Media coverage reflects reality

Leak cartoon

DESPITE its many qualities and indispensable services, the media is clearly imperfect. But in free countries the truth usually triumphs. News media helps keep authorities accountable.

The Finkelstein report is worrying because its recommendations could stifle the media. The inquiry believes it can improve the quality of media by creating a News Media Council, funded by the government, headed (you guessed it) by a lawyer, and consisting of appointed (not elected) delegates from the media and elsewhere. It does not believe that competition, consumer demands, commercial accountability, legal constraints and personal choice will deliver to the public the media that consumers deserve.

Rather, it believes a government-funded body of lawyers, academics, publicly funded and commercial journalists can decree what is good for the public.

Aside from their own sense of fair play, journalists face a range of controls, from the primary constraint of defamation laws, to anti-discrimination laws, court suppression rules and orders, professional and company codes, government regulation in the electronic media and self-regulation in the print media. And they do this in a digital age when it has never been easier for new entrants to enter the media marketplace.

Remarkably, Finkelstein recommended a government-funded news media oversight of electronic, print and online media without identifying a problem with the Australian media.

It traces its genesis, in part, to revelations about the illegal activities of the London tabloids. More disturbingly, the inquiry admits it was established because senior members of the Gillard government and its Green coalition partner believed they were being subjected to jaundiced political coverage.

So a government that is struggling has initiated a media inquiry because not all media is as generous towards it as are the ABC and the Fairfax newspapers.

If this happened in Fiji, Indonesia or Papua New Guinea, our foreign minister would be urging a rethink. In fact, the next time Australia urges improvements in free speech in China, the laughter in Beijing will not be stifled.

Strangely, politicians such as Stephen Conroy, Julia Gillard and Bob Brown did not complain when the media focused, under the previous government, on issues such as the children overboard and Australian Wheat Board scandals.

While the Howard government was at times despairing about media handling of these issues (I was a staffer at the time) it chose to defend its actions, not bring the media to heel.

The current intervention is based almost entirely on Conroy's gripes last year about how reports of problems with the National Broadband Network and leadership rumblings in the government were really about News Limited newspapers running a so-called campaign for "regime change". Never mind that those reports have been vindicated.

To look at how the Communications Minister would judge issues of media bias we could suspend disbelief for a moment and accept that everything the government says is true. As a test case, the government's attitude towards Kevin Rudd will do.

In December the Prime Minister told John Laws that "people are working as professionals in the nation's interest and Kevin Rudd most certainly is". As recently as last month Gillard told the Seven Network, "I think Kevin's doing a good job as the minister for foreign affairs".

So if that assessment was reflected without scepticism the media would have been accurate and unbiased, by Conroy's standards.

But two weeks ago Gillard said Rudd had "chaotic work patterns" when he led the government and that "one of the overriding problems of the government that Kevin Rudd led is it was very, very focused on the next news cycle, on the next picture opportunity, rather than the long-term reforms for the nation's interests".

And reflecting on his time as foreign minister, she declared, "it is now evident to me and I think it is evident to the Australian people that there has been a long-running destabilisation campaign here to get to this point, where Kevin Rudd is clearly going to announce that he wants to seek the Labor leadership".

That makes it hard for journalists to keep up. A fortnight ago, the media should not praise Rudd or suggest that all was well at the top levels of the government.But just days later, after defeating Rudd in the leadership ballot, the Prime Minister again praised her foe. "I want to say to Kevin Rudd for the days that lie beyond, as a nation, as a Labor Party, we must honour his many achievements as prime minister."

Hold the front page. Any journalist not wanting to be accused by Conroy of running a campaign should report on a harmonious government that honours a proud era under its former leader.

The absurdity is obvious. That such an unsophisticated and ill-considered response to his own political problems could lead the Communications Minister down a path of increased media regulation is alarming.

We need to resist the temptation to laugh at this folly because it just might happen. The loose Left coalition of academics, activists, publicly funded journalists and politicians who fear they have lost some crucial debates in recent years might just push this through as a means to cover for their own failures. They may, of course, live to regret it if they find a future conservative government escaping scrutiny.

The Finkelstein report plays games with academic papers and opinion polls that show a lack of respect for the commercial media. It fails to consider why, then, most of the population consumes most of its news from commercial media. Clearly the inquiry and the government believe members of the public do not know what is good for them.

Given what has transpired over the past couple of years, the real question about media is the inverse of the Conroy and Finkelstein approach. Instead of comparing media coverage to government expectations, we should compare media coverage to reality. Then the real question is not about media campaigns. It is about why some media were so incurious about government waste and mismanagement, and internal leadership dissent. In particular, given its vast resources and government regulation, how did the ABC manage to miss these developing stories?

The publicly funded media's sanguine reporting of the government and failure to provide the full picture to its audience provides a standing argument against government regulation.