Yes there was a time when the media recorded the news, now what we seem to see are opinion pieces like this one clearly is, and aimed obliquely, you'll see,at the ABC and SBS?

And just what you expect when editorial independence is replaced by amalgamated promulgation and too much control exercised by too few! Or kingmakers?

Other than the unfair and unreasonable patently biased attack on a still independant Aunty and her trying to please everybody, nephew, the article seems to hit the nail on the head?
Rhrosty.

What a good summation of what seems to drive today's media which thrives on the general reluctance of people to question what they are told.
Note I say "told", as opposed to what they learn.

Audiences become dumbed down because they allow that to happen.
Journalists and their media become pace-setters by default in a society that is often overwhelmed by information without the compensation of time to think clearly.

Just as fashion dictates conformity, so does media "authority", turning us from thinkers to thankers.

Some unsupported contentions and strawmen in this one. eg:

"Once upon a time, journalists reported what happened."

Even in pre-TV days news was concocted by press release, speech, parliamentary broadcasts and interviews. True about Social Media.

But a lament. Oh where are you now James Dibble, ABC? https://youtu.be/eZJkTCXEG8I

Those were the days my friend
Report them to the end
News and weather
Forever and a day...

Pete

I have been a journalist for 38 years and counting, most of it in the metros, and although what the author says is quite true none of it is new. All of it was evident when I was a trainee in the 1970s and, from what I know of newspaper history, was part and parcel of newspapers long before that.

It may have gotten worse in some publications in the last few years because of competition from blogs and online sites. Newspapers are desperate from readers. They are also desperate for advertising. Its hard times..

Fair diagnosis, wrong solution, “We urgently need more feedback from the public”. Already “news” is recycled from iphones, with only rarely the caveat “unconfirmed”.

Thanks to Dr Peter West for an excellent article.

Timely too when Mark Scott, the outgoing Managing Director, ABC, has questioned the substantial duplication between the ABC and the SBS. Mr Scott has asked whether Australia still needs two public broadcasters.

Mr Scott could have gone much further to reflect on the taxpayer supported ABC and SBS dominating the market generally. They are the very large, spoon-fed and privileged adult Cuckoos still in the nest, making it impossible for example for small local broadcasters to enter and survive in the market.

SBS and ABC give us two lots of stuff about Aborigines, all fairly predictable and there's never anything very controversial. I think there are clear overlaps.

West didn't mention that sex sells. In every way, almost any branch of the media - especially the commercial TV channels- give us busty girls, and men who are clearly to be admired- altho usually they seem to admire themselves........

Ninth: The media have been at the forefront of all the Western propaganda campaigns of recent years that have allowed the US/Nato to invade, bomb and generally destroy several otherwise functional countries, kill millions of innocent people and leave millions more homeless.

Whenever US/Nato needs to overthrow or intimidate an uncooperative regime, you can always depend on the Western media to obligingly monsterfy the current tyrant de jour. The Western media and US/Nato go together like Putin and MH17, Gadaffi and viagra, Saddam and WMDs - and are equally based on tissues of lies.

Killarney I think you have a point.
Murdoch and Thatcher; Murdoch and Howard... just the tip of the iceberg.
Sad really.

The ABC is as bad as it gets. Yet again it has been caught out printing rumours as fact in order to push its political agenda.

Oh mate I think breakfast TV must be the worst
Or the stuff that comes on in the morning,

or even midday...
If I'm ever dumb enough to turn the idiot box on before 5pm or so..............