Are journalists overstretched and under-resourced? Or just lazy? And how is the media shaping, and shaped by, its audiences’ opinions? This month’s Brisbane Line explores the changing role and influence of media and its relationships to news, commentary and public opinion, and asks how YOU are driving the changes.
It also introduces our brand new format, combining local perspectives on a topical issue with links to background reading from across the country and around the world, to help you make up your own mind. We look forward to your comments!
Like governments, do we get the media we deserve?
Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance: Life in the Clickstream – the Future of Journalism (please note, this is a large PDF file and slow to download; opens in new site)
Ben Eltham in The Drum: After the Fact – Adventures in New Journalism (opens in new site)
Crikey: Rejuvenating Journalism in a Jaded Age (opens in new site)
Peter Beattie: News Cycle Exhausting Pollies (opens in new site)
David Penberthy in The Punch: Tanner’s One-Sided Sideshow Lets Pollies Off the Hook (opens in new site)
if:book Australia: The Golden Era of Journalism (opens in new site)
Ben Eltham in Kill Your Darlings: Climate Change and the State of Australian Journalism (opens in new site)
The Australian: Staff, Union Shocked by Job Losses at Fairfax (opens in new site)
Dom McInerney in The Punch: We need a change in climate in the Australian media (opens in new site)
Next month: Is our public health system dead on the table?
Seriously? The writer seems to be more concerned that journalism doesn’t fit his world view. It’s not lazy to report what our leaders have said.
There is a difference between reporting and analysis. Both are journalism but must be kept separate, but this writer seems to think that reporting what a leader has said is lazy. No, that’s reporting.
That sort of attitude shows complete ignorance of democracy. Even if you don’t like what a politician has said it is a journalist’s job to report it. How you interpret that is up to you.
If we chose not to carry out this very basic function we would rightly be attacked for lazy and sloppy journalism.
There are good journalists and bad journalists, just like there are good mechanics, good doctors and bad lawyers. The market doesn’t allow the bad ones too much scope, no matter what the field of endevour.
Journalists struggle under time and money pressures like everyone else, but Brisbane is served by some of the best. Lazy? We don’t have time or the inclination.
The lazy journalism that I have in mind is closely, but not solely linked to Tony Abbott’s potent one-liners, which have characterised his leadership of the coalition and refers more to the broadcast than to the print media. Abbott is a master of the gibe; the verbal equivalent of the pugilist’s stinging short arm jab. He formulates his ceaseless criticism of the federal government in easy-to-understand, damaging phrases that have proved irresistible to news reporters, broadcasters, and presenters. Rather than thinking for themselves by using their own words and challenging the accuracy of Mr Abbott’s, they play into his hands by using his words. He has taken the art of ‘feeding the chooks’ to a whole new level. The way his glib taunts have become the currency of news reporting, thanks to lazy journalism, complicates federal politics. This cannot be in the national interest because it seems that only one side of politics is being rigorously held to account, which has allowed Mr Abbott to largely succeed in his aim of dictating Australia’s political agenda, which began in the lead up to the 2010 election with the ‘failed pink batts scheme’ and the ‘wasteful schools building programme’ barbs.