As the media works to win trust, people say they want the truth
Why are people turning away from mainstream media and seeking alternative sources of news?
Last week, the University of Canberra released its annual survey of trust in the media, which made fascinating reading.
Among its results, it found Australians' concern about misinformation was the highest globally.
It said Australia "urgently needed" a national media and digital literacy campaign to help news consumers feel confident about their ability to spot misinformation.
But what would that campaign look like?
Let's take a very quick look at the news-gathering model, think about what makes stories "true", and consider some of the pressures journalists face to stop them telling certain stories.
It's a huge topic, but it's necessary to talk about.
Journalists are taught that news stories should contain the "Five Ws":
If a news outlet covers an event, its coverage should contain those basic elements.
Who is this story about? What has happened? Where did it happen? When did it happen? Why did it happen? (And why is it important?)
The first four Ws can be simple enough.
They're the building blocks for basic stories like this: There is a huge flood (what) in outback Queensland (where) right now (when) and more than 100,000 head of livestock are estimated to be dead or lost (who).
The last W in the model — Why — can be more complicated, because that's how you apply "meaning" to an event.
Why has something happened? Why is it important?
Because we're human, the interpretation of events can be hotly contested and lead to accusations of bias and everything else.
But according to the way it works in theory, journalists are trained to gather the facts and seek expert opinion to help them make sense of the facts, to tell us what they mean.
When you put those elements together, you'll hopefully have a decent story.
Now, that's an oversimplified description of the way the news-gathering model works in reality.
The conceptual boundaries between the Five Ws aren't always clear-cut. There's a lot of interplay between them.
For example, depending on the type of story you're covering, you might need an expert's help to know what the facts of certain phenomena are before you can even start writing about them (re: the science of climate change).
But you get the gist.
If you wanted to teach someone how news was generated, you'd start with a bare-bones, idealised model like that.
Then you'd take the next step.
You'd say we always need to remember that they're just stories, at the end of the day. They're trying to turn the chaos and confusion of reality into a comprehensible "story" that helps the human brain to make sense of a very complex world.
And what sets the media's stories apart from other kinds of stories (such as fairytales, or novels, or films) is they're supposed to be "true", or an honest attempt to "tell the truth" about reality.
That's the implied social compact.
And given that assumption about the media's stories, people who consume "the news" are more willing to let the media's stories shape their perception of the world in ways they wouldn't dare allow for other kinds of stories (like fairytales).
So, cognitively, readers let their guard down a little. And that makes the media's stories uniquely potent.
It's why there's a global multi-billion-dollar industry dedicated to capturing, controlling, and confusing the "trusted stories" the media tells every day.
Or better still, stopping the media from telling certain stories at all, by harassing, intimidating, and killing journalists in their hundreds.
Is everyone in the media industry a good person pursuing a noble cause?
Of course not. It's like any industry.
If you work in the media long enough, it's unsurprising to learn that the "father of apartheid" in South Africa, Hendrik Verwoerd, was a former newspaper editor.
Some media companies behave like the media-arm of their preferred political party, do hit jobs on their enemies, and always seem ready to manufacture consent for the next war.
That's been the reality of the industry for hundreds of years. Who owns the world's media companies?
But there are plenty of journalists and editors that really try to tell the truth. In independent media and the legacy media. They appreciate that they have to keep demonstrating to their readers that their stories can be trusted.
They know if readers start to notice that their stories are omitting crucial facts, including basic facts of history and law, while downplaying some voices and elevating others, their readers will lose trust in their ability to tell truthful stories.
And that would be dire for their news outlet.
They know if they allow the powerful to dictate how stories are told, they'll be allowing the powerful to kill their stories and their audience.
So they really try to stop bad-faith actors from confusing their Five Ws with waves of misinformation and intimidation:
We're living in a dangerous moment in history.
In the last 12 months, arms and weapons manufacturers, and cyber intelligence and security companies linked to the global war machine, have been making extremely handsome profits.
The share price of Palantir Technologies has exploded by 447.57 per cent (to $US139.96) in the last year, and the value of Elbit Systems shares has surged 144 per cent (to $US438.47).
Australia's sovereign wealth fund, the Future Fund, is making multi-million-dollar returns from its investments in such companies.
Governments, militaries, and different lobby groups are trying to stop people speaking up about the atrocities they're witnessing and the concerns they have about the future.
How should journalists report on these events?
When it comes to media literacy, Australian audiences might be shocked to learn how difficult it is for the media to write about the world in plain language sometimes, given how strict defamation law is in this country (among other laws).
They might be shocked to learn about the orchestrated bullying that goes on, which is designed to discourage editors and journalists from reporting on certain topics and framing stories in certain ways, even speaking to certain people.
Would it improve media literacy if the media wrote about these issues openly and regularly?
Do we want the media to speak matter-of-factly about propaganda too?
Every military engages in it, including the Australian Defence Force. Governments and lobby groups engage in it.
They use different propaganda strategies for different audiences (whether domestic or foreign), and apply different tactics to try to control the media narrative at different times.
Consider Australia's public relations efforts in the Asia-Pacific.
Our government is spending a lot of diplomatic effort cultivating relationships with our island neighbours and encouraging their people to come to work in Australia on special working visas.
It would like them to think Australia is a trustworthy ally, one they can trust more than other countries in the region.
But one wonders what the people of Timor-Leste think about that.
Have a read of Hannah Arendt's famous essay from 1971, on the Pentagon Papers, where she expressed amazement at the degree to which the United States government deliberately lied to its citizens about the reality of the Vietnam War, and about its reasons for invading and bombing Vietnam.
Or have a read of the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe's most recent book, Lobbying for Zionism on both sides of the Atlantic, which goes into great detail explaining the tactics used by pro-Israel lobbies in the US and UK, including their campaigns against the BBC and the Guardian, and their campaign to stop Jeremy Corbyn becoming Britain's prime minister.
The former Israeli minister Shumalit Aloni, in an interview in the United States in 2002, stated plainly that pro-Israel lobbies used accusations of antisemitism to stifle criticism of Israel.
"Well it's a trick we always use. When in Europe somebody is criticising Israel, then we bring up the Holocaust. When in this country people are criticising well, then they are antisemitic," she said.
These are all things the media has to navigate.
In last week's media survey, respondents said they wanted journalists "to be more courageous and ask tough questions".
They wanted the media to "report the facts" and "tell the truth".
But let's raise some adjacent issues.
Do we want journalists to have morals? Do we want their work to be guided by their morals and ethics? Do we want them to speak up about the injustice they see around them, or do we want them to stay quiet? Is it courageous to sit in silence?
George Orwell is considered one of the greatest journalists and writers of the 20th century.
In 1940, he wrote a book review of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.
In his review, he was scornful of the British elite for their earlier support for Hitler.
He was objective. He said he understood Hitler's charismatic appeal and he could see that Fascism and Nazism were tapping into something primal in the human brain.
He also shared a personal opinion about Hitler: "I would certainly kill him if I could get within reach of him."
Was that OK for a journalist to write that he would like to murder a public figure? It would probably be difficult to find many people who'd have a problem with that opinion of his, given he was talking about Hitler.
But what did it mean for Orwell's journalism?
One might argue that it showed it was possible to write with objectivity while feeling a deep moral disgust at the same time.
Let's wrap things up with a final question.
Sometimes you'll hear people saying journalists shouldn't be activists. But what they're really saying is:
"Journalists shouldn't be regularly writing and talking about the issues I don't want them to be talking about, but I'm happy for them to campaign on the issues I personally think are important."
All journalists are activists, in a sense.
An editorial decision to run a story (or ignore a story) is based on multiple decisions, but many of those decisions relate to what they think is important.
But "important" is a dangerous word.
Why? Because it's impossible to define the word "important" without referencing human judgement. If you say something's important, it begs the question: important to who?
At the moment, some of Australia's major news organisations are reporting very critically on the Albanese government's superannuation plan. There's an obvious media campaign going on.
What's motivating the campaign? Why isn't that considered a form of activism?
If we embarked on a national campaign to improve media literacy in this country, it would be fascinating to see how these topics were tackled.
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