Marching towards irrelevance
What is a journalist?
If you ask one about their ultimate ideal you'll likely get a noble answer such as
- "journalists speak truth to power!"
- "we hold the bastards to account"
- "journalism is about sharing important stories"; et cetera
These are lovely sentiments, but how well are they executed by Australian media corporations?
Much of print and television news is dry and sensational at the same time; junk food which is slowly poisoning us. Television, for example, is crowded by morning 'news' shows doing blatant advertising for airlines, showing footage of car crashes on the other side of the country, and provoking you into culture war bullshit designed to turn us against our fellow citizens. Print media is worse - how often have you seen a newspaper in a cafe with front-page inflammatory headlines stoking the flames of a controversy you didn't know existed?
Every now and then there is admirable reporting, like exposing tax fraud by multinationals, revealing destitute living standards in aged care facilities, or a Prime Minister jetting to Hawaii during a bush-fire crisis. But these are the exceptions, not the rule.
The service at the heart of journalism is a trade; your attention for information. If the information being fed to us is harmful or deceitful, then we're accepting a poison pill and giving away our most valuable resource - our time.
I contend that the Australian media ecosystem as a whole is unable or unwilling to provide us with consistent, high-quality journalism; content that enriches our lives and empowers us to take collective action.
The Legacy Mainstream (Lamestream) Media earned our trust at some point in the past, but has since abdicated their responsibility of informing the public.
The Lamestream Media won't reliably give you information you need. How often have they been flat-out wrong, or promoted propaganda, or blown issues out of proportion; how often do they show journalistic integrity?
Much of this can be attributed to the concentration of media ownership by the three largest players - News Corp (accounting for more than half of all print and TV viewership), Nine, and Seven Media Holdings. These entities bought up the majority of local and state journalism, overtly and covertly influencing the national conversation via editorial control and conversation-setting. The ABC is also worthy of scorn; as national state media they have obvious incentive structures which lead them to bias, misrepresentation and omitting important stories.
I, for one, am sick of being told what to think by arrogant paid shills. All journalism (including my own) is done with an agenda; this is not inherently bad, but when this agenda is obscured and goes against your interests, how could you trust it? There are varying degrees of garbage journalism around, and many of us have drifted to the first not-shit journalist we find who makes us feel seen and heard.
But journalism can be more than just not-shit. It can be Great
The mission of Civic Forum
I want to make news that you don't have to trust, because you can verify. The way I see it, journalism is the art of routing information; finding source material, sometimes performing analyses, then sharing findings widely.
The Lamestream Media are not what we need for the next quarter of the twenty-first century. There are myriad opportunity and dangers on our horizons and to have our best shot at surviving we need an active and informed citizenry. The goal for Civic Forum is to make politics life-affirming, enjoyable, and productive for every citizen. The last decade has delivered us generation-defining technology upgrades, and we need to use them to make the world better. For my part, I want to bring people closer to government and inform the public about what they need to know.
Journalism today can be done with low budgets and spread widely with social media. Emerging technology allows us to process information with incredible volume; all we need is to reach out and use the tools that have been created for us.
The first task for Civic Forum is to hone in on federal politics, particularly Senate inquiries, and apply a greater level of scrutiny to members of Parliament and witnesses providing testimony. I want every Senate inquiry to be legible to any interested citizen, allowing them to get a sense of what their representatives are doing in Parliament in five minutes. Once this technology is functional, then we can apply it to State and Council matters, where a significant portion of Australia's governance is done, often the most important matters that really affect our lives.
Further, here are some blue-sky ambitions:
- innovate citizen-in-the-loop journalism; using feedback and curation to develop high-quality information bespoke to you
- make news that challenges your beliefs
- enable journalism-for-hire
The main content on Civic Forum will be articles that explore the levers of power available everyday citizens now.
Journalism must become a cohesive force that empowers people to achieve real change.