Nothing new here.

The media has ALWAYS served the interests of its owners.

Noam Chomsky has been telling us this for 40 years.

Plus Sharon Beder in Global Spin gives a superb analysis of how corporations and right wing think tanks including, here in Australia the IPA and CIS, produce the spin which passes for the "news".

I quite like Media Lens too: http://www.medialens.org
And Tom Dispatch: http://www.tomdispatch.com

Plus if you want to see 24 hour a day spin just check out Fox so called "news" which is very much liked by many so called "conservatives".

I found myself nodding in agreement with this piece - Hawkins has nailed the situation precisely.

Few sectors have changed over the past decade as much as media, though concern over these changes are often perceived as either a journalist's conceit regarding their own profession, or else commentary aimed at protecting their own interests.

By and large, most journalism today is simply regurgitating comment: the 'he said, they said' style of reporting is one of the few methods that fit the tightened deadlines. With huge numbers of stories required by deadline, it effectively means there's little time for proper investigation. Indeed, few papers have genuine investigative journalists - it's far too expensive.

Yet when journalists make these kinds of comments, it is regarded as simply an attempt at an easier ride. The implications for wider society are often ignored.

I tend to think this increased volume of editorial required to be completed by journalists - quantity over quality - is symptomatic of the greater amount of information demanded by the public, which in turn leads to the indifference that the author speaks of.

I too am saddened at the standard of journalism these days. Do they think that we are all besotted with Britney and Paris? What has happened to investigative journalism? Why not send a journalist into the RNS emergency department and detail a report on how long it took for emergency cases to be seen? How ‘bout a few shots of the 24/7 police protection outside our Premier’s residence with a story asking why a family living at Mudville aren’t entitled to the same level of protection? Surely there’s an interesting story to be told about a federal Justice Minister who stopped a federal brief being sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions regarding fraud by a federal treasurer. Why not use FOI legislation to open the file of a former high court judge who phoned the NSW Chief Magistrate seeking a favour for a friend. The Age seemed to be on the scent because it published extracts from a series of taped phone conversations involving that high court judge and other notables. Sadly the story has been killed off.

Instead of excellence in journalism we’re treated to stodgy collection of alleged journalists who can barely hide their prejudices.

Yes we are besotted with trivia at least enough of us react boosting sales and by reducing the needs for accuracy let alone honesty increase advertising and thus profits.
The there is the high table of information from the important, which can and is denied, journalists who don't give the correct spin.
The of coure there is the Chomsky factor not only for the journalistic look alikes but increasingly for more of us, this in turn redcuing the number asking for information not spin.
Finally Governments have refined how their own spin is spun, dog whistling and deliberately confusing issues. They even employ their own advisors unaccountable to the elecetorate of course. Mark Textor apparently being one such.

IMPROVED MEDIA DEPTH. I'd just like to say that I feel over the past few years there has been an absolute improvement in public broadcast and journalism, especially with SBS, ABC radio and TV.

I feel Radio National works really hard to be inclusive. Providing talkback to diversely discuss, probe and 'get to the bottom" of issues is groundbreaking given once...we the audience were not really part of the story. We were not engaged, rather we were talked at, by the medias superficial club-med.

From Cooktown I would be nowhere in attempting to understand what's going on in the rest of Australia - let alone many parts of the world if it were not for public broadcast.(TA)

I think Journalists have never had more competition as with the web, Burma, 9/11 and recent events have shown us.

We get few papers up here and things including NEWS PAPERS is expensive.

I make no excuse for bias, (unless stated) and I have no time for spin. Those people who carelessly fail to understand their role in helping us/audiences decide a balance-complexity inside a news item, snag the significance of journalistic code.

Today I see the follow-ups occurring in news essential. It builds Australia's learning capacity at every turn as a progressive knowledge base.

In terms of objectivie vs subjective, I am pleased there is more personal reflected engagement today in Australian journalism. I feel in a faceless world toward ie: Aboriginal Australia - Darfur - Sudan - Iraq - Asia - Burma - China... it is the HEART and HUMANITY of some journalists who have helped and DO help make these situations 'an ALL Australian experience and shared concern'.

While non-bias reporting is important I believe a LONG ARMED approach to the "every-day" life - is what got us into the human unsustaining mess we as humans are (together) in.

I'd rather plough through a bit of subjectivity here and there to understand those who are experiencing the subjects news - in its human context, then be sujected to the clinical - sterile words that do nothing in consequent.

http://www.miacat.com
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I neglected to mention omission of information. Here I must admit I no longer scan the media with much attention for fear I of being misinformed so maybe Hersh was mentioned.
If so then part of the blame for the inanity and inaccuracy of the press lies at our feet. For if Hersh's piece was recorded indicating as it did probable atatck on Iran, not for nuclear arms now admitted five years away (shades of Iraq?) but as part of American not liebensraum but rather Rohstoffe.
Nelson is said to ahve indicated interest on behalf of the Australian Government. Surely such would cause many letters and comments but I see none, serving to at laest irritate the press moguls. Maybe even the Government-doubtful for they have their own set of astrologers.

Close Bob very close but you missed the major reason most sensible people today are becoming more and more dismissive of journalists and the media.

It is because journalists present as fact their own biased, underresearched, uncritical and often quite inappropriate opinions.


Regards Keith

I think one reason (amongst many) for the sad tale of journalistic objectivity these days, is simply because there is more money to be made elsewhere. Like teaching, journalism no longer attracts those geared to be altruistic in their work efforts. With the number of kids with Communications degrees attempting to get into the industry, and the heirarchies now involved in this large industry, the jobs probably don't go to the most individualistic people, but to those who tow the line (or in the case of TV the most pleasant and shallow).

Few points:

Ho Hum: this is precisely the kind of cynical attitude that means that even when good journalism does occur, nobody listens. Blame the moguls if you will, but also acknowledge that at the other end of that ladder, there are those journalists working toward informing the public - and I happen to believe it is most of them, even if the profession is skewed toward younger recruits with less historical or political awareness.

Sage: everything you speak of is due to the lowest common denominator and the fact that people do indeed read that trivial information. If more people would refuse to read about Britney or Paris point blank, we'd be much better off.

keith: that's the nature of opinion. You'll find the public often has opinions that are "biased, underresearched, uncritical and inappropriate" as do many of the 'experts'

jimhaz is pretty right, though as an emphasis I'd add that there's much more money to be made on the PR side of the fence creating spin, which is bound to create an imbalance.

Sorry Bob but your language needs brushing up.

The words "reporter" and "journalist" were deleted from the dictionary some time ago as separate entries.

Under each word now you simply find a reference that says "See sychophant".

Sorry to comment twice Bob but I forgot to point out to you that using the word "spin" tells us you were converted too. That word is actually "Lies".

Turn Right. Yes there is some good journalism, even (occasionally) in the Murdoch media. Nicholas Rothwell is my favourite Australian journalist.

But the good bits just get overwhelmed by the blatant spin, lies and awfulness of the rest of it.

Also remember that all "news" is a fabricated "communication" and has all sorts of uninspected biases attached to it. To one degree or another it is all propaganda.
Why are certain items featured and others ommitted.
For instance earlier this year there was a world forum for NGO's and grass roots political movements---a genuine peoples alternative. It didnt even rate a mention in the mainstream "news". Why not?

Each year there is an alternative to the Nobel Prize or the Right Livelihood Award. We never hear of it it the mainstream "news". Why not?

World-wide there are dozens of Peace groups including the marvellous TRANSCEND 1. http://www.transcend.org We never hear of them in the mainstream "news". Why not?

The Media Lens site does a good job in pointing out the biases.

2 points:

*I'd like to see a permanent OLO thread devoted to debunking Biased articles that appear in our media.

* The main topic being spun in media today is "IMMIGRATION is good for Australia" and that the overcrowding and inconvenience it causes in our cities is OUR fault and so we have to pay for it with ludicrous Desal plants, increased bus fares, crappy hospitals, police with Italian names in an almost exclusively Italian State government and being told we are richer than ever when we feel so poor.

Are DICTATORSHIP & PROPAGANDA really too strong to describe this?

And then there's Coonan. Wow!

Would you upset your political masters when the Federal Liberal and State Victorian Labor governments are spending between them 2.5 Billion dollars on advertising. They are the media's largest single client.

In Victoria we cannot get any objective reporting on police corruption, even The Age police reporter John Silvester understated the role of former Premier Bracks in his secret deal with the Police union leader Paul Mullett. Silvester did not mention the Westminster doctrine of the Separation of Powers and what a perversion of democracy the secret deal was for Bracks to receive police union support for the 2006 election.

Commercial journalism standards sicken me so much that I have to write my own editorials, mainly on censorship and on ubiquitous police corruption in Victoria.

Joe Hockey threatened me with a defamation action for supporting Centrelink's aggrieved clients, so that cheers me up, but I receive zero dollars in funding or advertising.

http://www.hereticpress.com/Editorials/Editorial07.html#skipnav

Tim
http://www.hereticpress.com

Yes. I think the article is correct.

Just count the adjectives in a supposed objective news report (especially the commercial TV stations).

I thought, for instance, that when a newsreader delivered a report, if the journalist who wrote the report used an adjective, it was then a form of commentary and this is an insult to the audience.

And yes long, rambling sentences aren't appreciated either.

An excellent article but I would add one more criteria that seems to push poor quality publications of "facts". Political correctness over rides almost every story about the environment. From climate change to GM crops the media has done almost zero homework and continues to spout the politically correct (often dead wrong)version of the story endlessly.

Clearly written by someone who knows that working on the stone in a newspaper doesn't mean you're a sculptor.

When I was a young reporter (actually I was 28 when I started), we had to write intros of under 19 words or less and they had to be as tight as a drum. God help the reporter who hadn't checked a fact or wasn't contactable after they'd filed their copy.

What a fantastic medium TV news could have been but it has been take over by Sideshow Bob types who know that footage of newly born panda bears will always take precidence over a more complex stories where there are no heroes or villians.

> Perhaps it is because the public no longer give a damn whether anything they read or hear is true.

Certainly the public care about whether what is written is true, just they like more a good story, and a good story does not need to be true.

> Perhaps it is because the public have become inured to fork-tongued, piously delivered utterances of politicians, bureaucrats and executives; brutality by despotic, military-backed tyrants; self-righteous faith-based certainty by the religious; obscenities perpetrated by terrorists and governments alike; near inviolable white-collar crime; and to news of “miracle” drugs and “cures” from a world of science now largely owned and controlled by corporates rather than operating unfettered in independent research institutions and universities.

Nowadays many these forked tongues are not speaking from heart and mind, merely reading scripts written by journalists, media liason...

How much are our politicians and their backers spending to get their messages filtered, then presented ?

Where is the support to present all the candidates together on stages within their electorates to answer questions that are not scripted, so we can see how they perform on the run ?

Is the electorate prepared to listen ?

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