How news is made in Australia – some personal views

In the 1970s the Australian public held more conservative positions on social and cultural issues, and conservative positions on economic issues. But so did the mainline media. The Nation Review (and later and to a lesser extent, The National Times), and close behind ABC's AM and PM, and This Day Tonight espoused progressive positions on social and cultural matters. The Financial Review took a pioneering role in espousing free trade, and an enhanced role for the market.

Today there is an interesting change. Much of this has to do with the empowerment of the journalists, giving them their identity in lieu of anonymity, their evolution from an apprentice-based trade into, if not a profession, certainly an elite corps, and above all, their freedom to publish their own opinions.

Since the ‘70s, there is something of a rift between the 'quality' media and the public. Perhaps they are leading the public into adopting more progressive positions. On the other hand, it may well be that they are just out of touch.

This tendency is not universal. The tabloids and talkback opinion seem closer to the public's view, for example Alan Jones’ almost one-man campaign against free trade. Yet protectionism was once an article of faith. It is not so long ago that we saw The Australian Financial Review, almost alone in the media, leading the movement away from protectionism. Fortunately this coincided with the decline of socialism as the intelligentsia's solution to economic issues. Now the espousal of protectionism is a capital heresy, yet the principal object of the enormous US$90 billion budget of the European Union is to achieve precisely that.

Herd Mentality

The report notes that there is a widespread view that the media responds as a single group to issues of importance, the so-called ' herd mentality'. This relates to the 'gallery', Australia’s political journalists, who hold out that they are informing us, reporting on the great events of the day in the world of politics. Even most of the news producers (86%) agreed with this, at least to some extent.

One issue on which the gallery has a strong majoritarian view is reconciliation. Glenn Milne put it this way: "The gallery wants reconciliation. They want Howard to say sorry and Howard won't. And the gallery basically wants him gone for that…they ignore the fact that the latest poll – that most people don't want to say sorry. So my criticism is that the gallery ought to take note of what the electorate has expressed as its wish…. Who are the gallery to say…'That's not what you're going to get'?"

From being reporters of news, our political journalists in reporting news have become, for better or worse, unelected participants in the political arena. Once unknown habitues of the saloons of rather disreputable pubs, reporters on politics are now prominent in the salons of the nation's fast new establishment.

This is of course a crucial question if we are to solve Parliament's riddle, and track down the most influential medium, and having found it regulate it. It is clear that in their output, and in their background, there is a surprising degree of homogeneity among the gallery, Australia's political journalists, in their news reporting.

It is true, of course, that there are alternative voices in the media. In the survey Philip Adams identifies himself as a 'nominal lefty' in the mainline press. In fact he is mainline now. The truth is that the few conservative voices in the Australian media are the nominal ones. Most of these restrict themselves to opinion pieces. How many conservatives are there involved in the political reporting of the news? In principle, it should not matter.

But if there is a herd mentality, does it matter?

Are our political journalists so influential? The survey suggests the public thinks their preferred source of news and current affairs, while influential in shaping public opinion, does not determine public opinion. But this is after the journalists have determined what is newsworthy and how it will be presented – journalists are after all the gatekeepers of our information flows.