None of us is entirely blameless for the feckless public acceptance of lies and propaganda sold as news, especially the supposed journalists and other public rôle models.
Following the historic Dominion voting machines settlement by Fox News in the USA, for knowingly disseminating lies about the presidential election resoundingly won by Joe Biden, there seems to be almost a reticence among Australian media workers (calling them journalists is too embarrassing) to acknowledge the culpability of their ‘colleagues’ in destroying journalism by normalizing deliberate dishonesty in ‘news’ publications and broadcasts.
This is not a matter of differing editorial opinions, which are fair game for anyone, including fascist apologists and Stalinist wannabes. But reportage claiming to be factual and accurate turning out as massaged propaganda and outright lies. None more so than Australian ‘reportage’ on climate change, the extraordinary incompetence and ideologically-driven malevolence of previous three Liberal/National governments, and all the confected heat around what we call ‘culture wars’, which is really a euphemism sanctifying a reactionary anti-culture, anti-civilization agenda.
Anyone who observed journalism in Australia from the 1980s to the present day cannot have failed to notice two parallel trends: the traducement of Fourth Estate values in favour of propaganda favoured by owners (most especially within News Corp), and the gradual surrender of journalists to become either compliant bureaucrats applying decreed biases, or narcissistic, preening would-be celebrities-as if they were the story in their own right. Telling truth to power, telling any kind of truth, serving the public interest, and not self-censoring all fell by the wayside.
This trend was not arrested by social media ‘citizen journalism’, which is possibly worse on all counts.
Media ‘saint’ Margaret Simons wrote:
We have sadly grown used to news reporting that lacks context, that mixes opinion and fact and by doing so distorts, and that makes egregious and careless errors. These faults are not unique to News Corp and Fox News. If only.
But for a mainstream, professional news organisation to lie, and effectively admit to having done so – that is new, and we should stop and think about the implications.
How naïve or ignorant do you have to be to suggest lying in a ‘news organisation’ is new? Simons is credited by the Guardian as an ‘award-winning freelance journalist and author. She is an honorary principal fellow of the Centre for Advancing Journalism and a member of the board of the Scott Trust, which owns Guardian Media Group’. So how is it possible to be so oblivious to what has happened to journalism and media companies? Is it wilful blindness or deliberate dishonesty in itself?
She went on:
For many years, commentators on Murdoch’s role in Australia (including me) have hedged their criticisms by saying that there are many fine journalists employed at News Corp, and much good journalism done. That has always been true, and it remains true.
What do you call someone who supports murder? An accessory. What do you call someone who supports fascism? A fascist, or at least a fellow traveller. What do you call someone who knowingly supports treason? A traitor. So why are News Corp employees suddenly exempted from collaborating with Rupert Murdoch’s longitudinal demands that truth be subverted and propaganda be built into everything that comes out of his media empire?
The worst development of all is the changing public sentiment that permits and even demands these changes: patronage based on increasing ignorance after decades of striving in education, personal biases, and a re-emerging flirtation with fascist populism, for its simplicity and mean-spirited selfishness.
Simons sounds more like an officious, patronizing public servant explaining to the public why it’s below her dignity to serve it.
In an earlier comment on the Dominion case in the Guardian, Jane Martinson wrote:
One of the ironies of the defamation suit is that these momentous questions have been raised not by government or regulators, but by a voting machine manufacturer no one had heard of before guests on Fox News started to spread the lie that it had been founded in Venezuela to rig elections for the dictator Hugo Chávez.
The real irony is that the people calling themselves journalists never raised ‘these momentous questions’. Never sought to cure the disease that stripped away all public respect for the institution of journalism. That validated the concepts of ‘alternative truth’ and that balance means giving a public megaphone to every crank and mountebank shouting loud enough, as they do on Fox/Sky News, News Corp mastheads, and other media companies like Nine Entertainment, Seven West Media, Ten Network Holdings, and even the ABC after its Balkanization by the Coalition.
Martinson again:
Let’s be clear about this: if the journalism profession lets a broadcaster cite the integrity of all journalists when it knew that its presenters were allowing guests to lie, then we really are all doomed. Journalism standards that promote “newsworthy” lies over dull truth lead to a situation where anyone can say anything they like in the media, if that’s what viewers – or powerful politicians happy to do a media owner’s bidding – want to hear.
Indeed.
Martinson might be doing a sleight of hand here, passing blame for the prostitution of the Fourth Estate to the public, maybe hoping no one notices the primary rôle played by ‘journalists’ themselves. But she has a point: just who are the people who pay to inculcate fascist populism, anti-science conspiracy theories, and plutocrat propaganda?
The answer appears to be you and me. Or at least enough people around the nation to make it likely we live with or next door to such people.
As a postscript, it seems predictably disappointing that our legal system apparently protects media lies and propaganda. University of WA law lecturer Michael Douglas was sharply critical of minor publisher Crikey’s motives in calling ‘Donald Trump a “traitor”, and Lachlan Murdoch Trump’s “unindicted co-conspirator”’ in the failed Washington insurrection of 6 January 2021. But he did explain the most likely reason Lachlan Murdoch dropped his defamation law suit against Crikey:
If Lachlan Murdoch continued the Crikey case, then all of the dirty laundry that was to be aired in the Dominion case could have been aired in Australia.
According to the principle of open justice, that evidence would have been heard in open court, with the global media watching.
Fox’s key benefit of the Dominion settlement – making the story go away, and not having to uncover further evidence – would have been destroyed. It would have been a massive own goal.
It’s likely Lachlan Murdoch himself would have been cross-examined.
So, the evidence is considered to be damning, but Douglas thought Murdoch might have won the case. On legal grounds divorced from ethics or the national interest, once again highlighting how Australian courts have little to do with justice.
Nor are politicians to be seen as honourable in their response to the degradation of journalism. The Coalition parties clearly believe they benefit from having policy and talking points dictated to them by News Corp and Nine Entertainment, and the ALP is too chicken to back a Royal Commission into the politicization of ‘news media’ in Australia.
With such sterling public rôle models, it becomes easier to see the degradation of journalism as a more general degradation of public ethics, integrity, and professional principles.
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