As Australia is now less than 3 months away from entering Year Three of the COVID-19 Global Pandemic and is expecting the announcement of a federal general election in the first quarter of 2022 (if not earlier) here is a brief look at how & where the general public obtains its political, social & health information

 

All information comes to an individual from eight main sources: family & friendship groups or teachers; professionals personally consulted on specific issues; government advertising, television news & public affairs programs; radio news & commentary; print newspapers; digital news websites; social media platforms & Internet search engines. 

Every source relays this information through a filter - either of personal experience or level of understanding, commercial interests of proprietors, editorial guidelines or content space constraints, potential legal consequences, the interests of a lobby group and sometimes of political allegiances or government policy aims.

Increasingly in the straightened economic times of the last four years, mainstream media appeared to heavily rely on government & industry media releases (often accompanied by digital-ready posed images) as a 'no cost' news item, which is published verbatim without source attribution. While salient points uncovered during exchanges with journalists during interviews and press conferences don't always escape the red pencil of an editor.

The political climate has in recent years also become less tolerant of investigative journalism, with threats of legal action, police raids on journalists' work places or homes becoming an issue to be considered and their social media presence often being constantly monitored. A number of bloggers, vloggers, tweeters and even chatroom posters have also been subjected to similar treatment. All of which appears to be aimed at silencing unwelcome critique of or comment on governments of the day and their cabinet ministers or on specific industries. In my opinion a chilling effect now exists. 

 

So let's take a brief look at the Australian media landscape in 2021......

Australian Government, Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), Media Interests Snapshot, 26 July 2021: 

ABC News, 14 April 2021, excerpt:

What does Rupert Murdoch own?

Mr Murdoch's portfolio of Australian news media brands stretches from print, radio and pay television to online news, including:

• Print and Online: roughly 100 physical and digital newspaper mastheads in Australia (at the start of 2021), along with the news website news.com.au.

• Television: 24-hour news service Sky News Australia.

• Radio: a minority shareholding in Here, There & Everywhere, formerly APN News & Media.

• These investments fall under the banner of News Corp Australia, whose ultimate owner is the US-based News Corporation, of which Mr Murdoch is executive chairman.

• The Murdoch Family Trust controls around 40 per cent of the parent company's voting shares (and a smaller proportion of the total shares on issue).

....On social media, however, Sky has an outsized audience. In the second half of 2020, its Facebook posts were shared more often than any of the 65 accounts analysed by Fact Check, while news.com.au placed third, behind Daily Mail. On YouTube, its subscriber base far exceeds that of Channel 7 and Channel 9 and by March 2021 had surpassed ABC News, while its videos receive millions more views per month.

In May 2020 News Corp announced that 112 of its local and regional print newspapers would go digital or disappear entirely. Some of the est. 76 which went digital have since been reduced to a page on one of the main masthead's website. At the end of September 2021 it will stop distribution of its print news papers to regional Queensland and there are a growing number rural and regional areas across Australia which now have no local, state or national print newspapers available to the community at large.

The Australian Press Council has not published an annual report since 2018-19. In that financial year it received 758 in-scope and 183 out-of-scope complaints from 2,004 complainants, compared to the previous period’s 554 in-scope complaints and 158 out-of scope complaints from 959 complainants.

That 2018-19 total of 758 in-scope complaints was a sharp increase on the preceding four financial years.

According to that annual report an est. 621 of the 758 complaints considered by the Press Council to fall within its remit were partially or fully upheld and 18 underwent formal adjudication.

The Australian Press Council Inc. which is funded by the Australian media industry has no legislated ability to impose penalties for serious breaches of journalism or community standards on any of its 22 media organisation & independent journalist members.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 16 August 2021, excerpt:

New figures from industry group ThinkTV, audited by KPMG, report that industry-wide TV revenue – which includes metropolitan broadcasters, regional broadcasters and pay TV company Foxtel – grew 12 per cent in the 2021 financial year to $3.9 billion. 

Metropolitan television revenue, a key figure and the biggest earner for Seven, Nine and Ten, grew 11.5 per cent to $2.6 billion. The return to growth comes after revenue fell drastically across the television industry in the 2020 financial year as advertisers slashed spending in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, while the 2021 industry figures represent a rebound, they are still below the levels achieved in 2019. 

Seven’s revenue figures were impacted by the delayed Tokyo 2020 Olympics. However, the network is betting that record-breaking ratings for that event will translate into higher viewership for programs such as The Voice (which it took from Nine last year) and Big Brother. It is also expected to generate a large amount of revenue in the new financial year from the most recent event, as well as the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. 

Television advertising is still the biggest driver of revenue for Seven, which also operates a production business and the West Australian Newspapers publishing operation. The revenue share figures imply Seven made about $917 million from television advertising last year. Nine made about $1 billion while Network Ten pulled in approximately $671 million, boosted by growth in market share in the second half. 

Nine, which will report its financial results on August 25, makes most of its money from television advertising but also owns radio, publishing and real-estate assets, and subscription streaming service Stan. Its revenue was boosted in the last financial year by programs including Married at First Sight and Legomasters and key sporting events such as the State of Origin. Ten, known for programs such as Australian Survivor and The Bachelor, made all of its money last year from advertising. 

 Advertising on online services, such as 7Plus, 9Now, 10Play and Kayo Sports, increased substantially in the same period, up 63.4 per cent to $278.2 million, according to ThinkTV. The growth in revenue from digital services is considered critical by media investors and executives as audiences migrate to consuming video online. Seven, which runs 7Plus, is expected to announce it made about $93 million from its online streaming service last financial year, compared to about $118 million for Nine’s platform, 9Now. Network Ten’s online service, 10Play, made about $40 million, according to industry sources who spoke anonymously......

Seven said in June it expects earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation to be between $250 million and $255 million for the full-year ending June 30. 

Australian Government, ACMA, News in Australia: diversity and localism - News measurement framework, December 2020, excerpt:

News on social media is unlike other mediums. Designed to keep users engaged and on the platform, embedded algorithms on these sites rank and select news content for users based on their social circles, interests, likes and dislikes. While this arguably has positive benefits in exposing users to a greater number and variety of news sources, it also raises concerns that passive users of these platforms could become caught in socalled ‘filter bubbles’ or ’echo chambers’ of like-minded people with a similar set of viewpoints or opinions, despite having access to a wider range of news content.

Another concern about the consumption of news on digital platforms relates to the rise of ‘clickbait’ journalism and deluge of easily sharable sensationalised or ‘fake news’ stories. These are stories designed to elicit an emotional response and be accepted without critical examination. This has led to declining levels of trust in news content posted on digital platforms and higher levels of news avoidance. These behaviours highlight some of the contradictions and complexities of examining media diversity in the digital age and the need to better understand news consumption behaviours, including the influence of social media and news aggregators.

The majority of print newspapers, their associated websites and a good number of their journalist have a presence across the main social media platforms accessible in Australia.

APO: Analysis & Policy Observatory on the subject of University of Canberra News and Media Research Centre’s Digital news report: Australia 2021, 23 June 2021:

The global COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for credible and fast news. In the early days, news consumption increased as the public tried to make sense of the rapidly evolving crisis. Despite the surge in demand, news organisations experienced a substantial hit to revenues, which led to the closure or suspension of many local newspapers across Australia. The pandemic has accelerated the industry’s decades-long struggle to replace falling advertising income.

The global data show there is no consistent pattern in COVID-19’s impact on news consumers. In Australia, 57% say their lives have been impacted by the pandemic, the lowest out of the 46 countries surveyed.

However, this year’s report reveals the rapid increase in news consumption by Australians at the start of the pandemic has not been maintained. The proportion of people paying for it has not increased, and interest in news has declined since 2020.

The report also finds that Australians have become more trusting of news in general but concern about misinformation remains high. However, many Australians lack adequate levels of media literacy to identify it and are unaware of the financial difficulty facing the news industry.

Key findings:

• Trust in news increased globally over the past 12 months. In Australia, trust in news has risen (+5) to 43%, close to the global average (44%).

• Australians’ interest in news dropped during the pandemic in line with other countries. Interest in the news has been consistently declining among Australian audiences.

• General concern about false and misleading information online in Australia is high (64%), and much higher than the global average (56%).

• Women, younger generations and those with low income are less likely to see themselves or their views as being fairly or sufficiently reflected in the news.

• The majority of Australians (66%) are either unaware that commercial news organisations are less profitable than they were 10 years ago, or they don’t know about the current financial state of the news media.

Full report can be downloaded at:

https://apo.org.au/sites/default/files/resource-files/2021-06/apo-nid312650_0.pdf

This report is part of a long running international survey coordinated by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, an international research centre in the comparative study of journalism based at the University of Oxford. The Digital News Report delivers comparative data on media usage in 46 countries and across 6 continents.

The News and Media Research Centre at the University of Canberra is the Australian partner institute and author of the Digital News Report: Australia. This is the seventh annual Digital News Report: Australia.

Cite the report as: Park, S., Fisher, C., McGuinness, K., Lee, J.Y. & McCallum, K. (2021). Digital News Report: Australia 2021. Canberra: News & Media Research Centre, University of Canberra.

So you are a professional journalist and you personally don't like the social media platform, Twitter? Read on.......

IMAGE: The Wheeler Centre

University of Melbourne academic, author, writer, Tim Dunlop writing at Patreon, 19 September 2021:

The audience-journalism treadmill

 This post is out from behind the paywall for a few days. Feel free to share. If you find your way here via this article, please consider a paid subscription. It will give you access to the full archive and all future work. Thanks. (My Twitter travel hiatus continues.)

The best thing about Leigh Sales writing about abuse on Twitter, I was thinking as the story broke, was that it will likely bring forth a response from Margaret Simons.

Lo and behold.

Simons has a piece in The Age responding to Sales's piece at the ABC.

I want to say something about both, and the debate more generally, about why we keep going over the same old ground and what journalists who hate social media think the endgame might be.

Apologies if you've heard all this before.

The Sales' piece, as far as it goes, is compelling. It addresses a serious issue that needs regular reiteration, and it highlights a failing of social media that users––and owners––of various platforms need to acknowledge, that particularly for women, and maybe particularly for women journalists, such spaces can be sites of unforgivable and unrelenting abuse.

Honestly, read the article and take it to heart. Keep the tab open. We are all diminished by the abuse she documents.

The article is, though, a very partial take on what is a much bigger issue. I say this as a criticism, not just of Sales' piece, but of the way too many journalists continue to wear blinkers when it comes to social media.

We can all acknowledge the problems with Twitter, but if we are ever going to seriously address the underlying issues we need to engage with a few other things, and it is a constant failing of journalists that they don't. This is not to diminish their complaints; in fact, it is take them more seriously than they tend to themselves.

Neither Sales' piece (nor Simons') can be read in isolation from the previous two decades of exchanges between professional journalists and their post-digitisation audience, and one of the most frustrating things about the issue is the way in which various journalists reinvent the wheel every time they get annoyed with Twitter.

As often happens in the media, the controversy du jour is presented as just that, and little regard is given to history or wider context.

Even worse, insufficient attention is paid to matters of power and institutional structure, of the place of the media in society more generally, of the way in which public spaces like Twitter and Facebook are controlled by privately-owned corporations, and of the ongoing relationship between audience and media. Little or no reference is made to the endless pieces that have already picked these issues apart outside journalistic op eds.

We have been having this discussion since at least the turn of the century, since blogs, but to read Sales' piece is to start from scratch.

It is a huge failing, and no wonder nothing changes.

So, it is worth noting that Sales offers no structural analysis, makes no attempt to understand the wider issues in which the abuse she rightly criticises arises. She responds to precisely none of the, by now, extensive body of work that exists on the nature of journalist-audience interaction on social media. It is all reduced to personal anecdotes (powerful ones, I might add) and generalisations, an unfortunate combination.

Can we at least be honest here and recognise the problems she describes are not limited to social media, let alone to Twitter in particular. Racism, sexism, misogyny, all sorts of gendered and class abuse are stock-in-trade for other platforms and, for the mainstream media itself.

In an Australian context, News Ltd in particular has elevated bullying––the almost unchecked exercise of their own power––to a reflex, and Margaret Simons herself, along with any number of others, have been victims of this, and it is more damaging than any 'pile on', so-called, on Twitter.

Can we talk about that?

And don't tell me this isn't relevant to Sales' piece, or that she is making a more specific point. It is part of the same problem.

Let me let you into a secret: part of the reason people take to Twitter in the first place is because the media, its journalists, and editors, and its so-called regulatory bodies, fail to respond to the way in which the media regularly drops the ball, either in terms of accuracy or analysis, or, indeed, in terms of abuse. They create a vacuum into which an audience with access to social media is inevitably drawn.

Journalists will regularly invoke badly formed theories of free speech to defend their own shortcomings, but never extend anything like the same standards to "Twitter". To put it another way, they hold Twitter to a standard they don't apply to their own industry.

.........

Some people are running the line that the Sales' piece is about abuse she has received, not about other sorts of criticism, and that therefore––the logic runs––if you are upset about her piece, then you must have a guilty conscience.

This is disingenuous at best and goes to the heart of the problems we have in discussing these issues.

By which I mean, the line is not that easily drawn. Indeed, the difference between abuse and criticism is one of the matters at stake. Sometimes the line is obvious, other times it isn't.

Over and over, journalists write pieces like this and they respond to the most mindless abuse they receive, generalise that to all of 'Twitter', while ignoring more thoughtful criticism that comes their way. It is a lazy and self-serving approach.

Journalists are completely within their rights to complain about the way people respond to their work, but it would help everyone, especially them, if they acknowledged and engaged with the huge body of work that already exists on these matters. If they responded to the best of the criticism rather than the worst.

Only then are we likely to get off this treadmill.

Yes, Sales makes a valid and concerning case about the abuse directed at, particularly, women journalists. And yes, such abuse is cowardly, demeaning and indicative of broader issues of misogyny in public culture and should never be tolerated.

But now what?

Unless journalists also engage with the legitimate criticism they receive, they run the risk of conflating criticism with abuse, and that is what at risk in Sales' piece and other articles like it.

A double standard develops.

The people Sales blocks on Twitter include well-credentialed journalists who have criticised her, not abused her, and while it is entirely up to her who she does and doesn't block, can we at least acknowledge that lines are, at best, blurred.

Abuse on social media is given disproportionate attention by journalists, but the abuse, sexism, misogyny, and racism that is structurally embedded in the mainstream media is given little attention at all.

Sales is on strong, if anecdotal, ground when she highlights abuse. She is less convincing in some other matters, and it is a shame she didn't offer a more in-depth analysis.

For instance, she writes, 'Let's not duck the common thread here — it is overwhelmingly left-leaning Twitter users who are targeting ABC journalists for abuse.'

Given the way in which the ABC is targeted by News Ltd, the IPA and the Liberal Party (a point Sales notes in passing) I would like to see some data that supports the claim that abuse is 'overwhelming left-leaning'. It may well be true of Sales's experience, but as I say, it would be good to see some evidence that this 'fact' extends beyond that.

The plural of anecdote is not data, as they say. And the use of 'left-leaning' as a descriptor is itself hardly an example of precise labelling.

My own experience is that most abuse is from the right and from the centre (yes, also imprecise terms), not to mention from the mainstream media itself––particularly true in the days of blogs––but I would try not to say this amounted to a common thread, let alone present it as an overwhelming fact of Twitter or any other social media platform.

Let's look at the Simons' article.

Margaret Simons is one of a relatively small number of established journalists who were trained and came to professional maturity in the pre-digital age who have meaningfully adapted to the changes wrought by digitisation and rise of social media. In fact, she is a leader in the field, and has written extensively and wisely on the topic. From the beginning, she has engaged with the new landscape and has tried to make sense of how, not just the industry, but the craft of journalism has changed. (And yes, she is a friend, so I am biased.)

She is simply one of the best journalists out there, with a love of, and dedication to, public interest journalism that shines through everything she does, and that she enhances with her own use of social media, as anyone who followed her Twitter coverage of the lockdown of the Flemington public housing towers in 2020 can attest.

In her hands, Twitter is a powerful tool, and her journalism on the platform has won her plaudits and a dedicated following amongst those other journalists dismiss as the Twitterarti. Her example puts the lie to the idea that the site is nothing more than a sewer.

Beyond all that, she is journalism educator, most recently as the head of the Centre for Advancing Journalism at the University of Melbourne, where she has nurtured some of the best young journalists in the country.

And this is one of the things I keep wondering as journalists continue to bag and rubbish social media: from a purely pedagogical standpoint, what message are they sending to young journalists who will inevitably have to work in this environment?

Maybe a Leigh Sales or a Chris Uhlmann or a Chris Kenny can excuse themselves from such platforms, but it is a privilege not available to most journalists, especially newbies.

Simons' response to Sales is measured, but with steel in it.

She acknowledges the problems with bullying; she concurs with Sales' concerns about accusations of bad faith. 'Nevertheless,' she writes, 'I think she fails to draw a distinction between abuse and legitimate critique.'

She calls Sales bluff on journalists not being thin-skinned, and writes: 'Journalists ARE thin-skinned, sometimes ridiculously so, when they are criticised in public.'

Simons makes the point that simply withdrawing from social media is not good enough, arguing, 'Journalists who do not interact are missing a professional opportunity.'

Many journalists dismiss Twitter as unrepresentative of broader society in order diminish its relevance, and Sales says it is not 'anything remotely representative of the Australian public.'

But as Simons points out, Sales is underestimating the number of people who use Twitter:

Leigh Sales quotes data from the ABC’s Australia Talks survey to assert that only 6 per cent of Australians use Twitter regularly. The University of Canberra figures suggest that is closer to 18 per cent – but these general figures obscure important details.

The Digital News Report data shows Twitter users are particularly news-aware and engaged.

They are more likely to use Twitter mainly for news, whereas Facebook and YouTube users come across news incidentally.

 

Twitter users are more likely than other social media users to follow mainstream media outlets and journalists, and less likely to get their news from social media personalities and “influencers”.

Importantly, at a time when persuading people to pay for news is crucial to the survival of serious journalism, Twitter users are much more likely to be already paying subscriptions.…

By comparison, only 14 per cent of Facebook and YouTube users pay for news, although the user bases are much larger. (Park emphasises that sample sizes are small once cross-tabulated, so the data should be treated as indicative rather than precise.)

In other words, the more serious contributors on Twitter are exactly the kind of people serious media organisations most want to attract.

I would make a further point: the fact that Twitter is not representative of the broader population is a feature not a bug. Used properly, as many have found, it can be an endless source of useful information and, what's more, can offer insights not available elsewhere.

In other words, by virtue of the engaged and learned nature of many participants, Twitter users are often ahead of the game precisely because they are not beholden to the same echo chambers and self-reinforcing problems of journalists who talk only to their own kind.

I know this flies in the face of a lot received 'wisdom', but so be it.

Users on the platform saw the end of Malcolm Turnbull long before the gallery did. They saw the relevance and power of the Gillard misogyny speech while the press gallery was churning out Tweet after article dismissing it as a gimmick.

To say you don't want to deal with the most engaged edge of your readership/viewership is a limiting professional decision.

For most people––for the representative Australian public Sales invokes––politics is completely mediated, known only by the way it is reported. Twitter, on the other hand, is full of people who interact with politics more directly and it therefore offers, as Simons says, a tremendous resource for any journalist who is smart enough to take it seriously on its own terms.

There is another inconsistency here. If Twitter users are as small and irrelevant a section of the population as Sales claims, and if your intention is to make a stand against bullying and abuse, then why is Twitter given so much journalistic attention and the mainstream media itself so little?

There is a glaring double standard here.

Again, this has all been pointed out before.

In the early 2000s, when blogging took off, it was inhabited by engaged amateurs, often with expertise in various areas, and it was noticeable how the tone shifted––from a deliberative space to one of gotchas and, yes, abuse––as more and more mainstream journalists started to use the space.

When I blogged for News Ltd, my comments thread would on occasion fill with abuse and I knew that in all likelihood Andrew Bolt had 'mentioned' me and linked, thus encouraging his carefully cultivated readership to whip over to my joint and tell me what they thought of me. This wasn't an accident: it was a business model, and when I complained to higher ups, no-one was willing to confront Bolt, let alone issue any sort of wider directive about such matters.

Sky News doesn't exist to deliberate on matters of public importance: it is there to cultivate and monetise anger and disaffection and it does so in such a heavy-handed way that YouTube recently suspended Sky's channel on the platform.

Can we talk about that? Can we get a phalanx of journalists who are concerned about standards in public debate to put pen to paper on that?

Journalists who regularly find fault with 'Twitter', rarely call out abuse when it is other journalists doing it, and they use their powerful platforms to intimidate, and in some instances, actually abuse a particular sector of citizens, namely, those on Twitter. They rarely take the time to discriminate, dismissing and criticising 'Twitter' with a broad sweep of their hand.

In the Phil Coorey article the above Tweet links, Coorey says of the Lindy Chamberlain trial:

One can only imagine how even more hideous the whole episode would have been had the internet – including its sewer, Twitter – existed back then.

It's laughable. One of the huge failures of mainstream Australian journalism, and his concern is it might've been worse if Twitter existed.

Great argument. Compelling analysis.

Coorey dismissing Twitter as a sewer and Uhlmann calling people on Twitter sewer rats is itself a form of bullying. By itself, each insult might be a glancing blow, but they reinforce prejudices that poison public discourse. The difference is, Uhlmann and Coorey (and others) are doing it from a position of much more power than any no-image user on Twitter.

Can all mainstream journalist concerned about bullying and abuse on Twitter write a swathe of articles about that?

Until journalists acknowledge this power imbalance, until they openly address the structural problems with their own industry and pay more than lip service to the failings of their profession, they are never going be taken as sincere contributors to this important debate.

And round and round we will go.

I honestly don't expect Sales to pay any attention to this piece, but that's why I was glad Margaret Simons wrote a response. Maybe Sales will be less willing to dismiss the criticism Simons offers, and take to heart, not just the article itself, but the way Simons conducts herself on social media and how she deploys it in her journalism more generally. 

Regardless, the issue goes beyond individual behaviours and rests on structural matters to do with the incentives––algorithmic and human––built into the business models of both social and mainstream media. If journalists genuinely want to address abuse in the public sphere, they could do worse than enlist the support of their most engaged readership and work with them towards a common solution rather than simply dismiss that readership as the problem.

Murdoch and Costello's "recycled press releases by government spin doctors being passed-off as journalism or entertainment clickbait pinched from elsewhere and dressed up as original news content, isn’t going to cut it"

The Northern Rivers Times, 10 September 2020:

If there was ever an indicator that the media is not a one-size-fits-all model, it’s happening right now in Australia. 

And given the monopoly one media organisation has in this country, it’s a pretty reasonable assumption (on the author’s part at least, having been part of said organisation up until a couple of months ago), that they are driving the campaign to make online giants Google and Facebook pay to use Australian news on their platforms. 

But who exactly will benefit from charging Facebook and Google? All Australian media, or just those luddites struggling to implement their particular business model in today’s online media climate. 

Despite what the Federal Government, or more aptly their friend Newscorp, might be proposing to challenge the Facebook and Google news sharing platforms, not all news being shared is created equal..... 

While the media industry preaches that paying for journalism is a must to ensure quality and accountability remains at its bedrock, it’s no guarantee you are going to get either if you do. 

Recycled press releases by government spin doctors being passed-off as journalism or entertainment clickbait pinched from elsewhere and dressed up as original news content, isn’t going to cut it. 

Expecting people to pay for what they can read for free elsewhere isn’t going to cut it. Demanding trust rather than delivering it, isn’t going to cut it. 

Original, well-researched, unbiased, investigative journalism might. And if it doesn’t, well what’s left hardly constitutes journalism does it....

Read the full article here at Page 5.