News 2.0 : journalism, wikileaks and beyond the fourth estate

It’s not every day that you attend a book launch. It’s a once-or-twice moment to launch a book you’ve actually written.

Today, 16 December 2010 on a pissing-down evening in Auckland is one of those moments for me.

Today is roughly – give or take a week here and there – also an anniversary of sorts. In January 2007 I started here and this is the end of my fourth year at AUT.

More of that later, but first I should probably think about answering the inevitable question I will be asked about the book: “Do you think journalism can survive the Internet?”

So far I’ve usually responded with a qualified “Yes.” Almost a “Yes, but…”

As The Beat tell us: “It’s cards on the table time.”

My considered, thoughtful answer now is: “Journalism must survive.”

The bigger issues are really What? How and Why?

What sort of journalism will survive, or thrive on the Internet?

How will it survive – what changes will finally shape the journalism of the immediate, proximate and distant futures?

And finally: Why should journalism survive when it seemingly has low levels of public trust and it is economically in trouble?

Journalism is too important for the social fabric and the public sphere to be allowed to disappear, because of the Internet, or in spite of it.

The demand for journalism is strong — all sorts of news and news-like information is consumed around the clock by audiences around the world and across many platforms.

It seems obvious that news is a human need. The circulation of news and information is crucial to so much of our daily life; from simple things like weather forecasts and news headlines to more complex decision-influencing interactions with media: taste recommendations, tribal and communal affiliations, social, cultural and political allegiances.

In short, news and journalism contribute to our global world view. Many of these insights, reports and analyses might be partial. Some will appear biased or advocacy-based rather than ‘news’ and some will make our blood boil; but they inform, educate and entertain.

Journalism and journalists have a proud history of – under the right circumstances – speaking truth to power. At the same time, it is criticised for being too close to power. There’s a contradiction in that couplet. This fault line is expressed in many ways:

• journalists and news represent the fourth estate, based on bourgeois ideals of freedom of expression, rights and democratic representation
• the Internet represents a new ‘fifth estate’ or sorts that is more democratic, or at least should be outside of traditional media structures and systems of control
• the news industry is the free market of ideas where the value of an idea can be measured by commercial success
• #wikileaks is the new journalism – or a threat to national security
• easy access to user-generated content means that the MSM is becoming irrelevant in many peoples’ lives
• social media and digital technologies will kill newspapers sooner rather than later and television eventually
• journalism is a mirror reflecting society back to itself
• journalists and news cannot be trusted to always tell the unvarnished truth
• news is compromised by ideological values that support the status quo
• twitter beats the MSM for speed, but has a low signal to noise ratio
• journalists are caught in an ethical minefield because of the contradictions
• the spin doctors are in control – journalism is just churnalism
• commercial speech is chewing up the space free speech used to occupy in the public sphere
• which business model is going to work best?

Funnily enough, enough of these common sense insights are true – or, put another way – there’s enough partial truth in these ideas to formulate a greater understanding.

I try to capture some of this in News 2.0 and argue that journalism can survive the Internet. More precisely journalism and the Internet will get on just fine. What’s less clear for me at the moment is the future of professional journalism versus amateur or alternative models; the stability of the industrial news model; and what Rupert Murdoch might do next if and/or when the paywalls fail or succeed.

I am encouraged by experiments in crowd-sourcing and collaborations.

I believe in and will fight for good investigative journalism

I want to encourage greater democratic input to news and journalism and to empower the people we formerly called the audience.

I also want to celebrate and invigorate the fighting, democratic and committed journalism of my heroes, past and present.

I actually got to celebrate my book moment in a different way earlier today. I had a long chat with National Radio’s Mediawatch producer Colin Peacock about #twitdef, which I covered recently. You might recall the incident when a senior News Ltd editor threatened to sue a hackademic blogger reporting on a journalism education conference in Sydney.

Twitdef and The Australian

A week in the Twitterverse

#posettigate as it became known in tweets raised interesting questions about tweeting and blogging and when someone might be considered to be a journalist and able to claim privilege for fair reporting of someone else’s potentially damaging comments.

Did it count in Julie Posetti’s favour that she has been a serious MSM journalist and can claim an understanding of the rules? Did Julie in fact stop being a journalist when she became a full-time educator and academic? She may well argue that she hasn’t given up journalism and I would be among many journalism educators that feel the same way.

Journalists are people like us – trained, schooled in newsrooms, perhaps even university-educated; but at heart a reporter, a ‘newshound’.

Most of us hackademics like to think we still think like hard-nosed journalists; we still have some good news instincts and we ‘get’ journalism.

But we also bring something else to the mix; a fresh(ish) and more distanced, nuanced perspective. We don’t just ‘do’ journalism, or ‘teach’ it; we think it and analyse is and many of us question it too. To some extent, we are now outside journalism, but looking intently inwards.

For the most part our intentions are honourable.

We love journalism and we actually like lots of actual journalists.

We love news and believe in its powers for both good and evil

But do we really know what journalism is today?

This is the question at the heart of the contradictions I’ve been talking about.

You will notice now that I haven’t defined journalism really. Except towards the end where I describe people like me.

I am acutely aware that this is only one definition today.

Seismic shifts in technology and in the social relations of news production have rattled the foundations of the fourth estate and wikileaks is just another example of ongoing after-shocks.

I end my book by arguing we have to move beyond the fourth estate conception of journalism and news in order to save both as areas of professional and intellectual practice.

I’ve begun to look to Gramsci and the history of public intellectuals for some possible clues.

But that’s a project for next time.

Twitdef encouraging more forensic scrutiny of The Australian

Have you seen Caroline Ovington’s short Media Diary entry on the #twitdef saga from The Australian. It was written one day after Julie Posetti received a lawyer’s letter demanding an apology to Chris Mitchell. Is that significant?

Media Diary | November 30, 2010 | 0 Comments

THE ABC has obtained audio of former rural reporter for The Australian Asa Wahlquist speaking at a journalism conference in Sydney last week.

The tape is here.

Canberra academic Julie Posetti live-Tweeted the event. Her Tweets are a fair summary of what Wahlquist said.

Wahlquist, who left the Oz a month ago, has told Mitchell that her comments have been taken out of context.

The Australian’s editor in chief, Chris Mitchell, says the Tweets are defamatory of him, and that Posetti did not contact him to get his side of the story.

And there it rests.

(There’s some confusion on Twitter as to what `there it rests’ means. It means: that’s all I have. I have no more.)

“I have no more.” What a sad admission for a senior journalist with excellent access to many sources on this story – including Chris Mitchell. Ovington could have consulted any number of independent media law experts. I’m sure Mark Pearson would have spoken to her about defamation, fair report and comment, or possible defences.

Mark has had plenty to say.

So too has another independent media academic: NYU’s Jay Rosen.who did a great Q&A with Woolly Days’ Derek Barry.

Rosen told me he saw it as a critical part of a larger battle.
“As the Murdoch empire faces the loss of the emperor–his lost grip, his inability to master digital, or his eventual passing–it starts behaving erratically and in that state it becomes rather dangerous: to itself, but also to other people and to cultural treasures like freedom of the press,” he said.

But the Empire has an Achilles Heel, according to Rosen: “Murdoch cannot master digital.”

In fact, Ms Overington could have written a cracker of a piece just by reviewing what the blogosphere was talking about. But maybe Jay Rosen’s got a point.

The suggestion’s been made that Overington’s diary note signalled that Chris Mitchell was prepared to drop his legal action and that acknowledging that Posetti’s tweets were “a fair summary” was a sign the paper would back off.

The #twuckup has also åttracted attention on science blogs. The debate has widened into an examination of several issues.

An interesting one, that I’m sure will cause Chris Mitchell some regret, is the focus on The Australian’s climate reporting.

On The Drum Jonathan Holmes also has another go on that score too.

It’s also worth noting that this is not Julie’s first run-in with The Australian. She explains it all in this post on The Drum from 5 October this year.

What appears to have surfaced here is that The Australian actively campaigns against its social media critics.

If the allegations revealed here are true then it’s a national scandal.

If you believe the accounts of several Twitter users who contacted me last week, bullying tactics were employed in the process of trying to manage the criticism of The Australian – and James Massola’s stories specifically – as tweeters reacted en masse to Grog’s Gamut’s outing.

They claimed that a reporter on The Australian had telephoned their employers, asking for action to be taken against employees for comments (some using very strong language) directed at James Massola via Twitter.

One of those allegedly targeted – an employee of a large corporation who asked to remain anonymous – told me:

“(He) contacted someone at my work to complain that I was being unpleasant… on Twitter. My work stated that employees were free to speak their minds on their own time. It did however leave me with a sense of caution – no-one likes having their employment threatened by a major newspaper’s employee merely for expressing an opinion.”

As you can see, there’s certainly a fire burning around here somewhere – just look at all that smoke.

 

A week’s a long time in the twitterverse: honest opinion and available facts

A week’s a long time in the twitterverse.

I was in the audience for the JEAA // 2010 session where the already infamous and legendary #twuckup occurred.

Declaration of interest: I regard Julie as a good and trustworthy colleague a relatively recent friend I see now and then.

I also fully endorse the statement made by the JEA executive on November 29 and signed by President Anne Dunn backing Julie.

We are concerned when journalists threaten others with law suits. The implications of the situation are serious for the many people who use Twitter to provide “as live” reporting of public comments and for fair report in general. We stand in support of informed debate, including criticism of the media and we support our colleagues’ right to report fairly on all issues in the public interest

I certainly thought Julie Posetti’s comments about well-known Australian journalist Asa Wahlquist, The Australian newspaper and its editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell were innocent enough at the time, but for the past seven days, they have been at the epicentre of a maelstrom of angst and often intelligent argument.

RT @julieposetti: #jeaa2010 Wahlquist:”Chris Mitchell (Oz Ed) goes down the Eco-Fascist line” on #climatechange “I left because I just couldn’t do it anymore”

This is just one of the many RTs of this snappy, instant observation.

Just a few moments aago this latest tweet on the #deftwit and #posettigate feeds:

@crikey_news [Mitchell] not pursuing damages, demanding fulsome apology, offered to attend mediation, Chrissy coming or going? #twitdef #jeaa2010

So, perhaps it’s now safe to talk about this affair of the state of journalism in Australia and the world as 2010 winds down. I think #deftwit is a milestone event and it couldn’t have been more public, or more spectacular.

If Roger and I do a third edition of Journalism Ethics, it will have to be a major case study in a new opening chapter.

Surely Julie’s key defence was honestly-held opinion based on the known facts. I hope Mitchell has backed off as crikey is reporting.

If you are not familiar with this case and want some background, this ABC news story paints an interesting picture of the situation as it stood a couple of days ago.

In the audio, recorded by freelance journalism researcher Jolyon Sykes at the journalism conference in Sydney, Wahlquist can be heard saying that she had worked at The Australian for 14 years as a rural journalist.

“Climate change, of course, was a part of what I covered. It was absolutely excruciating. It was torture. There’s no other way to put it,” she said.

This comment seems to match a tweet made by Ms Posetti which read: “‘It was absolutely excruciating. It was torture’: Asa Wahlquist on fleeing The Australian after being stymied in covering #climate”.

In the audio, Wahlquist then went on to describe Mitchell as taking a “political view” on climate change.

“It took me quite a while to realise that my editor at The Australian, editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell, was taking a political view and he goes down the eco fascist line,” she said.

“He sees climate change as being a political movement that the left has now adopted that will, aims to destroy everything that he loves and values.”

She went on to say that it was “really debilitating”.

Jonathon Holmes’ piece on The Drum ABC blog is also a good read. Holmes’ ends with this and I’m off to the conference ball.

At Media Watch, we’re well aware that The Australian reacts to criticism or challenge with a vitriol unmatched elsewhere in the Australia media. But surely Chris Mitchell – who whatever else he is, is no fool – will realise that pursuing Ms Posetti through the courts (and incidentally risking some devastating evidence from Asa Wahlquist and, perhaps, other former and current staffers at The Oz, if they chose to risk speaking out) will not be in his interest, or The Australian’s; and it certainly won’t foster “freedom of speech and a vigorous and open marketplace of ideas” which, as The Australian argued in an editorial in 2004, “are essential to a democratic society”.

140 characters of legal nightmare

Where are the journalism jobs in 2010? An initial study

Aoraki Polytechnic - Timaru

I’m recently arrived in Timaru for the New Zealand Journalism Education Association (JEANZ) 2010 annual conference.

I’m giving a paper examining the job market for journalists in the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the UK. The bulk of this post is about that [and it's quite interesting].

The JEANZ agenda looks great and just enough speakers to fill one-and-a-half days. Our host is Peter O’Neill and the Aoraki journalism staff. The theme this year is “What editors want”. I’m sitting in the very pleasant Aspen on King motel and I have a half-smirk / half-grimace on the dial as I ponder this statement.

You see, there is no question-mark, but perhaps there should be. At a similar session at last week’s Australian JEA conference, there was a lively debate between the panel of editorial trainers and the assembled hackademics. I’ve got some notes here somewhere…I’ll dig them out and be right back.