The Media's Obligations

The reactions to the International Media Forum varied. Pamela Bone, who represents The Age on the Press Council, saw it this way.

In January, The Times of India published an eight-page supplement praising the achievements of a Bombay politician, Bal Thackeray. Mr Thackeray is the leader of the Shiv Sena, or "God's Army" party, part of whose platform is to save India from immigrants and Muslims. A former journalist and cartoonist, Mr Thackeray has advocated direct action against Muslims, such as the burning of mosques. He has written a book in praise of Hitler.

Why is this of interest to us? Perhaps it is not. I merely present it, and the following, for your attention in the hope that it might be.

The story was told by Rajmohan Gandhi, a journalist, editor and the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, at an international media forum I attended in Sydney recently. Mr Gandhi said The Times of India had received eight million rupees for the supplement and that the decision to publish it had been made by the publisher, not the editor. "In India, we are seeing the demise of the editor," he said.

The subject under discussion was the media's handling of issues of race and conflict which, because the forum was dominated by Australians, turned into a long examination of the Australian media's handling of the Pauline Hanson phenomenon. Jack Herman, the executive secretary of the Australian Press Council, which was joint sponsor of the event along with the International Communications Forum, noted that Ms Hanson only became a media star when she was "taken up" by talk-back radio. He said the Council had received as many calls complaining that newspapers were not reporting Ms Hanson as it had complainant that she was being made a celebrity.

A survey some years ago found that 51 per cent of Australians were in favour of Asian immigration, compared to 83 per cent of journalists. There were similar findings on other social issues. Whether "the media" (and it is curious that some of those who attack the media for stereotyping don't mind lumping the media into one) are right or wrong seems to depend on whether you believe the media should reflect or shape public opinion.

Good News

Another discussion was on whether the media should concentrate more on what is right with the world instead of what is wrong with it. This was prompted by a talk given to a London conference by the BBC news presenter Martyn Lewis, who said 95 per cent of the BBC's news reports were negative. The media, he said, report the war but lose interest in the peace, report the problem but not the attempts to find solutions, "pander to that base human instinct which gives some people a vicarious pleasure in being voyeurs of disaster". News values are driven by the principle that the only news, the only manly news, is bad news.

Isn't there a truth in that? You could get a distorted view of human nature from reading the newspapers: babies being bashed by their parents, road rage, people killing and stealing and cheating. Yet the daily experiences of most of us are that out there, people are generally interacting with each other quite amicably, parents are looking after their children, most business people and even most politicians are honest, the sun is shining and everyone has plenty to eat.

The question is, do people want to read good news? Would you find interesting a story that said every aeroplane in Australia landed safely yesterday? Isn't it comforting that we can take it for granted that, if one didn't land safely, we would read about it? If news is bad news, no news must be good news. Whoever talks about not having a toothache or a bad back?

What the People Want

Richard Walsh, the chairman of Australian Consolidated Press International, said the assumption from Martyn Lewis' argument is that people want something different from what the media are providing. One of the virtues of capitalism, he said, was that it created the media people want. And out in the real world, people were happy with what they were getting.

A long time ago, Mr Walsh said, a man named Shakespeare realised that people liked conflict; a man named Chaucer discovered even earlier that people liked gossip. What Mr Lewis was complaining about was not the media but society. People who complained about violence in the media were really wishing that society did not like violence.

Who is right? I think they both are. The media do have a responsibility to create, as Rajmohan Gandhi said, a "conflict-solving atmosphere". According to Martyn Lewis, the Toronto Globe and Mail has told its journalists that when they cover problems they must look for answers too, and many people within journalism are coming to the same conclusion. I may be accused of bias, but I think The Age does a reasonable job of both these things, and does present a fair number of what might be called "positive" stories.

However, I am also a little suspicious of those who accuse the media for being negative. I agree with Richard Walsh, who said the dark side of tolerance was the acceptance of the status quo, and the most important thing the media could be was an irritant. Remember, it was the former Queensland Premier, Joh Bjelke-Petersen, who said how good it would be if we could get rid of the media so that everyone "could live in peace and tranquillity and no one would know anything".

I am not as confident as Richard Walsh that everyone is happy with what the media are giving them. And even if they were, and even if the saying that you can never go broke underestimating the taste of the public is true, and even if it sounds elitist, I believe the media have an obligation to raise people's sights, not lower them. "Why should the media be better than society as a whole?" a French journalist, Bernard Margueritte, asked the forum. Because it has the power it has, it should try.

PAMELA BONE

see also
Jack Herman's report on the forum

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