 |
Dr. Scott Burchill, ABC Breakfast Show, 19 April 2022
SNAPSHOT IMAGE: ABC News
|
From
the pen of Dr.
Scott Burchill,
Honorary
Fellow, Faculty of Arts and Education, School of Humanities
& Social Science, Deakin
University,
at
https://iranalyst.medium.com/problems-in-australian-journalism-c79573279462,
18 April 2022:
Problems
in Australian Journalism
(updated
and expanded)
Whether
we are being directed to a news story by an editor or an algorithm,
the task of filtering the dross from the insightful remains the most
important challenge for those who ‘consume’ political
information.
This
is a much more important concern than perennial angst about
concentrated media ownership in Australia, or whether a Royal
Commission should be held into News Corporation.
Despite
new media platforms provided by revolutionary advances in information
technology, the structural problems facing political journalists who
create the ‘content’ of these stories are mostly the same today
as they were in the past.
Here
are four which help to shape our views about the world outside
Australia, followed by those shone into high relief by the election
campaign in Australia.
Missing
Context
Too
many journalists have a limited capacity for critical thinking
because of an impoverished historical knowledge, and therefore cannot
place real time announcements and actions by governments and their
opponents in any philosophical or historical context for their
audiences.
This
is partly the fault of journalism courses at universities, which
should provide post-graduate training rather than undergraduate
degrees. Journalism is not an academic discipline nor an
apprenticeship, and should be seen as a skill set built on top of
foundational knowledge in the humanities and social sciences.
The
veracity of sources should always be tested. For example, journalists
should be very sceptical of “intelligence leaks” which cannot be
verified, but which sound authoritative only because they are
confidential or constitute confirmation bias. Open-source material is
more reliable.
Everyone
who faithfully reported the phony WMD pretext for the 2003 war
against Iraq should have had the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin “incident”
uppermost in their minds before giving Western governments the
benefit of their doubts again. How many journalists covering the lead
up to the 2003 war had even heard of it? Governments lie and deceive
all the time, especially about their wars. Google ‘curveball’.
The
new “China” scare, including exaggerated and preposterous claims
about China’s military intentions in the region, reflects a paucity
of knowledge about earlier bouts of Sinophobia in the West, and would
be very different discussion if the Cold War and modern Chinese
history were better understood. Those following events over the last
three years who have no sense of déjà vu just haven’t done their
homework. A good antidote is James Peck’s Washington’s China.
The
same applies to Russia’s illegal attack on Ukraine. The starting
point for understanding this war, especially its timing, is NATO’s
eastward expansion into Europe since the implosion of the Soviet
Union in the early 1990s and the role of the US in Ukraine since
2016. At the risk of stating the obvious, the challenge for
journalists is to provide context for a better understanding of the
causes of the war, not joining with governments to play the blame
game. Unfortunately, how the attack on Ukraine has been covered in
the Western media is strikingly similar to the way the 9/11 attacks
were presented in their aftermath: context-free.
By
the time a political claim is exposed as fraudulent, the media circus
has moved on from ‘old news’ to another ‘new’ issue with an
equally brief shelf life. This is because news and information have
become disposable commodities to be consumed like fruit and
vegetables. This is how capitalism treats information.
Flak
and distractions are often taken at face value, uncritically reported
thanks to a remarkable level of political naivety and quiescence
across the Fourth Estate. Given almost everything is now searchable
and recorded for posterity, there are no excuses for the success of
diversionary tactics regularly undertaken by governments at the
insistence of their spin doctors.
Obvious
questions about policies are just not posed.
Why
is this being announced now and in this way?
Which
questions do the government not want asked of it?
Why
is the media being steered in this direction — away from what?
What
is the political motive behind this decision: who wins and who loses?
Often
misconstrued as adversarial, critical journalism should be based on a
comprehensive knowledge of the subject in question and a well-founded
suspicion of those with power and wealth.
Overton
Windows & False Balances
Journalists
should continuously ask themselves: what is considered the
permissible range of opinion on this subject and why is it
circumscribed in the way that it has been? The Overton Window, as it
is called, should be opened as widely as possible, otherwise key
aspects of a topic will be misunderstood or ignored entirely.
It
is always easier to repeat and recycle familiar nostrums and
orthodoxies than to challenge them: the former requires no
elaboration or any examples, while the latter takes time to explain
and will confuse and confound pre-existing assumptions.
Alternative
accounts must confront the tyranny of concision, which reduces
detailed and complex narratives to sound-bytes and photo ops. If
newspaper analysis cannot be reduced to 800 words, they must find
another home where ‘long-form’ journalism is still practiced.
How
does narrowing the spectrum of legitimate opinion work in practice?
Here are some examples.
The
discussion of politically-motivated violence, for example,
presupposes that the West is always the innocent victim of terrorism
but never its perpetrator. This is demonstrably untrue, but it sets
the tone of the discussion to look at what is done to us rather than
by us.
Why
are the Pentagon’s remote controlled drone attacks on innocent
civilians in Afghanistan, Syria or Yemen portrayed as self-defence
when they constitute a textbook definition of terrorism? Why is there
so little interest in the role of the US spy base which Australia
hosts at Pine Gap in targeting people for assassination by the United
States?
Why
are the occupied people of Gaza not entitled to self-defence against
Israel’s state terrorism when it periodically bombs them with
US-made aircraft and munitions, acts which have turned the small
strip of densely populated blockaded land into a living hell without
safe drinking water? Why are incidents in a one-sided occupation
described as “clashes”, implying some equality of power?
Why
is Iran described as a rogue state which sponsors terrorism in the
Middle East when its scientists and officials are routinely murdered
by Mossad agents and US drones?
Given
the preoccupation with Russia’s crimes in Ukraine, why can the US
and Israel regularly bomb Syria without any media discussion of these
violations of that country’s sovereignty? Who gave Washington the
right to grant the Golan Heights, Syrian territory under
international law, to Israel?
The
short answer to these and many similar questions is that we judge our
own actions, and those of our friends and allies, by a different set
of ethical standards to the ones we apply to designated enemies. Our
foreign policy is hypocritical and unprincipled, though such a view
is considered “dissident”.
The
very opposite should apply. As Noam Chomsky explains the basis of
moral consequentialism:
People
are responsible for the anticipated consequences of their choice of
action (or inaction), a responsibility that extends to the policy
choices of one’s own state to the extent that the political
community allows a degree of influence over policy formation.
Responsibility
is enhanced by privilege, by the opportunity to act with relative
impunity and a degree of effectiveness.
For
profession of high principles to be taken seriously, the principles
must first and foremost be applied to oneself, not only to official
enemies or those designated as unworthy in the prevailing political
culture.
Our
own behaviour, and the actions of friends and allies, should be
scrutinised first. That’s where we have moral responsibility and
some influence, however small. We have almost no influence on
governments with which we have strained relations. It is the citizens
of those states who bear responsibility for the actions of their
governments, though in many cases dissent is more perilous than
anything we might face: no doubt Julian Assange would demur here
about the suggestion of “might”.
This
is less ‘whataboutism’ and more to do with barracking for the
West and supporting its interests by reinforcing existing narratives
which remain unchallenged. One cost of this is the loss of our own
credibility in advocating universal human rights. Another,
significantly more important, is greater human suffering.
Legitimate
concerns should be expressed about Beijing’s treatment of the
Uyghurs in Xinjiang and restrictions imposed on Hong Kong and in the
South China Sea, but there is very little we can do to influence
decisions taken by a government we are distancing ourself from. Given
China is our most important trading partner and the West must engage
with Beijing if climate change is to be seriously addressed, this
approach is counter-productive.
As
a fellow member of the Quad and the so called ‘club of democracies’
we have much more influence over India, but Western leaders remain
mute about Narendra Modi’s Hindu extremism, especially his
appalling policies in Kashmir. This is because, with few exceptions
such as Brian Toohey, they aren’t asked questions by the media who
have easy access to them. The Morrison Government does not want to be
asked about Modi’s outrages and a supine media class is happy to
oblige.
The
demonisation of Vladimir Putin and all things Russian, is a very
different story. It goes without challenge, context or a
consideration of the logical consequences of widening the cleavage
between Moscow and the West.
Riyadh’s
atrocities in Yemen leading to a cholera epidemic, Jakarta’s brutal
50 year repression in West Papua and Morocco’s illegal occupation
of the Western Sahara should be higher priorities because the West is
complicit in these crimes with arms sales and diplomatic protection
offered to the culprits. Again, there is silence from the media, and
therefore governments are not held to account for their actions.
It’s
a simple truism that concerns about human rights violations are
universally expressed and applied or they are not principles at all.
Russian
“election meddling” is a preoccupation of governments in the
North America and Western Europe, while promiscuous US interventions
in the politics of countries around the world, including the
overthrow of legitimate democratic governments, attracts little if
any media interest at all.
Compare
China’s behaviour towards Taiwan, whose sovereign control the West
acknowledges, with US behaviour towards Cuba or its “meddling” in
Ukraine on Russia’s border. Or Israel’s colonisation of the West
Bank. Which of these violates international law and the ‘rules-based
global order’ we hear the West boasts about?
Why
would anyone with a knowledge of the overthrow of the Mossadegh
government in 1953 by the US and UK be surprised by Iran’s
hostility to the West? Journalists should not think that history is
as conveniently forgotten in these countries as it is here.
There
are not always two sides to every story, with a ‘balanced’
position to be found at the ‘sensible centre’. When it comes to
immunology, environmental science or the holocaust, to take only
three examples, there is no range of legitimate opinion. Seeking the
centre is not about being even-handed, it’s a claim that there is
always a range of legitimate opinion on most subjects and safe
harbour should centre on compromise: don’t pick sides. This is
dangerous nonsense.
Stenography
Many
journalists are too dependent on drip feeds from political elites,
ranging from the unedited stenography of government ‘messaging’
to ‘exclusives’ — beating competitors to a story. Authorised
leaks from incontinent MPs may be welcomed by the ideologically
aligned, but they almost always come with conditions attached —
usually favourable media coverage. Editors are largely to blame for
this by privileging exclusivity and ‘insiderism’ over detailed
analysis. It is never the role of the media to be the propaganda arm
of political parties or governments.
There
is nothing wrong with commentators cheering for their political team,
as they openly do in Murdoch media and increasing in Nine newspapers.
No-one should approach the op ed pages expecting balance or fair
analysis. But when front page reporting becomes indistinguishable
from government talking points, the audience is being short changed.
Too
many journalists, as opposed to commentators, see nothing wrong with
partisan advocacy as their job focus. In doing so they not only
debase the profession, but more importantly they do their readers,
listeners and viewers a grave disservice by denying them the capacity
to evaluate alternative policies.
Stenography
is fatal to the credibility of any journalist. If you want to be an
ideologue and work for a politician and a cause, join their staff
formally.
It
is also boring and repetitious. According to the late international
politics expert Fred Halliday, the term corkscrew journalism
originated in the film The Philadelphia Story directed by George
Cukor in 1940. Halliday
defined it as “instant comment, bereft of research or originality,
leading to a cycle of equally vacuous, staged, polemics between
columnists who have been saying the same thing for the past decade,
or more.” Ring any bells?
Professional
Ethics
Philosophically
and professionally, too many journalists have a poor understanding of
their role in holding the powerful to account and how to represent
their audiences. They fail to see the difference between being liked
and being respected. Many want to be players and insiders, forgetting
that their function is to ask the questions that their readers,
listeners and viewers want posed. First and foremost, journalists are
conduits for their audiences, not celebrities.
Some
are willing hostages to opinion management and the public relations
techniques of media minders. However, if they are to perform their
roles properly, they must remain at arms-length from the subjects of
their inquiries.
It’s
not that difficult. They should avoid being schmoozed by drinks at
The Lodge, and say no to junkets and being duchessed around the
Middle East on the dime of local lobby groups acting for a foreign
state. If a foreign state lobby awards a journalist a prize for their
reporting, they have been fatally comprised.
Politicians
and their staff are not friends to cultivate, no matter how hard they
try to flatter or invite a journalist into the inner sanctums of
power. Success should be measured by the enemies made amongst the
powerful. The shakers and movers are always looking to co-opt the
sympathetic and impressionable. After all, the overwhelming majority
of leaks come from politicians not whistleblowers.
Interviewers
should learn how to control verbal exchanges with media trained
politicians by anticipating their tactics and working around them.
They should press hard without being personal, highlighting
contradictory and inconsistent remarks over time.
‘Gotcha’
moments such as Anthony Albanese’s stats “gaffe” might be
tempting for journalists seeking a headline, but like fast food they
are not very satisfying to information consumers. Leadership contests
and elections attract subscriptions and clicks. They are headlines
designed to sell audiences to advertisers, but they are usually poor
substitutes for the hard slog of detailed, substantive research.
Too
many journalists are comfortable with ‘personified politics’
rather than the evaluation of policies. They rigidly focus on
leaders, personalities and the election race when they could easily
forget the ephemeral gimmicks and photo ops which spin doctors want
to see on the nightly news. Their focus should be on policies, both
what is openly presented and what is deliberately concealed or
omitted. Politics is a lot more than third rate entertainment for
ugly people.
Journalists
and editors do face significant challenges. The death of a thousand
funding cuts to the leading public broadcaster, and the implied
threat of future reductions linked to unfavourable political
coverage, induces ABC management and journalists to be less critical
of the government of the day, especially hostile and suspicious LNP
governments. Consequently, they position themselves in the “sensible
centre” which is actually the conservative right, and become
increasing indistinguishable from their privately-owned competitors.
Technical
competence is emphasised and privileged at the expense of
intellectual knowledge, background preparation and professional
skill. Mouse clicks, page views and social media feedback now
structure the delivery of news content and analysis.
One
consequence of this during an election campaign is a shrinking
insular media bubble, where dubious opinion polls, headlines,
partisan barracking, ‘who won the week?’ and the daily agenda
repeat themselves in an endless and co-ordinated loop. The underlying
assumption is that the horse race will be decided inside the bubble,
not outside where the great unwashed are starved of serious policy
discussion and evaluation. That is why insider status is so highly
valued by journalists: they can be players, not just observers. On
the odd occasion when policy analysis leaks outside the bubble, it is
invariably refracted through the question of how this will influence
the vote rather than whether the policy might be good or bad for the
country. This amounts to professional misconduct.
Calls
for a Royal Commission into News Corporation assume there are
problems with the media in Australia that can only be uncovered
through an investigation by the Crown. Yet there is probably very
little that isn’t already well known.
Anti-competitive
practices are there for everyone to see. The alignment of business
interests with right wing opinion and calls for the privatisation of
the ABC are neither new nor subtle. The concentration of media
ownership is hardly secret, but at a time when private media owners
struggle to build viable business models, greater diversity in the
mainstream isn’t coming any time soon. Besides, thanks to the
internet there are more sources of information available to the
curious today than at any time in history. They are often superior to
the mainstream.
If
journalists were more diligent and professional, and information
consumers developed better filtering mechanisms, most of these
problems would disappear.
An
earlier version of this article was published at Pearls &
Irritations on 8 January 2022.
Dr
Scott Burchill taught International Relations at Deakin University
for 30 years
