Suzanne

WK 3: The Future Of Journalism – Catharine Lumby

The Future Of Journalism – Catharine Lumby

An interesting article that tries to speculate on the future of journalism by looking at the history of Journalism in Australia.

Australian Journalism seems to have been built on ” Objectivity” reporting. Fiona says that “Journalist objectivity developed from them not just reporting the FACTs but weeding out the Bias.”

From this reading I came to understand that from around 1960’s 1970’s the popularity of tabloid reporting created a large shift in the “content” that Journalist reported. Although if you look back in history the “tabloid” reporting has been around forever. But it was it popularity that changed the way Journalist started reporting, now they were accused of “Sensationalizing” stories.

Certainly in the 80’s and 90’s this became very apparent in Australia with the success of the “A Current Affair” style programs. Where hidden camera and confrontational style reporting became acceptable on Australian Television. The only station to not fall to this was of course the ABC – which had and still does a reputation for hard news reporting.

Then in the 1990’s the rise of Infotainment news and lifestyle programs which brought up every day social issues and political issues in the same way as traditional Journalism (except for the Objectivity of course) but they used different techniques to deliverer this material. No longer one man behind a desk, but rather a cluster of presenters out and about delivering their segments from the “real world”. The issues were starting to be more social, rather than political.

With the rise of these programs of course the rating wars became more and more important to the networks and as a result we saw the ABC’s funding cut during the 90’s and an expectation for them to “compete” with the commercial networks.

More recently our news and events are being more centered around Celebraties, even as I write this, the head line story on every station is “Mark Waugh’s Wife in Hospital after recovering from an operation on her brain”, and second to that is of course the raging war in Lebanon. Interestingly the reading points out that this new rise in Celebrity news has been attacked as a “false distraction from the pressing political , economic, and social issues raised by life under global capitalism”.

The reading suggested that this new role that celebrates are taking in Australian Journalism, is essentially the same role as the shift to “life style” reporting. Saying that “Celebrities are a human screen on to which problems of individual and social importance can be projected and discussed.”

We just have to look at Kylie Minquoes breast cancer to see how the “breast cancer awareness” was increased. It was certainly reported that a huge number of 30 something women bombarded their local doctors for a check up. If it can happen to Kylie it can happen to anyone!

This reading does not really point out that the Future of Australian Journalism lies here and there, but rather makes the smart comment that:

“be open to the new possibilities which new media technologies and forms offer Australian journalism and to be ware that ethical challenges are associated with all media, highbrow or tabloid, new media or old.”