{"id":6536,"date":"2013-07-20T16:59:45","date_gmt":"2013-07-20T06:59:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nofibs.com.au\/?p=6536"},"modified":"2022-05-02T00:26:20","modified_gmt":"2022-05-01T14:26:20","slug":"the-naked-truth-journalism-today-by-aleighmp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/the-naked-truth-journalism-today-by-aleighmp\/","title":{"rendered":"The naked truth? Journalism today by @ALeighMP"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Margo: <\/strong>A veteran journo friend recently recommended I read a lengthy 2012 speech by Labor MP Andrew Leigh about political journalism, where it’s at and why. Enjoy.<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Truth, Naked<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Andrew Leigh
\nSource:\u00a0www.andrewleigh.com<\/a>
\n1 August 2012<\/p>\n

At the end of 1992, a team of us got together at Sydney University to run for the student newspaper, Honi Soit. We needed a name with a hint of journalistic credibility and a bucketload of electoral appeal, and so we opted to call ourselves \u2018The Naked Truth\u2019.<\/p>\n

We threw ourselves into the campaign with the kind of frisky eagerness only a dozen 20 year-olds can muster. By day we sang our campaign song to bemused classes, removing much of our clothing to reinforce the team name. By night we put up posters and chalked \u2018The Naked Truth\u2019 around the campus. One of our team, Verity Firth, even brought along her younger brother Charles to help out. A class of medical students promised to vote for us en bloc if a member of the Naked Truth team would streak through their lecture hall. One of us obliged.<\/p>\n

And so my year as a journalist began. I interviewed Andrew Denton, Henri Szeps and Dorothy McRae-McMahon, went inside Long Bay jail and a submarine, spoke to a magician, a monk and a basketball commentator, and wrote about child sponsorship, biblical literalism and virtual reality machines. In a display of youthful chutzpah, I also reviewed a handful of sports cars, making me (I hope) the only motoring writer in the history of student journalism. When the 1993 election came around, I managed to get Keating and Hewson to answer twenty questions apiece.[1]\u00a0The year even got me my first article in the\u00a0Sydney Morning Herald<\/em>, on illegal street racing.<\/p>\n

I loved journalism, but even at the level of student journalism I found it hard. Pitching stories. Separating beef from bulldust. Staying objective. Since writing for\u00a0Honi<\/em>, I\u2019ve written hundreds of thousands of words in newspapers: all of them opinion.<\/p>\n

Because of that, I approach the topic of journalism with a modicum of trepidation. Plus, because I\u2019m a politician, you should probably regard my views on journalists as akin to the views that a kangaroo has about gun ownership.<\/p>\n

The New Economics of Journalism<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first thing to say is that journalism really can change the world. Emile Zola\u2019s letter \u2018J\u2019Accuse\u2019 did more than win the freedom of Alfred Dreyfus; it changed the political character of modern France.[2]\u00a0In their reporting of Watergate, Woodward and Bernstein brought down a President. In Australia, reporting by the Courier Mail and the Four Corners program ended the Bjelke-Petersen Government and led to the jailing of three ministers.[3]\u00a0In 2005, a newspaper article brought down NSW Opposition Leader John Brogden, and probably changed the outcome of the 2007 NSW election.[4]\n

Journalists make wonderful company. Not many people are great listeners\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0splendid raconteurs \u2013 but my journalist friends all meet that description. As a reader, I delight in the wit of Annabel Crabb, the global view of Peter Hartcher, the economic nous of Peter Martin, the eccentric curiosity of the late Peter Veness, and the forensic reporting of Neil Chenoweth. Watching Emma Alberici grill Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov about his nation\u2019s disgraceful position on Syria made me proud of our public broadcaster. I could add dozens of other examples, but I\u2019ll sum it up with this: I\u2019d happily put Australia\u2019s best journalists up against any in the world.<\/p>\n

For the most part, my argument today will not be about individuals. Sure, I wish there were more great journalists and fewer crummy ones, and I\u2019m sure they\u2019d say the same about my profession. But there isn\u2019t much point in politicians and journalists engaging in a name-calling exercise. Right now, the share of the Australian population that rates either profession as highly ethical and honest has fallen to one in ten.[5]\u00a0So we need to start thinking systematically.<\/p>\n

As an economist, that\u2019s my natural inclination. Human agency can be important, but pivotal changes are generally the result of technology and policy, not individual actions. People respond to incentives \u2013 so if you want better behaviour, improving the incentives generally works better than moral exhortation.<\/p>\n

The big technological shift in media has been the falling cost of disseminating ideas. Cable and digital television have expanded the number of channels. Digital radio will have the same effect on that medium. Ubiquitous broadband has allowed news to be conveyed through a host of electronic media. Among Australian adults who are online, almost all use social media, with 76 percent using Facebook, and 10 percent using Twitter.[6]\u00a0About half of all Australian politicians tweet.[7]<\/a>\u00a0After undertaking a month-long randomised trial at the start of the year, I joined them.[8]\n

The effect of this has been increased competition in the media market. By international standards, the Australian media \u2013 particularly our newspapers \u2013 are not especially competitive.[9]\u00a0So competition from new outlets has come as a particular shock to incumbent players in the Australian media market.<\/p>\n

One of the main places you see the impact of competition is the contest between outlets to be first with the story.[10]\u00a0Under the old model, papers told you the latest news as of 12 hours earlier, while the evening television news told you what had happened during the day. But competition from online news outlets and 24-hour news channels has made that increasingly unsustainable. Increasingly, people are choosing faster-paced media. Asked their most important sources of news information, 31 percent nominated commercial TV, 30 percent said the internet, and 13 percent said a daily newspaper.[11]\n

As Tony Blair has pointed out, his 1997 election campaign took an issue a day, while his 2005 campaign \u2018had to have one for the morning, another for the afternoon and by the evening the agenda had already moved on\u2019.[12]\u00a0In the 1980s, Treasurer Keating would go on the road to sell the budget for a full month. In the 1990s, Treasurer Costello would take a fortnight for his budget tour. But by the time Costello left office, the budget roadshow had shrunk to about a week. This wasn\u2019t anyone\u2019s fault \u2013 it\u2019s simply a function of the national attention span.<\/p>\n

Information Inequality<\/strong><\/p>\n

My central thesis in this speech is that the technological changes in media have led to greater\u00a0inequality<\/em>\u00a0in political information than ever before. For engaged citizens, there\u2019s never been a better time to be a news consumer. You can watch press conferences live on Sky, and get transcripts of radio programs in different cities. You can access the opinions of thoughtful bloggers and sassy tweeters. Engaged citizens are better informed now about political news than they\u2019ve ever been before.<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s the remainder of the population: some who are too busy with family and community to bother with national politics; others who are more interested in Lara Bingle than Laurie Oakes; and those who don\u2019t seek out political information, but let it come to them. For this group of disengaged citizens, there is a growing disconnect from the political process. For example, at the last election, 6.8 percent of voters failed to cast a ballot, and 5.5 percent voted informal. That\u2019s over 12 percent of the electorate who didn\u2019t participate in the democratic process. I believe that changes in the media are one of the factors making this group of Australians more disconnected from politics. In effect, technology has widened the information gap between the most-informed and least-informed members of society.<\/p>\n

The notion that technology can have different impacts across society is a familiar one to economists. We use the term \u2018skill-biased technological change\u2019 to capture the idea that some technological innovations both help high-skilled workers and hurt low-skilled workers. For example, while computerisation was making lawyers more efficient, it was making their typists redundant.<\/p>\n

The thing about skill-biased technological change is that if you\u2019re among the group that benefits, you can easily miss the negative side. And my guess is that many of you in this room will be engaged news consumers, who most keenly feel the upside \u2013 the wealth of new information now at your fingertips. But it\u2019s important to also take account of the impact across society if we\u2019re to get a full picture of how the media has changed people\u2019s views of politics.<\/p>\n

From the perspective of the most engaged citizens, the media is more abundant, diverse and accessible than in the past. Yet that\u2019s not how things look to many Australians. Taken as a whole, the media has become more opinionated, nastier and shallower. The shift has not taken place because individual journalists have grown horns and forked tongues, but because the technological changes have privileged those kinds of voices. Opinion, nastiness and shallowness have always been there \u2013 but they have flourished over recent decades.<\/p>\n

Problem 1: Too Much Opinion<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with opinion.[13]\u00a0Most of the new political news websites that have emerged over recent decades are dominated by comment. These include\u00a0The Drum, The Punch, The Conversation, Crikey, Inside Story, The National Times, Australian Policy Online\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Online Opinion<\/em>. In fact, the only political news website that has not increased the overall opinion\/news ratio is\u00a0The Global Mail<\/em>\u00a0(which generally does not print opinion pieces).[14]\u00a0On television, stations such as Sky and ABC24 thrive on commentary. In some cases, guests on these shows are print journalists, who may sometimes do multiple interviews in a day, as well as writing for the web and print editions of their newspaper.<\/p>\n

As former press secretary Lachlan Harris has argued, \u2018every year the number of journalists goes down and the number of commentators goes up.\u2019[15]\u00a0In 1990, the Parliamentary Press Gallery had 252 journalists working in television, print and radio. In 2010 that had decreased to 179.[16]\u00a0One factor is simple economics: journalism costs money and comment is often free.[17]And as comment proliferates, there is a temptation to blur the boundaries between news and opinion \u2013 to take the small but significant step from arguing that a policy\u00a0could<\/em>\u00a0be implemented to arguing that it\u00a0should<\/em>\u00a0be; to make oneself a \u2018player\u2019 not merely an impartial watcher from the sidelines.<\/p>\n

In a world where economic policy gets steadily more complex, and Australia\u2019s future is close-knit with the Asian region, I worry when I see journalistic resources diverted from making sense of policies and events to commentating on the events of the front page. We seem to have devalued good reporting. Recently, Yale University journalism students were asked how they would have gone about investigating Watergate. To the shock of their guest speaker (Bob Woodward), most students essentially said that they would Google \u2018Nixon\u2019s secret fund\u2019.[18]\n

In Australia, I must have read a hundred comment pieces about the politics of asylum seekers, but I don\u2019t recall a single journalist having asked the Malaysian government why they\u2019ve chosen not to sign the Refugee Convention. Rather than endless speculation on the relationship between opinion polls and interest rates, wouldn\u2019t it be worth exploring what an interest rate cut is likely to do to the price of an imported television? Again, this comes down to information inequality. The engaged news consumers see opinion as merely adding to the smorgasboard; but disengaged news consumers are increasingly finding themselves getting fewer facts and more commentary.<\/p>\n

Perhaps my view of this is somewhat shaped by an email that a senior opinion writer sent me a couple of years ago. Allow me to quote a few lines:<\/p>\n

\u2018I am prepared to spend my last dollar and effort of energy to avoid having you purporting to represent my views in parliament. And that is quite apart from the fact that you are a crap statistician. \u2026 You are a fucking disgrace \u2013 the more so because your electorate has a higher standard than you \u2013 and I will not lose a moment saying so, in any audience, in any place, and to everyone who asks my opinion.\u2019<\/p>\n

In case you\u2019re wondering, I had emailed the journalist to say that since the two of us had never spoken, perhaps we should have lunch together.<\/p>\n

My concern about comment is not mostly about ideological bias. Sure, the ALP isn\u2019t exactly having a dream run in the mainstream press at present, but I know enough history to recognise that the worm turns. Curtin won his 1943 landslide election with Packer and Murdoch against him. In the early-1980s, Hawke was backed by most of the mainstream media. In 2003, Howard Government minister Richard Alston made 68 official complaints against the ABC for allegedly being biased against them in reporting the Iraq War. My own systematic study of media bias (co-authored with University of Toronto professor Joshua Gans) found that during the period 1996 to 2004, most outlets adopted centrist positions.[19]\n

My chief concern about the rise of opinion is the risk that it leads to an increasingly polarised electorate.[20]\u00a0In one experiment, Stanford\u2019s Geoffrey Cohen asked students to rate a hypothetical social welfare program. The article described the program, and said whether Republican or Democratic leaders supported it. Cohen found that what mattered were the party leaders\u2019 views, not the policy itself. \u2018If their party endorsed it, [Democrats] supported even a harsh welfare program and [Republicans] supported even a lavish one.\u2019 As New York University\u2019s Jonathan Haidt puts it, \u2018once group loyalties are engaged, you can\u2019t change people\u2019s minds by utterly refuting their arguments\u2019.[21]\u00a0My fear is that the rise of opinion threatens the information commons, and threatens to split people into increasingly extreme echo chambers. In one US survey, 77 percent of respondents said the press tended to favour one side, up from 53 percent in 1985.\u00a0[22]\u00a0I find the rise of MSNBC as worrying as the advent of Fox News.[23]\n

Problem 2: Nastiness<\/strong><\/p>\n

The second trend that concerns me is nastiness. In her address to the Sydney Institute last year, Annabel Crabb argued that \u2018there is a hostile, scratchy feel to politics at the moment\u2019.[24]\u00a0In the latest\u00a0Quarterly Essay<\/em>, Laura Tingle contends that \u2018Australia\u2019s politics and our public discourse have become noticeably angrier\u2019.[25]\n

Now there have always been people saying ungenerous things about politicians. And very often, those people are politicians themselves. Bob Hawke famously refused to withdraw the claim in Parliament that Malcolm Fraser was a liar. Paul Keating popularised not only \u2018J curve\u2019 and \u2018Banana Republic\u2019, but also \u2018grub\u2019 and \u2018scumbag\u2019.[26]\u00a0Mark Latham was so proud of his insults that he used one of them as the title of his book of quotations:\u00a0A Conga Line of Suckholes<\/em>. Barry Cohen\u2019s books of anecdotes are replete with examples of parliamentarians calling one another drunks, fools, and philanderers. In other countries, the history is worse still. Any discussion about the character of US political debate today needs to bear in mind that this is the nation where a former Treasury Secretary once shot and killed the sitting Vice-President in a duel.[27]\n

But there are two features of the technological shift in the mass media today that have accentuated the nastiness in political reporting: competition from online outlets, and anonymity.<\/p>\n

The impact of competition from online outlets is to reduce the time that outlets have to carry out their fact-checking process. When tabloid papers published on their front page fake nude photos of Pauline Hanson, their haste was partly due to a concern that if they didn\u2019t rush to print, they would be scooped by an online site.<\/p>\n

Competition from online outlets can encourage outlets to exaggerate. One of my favourite tabloid headlines of recent times is this one from July 2011: \u2018Workers struggling with a carbon tax are about to be hit with a second wave of Greens-inspired tax pain\u2019. Not only was the carbon price nearly a year away, but federal and state governments had ruled out imposing congestion pricing. Yet when deadlines are tight and competition is fierce, you can see how people end up cutting corners. Other oft-repeated errors include the claim that Opposition Leader Tony Abbott\u2019s reaction to the death of an Australian soldier was \u2018shit happens\u2019 (he was in fact summarising another soldier\u2019s view), or that Australia has an \u2018economy wide\u2019 carbon price (it covers about 60 percent of domestic emissions).[28]\n

Another way that technology can accentuate nastiness is through anonymity. Increasingly, letters to the editor are being replaced by website comments, blogs and tweets. While letters carried the author\u2019s name, social media is often anonymous or pseudonymous.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0Disconnected<\/em>, I noted the evidence on how anonymous technologies can turn interactions nasty.[29]\u00a0In one psychology experiment, students at the University of Texas in Austin were placed in separate booths, assigned a pair and asked to exchange emails to get to know each other better.[30]\u00a0In many cases, the conversations quickly became either lewd or rude. As the researchers noted at the end of their article:<\/p>\n[T]he male experimenter who conducted the sessions debriefed the participants immediately after the interactions without reading the actual transcripts. He noted that the students were always low-keyed, unassuming, and moderately interested in the study. No participants appeared embarrassed, shocked, or in the slightest way, upset or angry. At the conclusion of the project, when he was given the opportunity to read the transcripts, he was astounded\u2014even overwhelmed\u2014to learn what these polite students had been saying to one another.<\/p>\n

If you have ever said something more vitriolic over email or social media than you would have been willing to say in person, you know how this can happen.<\/p>\n

Even text messages provide a shield behind which poisoned darts can be hurled. In\u00a0The Australian Moment<\/em>, George Megalogenis describes how 2GB\u2019s Alan Jones read out text messages before the Cronulla riots, such as this one \u2018This Sunday, every Aussie in the Shire get down to North Cronulla to support Leb- and Wog-bashing day.\u2019 As Megalogenis argues, \u2018The commonsense filters that were used to keep the letters-to-the-editor page civil, and to prevent the cranks from getting on air, don\u2019t apply in cyberspace because the medium rewards those who generate the most outrage.\u2019[31]\n

The problem, as Tony Blair noted in a wide-ranging speech on the media, is that \u2018Something that is interesting is less powerful than something that makes you angry or shocked. \u2026 attacking motive is far more potent than attacking judgment. It is not enough for someone to make an error. It has to be venal. Conspiratorial.\u2019[32]\u00a0One academic study found that individuals are more likely to be persuaded by political arguments that play on their fears even when they are told counter arguments.[33]Again, this is a matter of information inequality. If genteel discussion is your thing, you now have instant access to Productivity Commission reports and new sites like\u00a0The Conversation<\/em>. But for more disengaged news consumers, public debate has become noticeably scratchier.<\/p>\n

Problem 3: Shallowness<\/strong><\/p>\n

My third concern is that new media technologies are driving towards a shallower national conversation than in the past. One manifestation of this is the rise of \u2018showman politicians\u2019 (and yes, I do mean showman<\/em>), who are known more for their exaggerations and snappy grabs than their thoughtfulness. Waiting one day to speak to reporters on the doors outside Parliament House, it occurred to me that the 24\/7 media cycle has the same effect on the political system as if we offered a cash prize for the parliamentarian who could come up with the most outrageous line of the day.<\/p>\n

Another aspect of shallowness is the emphasis on \u2018gotcha\u2019 questions, like \u2018will you rule out\u2026?\u2019, \u2018will it increase\u2026?\u2019, \u2018do you promise never to\u2026?\u2019. In one of my first media appearances after being elected, I was asked whether I would stand up for every public sector job in Canberra. I replied that it would be silly to do so, given that some public servants are dismissed for cause. A newspaper article the next day omitted the qualifier, simply quoting me as saying \u2018I\u2019m not going to stand up and fight for every public service job in Canberra\u2019. It was a useful lesson about where straight-talk can lead. In the US, gotcha journalism has reached such a stage that spokespeople for both the Obama and Romney Presidential campaigns routinely speak to media outlets only on the condition that they have the right to subsequently edit their quotes.[34]\n

And yet the most interesting policy questions are rarely about whether something will go up or down, but the size of that increase. Chances are you\u2019re less interested in whether you\u2019re getting a pay rise this year than how big it will be. You don\u2019t want to know whether this speech will\u00a0ever<\/em>\u00a0finish \u2013 you want to know when. Deep reporting focuses on magnitudes. Shallow reporting focuses on whether something is positive or negative.<\/p>\n

Shallowness can also manifest in picking examples that aren\u2019t representative of the broader context. The current inflation rate of 1.2 percent is the lowest in over a decade. But you can always run a \u2018cost of living\u2019 story by finding items or households for whom costs are increasing rapidly.[35]\u00a0Similarly, the current unemployment rate of 5.2 percent is low compared with recent decades. But a journalist who wants to write about job losses will have little difficulty finding examples. On the average working hour of the average working day, about 1530 Australians lose their jobs, and 1550 find a new one.[36]\u00a0In discussing school funding, the core question of principle (\u2018what\u2019s the best way to improve student performance?\u2019) risks becoming sidelined by trite jibes about \u2018hit lists\u2019.<\/p>\n

Another feature of political journalism that has become increasingly ubiquitous is a focus on the \u2018horse-race\u2019 element of politics through the lens of opinion polls. As technology has reduced the cost of carrying out opinion polls, their frequency has increased from quarterly to monthly to (in some cases) fortnightly. The trend could easily continue: in the United States, Gallup now conduct daily opinion polls. A typical poll-watching story tells the reader how the poll has changed since it was last taken, and then discusses how the events of the previous weeks can explain this result. Increasingly, polls are becoming the lens through which many journalists view politics.<\/p>\n

The problem is that polls are notoriously inaccurate. In an analysis of election-eve opinion polls from 1993 to 2010, Murray Goot found that across three major pollsters (Newspoll, Morgan and Nielsen), the average prediction error ranged from 1.4 to 2.0 percentage points, with a median error of 1.8 percentage points. Goot noted that \u2018if in 1993 an enterprising rogue had set up a pseudo-poll that conducted no interviews but simply worked on the assumption that at every election Labor would get 50 per cent of the two-party preferred vote, he or she would have \u2026 an average error of just 1.8 percentage points\u2019.[37]\u00a0Unsurprisingly, polls conducted earlier than election eve have larger errors.[38]\n

Statistical analysis of volatility in opinion polls also suggests that polls suffer from sampling problems that magnify the true margin of error \u2013 perhaps by a factor of two.[39]\u00a0Journalists who report small movements in opinion polls (eg. 1 or 2 percentage points) without acknowledging the margin of error may well be misleading their readers.[40]\n

Superficiality isn\u2019t something that\u2019s emerged in the last decade or so.[41]\u00a0But it does pose a particular challenge for reforms that are non-intuitive. The arguments in favour of free trade, foreign investment, a floating dollar, a goods and services tax and a price on carbon are all more subtle than the arguments against them. Lindsay Tanner calls this the \u2018sideshow syndrome\u2019, and argues that it poses a \u2018direct threat to the nation\u2019s well-being\u2019 \u2013 constraining our ability to discuss major reforms.[42]\u00a0For politicians, the technological changes in the media have made reflection, doubt and subtlety more difficult than in the past.[43]\n

A major driver of the shift towards shallowness is the rise of television and the decline of newspapers. Television news bulletins tend to provide less depth than newspaper reports. In 1970, there were more daily newspapers bought each day than there were televisions in the country. Now, there are four televisions for every newspaper purchased.[44]\u00a0The internet didn\u2019t kill newspapers (their circulation was declining by the 1980s), but the shift of advertising to the web has dealt a brutal blow to the economics of newspapers. For the most engaged, the conversation may have become deeper and richer; but for disengaged citizens, the trend has been in the opposite direction.<\/p>\n

Solutions<\/strong><\/p>\n

So what should we do about it? From the perspective of regulation, the Finkelstein Report (which the government is currently considering) makes the point that when technology changes, legal regimes need to adapt. Take smh.com.au and ninemsn.com.au, two of the most popular news websites. Right now, content on the\u00a0Sydney Morning Herald<\/em>\u00a0website is largely created by a newspaper, which operates under a voluntary code of conduct, regulated by the Australian Press Council. By contrast, content on the NineMSN website is largely created by a broadcaster, with complaints directed to the Australian Communications and Media Authority, a statutory authority. ACMA may consider the \u2018suitability\u2019 of a person who seeks to hold a broadcasting licence. A newspaper proprietor is not subject to such a test. If we were starting from scratch today, it\u2019s far more likely that we would have created something like Finkelstein\u2019s proposed \u2018News Media Council\u2019 than the current regime.<\/p>\n

But complaints-handling bodies are only part of the challenge. In my view, a more significant problem is sustaining the economics of quality journalism. Financial pressures at Fairfax will only accentuate the problems that I\u2019ve spoken about, and will make it more difficult to sustain innovations such as investigative journalism, a readers\u2019 editor,\u00a0[45]\u00a0or high-quality pattern journalism that puts a story into its proper context.[46]\u00a0Google\u2019s Hal Varian is right when he urges newspapers to \u2018experiment, experiment, experiment\u2019 \u2013 but when newspaper sales have been trending downwards for a generation, it\u2019s hard to imagine experiments that will bend the curve back upwards.[47]\n

For university journalism schools, I think the current environment presents a unique opportunity. As well as training the next generation of media professionals, I\u2019d like to see more public interest journalism produced out of university journalism schools. While some of this occurs already, there is considerable scope for it to be expanded.<\/p>\n

Another proposal, put forward by both Lindsay Tanner and Malcolm Turnbull, is to provide subsidies to quality newspapers.[48]Tanner proposes direct grants, while Turnbull suggests providing tax-deductible gift recipient status to newspapers that subscribe to \u2018a code of conduct analogous perhaps to that subscribed to by the ABC\u2019.[49]\u00a0Naturally, such a proposal would need to pass a reasonable cost-benefit test, but I am inclined to think that the benefit of a better-informed public would be likely to justify the cost of the subsidy. In implementing such a proposal, it would be important to think about how to ensure that public money increased the amount of political information among those who are disengaged from politics. If the problem is information inequality, there\u2019s little point subsidising content that is only consumed by those who are already engaged.<\/p>\n

As an economist, I\u2019m naturally drawn towards using price signals rather than regulation to achieve any given aim. This is particularly the case in an area where there\u2019s considerable controversy over defining what we mean by quality journalism. I\u2019m not sure you can legislate good journalism any more than you can legislate good taste. But appropriate subsidies may be able to get us there.<\/p>\n

Lastly, there\u2019s the question of how progressive politicians should behave in a changing media environment. The changes that I\u2019ve spoken about pose a particular challenge to progressives. Looking around the world, we\u2019re living in an era when social democratic governments are particularly thin on the ground. I\u2019m not sure it\u2019s a coincidence that this is happening at a time when the media landscape is fragmenting. The changes afoot aren\u2019t ideologically neutral: they\u2019re particularly beneficial for populists and libertarians, and confronting for long-game reformers.<\/p>\n

But for those of us who believe in progressive reform, it\u2019s vital that we continue to talk about big ideas. In his book\u00a0Outliers: The Story of Success<\/em>, Malcolm Gladwell argues that you only get to the top of your profession after 10,000 hours of practice. A similar argument may apply to reform. Critical reforms like Medicare and universal superannuation, expanding university places and dropping the tariff barriers didn\u2019t happen by themselves. They were the product of passionate and painstaking advocacy. My guess is that politicians who manage to implement major changes are invariably those who\u2019ve chalked up at least 10,000 hours of advocacy.<\/p>\n

Progressives also need to get better at linking the reforms of today with the events of the past. Too much reliance on talking points and \u2018lines\u2019 can win the battle, but lose the war. Humans are fundamentally storytelling creatures, and stories are a powerful way of persuading people about the importance of change. Reform isn\u2019t about uprooting our history \u2013 it\u2019s about allowing our values to endure in a changing world. It is about identifying the golden threads that run through our history.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n

George Megalogenis compares the changes today to the insecurity of the stagflation decade. Yet he argues that while the 1970s saw the media emerge as perhaps the only institution to play a constructive role, the media is today \u2018an intrinsic part of the problem\u2019.[50]\u00a0Given the transformation that technology was already imposing on the media, the\u00a0News of the World<\/em>\u00a0scandal could hardly have come at a worse time.<\/p>\n

And yet there are good reasons to be optimistic. We can never return to the old way of doing things, and need to learn to manoeuvre our way in this new environment. The Fourth Estate is going through perhaps the biggest transformation in the past century. For highly engaged citizens, there\u2019s never been a better time to be a news consumer. Here\u2019s hoping we can eventually say the same for the rest of the population.<\/p>\n

\n

*\u00a0I am grateful to Trudy McIntosh for outstanding research assistance; John Hirst for supplying me with some historical examples; and Michael Cooney, Louise Crossman, Stephen Dziedzic, Damien Hickman, Rick Kalowski, Matthew Ricketson and Nick Terrell (among others) for valuable comments on earlier drafts.<\/p>\n[1]\u00a0Asked for their ideal dinner companion, Keating responded with conductor Rudolf Kempe (who died in 1976), while Hewson named Norman Gunston. Asked their epitaph, Keating responded \u2018Si monumentum requiris, circumspice\u2019 (Christopher Wren\u2019s epitaph, which translates as \u2018If you require a monument, look around you\u2019). Hewson responded with \u2018He tried his best\u2019.<\/p>\n[2]\u00a0For a beautifully-written (if somewhat inaccurate) account of the episode, see Henri Szeps,\u00a0Wish I\u2019d Said That<\/em>, Phoenix Education, Sydney, 2012.<\/p>\n[3]\u00a0For a seminal account of Queensland corruption in this era, see Scott Prasser, Rae Wear and John Nethercote (eds),Corruption and Reform: The Fitzgerald Vision<\/em>, UQP, Brisbane, 1990<\/p>\n[4]\u00a0For a plethora of other examples, see ABC Radio National,\u00a0Media Report,\u00a0<\/em>9 December 1999, available atwww.abc.net.au\/radionational\/programs\/mediareport-1999\/the-best-australian-journalism-of-the-20th-century\/3566498<\/a>.<\/p>\n[5]\u00a0Roy Morgan, Image of Professions Survey 2012,\u00a0Finding No. 4777<\/a>. Journalists are rated highly ethical and honest by 12 percent of respondents; federal MPs by 10 percent. Incidentally, those in my former profession (university lecturer) are rated highly ethical and honest by 65 percent of respondents.<\/p>\n[6]\u00a0comScore report,\u00a0It\u2019s a social world<\/em>, October 2011<\/p>\n[7]\u00a0See official lists of federal politicians on twitter from @AttheHouse and @AuSenate. Analysis on the tweets of the top 10 politicians during the 2010 election showed that over 50 percent of tweets were \u2018broadcast messages.\u2019 Jim McNamara, \u2018Pre- and post-election 2010 online: What happened to the conversation?\u2019,\u00a0Communication, Politics, Culture<\/em>, vol.44, no. 2<\/p>\n[8]\u00a0Of my 3000 or so Twitter followers, I\u2019d guess that less than half live in the Fraser electorate. Traditional campaigning, such as newsletters, public meetings, mobile offices and appearances on mainstream media still remain the bedrock of the interaction between politicians and voters.<\/p>\n[9]\u00a0According to Ray Finkelstein, 2012,\u00a0Report of the Independent Inquiry into the Media and Media Regulation<\/em>, Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Canberra (hereafter the Finkelstein Report): \u2018Australia\u2019s newspaper industry is among the most concentrated in the developed world. An international collaborative research project \u2026 has generated data on the newspaper industry in 26 countries including Australia. One of the measures used is the proportion of daily newspaper circulation controlled by the leading firms in the industry. Australia is the only country in which the leading press company accounts for more than half of daily circulation \u2026 With a share of 86 per cent, Australia also ranks highest by a considerable margin when considering the share of the top two companies. The share of the top two companies exceeds 60 per cent in only six of the 26 countries\u2019 (pp.59-60)<\/p>\n[10]\u00a0For an excellent discussion of this issue, see Rodney Tiffin, 2012, \u2018Spin Doctors, News Values and Public Interest \u2013 the Bermuda Triangle of Policy Debate\u2019 in Matthew Ricketson (ed),\u00a0Australian Journalism Today<\/em>, Palgrave, Melbourne (as an aside, Tiffin was very tolerant of my poor class attendance while I was an editor of\u00a0Honi Soit<\/em>).<\/p>\n[11]\u00a0Essential Media poll, November 2011, cited in the Finkelstein Report, p.87<\/p>\n[12]\u00a0Tony Blair, \u2018The Prime Minister\u2019s Reuters Speech on Public Life\u2019, 12 June 2007.<\/p>\n[13]\u00a0Had space permitted, I would have explored the difference between attack commentary and constructive opinion pieces. For simplicity, I have ignored that distinction here.<\/p>\n[14]\u00a0Having written a couple of hundred opinion pieces, one might reasonably ask whether I ought to desist, if I believe that too much opinion is a problem. While I\u2019d prefer to see a fall in the opinion\/news ratio, I\u2019m\u00a0 aware that my opinion pieces are only displacing those of other people, rather than adding to the sum total of published opinion in Australia.<\/p>\n[15]\u00a0Lachlan Harris,\u00a0Keynote address at Public Relations Institute of Australia\u2019s annual conference<\/em>, as quoted at \u2018Lachlan Harris: Rise of the opinion cycle makes Andrew Bolt the most influential man in media\u2019, mumbrella,http:\/\/mumbrella.com.au\/opinion-cycle-lachlan-harris-andrew-bolt-pr-62272<\/a><\/p>\n[16]\u00a0Calculations based on the listing of the Press Gallery names in Parliament House Communications Directory from 1990, August 2000, 2010.<\/p>\n[17]\u00a0One consequence of the rise of opinion has been an increase in the weight accorded to special interest groups.<\/p>\n[18]\u00a0Martin McKenzie-Murray, \u2018Democracy Running Low on Ink\u2019,\u00a0Sydney Morning Herald<\/em>, 14 June 2012.<\/p>\n[19]\u00a0The exceptions were the ABC (which was right-leaning on one measure) and the Age (which was left-leaning on another measure). See Joshua Gans and Andrew Leigh, \u2018Multiple Measures of Media Slant\u2019, Economic Record<\/em>, Volume 88, Issue 280, pages 127\u2013147, March 2012<\/p>\n[20]\u00a0For good discussions of this issue, see Paul Starr, \u2018Governing in the age of Fox News\u2019,\u00a0The Atlantic<\/em>, 2010\u00a0http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/archive\/2010\/01\/governing-in-the-age-of-fox-news\/7838\/<\/a>; Alan S. Gerber, Gregory A. Huber, David Doherty, Conor M. Dowling, \u2018 Personality Traits and the Consumption of Political Information\u2019,\u00a0American Politics Research<\/em>; Eszter Hargittai, Jason Gallo, Matthew Kane, \u2018Cross-Ideological Discussions among Conservative and Liberal Bloggers\u2019,\u00a0Public Choice<\/em>, (2008) Vol 134, No.1\/2,<\/p>\n[21]\u00a0Both Cohen and Haidt are quoted in Ezra Klein, \u2018Unpopular Mandate\u2019,\u00a0New Yorker<\/em>, 25 June 2012, pp.30-33.<\/p>\n

[22]<\/a>\u00a0Pew Research Centre,\u00a0\u2018Press Widely Criticized, But Trusted More than Other Information Sources\u2019<\/em>, September 2011, as accessed at http:\/\/www.people-press.org\/2011\/09\/22\/press-widely-criticized-but-trusted-more-than-other-institutions\/?src=prc-headline<\/p>\n[23]\u00a0For two studies providing causal evidence that slanted media can change electoral outcomes, see Gerber, Alan S., Dean Karlan, and Daniel Bergan. 2009. \u201cDoes the Media Matter? A Field Experiment Measuring the Effect of Newspapers on Voting Behavior and Political Opinions.\u201d\u00a0American Economic Journal: Applied Economics<\/em>, 1(2): 35\u201352; Stefano DellaVigna and Ethan Kaplan, \u2018The Fox News Effect: Media Bias and Voting\u2019\u00a0Quarterly Journal of Economics<\/em>\u00a0(2007) 122 (3): 1187-1234<\/p>\n[24]\u00a0Annabel Crabb, \u2018An audience, an audience, my kingdom for an audience\u2019, 19 Oct 2011,\u00a0The Drum<\/em>, http:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/news\/2011-10-19\/crabb-an-audience-my-kingdom-for-an-audience\/3578344<\/p>\n[25]\u00a0Laura Tingle,\u00a0Great Expectations: Government, Entitlement and an Angry Nation<\/em>, Quarterly Essay 46, Black Inc, Melbourne, 2012<\/p>\n[26]\u00a0A more comprehensive list of Keating insults has even earned its own website. See\u00a0http:\/\/www.webcity.com.au\/keating\/<\/a><\/p>\n[27]\u00a0To take a twentieth-century US example, New York Post editor Steve Dunleavy ran a campaign against gay rights, apparently even ordering a reporter in the 1980s to write that AIDS could be transmitted by kissing: \u2018Let\u2019s not be too technical mate \u2013 it\u2019s a good yarn.\u2019 David Marr, \u2018The Politics of News (Review of David McKnight\u2019s Rupert Murdoch: An Investigation of Political Power)\u2019,\u00a0The Monthly<\/em>, February 2012, pp.62-63.<\/p>\n[28]\u00a0The Abbott example is drawn from Nicholas Gruen, \u2018Beyond Vox Pop Democracy\u2019, in Helen Sykes (ed),\u00a0More or Less: Democracy and the New Media<\/em>, Future Leaders, 2012. For a thoughtful discussion of the role of reporters in challenging assertions by public figures, see Arthur Brisbane, \u2018Should the Times be a Truth Vigilante?\u2019, Public Editor\u2019s Journal,\u00a0New York Times<\/em>, 12 January 2012. For some odd reason, the challenge of correcting factual errors in Australia reminds me of the line from Wodehouse\u2019s\u00a0Psmith, Journalist<\/em>: \u2018Cosy moments<\/em>\u00a0cannot be muzzled\u2019.<\/p>\n[29]\u00a0Andrew Leigh,\u00a0Disconnected<\/em>, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2010.<\/p>\n[30]\u00a0Kate G. Niederhoffer and James W. Pennebaker (2002), \u2018Linguistic Style Matching in Social Interaction\u2019\u00a0Journal of Language and Social Psychology<\/em>\u00a021: 337-360, cited in John Freeman (2009)\u00a0Shrinking the World: The 4000-Year Story of How Email Came to Rule Our Lives<\/em>, Text Publishing, Melbourne, p.154<\/p>\n[31]\u00a0George Megalogenis,\u00a0The Australian Moment<\/em>, Penguin, Sydney, 2012, p.363<\/p>\n[32]\u00a0Tony Blair, \u2018The Prime Minister\u2019s Reuters Speech on Public Life\u2019, 12 June 2007.<\/p>\n[33]\u00a0Kevin Arceneaux, \u2018Cognitive Biases and the Strength of Political Argument\u2019,\u00a0American Journal of Political<\/em>\u00a0Science, (2012) Vol. 56, Iss. 2.<\/p>\n[34]\u00a0Jeremy Peters, \u2018Latest Word on the Trail? I Take It Back\u2019,\u00a0New York Times<\/em>, 15 July 2012.<\/p>\n[35]\u00a0Indeed, you can even use social media to do it, like the\u00a0Sunday Telegraph<\/em>\u00a0journalist who put a message on the Source Bottle website in January: \u2018I need a gorgeous Sydney family who is outraged at the fact their electricity bill has skyrocketed\u2026 Ideally not eastern suburbs\u2019.<\/p>\n[36]\u00a0Bruce Chapman and Kiatanantha Lounkaew, \u2018How many jobs is 23,510, really?\u2019, Technical Brief No. 9, June 2011, The Australia Institute.<\/p>\n[37]\u00a0Murray Goot, \u2018To the Second Decimal Point: How the polls vied to predict the national vote, monitor the marginals and second-guess the Senate\u2019, in Marian Simms and John Wanna (eds),\u00a0Julia 2010: The Caretaker Election<\/em>, ANU E-Books, Canberra, 2011.<\/p>\n[38]\u00a0My own work, with Justin Wolfers, finds that polls conducted a year before an election have average errors of around 4 percentage points. Justin Wolfers and Andrew Leigh, \u2018Three Tools for Forecasting Federal Elections: Lessons from 2001\u2019 (2002)Australian Journal of Political Science\u00a0<\/em>37(2): 223-40<\/p>\n[39]\u00a0Andrew Leigh and Justin Wolfers, \u2018Competing Approaches to Forecasting Elections: Economic Models, Opinion Polling and Prediction Markets\u2019 (2006)\u00a0Economic Record<\/em>, 82(258): 325-340<\/p>\n[40]\u00a0The Australian Journalists\u2019 Association Code of Ethics begins \u201cReport and interpret honestly, striving for accuracy, fairness and disclosure of all essential facts. Do not suppress relevant available facts, or give distorting emphasis.\u201d<\/p>\n[41]\u00a0For example, in the 1983 election, Paul Keating was discussing the Accord to John Laws, and said \u2018I\u2019m not sure we can make it work but we\u2019re going to give it a good shot.\u2019 He was promptly pilloried by then Prime Minister Fraser for his \u2018extraordinary\u2019 admission. See Anne Summers,\u00a0Gamble for Power<\/em>, Nelson, Sydney, 1983, pp.162-163.<\/p>\n[42]\u00a0Lindsay Tanner,\u00a0Sideshow: Dumbing down democracy<\/em>, Scribe Publications, Melbourne, 2011, p.7<\/p>\n[43]\u00a0One of the best treatments of these issues is Leigh Sales, 2010,\u00a0On Doubt<\/em>, Melbourne University Publishing, Melbourne. See also Andrew Leigh, \u2018Progress rarely plane sailing but dare to do it anyway\u2019,\u00a0The Australian<\/em>, 25 July 2012.<\/p>\n[44]\u00a0Andrew Leigh,\u00a0Disconnected<\/em>, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2010. By comparison, a landmark study of Sydney adolescents in the 1950s found that 88 percent read a newspaper each day: W.F. Connell, E.P Francis and Elizabeth Skilbeck, 1959, Growing up in an Australian City: A Study of Adolescents in Sydney<\/em>, ACER, Melbourne, p.141.<\/p>\n[45]\u00a0The only Australian papers to have a readers\u2019 editor are the\u00a0Sydney Morning Herald<\/em>\u00a0and the\u00a0Sun-Herald<\/em>, who share readers\u2019 editor Judy Prisk.<\/p>\n[46]\u00a0For an excellent discussion of the ongoing value of long-form journalism, from Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson to Margaret Simons and David Marr, see Matthew Ricketson, 2012, \u2018The value of long-form journalism in a short-form world\u2019, in Matthew Ricketson (ed),\u00a0Australian Journalism Today<\/em>, Palgrave, Melbourne.<\/p>\n[47]\u00a0The Finkelstein Report notes that newspaper sales per 100 people were 38.6 in 1947, 32.1 in 1967, 28.8 in 1977, 21.9 in 1987, 14.1\u00a0 in 1996, 13.0 in 2000 and 9.7 in 2011.<\/p>\n[48]\u00a0For a detailed summary of subsidies to the news media in Australia and other developed countries, see Annexure K of the Finkelstein Report. Chapter 12 of the Finkelstein Report discusses the threats to accountability and democracy posed by a decline in quality journalism.<\/p>\n[49]\u00a0Malcolm Turnbull, 2012, \u2018Politics, Journalism and the 24\/7 News Cycle\u2019 in Helen Sykes (ed),\u00a0More or Less: Democracy and New Media<\/em>, Future Leaders, Sydney. In a similar vein, Andrew Crook argues that tax deductibility could encourage the rise of more investigative journalism, though antipodean equivalents of the US ProPublica: Andrew Crook, \u2018The case to make donations to non-profit media tax deductible\u2019,\u00a0Crikey<\/em>, 11 July 2012.<\/p>\n[50]\u00a0George Megalogenis,\u00a0The Australian Moment<\/em>, Penguin, Sydney, 2012, p.361<\/p>\n

Media coverage:\u00a0Canberra Times<\/a>,\u00a0Age<\/a>,\u00a0AAP<\/a>,\u00a0Australian<\/a>\u00a0(x2<\/a>). See also a\u00a0cut-down version in the Drum<\/a>, and a\u00a0discussion on ABC24<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0ABC\u2019s Media Report program<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Margo: A veteran journo friend recently recommended I read a lengthy 2012 speech by Labor MP Andrew Leigh about political journalism, where it’s at and why. Enjoy.   The Truth, Naked By Andrew Leigh Source:\u00a0www.andrewleigh.com 1 August 2012 At the end of 1992, a team of us got together at Sydney University to run for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6543,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3434,3546,67,585,21],"tags":[890,895,892,891,894,893,896],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Capture_2013_07_20_16_49_49_279.png?fit=842%2C466&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3t0mw-1Hq","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6536"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6536"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56577,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6536\/revisions\/56577"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}