The other weekend I spent a couple of days doing an advanced 4WD driving course. Seems like a fairly random thing to do, but I’ve always been a fan of putting my hand up to volunteer for any opportunity that is on offer. Anyway, the place at which we were doing the course was run by a gent who moonlights as a motoring journalist, writing reviews of various vehicles for a selection of mainstream media outlets.
As I tend to do, I got chatting to this guy and started talking about journalism more generally. He’s been a journalist for going on half a century and, in that time, has seen an incredible amount of change in the media landscape. Now, despite having written for the past 15 or so years for a variety of publications, both in New Zealand and overseas, I in no way consider myself a journalist. I’m a random chap with an overabundance of opinions, a need to espouse those opinions, and a bit of time on my hands.
For better or worse this has meant that I’ve written thousands of articles and, I guess, millions of words over the years. My own experience at the periphery of journalism is something that probably wouldn’t have happened a generation ago when journalism was the reserve of professionals and at a time when rank amateurs like myself didn’t get a look in.
All of this reflection on journalism got me thinking of Tova O’Brien, mental sidesteps being my regular modus operandi. A few months ago, I was interested to read that O’Brien had taken over as chief political reporter for Stuff, ironically the masthead for which I’m penning this piece. Now O’Brien has, over the years, been the target of significant opprobrium. She’s edgy, tenacious and won’t let go of a good story, all things that one wants from a political reporter. She’s also a woman and one who had to report from parliament during the Covid pandemic. In the face of waves of misinformation, she’s probably had to face more social media takedowns than most.
It would seem that the lashings that O’Brien, and other journalists of her ilk, have received is a function of an increased profile and need to get scoops in a more rapid-fire way than yesteryear. The rise of the internet has decimated the traditional revenue streams that paid for good journalism and has created a need to drive clicks. With advertiser revenue plummeting precipitously, traditional media outlets have, as the saying goes, a burning platform to deal with.
We’ve seen this across the globe where once heralded mastheads have had to pivot in order to survive. And many haven’t survived – the world is awash with once great newspapers and magazines that no longer exist, or only exist because some well-meaning (and sometimes not) billionaire has swooped in to rescue them. I wanted to get a perspective on what journalism looked like a generation ago. As luck would have it, I have a close family friend who is what I would term a “real journalist.” Said individual, long since retired, cut their teeth back in the days when newsrooms were fuelled by a pall of tobacco smoke and the side effects of regular long liquid lunches.
My illustrious contact pointed me in the direction of the late Jack Kelleher, former editor of The Dominion (back when Wellington had two dailies – The Dominion in the mornings and The Evening Post in the afternoons). Kelleher was editor back in 1963 and, by all accounts, a superb journalist in his own right.
Writing, he said, should be a model of accuracy and clarity, instantly intelligible to a reader……it should be arresting, lean and vigorous besides being accurate. Journalists should write with nouns and verbs and cut out the drones of the language like “very” and “rather”. In what would be considered pedantic these days, he explained that a shortage is not a famine, a strike-vote is not a likely strike. He admonished his staff that handouts (or emailed press releases as they have now become) must not be accepted at face value and passed on to the news desk.
This gets us to modern approaches to journalism in which the scribes are often personalities on their own account. As my wise counsel pointed out – news presenting is not journalism. Journalists have opinions but never share them in their writing, Presenters on the other hand, filter the news through their own biased lenses. That might be okay so long as they make it clear that that is what they are offering. Their opinion. Alas, all too often these opinions take the place of genuine reportage. Kelleher suggested that:
We need good journalists who will give the bureaucrats, politicians and other news subjects no cause for distrrust of their capabillities ; good journalists who will represent the public worthily, good journalists not ashamed to feel a sense of vocation, Whether they like it or not, in the safe working of democracy journallists are key figures.
Keleher will be, I fear, spinning in his grave. The face of journalism has changed forever. Public trust in what is read, heard and seen in the media is all but gone.
So, what is the answer? And does it even matter? Well, yes, it matters. A society can be judged on the discourse it has over the issues of the day. This discourse is informed by information of a credible nature from a wide variety of non-editorial sources. Absolutely it matters. As for what the answer is, so often these days I keep coming back to the same root cause: a lack of engagement, awareness and understanding by us, the citizenry. While it’s easy to blame the media sources for responding to the damaging changes that the tech giants have caused, all of these are, in my view, outputs of a society’s desire for quick hits and short soundbites. We need to look to ourselves for both the cause of the problems and the source of potential solutions.
Education, time, patience, and a willingness (nay, desire!) to listen will all help. While a classical education is seen as passe these days (let alone a liberal arts degree) those things are what went part of the way to create an open-minded and aware society. We need to find our pathway back to those traits, our survival as a society demands it.
Tovah is a great journalist, but she shouldn’t have to resort to snappy headlines to get her stuff read. We need a conversation about investment in a free and fair public media.
