The unbiased view of journalism – whose news?

 

I promised to talk about how money influences news selection and presentation - so, obviously, I am not going to do that.

Well, not yet. First I wanted to ask a more basic question, who do print and digital journalists write for?

The obvious answer is the “public” or at least what used to be called the educated newspaper-reading section of the public.

Ninefax economics pundit and amateur moralist Ross Gittins said he writes with “the reader” in mind.

“The reader” is much less abstract now then when Ross was chiselling his early journalism onto stone tablets.

Back then most audience feedback, other than perhaps people Ross knew, would have come a few days later by mail.

Now such feedback is instant and can be measured in traffic and engagement and social media measures such as sharing, “likes” or trending topics.

The social media platform of choice for journalists, especially those in the political news and commentary business, is Twitter.

Facebook is for the masses but Twitter is how the bigger names of journalism talk to each other and their keenest audience.

Twitter is very useful, or perhaps gratifying, to those chasing and forming public opinion because it tells you what topics are trending.

So, in theory, if you want know what people are talking about or think important, Twitter tells you.

The danger is if you spend a lot of time on Twitter… ahem… you can easily begin to mistake it for the world at large.

But that's exactly what it isn't - less a fifth of Australians use it.

Twitter leans heavily left, as even Leigh Sales noted, and that tends to skew its view of what is “important” or worth talking about.

As has also been noted, even by Crikey, Twitter trends are being influenced by bots and "sock puppets" and perhaps robotic sock puppets and the Left/Labor side seems more committed to doing this.

This might seem a sillier past-time than the Fish-Slapping Dance but it is what it is, "winning the social media battle".

So if journalist get their feedback Twitter, they are getting feedback from a closed loop – including colleagues and from the left-leaning sometimes “gamed” Twitter trending topics.

So, when Laura Tingle writes one of her “Why I hate Morrison and the Coalition and I so want Labor to win” pieces that appears almost word-for-word for both the ABC and the AFR it will invariably trend on Twitter because that’s what the audience wants to read and hear.

It is often a type of comfort food – "Did you see how Tingle gave it to that sneaky lying bastard Scummo this time?" BAM!

Not to be outdone the perpetually disappointed Malcolm Turnbull devotee Niki Savva will file her "I still hate Morrison too!" piece.

Perhaps she will appear on TV as well and give to Scummo all over again, to the approval ticks of the Twitter  Blue Ticked. EeeOW!

It's a type of political comfort food, familiar, gratifying and reassuring of what all the smart people think.

This is what being in an echo chamber means – but, of course. that only happens to the stupid rednecks who voted for Trump.

The danger is for political journalists, who are already in the Canberra Bubble. they may not realise they are also stuck in a slightly bigger Twitter bubble.

This wouldn’t be a big problem as such – as long as those writing for each other and the likeminded realise that is all they doing.

But while they might all be chasing the big story of whether that lying bastard Scummo told Albanese about his holiday destination at the start of last year there might be other big stories happening without them really noticing – or even wanting to notice.

Stories like possibly the biggest protests ever seen in this country.

John Safran, who seeks out those on not in the mainstream, went to one of the Melbourne rallies against the Victorian Premier's Pandemic Bill.

Safran was looking for extremists but he had to look very hard because of the sheer size of the crowd.

He writes: "Later, as the march reaches Flagstaff Gardens, I’m disoriented, the crowd as vast and overwhelming as a CGI army in The Lord of the Rings."

This seems a long way from the description of the protests as a small fringe group by the Premier, the police and various media outlets. 

Even as The Age reports the police estimate of 20,000 it says the protest "fills the streets".

That seems a bit unlikely for a 20,000-strong crowd.

Here's Safran again on whether the numbers are being exaggerated: "I’ve never seen anything like this. The Big Day Out crowd running into a Collingwood v Carlton crowd in the park. Is this the mainstream?"

So he is "guestimating" a crowd of around 150 to 200K. 

If he is right, and it accords with what I experienced at an earlier rally, than this represents a huge protest, one of the biggest ever Australia.

I should note after much searching, and a number of red herrings, Safran does find some sneaky anti-semites. 

However, as he notes there are anti-semities on both Left and Right but the ones on the Left are more vocal and open.

He writes: "Amazingly, the venom some on the left feel towards Jewish people has led them to tell Jews to stay away from the anti-racism movement."

Scott Morrison needs to get votes from the wider public, not trending hashtags each week on Twitter, so he pays very careful attention to what people outside the Canberra or Twitter bubbles are saying and thinking.

We have seen him subtly start to shift his messaging from the Covid narrative of fear to a stance of telling governments "to step back".

For those commentators writing for each other and their Twitter fans this is not the conversation they are having.

So, if Morrison again pulls off a “surprise” win the reaction from Twitter and its leading "lights" will most likely be shocked rage - again.

"How could all those stupid people vote for him? No one I know would vote him. We all think he is a liar and a sexist and a climate change sluggard."

If Morrison does listen to what the people are saying and not what Twitter is obsessing about he will almost certainly win.

The Twitter trending topics will swirl around the satisfying simmer of bile and abuse, while Morrison goes back to running the country.

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