Bravo. Brilliant piece - and so true. You neglect the reinforcing effect of intermarriage in the ABC in particular, which reinforces the upper-middle-class group think. Yours in gratitude, Jeff Waters, former ABC senior journalist from a poor background. (Oh the stories I could tell!)
An interesting perspective which is worth considering. Am glad that their are alternative publications that can be read, and whilst I have all but given up reading main stream journalism it still pervades our current media. Your last paragraph hit home as it also highlights the lack of diversity in the Australian Parliament(s) where people are plucked for preselection from the same cohort - managerial elites. Good for thought, thank you
Thanks for your kind words, Meg. This recent phenomena, the fusion of power and privilege, has been seen throughout history, it can be analysed, simplified and deconstructed with the right approach. Talking to the disparity can be a great start.
Gracias por tu artìculo, por tus valiosas y muy poco conocidas reflexiones . Destaco el hecho de que procuras esclarecer, a la vez que denunciar , algunas de las causas de lo que a diario vemos , mejor dicho, NOS HACEN VER, en periodicos, tv, redes los grupos hegemònicos, verdaderos monopolios econòmicos de opiniòn sesgada (incluso pagada). Vivo en Argentina. Los tres medios dominantes: Clarin, La Naciòn, Infobae replican a diario titulares de catàstrofe absoluta de nuestro paìs, o de infantilizaciòn misericorde de algunos de los problemas reales de amplias mayorias. Se replican a sì mismos hasta la nàusea. Y como dices al comienzo: " el periodista de clase trabajadora nunca se ha alejado de la historia de Australia, hasta ahora. Detrás de los muros de pago y los expertos de los medios de comunicación de hoy hay una clara falta de diversidad de puntos de vista, no solo internamente, sino también externamente. Ha habido discusiones sobre la concentración del poder mediático en este país, pero menos sobre la concentración de ideas propagadas por la prensa ". Ocurre lo mismo en nuestro paìs. Les cuento que aquì, esos medios alaban la maravillosa libertad de prensa y de opiniòn de Australia. Y nos presentan a vuestro paìs como si se tratase del mismo edèn. Difundirè tu artìculo para analizarlo, debatirlo no sòlo en la universidad sino en grupos de trabajo en los que participan y luchan a diario jovenes y adultos de clase social empobrecida. Trabajadores que casi nunca o nunca acceden a un trabajo en los medios. Un afectuoso saludo a vos, Joel , y a quienes han comentado. He aprendido mucho leyèndolos. Gracias
Thank you Isabel, I cant tell you how grateful I am for your insightful words and appreciate the parallels you draw with your own country. Empowering the lower classes and the youth with the confidence they need to ensure a voice, can go so much further than me may think. The confidence and grounding of an empowered working class allows for a unique and beneficial contribution to any society.
Thank you for your view on this Joel. There is another factor at play here too - there are a lot fewer journalists in the traditional media now than in the good old days you are looking to. That has led to a loss of diversity. It also means the few at the top are better remunerated than many, but they are easily replaceable if they push too hard the wrong way (although the reality is a lot of those near the top naturally have sympathetic views to management). Journalists by and large aren’t well remunerated - it is a particularly uncertain industry in which to build a career.
Hello Peter, I appreciate this factor you mention. There is a fragile nature to the profession in a declining workforce with fewer opportunities. How do we ensure that the fewer opportunities are fair? Or is there more opportunity out there than we may consider?
Hi Joel, from what I can see a big part of it is making and keeping as much of the industry as possible financially viable.
The loss of stability and diversity in media over the past 20 years coincides with digital disruption and a failure by traditional media companies to cope with the change. They have all been shedding editorial jobs along the way. Fairfax lost the rivers of gold and ultimately became part of Nine after a heap of retrenchments over years. News Corp has fared better but has still slashed plenty of journalism jobs, especially at the local level where a lot of journalists traditionally got a start.
We really need media with scale - the recognised entities that can get access to information and people to break significant stories - in the mix and functioning well.
Ideally consumers of media would pick their preferred one or two of these publishers and subscribe to underwrite their work. For mine the second choice would be more active, independent and better funded public broadcaster(s) because even if not everyone can see the benefit of objective media up front, the value to society is great.
There may well be more opportunity at the local level - smaller independent operations covering news of value to their communities that isn't covered anywhere else. That again comes back to finding ways to pay people to be journalists but that would genuinely be a good start.
I agree with much of this but as others have written - the cull of journalists, and particularly local journalism - the training ground for many working class journalists, has reduced so many avenues. Syndication of a single journos views across multiple titles saves money but also strangles authentic, differing or even geographical viewpoints. As everything becomes centralised and homogenised it is only those interests which are reflected.
The of local news is a key consideration here, Chris. These were once the proving grounds for great journalists, creating awareness and connection for local communities.
Brilliant article,,so insightful and well written .It seems there is a shift of mind set starting to happen a real thirst for true stories and real experiences 😊
I remember reading this when you published it, and have just re-read it thanks to your recent Tweet, marking your first anniversary as a writer.
‘Class migration’ is a really interesting thing to ponder. I was born into a single-income, working class family. My father was the principle bread winner, initially as an office worker, later as a janitor; mum was an exceptional stay-at-home parent.
Dad’s father was a tram conductor; mum’s father a plumber (although mum grew up in a more ‘middle class’ Brisbane suburb than dad).
Yet, despite this and by even the narrowest of socio-economic definitions, there is no way I could now be classified as working class.
What made the difference for me?
Tertiary education.
How did I get there? Austudy, when it was first introduced, was reasonably generous and it put a financial floor underneath me. I could supplement my Austudy with part time work (at a supermarket). Hawke’s Labor gave us Austudy so kids like me could stay learning at school and uni or TAFE. It worked.
My parents weren’t educated past year 8 (dad) and year 10 (mum). They had no concept of tertiary study but said I could go to uni if that’s what I wanted to do - but I had to pay my own way. They recognised I had the brains and aptitude to study. And so I did (thanks to HECS).
When I got to that sandstone, top-8 uni, I encountered the privilege of kids my own age who went to the so-called elite schools (I went to state schools). It was eye opening. I’d never met people like them in their deck shoes, Canterbury rugby jerseys and shorts. They moved in packs around the campus, devoid of any sense of individualism - they had their entitlement to protect.
And yet, here I am five degrees and thirty years later, a professional who enjoys a comfortable existence in a inner city suburb in Brisbane who still counts every cent, turns the lights out and unplugs appliances to save money and wonders and hopes that all will be OK and that the next pay packet will materialise.
So while I’ve clearly migrated class in terms of income and in terms of what I do, it’s nigh on impossible to shake those deeply embedded values that I was born into and raised in.
It took me some more years, and a bit more life experience, to understand that pack mentality I saw at uni - that’s how those privileged schools operate. It’s all about the networks they build at school; that they perpetuate at uni and then, after graduation, take into the workforce and places like News or Nine.
I never had any of that and I’m glad of it; I just rowed my own boat and made the most of what gifts in life I’d been fortunate enough to have bestowed on me. And, when I think about that, I’m reassured that my working class values are still well and truly in me, continually shaping the person I am…
Here’s to the Joel Jenkins journalists of this word and, to the rest, let’s hope humility comes to them at some point in their professional lives.
That churning of journalistic ‘talent’ through the houses of influence is telling. Ultimately the discourse is impoverished as employment/advancement becomes the goal. When everything is reduced to public relations, marketing or advocacy, journalism disappears.
Thank you for this great commentary Joel. You have put into succinct words, and shrewd observations and argument the causes of a deep frustration I have long felt: the gradual and relentless participation-dispossession of the working class; the eroding of 'common' from the Commonwealth. It is seen in some many changes: the privatisation of Telstra, the Commowealth Bank, Qantas, health services, employment services, post offices. Poor people once felt they were a part of this 'commonwealth'; now Morrison says even the aged pension should no longer be regarded as an entitlement, but as welfare (and presumably, if needs be, starving out of existence). And when the only watchdogs are members of the privileged-celebrity classes, how long will it be before that happens?
Thank you for a thoughtful and erudite piece of journalism. What you say hits at fundamental changes within journalism, politics and society. If journalism doesn’t reflect the society it purports to represent is it any wonder that alternative and misdirected ideas proliferate eg anti vaccine, no masks in a pandemic. Lack of education within the general populace until recently did not warp the thinking of people. They were grounded in their lives and could relate to solid journalism and even politicians. Now even the educated are losing contact with other people’s lives or even the reality of their own lives. This surely is partly a result of a media that is partisan and stagnant in a world that is their own but has little to do with the wider world.
It's probably not a good idea to conflate education and the failure of modern journalism. Some of us old farts who were lucky enough take advantage of Gough Whitlam's opening up of the universities found that their tertiary education opened their eyes to the way the world operates and what is wrong with it. That's no doubt why free tertiary education was closed down as soon as Gough was gone. Many educated people are equally appalled by the degeneration of the fourth estate. The article also points out that the backgrounds of modern journalists is a significant problem and I think that is the crux. Because they come from the same middle class as the politicians should we be surprised at how they act?
I am one of the educated people who are appalled by the degeneration of the fourth estate. I was in my thirties before education taught me to understand how the world operates. So I have a pre education life and a post education life. I am not surprised by how the media act. The point I was making was that the lack of solid journalism today fails people who lack a university education. Instead of informing people, it can provide a space for negative alternative ideas to proliferate. In my opinion, there is little capacity within journalism these days for that section of society to appreciate the depth and strength of the power that underpins and often dictates their lives. We seem to be informed by mediocre journos and led by mediocre politicians.
It's probably a bit more than mediocrity Suzanne. I suspect that they have similar agendas. That is, they both represent vested interests. At some point when we weren't paying attention journalists seem to have thrown in their lot with the politicians and the corporations who pull their strings. This is most obvious in the Murdoch press but it seems to have infiltrated to most news and media agencies, especially those on television. Even the ABC doesn't seem to be immune. That's why blogs like this one are so important. Unfortunately they tend to preach to the converted. As far as I can tell there doesn't seem to be too many bogan commentators willing to come on board. This seems to be the case with similar blogs where the readership tends to be middle class progressives. It's a nexus that seems impossible to break. Still, being a middle class bogan with an education isn't that bad.
You missed an opportunity to say something insightful. You should have begun with your last sentence & explored the MSM's lowering of the bar for the LNP for 70 years. As it was, the most insightful remarks about the historically unethical role of our partisan RW MSM in delivering negative social outcomes & even illegal LNP wars have been made again by Paul Keating. And note how easily he triggered your entire profession this week! Is it ironic that there's so much hypersensitivity to any criticism in a profession which claims to be a critical ethical enterprise & to speak truth to power? Come on. That's funny. Maybe if this author & more journalists had paid better attention at uni & been studying subjects which promote critical thinking, rather than a simplistic quick fix, he'd have a clue.
Excellent article, you are so right.Lived experiences give you an insight to what's really happening and empathy aswell.eg.Aged care if you ve experienced how horrendous it is looking after a Nanna in my case.You would report on it so differently to someone who has nt.
Thankyou Joel. Recently a well connected journalist- who was WFH since covid and only recently asked to return to office 3 days- suggested that women in Aus working ftime might struggle a little to support a single parent family despite my lived experience which includes rent representing >30% income .
Andrew DElder banged on about this over at Politically Homeless for ten years. He was spot on. Go and dig randomly into his archive. That an independent researcher from Ryde could dispense more useful observatiion of the intersection between government and governed than Grattan, Benson et. al. said a lot.
My only observation to this, very correct, author, is that they are not interested in working class lives. the senior bureaucracy, the corporate world, the judiciary; none of them give a rats about whether you're alive or dead beyond your use as a shovel or as a bank account to be emptied. Thius is neoliberalism my freind. It has become fashionable of late to say that neoliberalism is in its death throes or some such, but far from it - it's just evolving into its next phase to monetise late stage capitalism. This dystopia - as it is for millions of Australians - can get a lot more dystopic indeed.
I worked as a journalist for nearly two decades. I gave it us. Seldom look at media these days. Found your article by accident. Keep it up, but don't wait for the media to save us, they're there to do something completely different. And there's no "good media" it's all just lazy press mrelease rewrites from communication grads who aren't hosing out a meat pulverising machine in three degrees at 4am.
I too trained as a journalist and worked in the media for a period - I got out after less than a decade because I realised in my 20s I should not - and didn’t want to - be the one telling entire communities how or what to think.
The excuse for poor analysis and lack of depth in stories used to be “churn”. Simply getting the required centimetres to fill pages. But that was in the days when your primary journalistic weapons were a (landline, rotary…) phone and a set of car keys. If you covered a bushfire, you were standing right amongst it, and if you couldn’t find a working landline, you had to drive until you did to file.
Similar excuses are made now. But it’s not because they have 64 or 120 pages to fill; it’s because they have endless URLs to populate. Literally unlimited space - and unlimited potential mouse clicks to attract. The churn still exists, but it now has its roots in the attention span of carefully-targeted audiences.
Additional to the pressures to produce endless streams of copy, classism *is* a dire issue in today’s media. There’s no doubt about the case made by Joel. Three years of education in a single institution, with the end result being a bit of paper and a start most likely with the organisation where you did your 2nd/3rd year industry experience unit. An expanding number of graduates still live at home. They’re numerically adults, but have little further life experience than when they stepped into high school. B and they’ve never set foot in a Centrelink office.
But the issue doesn’t end with class or privilege. There has been a huge shift in how the media sees itself. The “fourth estate” was - and I use that word deliberately - one which self-supervised. The fourth estate understood it was a branch of public service. That is ensconced in our media landscape - the very structure of our broadcast licences, for example.
The licences providing public airwaves for use by private and public interests were constructed with the national interest in mind. The self-governing of (for example) the print media by a single, voluntary-membership council was a similar nod to the media’s need to serve the public. The fourth estate was mature enough to train its journalists to value independence, and more importantly integrity and ethics. And train them to ask questions of power - whether that was the local council or millionaire business owner in country Victoria, or holding the PMO to account.
As cadets, we weren’t treated by our employers as cheap, full-production models of the journos who’d been around a few years. We were expected to make mistakes. Require supervision. And training.
Recently I’ve done degree studies in media: partly for fun and partly because I entertain the idea of getting “back into it”, putting my money where my mouth is. A dry ethics class hasn’t got spots on the lecture from the old grizzly sub editor who stored a spare case of Melbourne Bitter under his desk. For emergencies. The outcomes of on-the-job-training and university degrees are worlds apart. I’ve done both, so I can stand behind that statement, even keeping in mind the inherent subjectivity of me being the case study.
Every media business throughout history has been out to make a profit; or at the very least, not cost more than it made. But today’s focus on finances, along with the pre-packaged “fully-trained” expectations placed on graduates means inexperienced people, of all classes of society, are being pushed into prime positions, by default. Positions that influence what our country - and world - will look like in the not too distant future.
If these graduates say no, or tackle a
story from an angle that doesn’t meet their employer’s wishes, all of a sudden, maybe their click stats take a dive. They’re no longer reaching their audience. And they’re waved goodbye - often into the rapidly converging land of PR, where at least pushing the interest of their employer is a noble(r) pursuit.
The truth of the problem with our media today isn’t the journalists - on the whole, journos do what they’re told, angle-wise. Always have. That’s how they get published. The real change in our media is the organisations themselves. They no longer act in the public interest. They are there for their proprietors, or that proprietor’s “supporters”; advertising money is exponentially more powerful today than it was 30 or so years ago - and it was pretty hefty even back then.
The bones of our media have become brittle and editorial independence is a rare beast these days. What we know as our “mainstream” media is no longer worthy of the title “fourth estate”.
That title is now owned by independents who struggle daily to get their stories out. It all goes back to who is actually running the organisation, and their values, regardless of the age or class or experience of the journalist.
And, let’s not get started on the topic of how the corruption of power structures within which the media operates effect the stories we see. That’s another essay all together.
Hi Joel, great article. I have sent you a direct message on Twitter - would be great to make contact. Michelle
Bravo. Brilliant piece - and so true. You neglect the reinforcing effect of intermarriage in the ABC in particular, which reinforces the upper-middle-class group think. Yours in gratitude, Jeff Waters, former ABC senior journalist from a poor background. (Oh the stories I could tell!)
An interesting perspective which is worth considering. Am glad that their are alternative publications that can be read, and whilst I have all but given up reading main stream journalism it still pervades our current media. Your last paragraph hit home as it also highlights the lack of diversity in the Australian Parliament(s) where people are plucked for preselection from the same cohort - managerial elites. Good for thought, thank you
Thanks for your kind words, Meg. This recent phenomena, the fusion of power and privilege, has been seen throughout history, it can be analysed, simplified and deconstructed with the right approach. Talking to the disparity can be a great start.
Gracias por tu artìculo, por tus valiosas y muy poco conocidas reflexiones . Destaco el hecho de que procuras esclarecer, a la vez que denunciar , algunas de las causas de lo que a diario vemos , mejor dicho, NOS HACEN VER, en periodicos, tv, redes los grupos hegemònicos, verdaderos monopolios econòmicos de opiniòn sesgada (incluso pagada). Vivo en Argentina. Los tres medios dominantes: Clarin, La Naciòn, Infobae replican a diario titulares de catàstrofe absoluta de nuestro paìs, o de infantilizaciòn misericorde de algunos de los problemas reales de amplias mayorias. Se replican a sì mismos hasta la nàusea. Y como dices al comienzo: " el periodista de clase trabajadora nunca se ha alejado de la historia de Australia, hasta ahora. Detrás de los muros de pago y los expertos de los medios de comunicación de hoy hay una clara falta de diversidad de puntos de vista, no solo internamente, sino también externamente. Ha habido discusiones sobre la concentración del poder mediático en este país, pero menos sobre la concentración de ideas propagadas por la prensa ". Ocurre lo mismo en nuestro paìs. Les cuento que aquì, esos medios alaban la maravillosa libertad de prensa y de opiniòn de Australia. Y nos presentan a vuestro paìs como si se tratase del mismo edèn. Difundirè tu artìculo para analizarlo, debatirlo no sòlo en la universidad sino en grupos de trabajo en los que participan y luchan a diario jovenes y adultos de clase social empobrecida. Trabajadores que casi nunca o nunca acceden a un trabajo en los medios. Un afectuoso saludo a vos, Joel , y a quienes han comentado. He aprendido mucho leyèndolos. Gracias
Thank you Isabel, I cant tell you how grateful I am for your insightful words and appreciate the parallels you draw with your own country. Empowering the lower classes and the youth with the confidence they need to ensure a voice, can go so much further than me may think. The confidence and grounding of an empowered working class allows for a unique and beneficial contribution to any society.
disculpas porque se duplicò mi comentario. No sè por què.
Thank you for your view on this Joel. There is another factor at play here too - there are a lot fewer journalists in the traditional media now than in the good old days you are looking to. That has led to a loss of diversity. It also means the few at the top are better remunerated than many, but they are easily replaceable if they push too hard the wrong way (although the reality is a lot of those near the top naturally have sympathetic views to management). Journalists by and large aren’t well remunerated - it is a particularly uncertain industry in which to build a career.
Hello Peter, I appreciate this factor you mention. There is a fragile nature to the profession in a declining workforce with fewer opportunities. How do we ensure that the fewer opportunities are fair? Or is there more opportunity out there than we may consider?
Hi Joel, from what I can see a big part of it is making and keeping as much of the industry as possible financially viable.
The loss of stability and diversity in media over the past 20 years coincides with digital disruption and a failure by traditional media companies to cope with the change. They have all been shedding editorial jobs along the way. Fairfax lost the rivers of gold and ultimately became part of Nine after a heap of retrenchments over years. News Corp has fared better but has still slashed plenty of journalism jobs, especially at the local level where a lot of journalists traditionally got a start.
We really need media with scale - the recognised entities that can get access to information and people to break significant stories - in the mix and functioning well.
Ideally consumers of media would pick their preferred one or two of these publishers and subscribe to underwrite their work. For mine the second choice would be more active, independent and better funded public broadcaster(s) because even if not everyone can see the benefit of objective media up front, the value to society is great.
There may well be more opportunity at the local level - smaller independent operations covering news of value to their communities that isn't covered anywhere else. That again comes back to finding ways to pay people to be journalists but that would genuinely be a good start.
I agree with much of this but as others have written - the cull of journalists, and particularly local journalism - the training ground for many working class journalists, has reduced so many avenues. Syndication of a single journos views across multiple titles saves money but also strangles authentic, differing or even geographical viewpoints. As everything becomes centralised and homogenised it is only those interests which are reflected.
The of local news is a key consideration here, Chris. These were once the proving grounds for great journalists, creating awareness and connection for local communities.
See also the flight to social media, free of inbred middle class gatekeepers.
Brilliant article,,so insightful and well written .It seems there is a shift of mind set starting to happen a real thirst for true stories and real experiences 😊
I remember reading this when you published it, and have just re-read it thanks to your recent Tweet, marking your first anniversary as a writer.
‘Class migration’ is a really interesting thing to ponder. I was born into a single-income, working class family. My father was the principle bread winner, initially as an office worker, later as a janitor; mum was an exceptional stay-at-home parent.
Dad’s father was a tram conductor; mum’s father a plumber (although mum grew up in a more ‘middle class’ Brisbane suburb than dad).
Yet, despite this and by even the narrowest of socio-economic definitions, there is no way I could now be classified as working class.
What made the difference for me?
Tertiary education.
How did I get there? Austudy, when it was first introduced, was reasonably generous and it put a financial floor underneath me. I could supplement my Austudy with part time work (at a supermarket). Hawke’s Labor gave us Austudy so kids like me could stay learning at school and uni or TAFE. It worked.
My parents weren’t educated past year 8 (dad) and year 10 (mum). They had no concept of tertiary study but said I could go to uni if that’s what I wanted to do - but I had to pay my own way. They recognised I had the brains and aptitude to study. And so I did (thanks to HECS).
When I got to that sandstone, top-8 uni, I encountered the privilege of kids my own age who went to the so-called elite schools (I went to state schools). It was eye opening. I’d never met people like them in their deck shoes, Canterbury rugby jerseys and shorts. They moved in packs around the campus, devoid of any sense of individualism - they had their entitlement to protect.
And yet, here I am five degrees and thirty years later, a professional who enjoys a comfortable existence in a inner city suburb in Brisbane who still counts every cent, turns the lights out and unplugs appliances to save money and wonders and hopes that all will be OK and that the next pay packet will materialise.
So while I’ve clearly migrated class in terms of income and in terms of what I do, it’s nigh on impossible to shake those deeply embedded values that I was born into and raised in.
It took me some more years, and a bit more life experience, to understand that pack mentality I saw at uni - that’s how those privileged schools operate. It’s all about the networks they build at school; that they perpetuate at uni and then, after graduation, take into the workforce and places like News or Nine.
I never had any of that and I’m glad of it; I just rowed my own boat and made the most of what gifts in life I’d been fortunate enough to have bestowed on me. And, when I think about that, I’m reassured that my working class values are still well and truly in me, continually shaping the person I am…
Here’s to the Joel Jenkins journalists of this word and, to the rest, let’s hope humility comes to them at some point in their professional lives.
That churning of journalistic ‘talent’ through the houses of influence is telling. Ultimately the discourse is impoverished as employment/advancement becomes the goal. When everything is reduced to public relations, marketing or advocacy, journalism disappears.
Thank you for this great commentary Joel. You have put into succinct words, and shrewd observations and argument the causes of a deep frustration I have long felt: the gradual and relentless participation-dispossession of the working class; the eroding of 'common' from the Commonwealth. It is seen in some many changes: the privatisation of Telstra, the Commowealth Bank, Qantas, health services, employment services, post offices. Poor people once felt they were a part of this 'commonwealth'; now Morrison says even the aged pension should no longer be regarded as an entitlement, but as welfare (and presumably, if needs be, starving out of existence). And when the only watchdogs are members of the privileged-celebrity classes, how long will it be before that happens?
Thank you for a thoughtful and erudite piece of journalism. What you say hits at fundamental changes within journalism, politics and society. If journalism doesn’t reflect the society it purports to represent is it any wonder that alternative and misdirected ideas proliferate eg anti vaccine, no masks in a pandemic. Lack of education within the general populace until recently did not warp the thinking of people. They were grounded in their lives and could relate to solid journalism and even politicians. Now even the educated are losing contact with other people’s lives or even the reality of their own lives. This surely is partly a result of a media that is partisan and stagnant in a world that is their own but has little to do with the wider world.
It's probably not a good idea to conflate education and the failure of modern journalism. Some of us old farts who were lucky enough take advantage of Gough Whitlam's opening up of the universities found that their tertiary education opened their eyes to the way the world operates and what is wrong with it. That's no doubt why free tertiary education was closed down as soon as Gough was gone. Many educated people are equally appalled by the degeneration of the fourth estate. The article also points out that the backgrounds of modern journalists is a significant problem and I think that is the crux. Because they come from the same middle class as the politicians should we be surprised at how they act?
I am one of the educated people who are appalled by the degeneration of the fourth estate. I was in my thirties before education taught me to understand how the world operates. So I have a pre education life and a post education life. I am not surprised by how the media act. The point I was making was that the lack of solid journalism today fails people who lack a university education. Instead of informing people, it can provide a space for negative alternative ideas to proliferate. In my opinion, there is little capacity within journalism these days for that section of society to appreciate the depth and strength of the power that underpins and often dictates their lives. We seem to be informed by mediocre journos and led by mediocre politicians.
It's probably a bit more than mediocrity Suzanne. I suspect that they have similar agendas. That is, they both represent vested interests. At some point when we weren't paying attention journalists seem to have thrown in their lot with the politicians and the corporations who pull their strings. This is most obvious in the Murdoch press but it seems to have infiltrated to most news and media agencies, especially those on television. Even the ABC doesn't seem to be immune. That's why blogs like this one are so important. Unfortunately they tend to preach to the converted. As far as I can tell there doesn't seem to be too many bogan commentators willing to come on board. This seems to be the case with similar blogs where the readership tends to be middle class progressives. It's a nexus that seems impossible to break. Still, being a middle class bogan with an education isn't that bad.
You missed an opportunity to say something insightful. You should have begun with your last sentence & explored the MSM's lowering of the bar for the LNP for 70 years. As it was, the most insightful remarks about the historically unethical role of our partisan RW MSM in delivering negative social outcomes & even illegal LNP wars have been made again by Paul Keating. And note how easily he triggered your entire profession this week! Is it ironic that there's so much hypersensitivity to any criticism in a profession which claims to be a critical ethical enterprise & to speak truth to power? Come on. That's funny. Maybe if this author & more journalists had paid better attention at uni & been studying subjects which promote critical thinking, rather than a simplistic quick fix, he'd have a clue.
Excellent article, you are so right.Lived experiences give you an insight to what's really happening and empathy aswell.eg.Aged care if you ve experienced how horrendous it is looking after a Nanna in my case.You would report on it so differently to someone who has nt.
Thankyou Joel. Recently a well connected journalist- who was WFH since covid and only recently asked to return to office 3 days- suggested that women in Aus working ftime might struggle a little to support a single parent family despite my lived experience which includes rent representing >30% income .
Andrew DElder banged on about this over at Politically Homeless for ten years. He was spot on. Go and dig randomly into his archive. That an independent researcher from Ryde could dispense more useful observatiion of the intersection between government and governed than Grattan, Benson et. al. said a lot.
My only observation to this, very correct, author, is that they are not interested in working class lives. the senior bureaucracy, the corporate world, the judiciary; none of them give a rats about whether you're alive or dead beyond your use as a shovel or as a bank account to be emptied. Thius is neoliberalism my freind. It has become fashionable of late to say that neoliberalism is in its death throes or some such, but far from it - it's just evolving into its next phase to monetise late stage capitalism. This dystopia - as it is for millions of Australians - can get a lot more dystopic indeed.
I worked as a journalist for nearly two decades. I gave it us. Seldom look at media these days. Found your article by accident. Keep it up, but don't wait for the media to save us, they're there to do something completely different. And there's no "good media" it's all just lazy press mrelease rewrites from communication grads who aren't hosing out a meat pulverising machine in three degrees at 4am.
I too trained as a journalist and worked in the media for a period - I got out after less than a decade because I realised in my 20s I should not - and didn’t want to - be the one telling entire communities how or what to think.
The excuse for poor analysis and lack of depth in stories used to be “churn”. Simply getting the required centimetres to fill pages. But that was in the days when your primary journalistic weapons were a (landline, rotary…) phone and a set of car keys. If you covered a bushfire, you were standing right amongst it, and if you couldn’t find a working landline, you had to drive until you did to file.
Similar excuses are made now. But it’s not because they have 64 or 120 pages to fill; it’s because they have endless URLs to populate. Literally unlimited space - and unlimited potential mouse clicks to attract. The churn still exists, but it now has its roots in the attention span of carefully-targeted audiences.
Additional to the pressures to produce endless streams of copy, classism *is* a dire issue in today’s media. There’s no doubt about the case made by Joel. Three years of education in a single institution, with the end result being a bit of paper and a start most likely with the organisation where you did your 2nd/3rd year industry experience unit. An expanding number of graduates still live at home. They’re numerically adults, but have little further life experience than when they stepped into high school. B and they’ve never set foot in a Centrelink office.
But the issue doesn’t end with class or privilege. There has been a huge shift in how the media sees itself. The “fourth estate” was - and I use that word deliberately - one which self-supervised. The fourth estate understood it was a branch of public service. That is ensconced in our media landscape - the very structure of our broadcast licences, for example.
The licences providing public airwaves for use by private and public interests were constructed with the national interest in mind. The self-governing of (for example) the print media by a single, voluntary-membership council was a similar nod to the media’s need to serve the public. The fourth estate was mature enough to train its journalists to value independence, and more importantly integrity and ethics. And train them to ask questions of power - whether that was the local council or millionaire business owner in country Victoria, or holding the PMO to account.
As cadets, we weren’t treated by our employers as cheap, full-production models of the journos who’d been around a few years. We were expected to make mistakes. Require supervision. And training.
Recently I’ve done degree studies in media: partly for fun and partly because I entertain the idea of getting “back into it”, putting my money where my mouth is. A dry ethics class hasn’t got spots on the lecture from the old grizzly sub editor who stored a spare case of Melbourne Bitter under his desk. For emergencies. The outcomes of on-the-job-training and university degrees are worlds apart. I’ve done both, so I can stand behind that statement, even keeping in mind the inherent subjectivity of me being the case study.
Every media business throughout history has been out to make a profit; or at the very least, not cost more than it made. But today’s focus on finances, along with the pre-packaged “fully-trained” expectations placed on graduates means inexperienced people, of all classes of society, are being pushed into prime positions, by default. Positions that influence what our country - and world - will look like in the not too distant future.
If these graduates say no, or tackle a
story from an angle that doesn’t meet their employer’s wishes, all of a sudden, maybe their click stats take a dive. They’re no longer reaching their audience. And they’re waved goodbye - often into the rapidly converging land of PR, where at least pushing the interest of their employer is a noble(r) pursuit.
The truth of the problem with our media today isn’t the journalists - on the whole, journos do what they’re told, angle-wise. Always have. That’s how they get published. The real change in our media is the organisations themselves. They no longer act in the public interest. They are there for their proprietors, or that proprietor’s “supporters”; advertising money is exponentially more powerful today than it was 30 or so years ago - and it was pretty hefty even back then.
The bones of our media have become brittle and editorial independence is a rare beast these days. What we know as our “mainstream” media is no longer worthy of the title “fourth estate”.
That title is now owned by independents who struggle daily to get their stories out. It all goes back to who is actually running the organisation, and their values, regardless of the age or class or experience of the journalist.
And, let’s not get started on the topic of how the corruption of power structures within which the media operates effect the stories we see. That’s another essay all together.