22 Sep Interesting vs Public Interest

A tax rebate to support ‘public interest’ journalists is being proposed by Prof. Allan Fels to reduce the erosion of locally based mainstream, commercial media organisations. It’s a great concept, but if the Commonwealth cannot properly fund the ABC, then there’s little hope of providing a ‘pool’ of publicly funded journalists, specifically tasked with writing stories that serve the public interest.

In my first journalism position at a commercial radio station in Karratha, I was told not to report on pub fights because it was bad for the advertisers; that is, publicans. And those were the days when regional towns had journalists rather than Google.

So how can we retain ‘public interest’ journalism in the era of ‘algorithm’ lead editing? Or indeed in the News Corp era? Just watch “The Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty” (ABC iview) to discover the power held by commercial media to manipulate the definition of ‘public interest.’

I need only look in my own backyard to see commercial interests at work. Last week we said goodbye to Channel 10 in Perth, because it wasn’t financially viable to retain local journalists, producers, directors, cameramen and editors. So now we’re left with Channels Seven and Nine, both of whom have cross media ownerships/partnerships with local radio and print media. Channel 7/The West/The Sunday Times (all owned in part by Kerry Stokes) are supporting journalist and broadcaster, Basil Zempilas for Lord Mayor of Perth. He also works on Radio 6PR owned by Nine Entertainment. Not that there’s anything wrong with Basil. He would probably make an excellent Lord Mayor, however, how are we to know if he does something wrong? It’s unlikely that his media friends and colleagues will criticise him in the public interest. 

Surely the simplest and most transparent way of protecting democracy, is to fund the ABC at a level where news gathering, sharing and dissemination can be done without financial or political agendas.