Australia’s official media watchdog is failing to stem the daily flow of destructive falsehoods, as Alan Austin reports.
AUSTRALIA DESPERATELY needs a press monitor to end the falsification of “news” destroying its social cohesion, undermining its defence capability and keeping citizens poor and miserable.
Australia’s mainstream media lies routinely. The Australian Press Council (APC) is abjectly failing to alert consumers to this profound evil, let alone to stop it.
Failing to report the economy
Newspapers falsify the record of Australia’s rapidly recovering economy every day. Last month’s UBS Global Wealth Report showed Australia is now second in the world in median wealth, behind Luxembourg. That’s up from fourth under the Coalition.
With wealth having surged above Denmark’s, Australia is now the world’s only economy to have delivered consecutive surpluses, reduced debt to GDP twice and kept average wealth per adult above US$540,000 (AU$810,000).
Australia is also the only nation in budget surplus, with top credit ratings, inflation below 4%, and which achieved positive GDP growth every quarter last year and so far this year.
This is an extraordinary turnaround from the dismal Coalition years when Australia’s economy languished near the bottom of most OECD rankings. The contrast between failure under the Coalition and success under Labor is truly remarkable.
Yet Australians who consume the false media reports believe the opposite. Polls show 40% of voters currently believe the Coalition is the better economic manager, while just 24% favour Labor.
Recent mendacious headlines contributing to this profound deception include:
- ‘Government spending addiction adds to RBA recession risk’;
- ‘Construction output is falling — and tradies aren’t to blame’;
- ‘Workers told to expect lower nominal pay rises as economy cools’;
- ‘ASX valuations mask grim reality of a softening economy’;
- ‘Cost-of-living crunch hits supermarket sales, says mall owner Region’;
- ‘“We’ve lost a cylinder in a four-cylinder engine”: Insolvency help soars as economy struggles’; and
- ‘Voters swing to Dutton in new sign of angst over economy’.
All these contain blatantly false “news” aimed at conning voters into thinking today’s economy is poorly managed.
Indigenous affairs
The appalling falsification of the “information” provided on the Voice Referendum last year was described here by the founder of the Press Council and former CEO of The Age, Ranald Macdonald.
He concluded that:
‘As an academic, committed to the importance of public interest and informed journalism in a democracy, I would mark the vast majority of Australian journalists, columnists and particularly those who promulgated their skewed views as failing the test of accurately and fairly covering a crucial issue for this country.’
Defence capability
Refusing to cover defence procurement accurately is arguably an even more serious evil. The stark reality is that every Coalition government has failed at defence preparedness, from the F-111 fighter jets ordered by the Menzies Government in the 1960s which never flew a successful mission to former PM Scott Morrison’s welched submarine contract that cost five billion borrowed dollars for no benefit whatsoever.
Australia’s defence has always been secured by Labor, as evidenced by the Collins class submarines, the Super Hornet strike aircraft, the Black Hawk helicopters, the Hunter class frigates and other ordnance.
Constant media lies have succeeded in getting opinion polls to show the Coalition leading Labor on national security and defence. That delusion seriously endangers the nation.
Denigration of effective women
The Murdoch media, led by the rancid daily The Australian, has long conducted malicious campaigns to destroy the lives of prominent women. Among current targets are Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Victoria’s Premier Jacinta Allan and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris.
Recent headlines include:
- ‘Jacinta Allan running the “worst performing government” in the country’;
- ‘Jacinta Allan government “manipulating women” with “weaponised empathy”’;
- ‘“Desperately bankrupt”: Victoria’s Allan Government “picking on probate fees”’;
- ‘Lefties losing it: Tim Dillon calls out Kamala Harris as “hollow”’;
- ‘“Lefty loon”: Kamala Harris is “not a clear thinker”’;
- ‘“She has no achievements”: Kamala Harris hasn’t “done anything”’; and
- ‘Kamala Harris “bribing” influencers reeks of “desperation”’.
Multiple fields of systematic deception
Other critical topics on which the media routinely falsify content include immigration and refugees, climate change, energy policy, Coalition corruption and the defamation cases in the USA against Murdoch’s News Corp.
The watchdog Australia needs
An effective media monitor would issue a monthly list of the 25 or so articles found in the preceding four weeks most seriously in breach of journalistic principles. The above 14 articles should qualify. It would identify the publication, the journalist and the editor, and show how the principles were breached.
That list will remain on the public record and another batch of fresh entries will be added each month.
This enables consumers to see from the 300 or so breaches annually which journalists have been the most dishonest, which editors have failed most egregiously and which publications should be boycotted out of existence — as happened to Murdoch’s News of the World in Britain in 2011.
Australia’s media lapdog
The APC’s current output is nowhere near enough to justify its cost – now $1.77 million annually – and the responsibility the community entrusts to it. It is now mid-August and only five offending articles have been publicly outed this year.
None related to the economy, Indigenous affairs, defence or national security. One adverse adjudication was made against a Murdoch outlet that criticised a prominent Labor woman. This was headed ‘Wong under fire for latest grant to Hamas-infiltrated UN group’. The judgment found the facts of the story were wrong but made no comment about the reprehensible treatment of the Foreign Minister.
A new model is urgently needed.
Alan Austin is an Independent Australia columnist and freelance journalist. You can follow him on Twitter @alanaustin001.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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