I acknowledge the Ngunnawal people, on whose lands we are meeting today, pay tribute to all First Nations people presents and recognise the important work that the University of Canberra does towards Closing the Gap.
It’s a pleasure to be part of the University of Canberra’s Research Showcase. You’ve brought your research here to the city. It is a reminder of what a terrific job the University of Canberra does in enriching the public debate in the nation’s capital.
Let me start with a story.
In 1992, some friends and I decided that we wanted to run to be the journalists and editors of the Sydney University newspaper Honi Soit.
We needed a campaign which would have enough sass and energy to capture the attention of apathetic students, so we decided we would run under the name ‘The Naked Truth’.
In an era before mobile phone cameras, we campaigned in lecture theatres by singing a silly campaign song in various stages of undress.
At the election, we were fortunate enough to become the editors of Honi Soit for the following year. For me it was an extraordinary introduction into journalism. I spent a year interviewing church minister, drag racers and comedians. Ahead of the 1993 election, I published a Q&A with the 2 leaders – Paul Keating and John Hewson – with both campaigns faxing back their answers just a few hours before deadline.
I learned to write quickly, learned the basics of laying out a newspaper, and loved the chance to the part of the news ecosystem. I’d grown up in a household where news mattered – with a daily newspaper on the table and ABC news radio burbling in the background. My wife Gweneth and I try and replicate some of that in our household with physical newspapers and a discussion of world events, not just what happened at school.
My concern in Australia today is that just as income inequality has grown, so too has information inequality. If you’re a highly engaged news consumer (and my guess is that includes basically everyone in this room), then there’s never been a better time to consume news. You can go online and get the very best from around the world. You can get access to The Conversation. You can look up data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and read reports from the Productivity Commission. You’ve got quick access on your smartphone to a bevy of podcasts on everything from national security to the environment.
For the least informed consumers, as the University of Canberra’s Digital News Report has shown us, news consumption is getting shallower. A significant share of Australians use social media as their primary source of news. We know that many people are feeling overwhelmed by the news and are choosing to step back.
Misinformation and disinformation are being turbocharged by artificial intelligence, making it harder to tell the bots from the real sources of news. As the old line goes, a lie can get twice around the world before the truth has had the chance to pull on its boots on. And the speed at which lies can travel and the volume at which they have they can reach consumers has increased substantially.
This notion of news inequality ought to inform how we think about news and journalism today. Just as the most affluent sometimes find it hard to empathise with those in poverty, engaged news consumers many not realise that their experience is atypical.
We’re in an environment now in which neither politicians nor journalists are trusted very much. Roy Morgan’s surveys find that journalists and politicians are only a rated high for ethics and honesty by about one in 10 Australians. And yet both of our professions remain enormously important.
Journalism has a vital role in uncovering scandal. The work of the Courier Mail brought down Joh Bjelke‑Petersen’s government and saw 3 ministers sent to jail. Four Corners’ investigative reporting has led to Royal Commissions and sparked important national conversations.
I want to argue tonight that there’s 3 big challenges that we need to address. Media has become more opinionated, it has become nastier, and losing the local content
Let’s start with opinion. Every year it seems that the number of journalists that are uncovering fresh facts goes down, and the number who are contributing opinion goes up.
This is a danger because the news media has a critical role in describing the world, not simply saying what we should do about it. Opinion matters. I’m one of the many people who seek to get their views onto the pages onto our opinion pages. But the fundamental role of news in uncovering fresh facts is critical. I’m pleased to see the growth of some of the data journalism initiatives, because I think that is one of the important areas on which news fact finding mission can be stronger today than it was yesterday, and I recognise Greg Jericho, who will shortly speak in the panel discussion, for the important work of that he does in that that regard.
We need more investigative reporters, and more collaborations between people who are comfortable in the world of statistics and people who are confident in the world of communications. Uncovering facts needs to remain a core focus, and while opinion matters, we should never blur the lines between opinion and news.
The second challenge is that the media has become scratchier, nastier. I’ve noticed this just in the 14 years that I’ve been in the federal parliament. There’s more of an inclination to immediately jump to calling out people’s motives. To suggest that someone isn’t just wrong but is stupid or corrupt. My experience in the federal parliament is that most policy problems are more complex than they first appear. If we immediately jump to that nastiness, of questioning motives, then the challenge carrying out a thoughtful public conversation is going to get worse and worse.
We see this in extreme form with the rise of authoritarian populism. Populism is the notion that politics isn’t about bringing people together, it’s about dividing them. Populists believe that the tribes of us and them are to be exploited rather than to be transcended. I’m somebody who believes in a stoic philosophy, with its values of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. That approach becomes harder to maintain amidst the rise of scratchy populist politics.
The third challenge is the loss of local news. Increasingly, politics is focused on discussing what’s going on in the national level and not enough on empowering citizens to act at a local level. You see this in the housing debate, in which it is tempting to angrily tell your social media followers your views about what the national parliament should be doing.
And yet that social media post is probably going to have much less impact on housing affordability than attending a local council meeting and making the case for sensible development. To attend and show up is fundamentally the work of politics, to engage face to face with people who might disagree with you. I recommend Eitan Hersh’s book, Politics is for Power, which makes the argument that politics isn’t like being a sporting fan. Our role isn’t to sit in the crowd and cheer and jeer, it’s actually to be on the field. We’re not fans, we’re participants.
President Barack Obama made this point in the context of the Black Lives Matter protests over police brutality, when many people were asking, what’s the White House going to do about that? As President Obama pointed out, policing in the United States is fundamentally a local matter. If you want to change the behaviour of police, that’s about engaging in a local level.
In both the United States and Australia, we are seeing a steady disengagement at the local level. This raises the importance of local news. Last month, Communications Minister Michelle Rowland announced $15 million in urgent funding for regional and community news.
Alongside this, all of us need to think about how we can be more focused on the local. Of course, national debates matter. But not everything happens at the national level and sometimes the national level can be harder to influence than the local level. We need those local stories encouraging local engagement, and local commitment.
I’ve just scratched the surface on some of the challenges we’re facing, but hopefully that notion of inequality of news consumption and the challenges of opinion, nastiness and neglecting the local can contribute towards your important conversations tonight.