The future of independent journalism: Mumbrella360 video
In our modern world of clickbait and fake news, can independent journalism truly remain independent? That’s just one of the many topics covered in this Mumbrella360 lunchtime debate, featuring speakers from the AFR, Guardian Australia, the BBC, and the Walkley Foundation.
During the discussion, the Australian Financial Review’s Michael Stutchbury clashes with Guardian Australia’s Ian McClelland over the issue of taxpayer’s dollars being spent on the ABC’s social media marketing budget as the panel explores how modern journalism can be funded.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZA15aW5OIk
McClelland has run The Guardian Australia since its launch four years ago and previously worked with Fremantle Media and RTL Group, while Stutchbury is the editor-in-chief of the AFR and formerly The Australian’s economics editor.
What a muddle. I’m not sure that any of the panel knows what the public interest is in journalism. It seems to me it’s pretty simple: to have a reliable source of news relevant to daily lives. The panel waffled on about so called business models and their “morality” but really did not get near the core question. Stutch, as usual, paraded his news “agenda” – which seems to consist largely of banging on about industrial relations. Marina Go was trying hard but list the plot when she used ANZ’s blue notes as an example of corporates building news platforms. The rest of it was even more banal.
I’m not sure these people are aware how much the average journalist is being rated as dishonest and unreliable. Most news networks struggle to tell the absolute truth about what happens during an important event without inserting their delusional biased opinions. The coverage of the US elections of 2016 were case and point. So many lies coming from the media industry that it forced people to external independent sources to get to the truth. If readers are cross-checking journalists’ work – why the hell are they being employed then?
The BBC representative even admitted to chasing “the large spikes” that garbage stories generate without realising he admitted how dishonest that conduct is. He failed to realise that this is the reason most people hate journalists right now and their low integrity profession. There is a very good reason why nobody really cares about the journalists that got fired by Fairfax – garbage news leads to lay offs I guess.
The key question is why do we live in a time where journalists and their leaders are more corrupt than the average politician? It used to be the other way round. Very ironic.
The panelists are delusional if they feel ABC/BBC add value to the public democratic discussion. They invent fake crap to chase “spikes” because they want to reach a large number of people. So ABC/BBC scum bags have a business model that is about spreading their idiot disease to as many people as possible. <<< That's lame-stream journalism in a nut shell.
Journalism industry deserves to die if this low integrity biased reporting continues. Regulation needs to be considered to punish news networks for lying – fining them for it will probably improve their ability to tell the truth… that may also improve quality of content too… Maybe de-funding ABC/BBC instead of guaranteeing their funding will improve their reporting integrity as well.
I don't see why taxes should pay for garbage news peddlers like ABC/BBC. Time to sink or swim like everyone else.
Defined: ‘the activity or profession of writing for newspapers, magazines, or news websites or preparing news to be broadcast.’
The ABC is far more aligned to being ‘independent journalism’ v say Murdoch’s stable. Australian taxpayers deserve to know the truth and whilst channels of broadcast change, we will still have credible journalists, who report the facts, without spin and ultimately enable the truth to travel through to the general public.
The mission for Australia and the western world is fighting the Murdoch spin. Further afield, fighting the republics and nations who filter the truth far heavier than we do here in the west.
#savetheabc