my youth, news was about the facts, the events, and while political, economic and power battle lines were drawn and argued around many contentious issues, each competing position had to at least pretend to be grounded in and referenced to some sense of evidence.

Having journalists interview journalists was not a common practice. Opinion was opinion, news was news, and name calling was not opinion or news. There were few, if any, stories reporting that one person had called another person something hurtful or derogatory. A journalist calling someone in the government or the opposition a rude name would not have been newsworthy. To me, it still isn’t.

I read a lot of news as part of writing Daily Diary for CCA members. And unfortunately, despite my extensive exposure to modern media in all its forms, my old-fashioned values about what is important, what is newsworthy, are constantly challenged.

I enjoy a good argumentative essay, an opinion piece that presents a challenge or a new perspective, even when I disagree. Opinion, commentary and reflection are all critical in ensuring we are better informed. Some of the opinion writers I most respect come from our sector.

Creating or responding to media is one of the requirements of the role of leaders of charities and community organisations. In my roles I’ve conducted many media interviews with journalists and had opinion pieces published in a broad range of publications.

In this work, I’ve met many excellent journalists. One of them is Sue Dunlevy, who was part of the latest redundancies at Nine Entertainment. Sue is not alone in being an outstanding, knowledgeable, courageous and insightful journalist.

What made Sue and her colleagues so unusual in modern media is that they knew what they were writing about. Sue had a better understanding of health and pharmaceutical policy than most health department employees or health ministers. She knew the players, what they wanted and why. When Sue received a media release from a vested interest, she knew the backstory, the reason this was an issue, what was at the heart of the competing agendas.

Sue also understood what would make a story, get a run, get a by-line.

Sue accepted a redundancy last week. Mark Metherell, another experienced and specialist health journalist who knew more about health policy than most, praised Sue’s tenacity and suggested that quite a few vested interests would rest easier knowing she was no longer reporting for the Nine papers.

Unfortunately, media companies are no longer investing in quality journalism the way they used to. News grounded in a deep understanding of the issues or situation is being swamped in a sea of superficial commentaries lost in the name-calling, attention-driven clickbait partisanship that drives the economic and political models of the big global platforms.

And the media moguls, who long ago gave up the pretence of running anything other than a self-serving agenda grounded in greed and power, have willingly set sail in the same outrage-driven bile of conflict and self-centredness.

Any doubt that media is driven by short-term economic interest has been further displaced by this week’s reaction to proposed bans on gambling advertisements. The government has clearly been told that any advertising ban would not only cost media and sport millions of dollars in revenue, but it would also cost the government through adverse stories and campaigns that would reduce their chances of re-election. Interestingly, the government seems to be prepared to ban gambling advertisements and inducements across all online platforms. Perhaps they pose less of a threat?

As Crikey’s Bernard Keane wrote this week in a series about the refusal to ban gambling advertisements in mainstream media: “It also confirms the toxic grip media companies have on public policy in Australia, one that has long harmed consumers and ensured Australia has a second-rate, oligopolistic media industry that invests more in ensuring it has a steady flow of regulatory wins from politicians than in quality journalism”.

Bernard’s view echoes the broader perspective offered in Eric Beecher’s new book, The Men Who Killed the News, which includes this quote among many other telling lines: “Media power is built on the gigantic loophole in democracy that protects the freedom of the press without requiring any ethical, moral or societal responsibility from its owners.”

The threat posed to democracy through the demise of public interest journalism is one of the reasons CCA and others believe we should be doing more to support charities like the Public Interest Journalism Initiative.

All of us want our stories told, and we want to be good advocates for our communities, our causes and our organisations. Good journalists help make that happen.

We all also want factual news, a shared reality on which to base arguments about how we can make things better in Australia. The lack of well-informed journalists who can challenge misrepresentations and explain the underlying interests of the loudest voices diminishes us all.

Thank you Sue and all those journalists who worked so hard to inform better policies in Australia through fearless expert journalism. Without you, our work promoting good public policy and community values has become that little bit harder.