RMIT lecturer Tito Ambyo challenged on view ‘good journalism is activism’

A senior RMIT lecturer who declared on social media that “good journalism is activism” has been challenged by fellow media experts.

RMIT lecturer Tito Ambyo. Picture: Supplied

A senior RMIT lecturer who declared on social media that “good journalism is activism” has been challenged by fellow media experts who warned that unearthing facts and holding the powerful to account must remain the bedrock of the profession.

Melbourne-based university lecturer Tito Ambyo posted a series of tweets on March 31 in defence of a journalist who was being attacked on social media for their coverage of the alleged rape of former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins inside Parliament House.

Mr Ambyo wrote: “Good journalism IS activism. All the rest is sideshow.” When contacted by The Australian, he said he knew his tweets would “cause a stir”, though he maintained activism is critical to a journalist’s role.

“If you are doing your job well as a journalist, you are creating change in the society and that’s what activism is,” he said.

But Mr Ambyo, who has worked for the ABC and now teaches data journalism and journalism technologies at RMIT, admits “straight news reporting is different to activism”.

“Activism shouldn’t be at the forefront but I think we should be open to looking at working with people who are trying to change the world with us,” he said. “I’m not asking students to be activists.

“If you see something around you, look at all the facts from all sides and that’s the way you contribute to the world.”

University of Queensland professor Peter Greste. Picture: Kym Smith

Mr Ambyo’s tweets were posted on the same day a controversial story was published in The Australian Financial Review, which referenced the recent “activism” of a number of prominent journalists.

“Angry coverage that often strayed into unapologetic activism came forth from a new, female media leadership: Laura Tingle and Louise Milligan on the ABC, Katharine Murphy and Amy Remeikis at The Guardian, Lisa Wilkinson on Channel 10, Karen Middleton in The Saturday Paper and a cameo by Jessica Irvine on the Nine Network,” wrote the AFR’s Aaron Patrick on March 31.

University of Queensland professor Peter Greste, who was imprisoned in Egypt for more than a year after he and two colleagues were ­arrested in Cairo in 2013 on the grounds their reporting for Al Jazeera was “damaging to ­national security”, does not believe it is the role of a journalist to engage in activism. “I don’t think journalists should be taking particular political positions or pushing particular angles or lines, but that doesn’t mean journalists shouldn’t be aggressive when chasing stories.

“They always need to be challenging and questioning the government and those in power and trying to get under the skin of the government.”

Greste said good journalism “should be about uncovering details and information the powerful would rather keep hidden”.

Crikey boss, former editor-in-chief of The Sydney Morning Herald and one-time deputy editor of The Australian, Peter Fray — who also had a stint as a journalism lecturer at the University of Technology, Sydney — said “straight reporting clearly gets results”.

“Journalists have a traditional and longstanding role to unearth facts,” he said.

“I think there’s still a primacy on straight reporting and I think most employers in the industry are still looking for great reporters.”

Tweets made by RMIT journalism lecturer Tito Ambyo in March, 2021.

Curtin University journalism lecturer Kayt Davies has been teaching students for more than a decade and also dismissed Mr Ambyo’s suggestion that good journalism is activism. “Good journalism doesn’t mean picking up every flag you walk past,” she said.

Ms Davies said the core of journalism training at tertiary level is “about being actively engaged in the process of informing the public and holding the government to account”.

RMIT’s journalism course remains one of the most prestigious in the country. Its website boasts that it’s an institution where students “will follow in the footsteps of some of Australia’s greatest journalists, and rub shoulders with amazing working mentors”.