I asked the sun and he said the future's looking bright.

..I interviewed the rain and he said that sun was truly an asshole.

This article is
 the basis of my second journal entry of the day and my favourite so far because I got to bemoan the state of media/politics in a way that is probably  more constructive than any other rant I've had on the matter. Sorry, blog-o-sphere, you are being spammed with my opinions and you will enjoy it! Or at the very least, I will provoke some thought amongst the few readers notquitelois has.

The principle of verification in journalism, and the notion of transparency are fundamental to the integrity of the industry. Straight up, that is my belief but whether or not in reality this is true is definitely debateable.

The news industry’s primary function is to report to the people information that is newsworthy – events or moments that have the capacity to affect the populace whether because of the timeliness, relevance, human edge or whatever other news value of the issue. So when that function becomes hard to do because other interests – ratings, namely, because ratings mean revenue - the integrity of news is undermined.

When ‘analysts’ and ‘contributors’ are in fact neither of those things, the idea of ‘verification’ falls to the wayside and the word ‘fabrication’ comes to mind. This ties in with the notion of transparency – viewers may believe they are getting the finance report from someone in the know (because they’re standing in front of a giant CBA logo) but they’re really getting a biased version of the days stock and so neither verification nor transparency are being used here.

I feel I may overstep the word limit on this slightly because though I almost fell into journalism as a way of utilising my love for words and the double major in English I did in college while making use of the UAI I didn’t try to achieve (it wasn’t very high), I have come to recognise it as a powerful industry contributing to society in ways I’d previously not imagined.

This reading stirred a few things in me. Firstly, the relationship between media and politics has indeed become very complex and I have felt isolated in my view that Australian politics are more about he-said, she-said than actual policy because no one else in positions of authority to assert this did so. Rosenstiel and Kovach talk about the ‘horse race bias’ in reporting political campaigns in the US and this idea reflects the cynicism I feel with regard to political reporting here in Australia. What I have been taught about morals and ethics in reporting appears at odds with the reality of the industry and this reading strengthened my feelings of disillusion with the state of political media as I thought about verification and transparency in journalism.

This quote from the reading perhaps best summarises why I feel this way:
“The press covers what the candidate does that day. The polls measure the political impact of that behavior. The media then analyze whether the latest campaign performance is helping in the polls. And that in turn influences the candidate’s behavior.”

To speak from experience, I can say frankly that being told each week whether K. Rudd is more popular than Tony Abbott doesn’t mean anything to me. More than anything it reflects the percentage of Australians who were offended by Abbott’s budgie smugglers (a downright disgusting misuse of media time across Australia that continues to this day, and one I fear to include as it may serve only to perpetuate the stunt’s efficacy in bringing Abbott press) and had at their fingertips the opportunity to lodge their approval (or not) of the action as they perused ninemsn or news.com instead of doing any work (maybe I imagine too harshly what happens in public service offices but from what I’ve heard from those in such positions that is actually the norm).

To make a point I’ve been trying to sharpen for the last two and a half years, the relationship between media and politics has become far too interdependent and that is shaping both the state of politics and media. That talking heads on stations like Sky News here are being labelled ‘analysts’ when really they are representatives of particular corporate interest reflects something ominous. The cycle Rosenstiel and Kovach describe further reflects this, but what isn’t said is that the time spent devising the shape of politicians’ media figures is time not spend on writing policy. The Abbott/Rudd popularity race has long annoyed me because I always wonder – “Surely Tony Abbott has more to do and say as Opposition leader with relation to Liberal policy than to merely discredit another of Rudd’s policies/actions, even it will sell tomorrow’s paper and draw viewers to TV bulletins..”

Being told ‘not to believe everything you see on the news’ goes against what I have learned of reporting – you have to verify your facts, you have to balance your story and, while you’re in university, report without bias. Unless asked not to by your talent, you have to identify your sources, but in any event the credibility of talent is enormously important because otherwise it's not news!

It seems though that to get ahead, or a job, your ability to advance the interests of the company is more important than any of those things and from the get-go, the integrity of the industry is forgotten as wanna-be reporters forsake the integral fundamentals of their craft to get their foot in any door.