Asking Rude Questions Of The Inquisition
Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday March 23, 2000
Journalists should come out of the shadows and face the same scrutiny as those they report on.
THERE has been the usual amount of tut-tutting from the usual suspects about the orgy of slavering media prurience in the matter of a billionaire, his wife of many years, his young mistress, and the tattling nanny. But, as always, the primary reason for the reporting of this matter is that it has aroused enormous public interest though it can hardly be claimed to be in the public interest and it sells papers, lifts ratings.
You can hardly expect the media to deny the public what it wants to hear the media, including the sanctimonious drivellers in the ABC, are driven by two major motives audience appeal and the desire of their own personnel to shine in the public eye, and especially in the eyes of their colleagues. It has long been obvious that the public gets the newspapers it deserves.
The reason why London tabloids are so bad is simple this rubbish sells. Same with television. Thus any editor is driven to carry it. The Australian public's tastes are not quite as grubby and nasty as those of the British, so our papers are better.
There has been a difference in coverage between the groups. Though much of the demonisation of Rupert Murdoch and his empire is nonsense, there has been a remarkable difference in kind and degree between its coverage of the affair of their leader with a much younger woman, followed by his divorce and remarriage, and of the most recent kerfuffle.
Perhaps it is just that the News Ltd writers are so frustrated at their own silence and gutlessness in reporting the former that they are expressing it all in reporting the latter. Not that there has been an absence of underground humour in the News Ltd buildings jokes like, ``who could have thought that a little blue pill could bring down a mighty media empire?"
It has not of course yet. But a couple of Chinese-American/Australian siblings could change the future picture for News Corporation quite dramatically. So could a heart attack.
There is one notable common element in all these exercises in public prurience. They bring out the fundamental assumption of all journalists, broadcasters, and commentators. This is that there is no such thing as a right to privacy for anyone who is in any sense a public, powerful or rich figure except for them.
The truth is that, apart from a few examples of high-profile figures, usually the equivalent of media stars but sometimes editors (of other papers), or executives, the face of journalism in this country is unknown.
If a non-journalist is found in the wrong bed, his or her privacy is at an end phone numbers will be ferreted out, pictures of houses if not actual addresses published, their past raked over, scurrilous gossip invented and/or reported, their incomes and wealth either reported or estimated, their former employers or their behaviour to their employees dragged out, details of illegitimate children published. Nothing is sacred.
But what about the journalists who report all this?
Journalists are not saints. They have their affairs, their break-ups, their personal bitching against a former partner, their hates and their dishonesties. Too high a proportion of the Canberra press gallery is compromised by their personal relationships with other journalists, with political staffers, with bureaucrats, and often enough with politicians.
Often enough the press gallery seems to have, as its major recreation, playing musical beds. But journalists are public figures who try to influence events in Canberra and elsewhere, who have their own prejudices and ideological leanings, their own axes to grind. As well as their own residual loyalties to people and parties. And of course, the press gallery is not alone.
It is time that we knew more about them. For a start, the names and at least the suburb of residence, including home telephone numbers, mobiles, and job descriptions ought to be available to any member of the public who wants to know. How many people have any idea even of the organisational structures of a newspaper, let alone those who fill each and every position?
If politicians have to keep registers of their assets and of any gifts or considerations, so should journalists. The public is entitled to know their salaries and other entitlements, including expense accounts, just as it is entitled to know as much about politicians. If a politician and his wife who invite a journalist friend who happens to be in the same foreign city to dinner with a couple of interesting friends must, if asked, reveal this publicly, and have it reported, why not journalists? We have to keep diaries for tax purposes when on overseas assignment why not make them available on request to anyone who asks?
The birth, marriage(s), infidelities, education, experience, employment history, affairs, financial status, party affiliations, illnesses, mental health, drug habits, even the regular social milieu of every journalist or regular contributor is something which is relevant to any social, political or personal issue to which they address themselves, especially when the media is in the middle of one of its periodic fits of morality. Too often there is a subtext to apparently casual remarks by an influential columnist which is understood only by those who know the gossip about his or her sexual history or personal loyalties.
Freedom-of-information principles should apply just as much to the Fourth Estate as to the other estates. There has been some informal commencement of this by an ex-journalist and ex-political staffer, Stephen Mayne, who has begun on his Web site (www.crikey.com.au) to publish lists of journalists who are former political staffers, public relations officers, etc.
He has also shown the naivete of most journalists by listing ``lilywhites" journalists who have never had a real job and who know nothing about working life in private industry, public institutions, or the bureaucracy. But at least it is a start. If journalists are to benefit from ``shield" laws to protect their sources, they should lose the protection of the defamation laws with respect to their own history and behaviour.
And of course by writing this I am risking retaliation, derision and abuse it is already apparent in the occasional snide comment or attempted denigration. Go ahead. I won't sue except perhaps in case of deliberate and malicious falsehood.
© 2000 Sydney Morning Herald
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