Everywhere you look, Australia’s major media outlets are facing crises — not those primarily created by the usual existential threats of recent decades, social media and Google, but by misjudgment and poor leadership.
The country’s largest media company, the Peter Costello-chaired Nine (as a political party masquerading as a media company, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp shouldn’t be included) faces serious questions about its leadership. Last night, ABC’s Media Watch showed the awful misjudgment of Nine journalists in signing up to promote gambling corporation Sportsbet — a misjudgment waved away by Age executive editor Tory Maguire as “a bit of a mixup”.
What Media Watch displayed was classic state capture. The gambling industry is, after the fossil fuel and arms industries, probably the most successful industry when it comes to capturing governments through political donations, board and executive appointments and by weakening and capturing regulators.
The multiple Crown and Star inquiries might have curbed their more egregious and abused forms of state capture, but the industry is far more than just those two corporations, involving the hospitality industry, online betting and sports industries like animal racing.
These still exercise a massive degree of control of states — the animal racing industry, for example, is infested with organised crime but continues to receive vast subsidies from taxpayers.
One of the mechanisms of state capture is using the media as part of your campaign of influence, and that’s exactly what Sportsbet was doing with Nine journalists. To dismiss this as “a bit of a mixup” is deeply disingenuous.
Media capture is partly driven by systemic factors — if revenue is down, partnerships with revenue sources become more attractive, and the pressure not to offend advertisers grows. But ultimately it’s a matter of judgment and leadership by journalists and editors in deciding whether they cooperate with vested interests and their agendas.
Poor judgment and a lack of leadership have also been on spectacular display in the case of the Rebel Wilson scandal at Nine, featuring gossip journalist Andrew Hornery and editor Bevan “it’s a strike” Shields.
Things are little better at the ABC, where the capture of ABC News by the Coalition over the past nine years has elicited little reflection in the wake of an awful performance during the election campaign, and its transformation into a sub-outlet for News Corp staffers to run Coalition talking points continues apace.
The proposed external ombudsman reporting directly to the ABC board is another example of state capture — in this case, by a political party of what should be an independent news service. It is a remarkable vote of no confidence by a Coalition-stacked board in the ABC’s existing complaints-handling process and a ludicrous bureaucratic addition given there’s already an independent complaints body for the ABC in the Australian Communications and Media Authority.
Meanwhile at Seven, Kerry Stokes continues to fund the defamation case of Ben Roberts-Smith — a Seven executive, no less — against Nine, as part of Stokes’ apparent enthusiasm for backing any ADF personnel accused of war crimes. Again, leadership and judgment.
News Corp continues its operation as a right-wing, foreign-controlled political party, running a hardline climate denialist agenda at its local, deeply toxic Sky News arm. It must, however, be wondering at the extent of its influence after its campaigning for Scott Morrison proved ineffective and its smearing of community independents only elevated their profile and helped them on their way to defeating an array of Liberals (perhaps that was the goal all along?).
And there’s no evidence within the parliamentary press gallery of much reflection on its performance during the election campaign and much of the past three years, and the role of business-as-usual journalistic practices like relying on drops, both-sideism in order to preserve access, and avoidance of policy substance in failing to serve the public interest.
This is a media landscape marked by capture of our most important institutions and poor judgment on key questions. And in Australia, our media is so heavily concentrated that a little bit of toxicity goes a long, long way to undermining the public interest.
