A lawsuit brought by a voting machine company against Fox News, which ran commentary supporting Donald Trump’s claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged, is a warning of the growing Australian media practice of co-mingling news and opinion.
Consumers of this are left with the difficult task of distinguishing fact from opinion. Spreading fake news under the guise of commentary embedded in news stories might be in the commercial interests of media owners, but its effect is to accentuate and sharpen divisions in society.
In the evening of the 2020 presidential election, Fox News was the first network to call the swing state of Arizona for Joe Biden. As loyal Fox viewers began switching to rival conservative media outlets, Fox executives went into overdrive to stem the bleeding. Before too long, Fox anchors were lending credibility to Trump’s claims that the election was stolen and the voting machine company was in cahoots with the Democrats.
Don’t tell ‘em what happened, tell ‘em what they want to believe happened, is a deeply worrying trend in mainstream media in America and increasingly here in Australia.
It started with the digital revolution in the media in the early years of this century.
As a minister in the Australian government, I did more than my fair share of media interviews. At that time, the main print mastheads had only recently employed a digital journalist whose job it was to report news as it was breaking – not in the next morning’s newspaper but instantaneously.
A distressed digital journalist lamented that “our editors are insisting that I insert the word ‘crisis’ or ‘scandal’ in the opening paragraph, because if I don’t our competitors will.”
A couple of years later, a senior editor of a national masthead told me: “We’re gonna be fishing in our own pond from now on and let all the others go fishing against each other in their pond.”
This was the formalisation of mainstream print media outlets choosing their audiences and pandering to their prejudices.
Before this, print media outlets separated their news stories from their opinion pieces. They would report the news and, to avoid any doubt, add a separate opinion piece under the by-line of the journalist who reported the news or another commentator.
Nowadays, have a look at right-wing print media locked into the culture wars with the left. On a typical day, before you get past page two, you will find the word “woke” in a headline or an opening paragraph three or four times. Although its origins were of an awakening against racial prejudice, the modern meaning of “woke” is a slur against those with progressive views.
But it cuts both ways. Those media outlets that have gone fishing in the progressive pond seem to despise markets, even highly competitive ones, advocating a role for government in every aspect of economic and social life. And they have established their own industry – the offence industry.
Not a day goes by when someone or some group has taken offence at a remark made by a conservative politician, a commentator, a business leader, or just about anyone.
A lucrative offence industry has emerged. A victim takes offence at a public remark and demands an apology. If the apology is not forthcoming, there is every chance that the victim will demand financial compensation for the personal hurt the remark has caused.
A staff member might complain about the behaviour of an employing politician. Both are employed by a government department. The dispute is eventually resolved via an undisclosed compensation payment funded not by the politician but by unwitting taxpayers.
In this burgeoning industry, the agreed settlement is confidential to protect the interests of both parties, but not those of taxpayers.
Now for the real news. The Herald-Sun recently ran a full-page splash: “Anthony Albanese is emerging as the most dangerous prime minister we've had.” It was, in fact, the opinion of right-wing commentator, Andrew Bolt. No longer a newspaper, the Herald-Sun is an opinion paper, fishing in its own pond.
Real news is being made at the Royal Commission into Robodebt, where evidence has been given that numerous ministers and public servants knew the scheme to be unlawful and a number of those accused of falsely claiming benefits committed suicide. Evidence has also been tendered by a former media adviser that, when these concerns surfaced, her minister instructed her to approach “more friendly media” to “shut down” the story.
In her closing remarks, commissioner Holmes paid tribute to social media – twitter in particular – for reporting the daily news from the inquiry, remarking that the coverage by the traditional media had been patchy.
Thankfully, the Financial Review has no interest in the culture wars. And it makes distinctions between news coverage and commentary.
Private mainstream media outlets have every right, in a free society, to express their owners’ opinions. But if Australia’s mainstream media continues to follow America’s path and presents opinion as news, our democracy will fail as surely as America’s is failing.
Craig Emerson is managing director of Emerson Economics. He is director of the APEC Study Centre at RMIT University, visiting fellow at the ANU and adjunct professor at Victoria University’s College of Business.