Hallelujah! A lightbulb moment. Today The Politics will not be negative or carping or sarcastic. No backhanded snide comments in a pathetic attempt at “humour”. We will instead be constructive and engage in solutions-based journalism which presents a more positive take on the world, thereby offering you a more empowering experience.
(Damn it. The sarcasm is slipping back in already. Begone!)
The reason for our change of heart is that courtesy of the Nine mastheads’ Peter Hartcher, we have stumbled across an organisation known as the Constructive Institute, which is working on something it calls Journalism for Tomorrow. The institute is based in Denmark, the home of both LEGO and drug company Novo Nordisk, which makes Ozempic. (Novo Nordisk is a major backer of the institute but let’s not get all sceptical about that.) The place has that northern European feel: modern, elegant, progressive. One imagines everyone is thin, fit and reasonable. And if the wellness industry came to journalism, this would be the result.
It’s news to me
The constructive change requires journalists to metaphorically let go of their past. You will hear the phrase again and again: “I realised I was part of the problem.” This makes it sound like AA for news hacks, which it kind of is. You must first admit you have an addiction — in this case to producing news stories which are negative and/or based on conflict. This produces more conflict and anger and leads to the polarisation of the audience and, eventually, society. It also leads to news fatigue and news avoidance.
Broadcaster Stan Grant made the “I am part of the problem” declaration when he left the ABC. He also spoke of mainstream media “feeding hatred into the bloodstream of our society”. His next step was to join up with the Constructive Institute as director of its Asia-Pacific arm, a position he no longer holds.
One of the ABC’s most senior news executives, Gavin Fang, has also made the public declaration that he has been part of the problem. Fang has become something of an ambassador for change:
“Constructive news became a key pillar of the ABC news strategy going forward.”
News discussions now included a new question: “What is the constructive news or solutions-focused element or story that we could be chasing?” As an example, he cited the “very successful ongoing blog” during the ABC’s coverage of COVID “where we were answering and responding to audience questions in a constructive way”. Who knew that the Danish revolution had quietly infiltrated ABC News in its bid to be relevant?
The Nick of time
The Politics is not accustomed to thinking of “solutions-focused” strategies “going forward” in order to engage audiences in a positive way. Is it time we too declared that we are “part of the problem”? Maybe, maybe not. There’s not enough time in the day to say what’s wrong with the media. But if we had to cut to the chase it would go something like this.
It is still possible to do journalism which is accurate, balanced, probing, sceptical and revelatory. It happens in The New York TImes and can still happen in some ABC and Nine outlets (principally when the Nick McKenzie show gets going). But most places do not have the time nor money. The lack of money means the industry no longer attracts the best and brightest in the numbers it once did. In the search for money via advertising and clicks, the industry turns to conflict because conflict sells.
Given the reluctance of news consumers to pay for straight news, media organisations have promoted opinion (views not news) to differentiate themselves. But more often than not people want to read views which reinforce rather than challenge their views. This leads to the siloing of opinion and ultimately an intolerance of different views. Small publications are particularly vulnerable to people cancelling if they don’t agree with an editorial line.
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You can try to be “constructive” and “solutions-based” to engage audiences, but that’s only necessary because journalism is failing to function the way it was designed to. In that respect it feels like taking Ozempic as a response to the proliferation of junk food.
But let’s not slump back into cynical ways. Let’s give a solutions-based strategy a chance and engage readers at the same time. What better way to do that than to ask: what’s your view?
David,
Could not agree more.
There was a time, last century, when all that mattered in news reporting were facts. That now has given way to opinions first, with very few facts to back up an argument.
News reporting has lost out through the emergence of a plethora of online outlets, all engaging in clickbait presentation.
Sadly, this sentence encapsulates what ails the media, with the few exceptions you name:
“Given the reluctance of news consumers to pay for straight news, media organisations have promoted opinion (views not news) to differentiate themselves.”
You are right to say accurate, balanced, probing, sceptical and revelatory journalism is still possible.
Consumers then have to be savvy enough to know where this can be found and break the addiction to main stream media.
Disappointed you think that the NYT is an example of balance journalism. It has led the charge against Gender Affirming Care for children despite the overwhelming evidence and the support of the world’s foremost medical experts on the subject. The harm they (ave done has been immense.
I think you are mostly correct. Some of the articles are well balanced, but the relentless focus on the bad side of Trump can be felt as angst in many of the articles. This column today fails to mention the other critical factor in news outlets, made famous by Rupert and MSNBC. ‘Don’t only tell them what they want to hear, but don’t tell them what they don’t want to hear’. On biased outlets, readers/viewers are simply not told about key things that are happening, for example the vast majority of Fox news only viewers had no idea what was actually in the Big Beautiful (not) Bill
We could easily pay for good journalism by funding the abc and sbs properly and ensuring their independence. In fact, it would be a good investment. And get rid of the ads on sbs.
Like the term ‘quality journalism’, ‘solutions-based’ journalism is not necessarilty straightforward. When ‘quality’ is used as an adjective, it’s usually inferred that ‘excellent quality’ is meant. Thus, can a solution end up delivering a positive OR negative outcome? I have a subscription to The Australian (to balance my left-leaning news subscriptions and to keep an eye on what the right are thinking) – and to give my blood pressure the occasional spike. I would say that the Oz’s solution-based offerings from their ‘journalists’ are not the solutions that necessarily offer a way forward. Small nuclear reactors anyone?
Thanks for a very constructive opinion piece. I checked the link and watched the video. It’s good to see that the ABC and Monash University are involved. I’m more optimistic about the future of journalism and perhaps the world now.
As a former journalist (who worked under Donald Woods during the Apartheid era in South Africa), I find myself in a terminal, solution-free slump regarding the possibility of producing economically viable “good news, solutions-based” stories. Way back, when my (white) friends would tell me “yes, we know it’s true but we don’t want to hear about it” (oops, not a constructive, solutions-based thought) I realised that our society was broken then, is far more fractured now, and we get the media we deserve.
Sure, there are sections of society (regrettably in a serious minority) who prefer in-depth, constructive, if not actually solutions-based journalism (solutions usually involve some sort of sacrifice on the part of the reader, be it of financial or of status, and who of us really want that?) – but that doesn’t make it economically viable on a broad scale.
So each day, as I click through the severely-siloed news feed on my phone, I feel disgust at the fact I no longer look forward to my weekly (digital) edition of The Saturday Paper and its in-depth reflections on the state of our world. Especially when I realise that, like the rest of society, my attention span has been reduced to that of a gnat and “proper” journalism no longer has more appeal than a click-bait headline.
So perhaps the question should rather be: How do we find an economically sound, solutions-based strategy to change society?
“Constructive” and “solutions-based?”Sounds like another branch of “weasel ease.”, or Richard Marles pimping for America.Given the overwhelming amount of shit going on in the world, it’s hard not to be “negatively impacted”.Of course, most of us here in Oz take refuge in the footer, or retail therapy ,or some god awful TV garbage.
Thanks, but no thanks,I’d rather search for the truth, instead of some ‘feel good’ bullshit.
Of course if Trump was tragically killed in a golf cart rollover,that would brighten the day no end.
Thank you Harry, the psycho babble shits me to tears and I have no time for the womens weekly style garbage that now appears on the ABC.
I want my news to be truthful and balanced, and journalists to ask question when they are being fed lies.
And I do see some justice in the golf cart rollover. We could hear “journalists” endlessly repeating “he died doing what he loved”.
Who else remembers the song It’s Good News Week from the Vietnam War era? Satirical, sarcastic and featuring dropping bombs and the rotting dead.
The media has long embraced lifestyle vacuity, real estate and dodgy right wing opinion over news.
‘Constructive news’ sounds like more of the same – avoidance of reality but with more scope for advertising revenue, recipes and fashion tips.
It seems Scotland has missed a brilliant opportunity to do the world a service on Trump’s own golf course.
with you Harry
Right, Harry, though I’d prefer a full prime time telly report on the Orange Lump tripping head first from Air Force One to the tarmac.
One “imagines” everyone is thin, fit and reasonable? You could start by being informed and not trite, about places you are writing about.
For 20 months The ABC has virtually ignored the genocide in Gaza. The MSM just need s to tell the truth, the rest will follow.
As likely as a circus on the moon – to misquote Bruce Hornsby
As Alan Jones once didn’t say, “I’m not a journalist, I’m an influencer”.
Agree that journalism has become totally obsessed with negativity, and apocalypse addiction. Is it at all possible to just have the unadulterated news without being framed in opinions of journalists. However, I am concerned at the term ‘solution based journalism’ which hints at inclusion of bias just the same. News is news, we don’t need solutions as they are opinioned options. Can we be left to make up our own minds and develop our own opinions without wading through the morass of click-bait and opinions of others.! The Politics has become more frequently prone to sarcastic commentary which has prompted me to find it of less interest recently. A different approach would be refreshing.
The term ‘solutions based journalism’ sends chills up and down my spine. Isn’t that another name for propoganda? Providing solutions is not the role of journalist / media. All they have to do is report the facts, the good old, where, what,when. We are not interested in some media outlets version of events , predictions and analysis.
Hopefully we are raising our children to be able to identify fact from fiction. It is as essential as teaching them to read
This has been the problem for media always and ever increasingly more so. But while great in theory journalism without bias doesn’t really work in reality. Every journalist and person in general on hearing a fact is going to have an ingrained feeling of what that means and how it should be presented.
You can try to remedy this to appear neutral by posting “both sides of the story” but that in itself is biased for while there will always be contested facts and ideas it is not usually the case that you could consider that to be of an equal 50/50 split.
Sure a news organisation can interview equal people with opposing views on an issue on their broadcast or write an article where you include quotes from opposing sides doing the same but then you are giving equal weight to two opinions that a probably not equally valid and are therefore being biased to the one that is less so.
The media particularly in Australia has already learnt this the hard way from the climate change denialists during the climate wars (if they would ever end) and pretty much the whole world during Trump and MAGA’s original rise in politics (which I can only hope upon hope doesn’t become as endless as the climate wars).
Are there criteria for joining this Institute? Does one have to be a journalist? If so, how come they admitted Hartcher who is a propagandist rather than an evaluative writer, see his role in The Stalking of Julia Gillard
Hartcher was the final straw that led to me cancelling my subscription to The Age. He’s a dreadful ‘journalist’. His hawkish stance on China lacks all objectivity and for many years he seems to be a purveyor of hate and judgemental rhetoric. If he’s signed up to this ‘institute’, I’ll be heading elsewhere. Thank you.
Australia needs something along the lines of the fairness doctrine (as abolished by Reagan in the US paving the way for Faux News). Perhaps we also need a ‘league table’ of media outlets, and perhaps a ‘league table’ for journalists. We also need an independently funded regulator, not the pissweak organisation we have now. There also need to be fines for transgressions. This should all be part of a Royal Commission into the media.
Journalism has been outsourced to the blogosphere.
Collation of day to day news is all the MSM has left.
Individual opinionating takes us back to the place it all began.
As a consumer much of the ‘news’ and the ‘views’ makes my blood boil, but I often find something of interest or a point I hadn’t thought of or heard of before, I remember that when I’m next reading or opining on some topic. Try to learn something new and different every day. Read widely, remain inquisitive and sceptical, but learn and accept new information when you recognise it.
1. Turn off social media and start/resume thinking for ourselves.
2. Identify the little information purveyed in modern so-called news.
3. Stop looking for someone else to blame…consumers of news and those who report it
If journalists are addicted to producing clickbait, it’s clear that most of us are addicted to whatever ‘hits’ we get from reading the stream of guff, garbage, gossip, opinion, falsehoods framed in shock-horror terms, even if we’re cynical about it & splutter indignantly & possibly move on to our trusted sites where we can get sound context & background for factual reports, plus solid long-form analysis. We readers/viewers also need to break those habits (not easy when the shock-horror headlines are fed to us insidiously with “based on your choices you might like to read these” slotted in at the end. That’s usually wrong in my case, & I mutter “anyway mate, it’s MAY not MIGHT, bad syntax is a real turnoff.”)
Everyone, though, must remember why so many journos/reporters/presenters behave this way: the owners, managers, bosses give the orders, set the ‘standards’ & the style, rewarding & punishing as they see fit. We have to engage with that reality in ways that go beyond hoping Rupert pops his clogs soon & that it will make a diference.
It’s hardly fair to criticise some journalists for their limited grasp of good grammar, syntax etc. Grammar appears to have all but disappeared from classrooms in Australia. That aside, we all have choices about what news and current affairs we access. What I resent very strongly is the type of opinionated presentation of current news items that can be accessed on Sky News. Putting it simply, it’s pathetic and embarrassing that our television can serve up this codswallop as real news (I’m being generous here). ABC’s The Drum gave, not news but a good cross section of views on important issues. However it fell by the way as did Q&A. At least these shows gave viewers food for thought and an occasional spirited conversation. News coverage of Trump’s behaviour is alarming in its lack of attention to real scrutiny as his descent into dementia continues. It seems that the best way to understand Trump is to watch YouTube!
I used to get something out of journalism every day.
Now it just sh!ts and don’t watch ABC’s 7pm news every night.
Interesting discussion David, and whilst not a media trained person, it seems to me that most Journalists forget the lessons of Marshall McLuhan – the medium is the message!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9fKhsZuKO4&ab_channel=mywebcowtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdQPaPBTC7U&ab_channel=mywebcowtube
Denmark and Australia are great places to live and if you havent travelled there are so many miserable countries I feel sad for so many of us who reside in the dark side Australia is a happy place and a place to bring up kids to know and love this country before setting off on their journey around the planet