Stephen Olsen
SYDNEY (Pacific Media Watch): Al Anstey, managing director of Al Jazeera English, proclaimed at the recent Walkley Foundation’s Storyology summit in Sydney that “there is a future for journalism, but only if we act now”.
Given how troubled the news industry is, his caution to the summit participants at the Teachers Federation venue in Sydney’s Surry Hills was that the industry journalists are “risking moving steadily towards obscurity”.
“The question we need to ask is whether we are heading in the wrong direction? The media industry has lost its way, and its true mission – that is, journalism,” said Anstey.
In Anstey’s words, that mission remained fairly simple, namely to “protect the integrity of content, witness events for ourselves, fully explain stories, and fundamentally give our audiences the full picture…through independent, reliable, factual, impartial information”.
"A vicious aspect of the news cycle is that the weakest remain in the dark. Their rulers are the only ones heard. Journalists exist to shine a light in the shadows,” said Anstey, adding that with increased electronic connectivity acting to traverse boundaries to bring people together an independent media was all the more important “to join the dots”.
Anstey believed that when the ownership of a raft of media mastheads passed into owners focused firstly on commercial opportunities, a turning point occurred that has seen media based more and more on a “misplaced assumption that tabloid infotainment will win loyal audiences”.
‘Real’ news
“Real news disappeared from the front covers of magazines and front pages of newspapers… real news in theory doesn’t sell cars, it doesn’t sell advertising [but] if we follow that logic we’ll all be living in a fantasy world,” Anstey said.
Anstey observed that a result of the rise of opinion channels masquerading as news channels was that journalism has become confused and that diversity of content has been severely dissipated.
On the other hand, he also observed the fact that even in the face of such “dumbing down”, people were crying out for quality information and the right to know what was going on.
For journalists, where they still have adequate resources, Anstey argued, this still meant never deviating from responsibilities to provide coverage that holds power to account for those audiences, and that reports the under-reported or overlooked; all because the bottom line for journalism remains an ability to achieve that level of credibility towards keeping a vital tradition alive.
“If practised properly, our profession is critical. We must stand together to protect our profession, to hear the voices and tell the stories of the world’s people,” Anstey said.
Stephen Olsen is the co-founder of Community Scoop and is part of the Scoop Foundation Project.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 New Zealand Licence.
Pacific Media Watch
