The Art Neuro Weblog

2004/05/24

Worried journalists
For some time I've been saying the level of journalism in the last decade and a half has stunk. I first started the noticing the decline in informativeness of news services when the Beijing students were marching against Deng Xiao Ping. In those days I worked at the ABC in Gore Hill and was privy to the news services coming in from the world. At the same time, I was a bit of an info junky, dutifully buying my newspaper and following events as best I could. I found the coverage of the Sydney Morning Herald opaque at best, uninformative, uninsightful and largely lacking in perspective, worst of all, Peter Ellingsen's reportage focused on his emotional response to events of the day while Peter Smark sent back glib observations about the Chinese being Chinese, so they would inevitably do something drastic. Ah, the memories of 1989! In the following years of the Gulf War I and the Balkan wars, it has seemed increasingly the case that the bottom line has dictated that reputable papers no longer send their best reporters, they buy lines off AP and Reuters.

So today, I find this article, which seems to me, a case of "too late to notice, bud." And even then, they miss the point. The simple facts of the matter are, we have worse journalists who are less-educated and more ideologically motivated for left or the right, far more so than their predecessors, who are getting paid less to do work of a far lesser quality. We get what we pay for, because we never really wanted to be informed.

- Art Neuro

8 comments:

DaoDDBall said...: It sounds as if we have agreed with each other for a long time.

Allow me to put a different spin. Journalists are not getting worse. The technical mistakes they make are fewer than they used to be. The articles you read in the Herald are substandard, but that's just a reflection of lack of editorial direction owing to the fact that they are not owned by someone with a spending agenda, or someone who is an ideologue. Of course, I classify the centre left as ideologues, but recognise that you do not.

Journalists are changing methods of inductive training and journalists are improving in many third world nations .. thanks entirely to the Internet.

I think that what you are seeing is that the journalists that you have sympatico with are finding that their sources are drying up. Third world journalists are in touch with their local issues, and have strong opinions on the behaviour of the Great Powers.

This morning on Sunrise, Dr Keith Suter was asked where was safe for Australians to travel. He didn't name England, Scotland, Poland or the US. Instead he named New Zealand, Pacific Islands (but not New Guinea) and Canada. This kind of barracking is typical of Suter, who has opposed Australia's involvement in Cambodia, Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq since Howard was elected to PM. His sources and reasoning can be found entirely in the SMH. I'm sure a Turkish journalist, or Lebanese, Iraqi, Afghani, Brazilian, Mexican or many others would offer a greater insight.

The problem is not the readers. It is not the journalists. The problem is a structural one that will only be fixed by either a stronger adherence to monopoly ownership of media or the tearing down of media institutions, to be reestablished using offshore sources for offshore content.; 5:30 pm
Anonymous said...: The idea that the Centre Left is non-ideological is absurd. i have never held that position. Instead I would say that the only non-ideological (because non-cultural) position, if there is one, is likely to be utterly rationalistic capitalism without Sadistic elements yet, even so, possibly as nasty as you like. Not Sadistic only because that would be irrational, which is to say cultural. If it is cultural, it is ideological to the extent that the unconscious aims of the text are not consistent with the overt theory of the text. that applies to all social projects with the *possible* exception of a kind of absolutely rational capitalism ruled by nothing more than the counting of beans.; 5:51 pm
Art Neuro said...: Yeah, I'd say Centre-Left is a heavily ideological position. :)

Look, while I agree with mr. Weasel's analysis of the ownership situation, I have to say that there have been a lot of half-wit editors and journos who have expended the social capital earned by their predecessors. You know, there was a time it meant something to be a war corrrespondent, for example in the olden days of Graham Greene or George Orwell.
So the question used to be (for me anyway), were they always this crap, or is it a craptitude they've devolved to over the post-modernisation of journalism? I really couldn't say for sure, but this article says, "no, joournalism used to be better".

-Art Neuro; 6:47 pm
DaoDDBall said...: Journalism has always been crap.

Orwell's language ability is pretty much all that separates him from Dr Suter. They are ultimately the people called in to advocate a position. This is, in my view, an essential part of journalism. Mike Carlton's view on any topic can be presented without referring to Carlton, making the journalist a joke. But the real joke is that Carlton's position is legitimate. What is risible is the editorial view that suggests that Carlton is balanced, and so acceptable on its own. in fact, Carlton's humor takes on a piquancy when presented balanced whith a legitimate, but alternate, viewpoint.

This is not the advocacy of Right/Left divide. Such a division is ultimately arbitrary, although related to cultural expression. Listening to Carlton, compared to Despoja, could suggest that Carlton was conservative.

Homogeniety is a threat to good journalism, and desired by all good journalists. The Trafalgar journalist camps had dimilar issues as journalists today. Observing an expenditure on war that wasn't popular, but which the conservatives viewed as being essential and the radicals viewed as political humbug. Few would argue today the Whig case that the excesses of French Revolution, with the mass slaughter and guillotines, was soley a French domestic issue, unworthy of intervention by foreign states. Few would argue today, as the Democrat Party did, that the South US should've been allowed to secede, allowing slavery to continue in North and South.

Good journalists have an oppinion. Bad journalists pretend they don't. Journalists need good editors to allow thesis and antithesis.; 6:54 pm
Art Neuro said...: That's an interesting commentary there, Mr. Weasel. If journalism has always been crap (which it very well may have been - as I said, I'm still unsure), then what would it matter that the editor presents a Mike Carlton as 'balanced'?

I understand your toothy, chewy frustration with Carlton as I feel the same way about, say Miranda Devine (to me, on most days she's a jump-to-the-wrong-conclusion-arch-concervative-cow), or Piers Ackerman (A Lennon line fits him - "you ain't gonna make it with anyone with minds that hate"); but they are commentator columnists so one expects them to take up positions and hack away. As *readers* we know what their line is going to be; we only read to see what topic they're choosing to run their lines.

It's more the regular dudes who write dispacthes from hotspots around the world that bother me even more. A Japanese novelist, Takeshi Kaikou, volunteered to do war correspondence during the Vietnam War. When he got to Saigon, he found that most journos of any country just hung out at the hotel, listened to the rumours the locals fed them, and filed those stories back home. So Kaikou went out to the front and almost got killed, but that is another story, and another great novel. The thing is, you get the impression from the 'The Quiet American' *and* 'The Year of Living Dangerously', that is essenitally what ex-pat foreign journos do in hot-spots because indeed realistically, that is all they can do.

Which brings me around to your conclusion, that they've always been crap, seems to be the correct assessment.

My God, that's the second time in a week I've agreed with the Conservative Weasel!; 4:26 am
DaoDDBall said...: You might like to see Akerman's take on Ray Hadlee. Hadlee has recently beaten Laws, Jones and Carlton during the breakfast drive time radio survey results.

I've never listened to him, but the article is interesting. Particularly Hadlee's complaint that he has been guest auctioneer ten times for the ALP, and once for the Libs, but has been called a toadie and lackee for the one Lib appearance and never once rated the news for the ten ALP appearances.

Without editorial balance, we end up with what some would like our justice system to become .. non adversarial. But then, the problem becomes, how does the reviewer rate the commentary? The weight given the opinion should not be based on the art of the advocate, but on the import of the topic.; 10:49 am
Art Neuro said...: Correcting myself now.
I think the Lennon line goes:
"If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, You ain't gonna makie it with anyone any how."
and
"But when you want money for people with minds that hate
All I can tell you is brother you have to wait"

...which means not only did I get it all wrong, it's not even close to what decribes Ackerman. So apologies there. :)

I used to now this shite like the back of my hand...

- Art Neuro; 9:31 am
DaoDDBall said...: I try not to shit on the back of my hand. Some things are only learned through experience.; 1:18 pm

2004/05/24

8 comments:

Blog Archive