Waleed Aly: Journalism isn’t really a profession and clickbait is costing us our authority
Commentator Waleed Aly has warned that journalism faces losing its authority with the public if competition continues to drive publications into the world of clickbait.
The host of Ten’s The Project, who earlier this year won the Gold Logie as most popular TV personality, gave the Andrew Olle Media Lecture in Sydney last night.
In the speech, Aly spoke of how commercial pressures and digital disruption have led to an increasingly lightweight news cycle which has in turn hurt the public’s trust in the trade of journalism. He said:
“Although we think of ourselves as professionals, journalism isn’t really a profession in the traditional sense. It’s not like medicine or the law. We have an ethical code of sorts, but we’re not bound to it by some solemn oath. There are no induction ceremonies in which people wear ridiculous gowns or hats. There’s no official body that can strike us off the roll for malpractice. And no one is suggesting there should be.
“The truth is that in traditional terms, we’re a trade. We’re pretty much self-regulated. If we stuff up, we publish a notice or an apology, maybe pay a fine if it’s serious, and we move on. We lose our jobs not because we lose our licence to practice but because our jobs either disappear or our reputations are damaged enough to mean our market value has crashed. If we’re unethical but valuable, there’s nothing to stop us, really.”
And he warned of the chase for short-term profits via clickbait. He said:
“What if, in the endless competition amongst ourselves we’re driving each other to do anything for a commercial advantage? What if our cut-throat rivalries are driving us ever further into the admittedly profitable world of clickbait? Is it possible we’d be pursuing short-term victories at a more comprehensive, long-term cost to our authority, much like we’re seeing in politics?”
Earlier in the speech, Aly warned that speed is given priority over thinking things through. He said:
“Time seems to be the enemy of ratings. In the competition for ratings, everything ends up being more or less the same as everything else. If we’re honest, we’ll admit we’ve seen this in our various newsrooms. The minute one network or radio station is running with a particular story, every other network scrambles to ensure they have it, too. This phenomenon of journalists watching each other to ensure they are never left behind by their competitors, combined with the narrow range of ‘received ideas’ television allows, has an overall homogenising effect where everything begins to resemble everything else while insisting it’s unique.”
#Waleed begins his #Olle16 lecture. pic.twitter.com/K93jXL1Xdc
— Sandra Sully AM 📺🎧📲🏑🌺 (@Sandra_Sully) October 14, 2016
He added:
“You can see it in the way people will actually apologise on social media if they share something that has been around for more than a day, lest they look like they’re off the pace. That’s actually quite a profound practice: to be slow online, even slightly, is embarrassing.
“We’re now after instant thinkers. Our ‘received ideas’ now need to be almost premeditated. Even in print – what has traditionally been our most serious, reflective medium – there’s precious little room available for the idea that has taken days to percolate. Not unless a topic has generated enough heat to become a snowballing scandal over days. And I think this is a problem because when I think about the people I know whose opinions are consistently the most challenging and insightful, they often can’t think of anything to say until the media cycle has lost interest.
Aly also pointed to the increasingly formulaic nature of online content designed for social sharing. He said:
“We’re at a point now where we don’t really have to guess what it takes to achieve this form of success. There are lots of studies analysing what sort of content is most shared on social media platforms, and trying to crack the code for virality, and certain things keep coming up. Once you remove all the stuff about pictures of cute animals and babies, you’re left with some pretty reliable traits. Quizzes and lists do well. So do images, videos and charts. Health tips and love advice are reliably strong, as is anything about a topic that is already trending. And beyond that, emotion and controversy are very effective.
Aly – whose contributions on The Project regularly get picked up on social media – was careful not to exclude himself from criticism as he warned that journalists are incentivised to create popular content.
HuffPo is among the sites that regularly send Aly’s TV segments viral
He said:
“I’m not saying there’s no place in journalism for content that is emotional, accessible and even provocative. But I am saying we have a problem if that becomes journalism’s centre of gravity. We have a problem if, for instance, press gallery journalists are being asked to provide content that will do well online, rather than that which will offer citizens a nuanced understanding of what happens in Canberra. Speaking for myself, if I’m in that environment and I have the choice between reporting a story on, say, how superannuation tax concessions work and another story about, say, a gaffe from Tony Abbott, I’ll choose the gaffe story every time. It’s easy to write, easy to read and will earn me more kudos. Why wouldn’t I? And if I have a choice between spending weeks or months getting to know a low socio-economic community to get a direct sense of what their concerns are and staying in my office and bashing out a live blog of the parry and thrust of the day in politics, I’ll choose the blog every time. Again, why wouldn’t I?
The Guardian is among the gaffe-loving titles
Aly also flagged up a media obsession with political gaffes – and the prioritisation of opinion over news over the past two or three years. He said:
“It’s this kind of shifting centre of gravity is I fear we’re now seeing. Sure, the last election campaign wasn’t exactly a classic, but I can’t remember one whose coverage has been so gaffe dominated. In our contemporary metrics, that stuff works. And it’s for similar reasons we’re witnessing the ever-collapsing wall between opinion and news in our work. I remember the first time I saw my op-ed column published at the top of the webpage amongst the top news stories. It was 2013, and I was deeply shocked. Now I’m shocked if it’s not. Once I understood that news was king and commentary was subordinate. But the facts of shareability often say otherwise and now I’m not so sure anymore.
“It’s becoming increasingly common for us learn the latest news from some opinion or analysis piece, for instance. Clearly I have no problem with editorial content. In fact, I think it’s crucially important. But that’s not the same thing as saying we should welcome this dynamic by which we privilege opinion and pump it out into digital forums in which we encourage people to react with their opinions so that others might then add theirs.
“We need to be careful here, because if everything our audiences consume begins to look like opinion, we’re going to have a hard time preserving our craft.
“If the audience is constantly being bombarded with our ‘hot takes’ – if we’re slowly replacing the news cycle with an opinion cycle – can we really complain when they think that everything we say is commentary?”
Aly also criticised the trend towards covering social media reaction to a television show as a news story in its own right. He said:
“It’s remarkable how much content we get now out of reporting on each other. There’s now an apparently compulsory tradition for instance, of reporting on what happened on something like, Q&A: delighting in the take-downs and the zingers, revelling sarcastically in the howlers.
The SMH publishes weekly recaps of Q&A
“Really, it has become a whole new genre of news.
Daily Mail is among the sites keen to report when a TV host slams something
“Hence the constant reporting of other people’s interviews, in which no one simply asks their guest some firm questions: instead they ‘grill’ them or ‘slam’ them in a ‘fiery exchange’. This stuff is eminently clickable and easily shareable.”
Sites like news.com.au regularly report ‘fiery’ exchanges
“Even the successes of great journalism won’t save us if we submit ourselves wholly to the commercial logic of clickbait even if only by accident.”
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large. He returned to Mumbrella as Publisher in January 2025
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First thing I’ve completely agreed with him on. Well done, Waleed. Great lecture.
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Pretty rich coming from someone who hosts the TV equivalent of clickbait.
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All the old lawyer jokes now apply to journalists. Very few remain with ethics (You all know when you are producing a story that is untruthful due to a minority complainant lacking credibility) and half the stories are first world problems like “My chicken was uncooked when I went to xxx”. With no consideration for the impact that story has on the people at xxx.
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Good lecture. And Waseed was previously someone (almost the only one) who I found to be an incisive and talented “serious” journalist on the radio. I heard he’d gone to The Project – I confess I didn’t know what that was. I sought it [the project] and it was superficial, dumbed down – what clickbait is supposed to be. I don’t begrudge Waleed the money. I do miss him.
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When you put the needs of the advertiser before that of the reader/viewer this is what happens. News is now just a vehicle for selling advertising, it has no more worth than that. It won’t be long before advertisers realise they can make the news themselves and bypass the very expensive process of buying advertising on channels that have little worth to the reader/viewer.
A real shame.
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Given that right now you can go to The Age’s homepage and click on what looks like a lead news story – only to find it actually takes you to a blog type puff piece over at Huff Post (and it doesn’t even open in a new tab, as any link to an external site should!), I’d say Aly’s comments are spot on.
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Without doubt, Waleed Aly is the smartest bloke in the room in Australian media at the moment. He delivered some serious home truths in this speech, none moreso than to point out the fact that journalism is not a profession, and in its current incarnation, never will be.
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Interesting that he took up the theme of journalism not being a profession but only in a remarkably gentle way. Mentioning the code of ethics and the lack of a deregistration function.
What really strikes me as the killing blow to journalism as a profession is the declining standards of practice. In the professions a doctor, lawyer, nurse, social worker, psychologist etc is actually expected to get better each year as part of their standards. Journalism is worse in 2016 than it was in 2015, it will be worse still in 2017. That’s considered normal in journalism….doing a worse job each year. That’s really what stops it from being seen as a profession.
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Are you saying at all journalism is worse or just the stuff you don’t like? Just as all doctors nurses and lawyers improve year on year? I think I’d have to disagree with both of those statements…journalism isn’t all bad …exposing Trump, the European refugee crises, at home the mistreatment of youths in custody in NT, ongoing stories on refugees in Australia, abuses in greyhound training etc etc…don’t just listen to Bolt et al…read some of the good journos as well.
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Well I think we have Mr R Murdoch to thank for killing journalism. Nobody has done more in the race to the bottom of the barrel than Rupert.
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The same homogeneity is happening in convenience stores.
When I go to the shop, I want to be able to choose between peppermints, not be forced to eat Mentos. Some days I want a XXX mint, sometimes I feel like Lifesavers and on rare days, a bag of Oddfellows. #Istand4mintdiversity
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Yes, journalistic standards are unquestionably deteriorating year-on-year. And for a very simple reason…the commercial model supporting it is teetering on the edge
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There will always be exceptions but the macro trend is for lower standards year on year. As I am the Walrus notes below, the supporting model is not longer fit for purpose.
There’s been a long slow decline in standards but we’re well past the event horizon now. Trust with the audience was lost, and with it, the audience’s willingness to pay. Which leads to more clickbait, less trust, less sales, which leads to more clickbait, less trust, less sales….which leads to….I think the point has been made.
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