It is becoming alarmingly clear to me, that the quality of contemporary journalism is being compromised to fill the 24 hour news cycle. The proliferation of new media and the digital landscape are creating more and more space for constant news updates that seem to compromise poignant analysis or reflection.
I believe it is the analysis and reflection that contributes hugely to a journalist’s skill and the quality of news. SMH online and ABC online news bulletins are commonly resembling something of a twitter or facebook update. While this is absolutely fine in delivering news promptly and concisely, it does little to provoke the critical thinking neurones of the audience.
The 2010 Hung Parliament is indicative of the lack of analytical and reflective journalism occurring today. Politicians act to please the masses by hugging babies or donning hard-hats and instead of analysing the Labor’s policy on the mining tax for example, many publications engaged in commentary about the opportunistic Labor leader appealing to the mining sector for votes or worse still, publishing spin which supports the perspective of the private sector, therefore neglecting to counterbalance the arguments with those from the public sector. The lack of analysis has coincided with a current trend, where the community are quick to support the private sector over the public sector and this wasn’t the case some 20 years ago.
AFR political correspondent Laura Tingle compares the current political landscape to that which dominated the 1980s and 1990s. She speaks of ‘Policy’ ruling the government at that time, but now, it’s ‘Politics’ she confirms.
In July, Tingle wrote a reflective and analytical piece in the Walkley Magazine about the lack of journalistic analysis surrounding the Super Profits Mining Tax policy during the end of Kevin Rudd’s Prime Ministership.
“As a member of the Canberra Press Gallery, which is always being criticised for being too ‘up’ one government or another, or too focused as politics as the game, I was depressed at the way the political end of this story was reported, but truly gobsmacked by the proselytising nature of the copy churned out by mining and business writers.
For example, while the government’s preparedness to ‘consult’ with the mining industry was dismissed as fiction... the industry’s refusal to concede any ground was seen as a perfectly legitimate position.
Whatever the government’s significant flaws, the mining industry was treated in this debate without the degree of scepticism which might be applied to a rent seeker, and instead with the respect applied to a ‘stakeholder’. And the media did not serve its readers and viewers particularly well.”
