Predicting political coups every second day is junk journalism

Social media, online clickbait and the 24-hour news cycle are killing journalism.

Social media, online clickbait and the 24-hour news cycle are killing journalism and turning positions once held by reporters with great questioning skills and inquiring minds into places for permanent political advocates for their ­particular segment of a fragmented media audience.

The one media personality who has always been honest about this is Sydney Radio 2GB host Ray Hadley, who proudly declares he is not a journalist and is paid to give his opinions. Boisterous opinions sure, but Hadley has such good ­instincts for prosecuting real news stories he probably has a better case to call himself a reporter than many who do.

He is very different from fellow 2GB host Alan Jones, or Sky News’s Andrew Bolt and Peta Credlin, who are proud and brave proselytisers for their own political positions, especially their ­campaign against Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. They argue for political insurgencies to the ­Coalition’s right, pushing Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, former Tasmanian independent senator Jackie Lambie, NSW Liberal Democrat senator David ­Leyonhjelm and Australian ­Conservatives head, senator Cory Bernardi.

Nationally these media critics of Turnbull’s left-liberal tendencies are often accused by ­traditional conservatives of inadvertently helping Labor leader Bill Shorten. There is a commercial logic: in the digital world commentary criticising Turnbull or supporting his deposed predecessor Tony Abbott often drives the most traffic on newspaper websites or audience numbers on electronic media.

But such campaigning can blind journalists to real news. On Tuesday night last week, the Bolt and Jones programs on Sky News gave more coverage to Turnbull negatives than to the Labor Party’s shocking day in parliament. Labor had been exposed for Shorten’s duplicity on Labor’s own MPs with dual-citizenship difficulties.

Credlin at 6pm was saved by The Australian’s political editor Dennis Shanahan, who focused in his interview on Labor’s issues. But it was really not until 9pm and Paul Murray that a Sky News host properly scrutinised Shorten, who had claimed his party’s vetting procedures were so good that Labor had no problems only to admit there were now problems.

Bolt had delivered a fiery ­editorial on Monday night ­denouncing Turnbull for complaining to News Corp management about Bolt’s reporting of threats to cross the floor by North Queensland MP George Christensen. It was a passionate editorial you can see on Bolt’s blog.

For me the key words were: “Malcolm Turnbull simply refuses to come on to my show and debate me.” He did not say: “be interviewed on my show”.

Social media had reacted to a Bolt blog post defending his ­reporting of the anonymous Christensen threats. Everyone had already guessed who Bolt’s source was, given Christensen makes such threats every few months, and Bolt’s blog explanation did not help his cause.

He wrote Christensen “authorised me and Peta to spread the word, without using his name, hoping to create maximum pressure on Turnbull. Twice more he urged me on, even after lying to Samantha Maiden of Sky News that he was not the MP I’d referred to”.

Twitter lit up and commentators started texting the comments. Bolt defended his role saying he was merely reacting as a reporter publishing a leaked story that would pose a serious danger to the government that was then still without Barnaby Joyce and John Alexander. Many journalists thought Bolt had crossed from ­reporter to political actor.

Shanahan on Wednesday nailed the problem. “Bolt decided to publicise the (Christensen) claim and keep the identity secret ­although the MP concerned had made numerous previous threats to cross the floor ... and had failed to do so. He was also a National, not a Liberal, calling for a Liberal leader to be sacked.”

Shanahan quoted Bolt’s friend Tony Abbot, the man Bolt, Credlin and Jones have backed for the past two years: “If there is one piece of advice I can give to the media, it’s this: refuse to print self-serving claims the person making them won’t put his or her name to.”

Abbott is dead right.

Now Shanahan knows a fair bit about leadership destabilisation and how to report it without ­predicting a hundred challenges that never happen. In 2010, the Saturday before Gillard’s June 23 knifing of first-term leader Kevin Rudd, I splashed this paper with a piece predicting a challenge in the coming week.

It was not based on discontented backbenchers briefing anonymously. Shanahan and I spoke almost daily for months before the challenge. Shanahan had set up a standing fortnightly private session with Gillard to keep tabs on her thinking. Shanahan and the paper had led national coverage of the revolt by the big mining companies against Rudd’s proposed mining super profits tax and we knew there was agitation against Rudd, driven largely by iron ore and coal miner BHP.

So here’s the thing. Predicting political coups every second day is junk journalism. Shanahan, The Australian’s editor-at-large Paul Kelly and I would regularly discuss the timing of stories in 2010 to be sure we published only what we knew would gain traction.

We thought the idea of ­challenging Rudd was mad and believed Rudd would win re-election. The paper had led the reporting of his economic stimulus mistakes, almost to the total ­exclusion of other media apart from Hadley. But we were campaigning for better government, not a leadership change

So was more care and attention given in the past to publishing only what journalists thought would actually happen? You bet. And why?

In an age of media fragmentation, when many prefer to read what they agree with rather than what is correct, the financial ­rewards via clicks go to journalism people can “like” on Twitter or Facebook and comment about ­online.

Once accuracy and getting it right earned loyal readers and viewers. Now not so much.

Former PM John Howard came back in 2001 from a shocking Newspoll position — though his lows were not as sustained as Turnbull’s. That started to turn with the Aston by-election and was improved by huge spending in rural Australia and scrapping fuel indexation. The Tampa and the 9/11 World Trade Centre attacks helped lift his polling.

Can Turnbull stage such a ­recovery? The truth is no one knows, but he lacks Howard’s ­political skill right now.

Will he survive until the next election? Only only a fool would challenge him now. My guess is a Julie Bishop-Peter Dutton team, in that order, will challenge in 12 months and then call an early election, but I would not bet on it.

An old Bolt quote from a year before the 2001 election, when he wrote Howard was “the walking dead prime minister, even before the GST puts him out of his misery”, highlights the dangers of political predictions based on opinion.

Politics is the art of the possible and journalists should, as Shanahan reminded me last week quoting gallery doyen, the Red Fox, Alan Reid, “avoid using the future tense” wherever possible.