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Media's Role - Informer or Educator?

Tiger74

In deedily doodily neighbourino!
Jul 2, 2004
11,601
5
Melbourne
Two recent events in the Fairfax press have made me ask, what is the role we expect of the media today.

We all know the agendas of the HUN. Its a Murdoch rag, and has made no quams about pushing certain barrows (be they corporate or political). The Age however has always maintained its above the fray, and reports with impartiality and fairness.

Two recent comments though ask me what this role of impartial reporting involves.

Firstly there is the following comment from Roebuck in the Australian (he was being asked to comment on recent opinion pieces in the Age and SMH):

Roebuck denied that he had "flip-flopped" on certain issues - he no longer thinks that Ponting, Hayden or Gilchrist should be sacked - and said that he had simply acknowledged that the on-field conduct of the Australian team had changed for the better since the Sydney Test.

"The initial article (January 8) was overstated and provocative, but it was intended to have the effect of making people think about the fierce debate that ensued," he said.

"And it had the desired effect of making Australian cricket confront itself.

"Their conduct changed for the better in Perth and Adelaide, they started shaking hands with opponents and so on, and I had to acknowledge that."


So its okay to overstate or exaggerate something, just as long as you stimulate debate or get a desired outcome? I know this is an opinion piece and not an article, but it worries me that facts and even personal beliefs are being hyped for outcome.

Then we had an interview with (I believe) the editor of the Age on 774 yesterday. When Faine was asking if the Age had an agenda against dredging, he said that he believed there were viable options outside dredging, and it was important for people to hear this. I have no issue with this, but when the editor of a paper is pushing an agenda rather than informing, this needs to be made clear. If you heard the man, it is clear he does not support dredging to the current plan, and he supports publishing articles informing of the negatives of the dredge.

My main issue with this is I read the paper to make up my own mind, not to have someone promote a cause. It was bad enough with Murdoch doing this, but if the Age is now walking this path of agenda setting rather than informing, where is someone supposed to go to find out something to make their own mind up?

Am I old fashioned in wanting media without an agenda?
 
Dude you've negleted to mention both Murdoch and Fairfax's primary agenda.To sell newspapers.

It's a jungle out there for competing media these days.Information is frigging everywhere.It's getting ever tougher to get people to prefer your form, and more importantly pay for it.

PS. I don't agree with you that the Age is any more 'fair and balanced' than the Australian.I reckon the're about the same.I don't buy either these days.



Tiger74 said:
My main issue with this is I read the paper to make up my own mind, not to have someone promote a cause. It was bad enough with Murdoch doing this, but if the Age is now walking this path of agenda setting rather than informing, where is someone supposed to go to find out something to make their own mind up?
The internet or the library.

Am I old fashioned in wanting media without an agenda?
Nope, but I doubt it's ever going back to the good ol' days.
 
evo said:
Dude you've negleted to mention both Murdoch and Fairfax's primary agenda.To sell newspapers.

It's a jungle out there for competing media these days.Information is frigging everywhere.It's getting ever tougher to get people to prefer your form, and more importantly pay for it.

PS. I don't agree with you that the Age is any more 'fair and balanced' than the Australian.I reckon the're about the same.I don't buy either these days.


The internet or the library.
Nope, but I doubt it's ever going back to the good ol' days.

Understand the commercial side, but if you are just slopping up predetermined agendas, you eventually lose your credibility (look at TV current affairs shows - once they interviewed Prime Ministers, now they promote boob jobs). Also commercial print media has a long tradition of good journalism. Look at the WSJ, Murdoch bought that solely because of the prestige and rep attached to it.

On the Age, I agree and that was probably my point. They like to say they are above it all, but like the HUN everything I read in it more and more has an agenda behind it. I just find it annoying when I hear "we are not biased like them", and they are just as bad.
 
Tiger74 said:
Understand the commercial side, but if you are just slopping up predetermined agendas, you eventually lose your credibility (look at TV current affairs shows - once they interviewed Prime Ministers, now they promote boob jobs). Also commercial print media has a long tradition of good journalism. Look at the WSJ, Murdoch bought that solely because of the prestige and rep attached to it.
The Hun,if it ever had any to start with lost its credibility years ago.Yet the punters keep buying it.No-one knows what people want better the Ruprect.

What I think you're really complaining about,and which I agree with,is that most people don't want so much to be informed,but rather have an easy and quick method of being told what to think.

Either that or they just like a bit of light entertainment with their weeties.

Ya gotta admit,Bolta is prettty funny in the audacity of some his arguments. ;D

On the Age, I agree and that was probably my point. They like to say they are above it all, but like the HUN everything I read in it more and more has an agenda behind it. I just find it annoying when I hear "we are not biased like them", and they are just as bad.
Yep.

Have you thought about reading Crikey.com,or some of the other bloggers?
 
evo said:
Dude you've negleted to mention both Murdoch and Fairfax's primary agenda.To sell newspapers.

Bingo bevo.

Selling newspapers = selling advertising.

Controversy sells advertising & so does Brittany Spears.

Sadly hard hitting journalistic integrity doesn't pay the bills as it once did.

Sadly most folks don't know the difference though as they believe everything they are fed.

Newsfotainment is where it's at baby!

evo said:
I don't agree with you that the Age is any more 'fair and balanced' than the Australian.I reckon the're about the same.I don't buy either these days.

Again agree.
The major rags are just like the major networks. Not much difference between them at all.



Good thread though T74. Looks like you just stepped out of the Matrix. ;)
 
Newspapers are a commercial enterprise and as such will support the status quo. Beat ups sell papers, sales please the shareholders and so it goes.

None of the mainstream papers will offer an alternative or radical view on current events.

Like politics its all in the centre now.
 
Roebuck doesn't normally venture into polemic.

That's kind of why the article he was defending in your quote, T74, was a bad one. But not exactly.

The article in question, note that he takes the extraordinary step of defending it, was a bad one because it missed the benchmark of polemic - provocative, sacred cow assassination - and simply expressed hysteria.

He became hysterical rather than causing hysteria in his readership. Bad writing IMO.

Instead of causing people to question the whole idea of captain sacking, people began to question the idea of Roebuck's emotional stability.

I'm, almost without exception, a fan of his work. But just as Caro did with her article bullying the opposition club that played against her son's team, Roebuck compromised the tradition of his work with that article.

Because the article was so badly written it raised a totally trivial question - has Peter Roebuck ever experienced what you or I would call sex? Hardly polemic.

That's not to mock the worthy idea raised in the thread.

FWIW I reckon the educator role is a tough one. It falls to editors and writers. For example cholesterol. Nobody had heard of the stuff, what 15 years ago? The media brought it up. A journo will have done the homework.

(Who were the journos who did the Watergate thing again? Investigative/educational. What's the diff?)

In contrast nobody was aware that the bite of a white tail spider could cause necrosis until one of those stoopid TV shows brought it up. (Maybe ACA and TT competed for scoop on the imminence of nationwide necrotic blue eyed babies.) Anyways, these days it takes time to convince people that the creatures (the spiders, not the babies, which can be deadly) are largely harmless.
 
Silly little me I thought the media's role was to make money for shareholders and advertisers. I guess I am uniformed or uneducated.
 
Bill James said:
Silly little me I thought the media's role was to make money for shareholders and advertisers. I guess I am uniformed or uneducated.

I have no issue with that, but if you are not there to inform, don't lie to me and say you do like the Age continually does. Act like the HUN and tell me to my face you are the puppet of Rupert (for instance). Also where does this place the ABC which is one of the worst at this?

It should also be noted TV stations are granted their licences under certain conditions, one of which is that they have to provide news services. As such providing this kind of function is not one that was originally done purely for revenue, but was done for and obligatory reason.