Political journalism

Political journalism has two main types. One sees the journalist as akin to a member of parliament, a representative of a Fourth Estate. Like members of the other estates, the journalist may have an office inside parliament, and like a backbencher, serves the constituency-the readers-and the wider Commonwealth. But well aware that this is not an elected position, the traditional journalist preserves a reasonable modesty: the role is to report the news as accurately, objectively, and honestly as possible. Journalists keep their own political opinions under control. They will be sceptical of authority but try to be fair. Their prose style also tends to be neutral-colourless and pedestrian but plain and clear.

This ideal of the Fourth Estate reporter never entirely conformed to the facts: the epistemology is shaky. A journalist does not simply observe, absorb, and report. We all see what we are looking for and any reporter will bring biases to the work. But good reporters also have a passion for facts regardless of bias. They try to find the facts and to pass them on to their readers-even to readers (perhaps a majority) who do not want facts but confirmation of their own biases.

The other main type is the opinionated journalist: a crusader or reformer, sometimes a muckraker, a critic of the opera-bouffe of parliament, a radio ‘shock jock’ or an opinion-page columnist. Opinionated journalists may see themselves as power-brokers. In its early years the Melbourne Age was known as ‘The Thunderer’ and its journalists as ‘gladiators’. Keith Murdoch was a Press Gallery reporter who turned kingmaker to help J. A. (‘Joe’) Lyons become prime minister. Other crusading editors of the past have included Brian Penton of the Daily Telegraph, Graham Perkin of the Age, Adrian Deamer of the Australian and Maxwell Newton of the Australian Financial Review. One famous journalist, the late Alan Reid, was said-usually by other journalists-to have spent more time advising politicians than reporting them. Contemporary columnists of wide influence include Paul Kelly of the Australian, Laurie Oakes of the Bulletin, and Michelle Grattan of the Age.

The opinionated journalist will be better known-and more admired or despised-than the often-anonymous news reporter, but in the great tradition of journalism takes second place to the reporter. In the famous aphorism of C. P. Scot, ‘Comment is free but facts are sacred.’ The conscientious gathering of the news is the primary office of a newspaper, Scott wrote: ‘At the peril of its soul it must see that the supply is not tainted’ (Manchester Guardian 6May 1926). In this spirit, the Country Press Association in New South Wales adopted the motto: ‘God, Country, Honour, Truth’.

The ideal of a Fourth Estate serving the public received a last confident expression in Australia-some said a swansong-in 1965 in the handbook published by the Australian Journalists’ Association, The Journalist's Craft, edited by Lindsay Revill and Colin Roderick. The chapter on political reporting (‘Political and Industrial Rounds’) described the political journalist as ‘the heart and soul of a newspaper’ who creates ‘the informed public opinion on which democracy is based’. Trained as an apprentice or cadet in all branches or rounds, especially municipal government, the political journalist despises ‘adolescent’ or malicious journalism, and honestly reports information that will help citizens assess the capacity of officials and politicians; reads widely; and is always discreet and trustworthy-albeit often frustrated. In the same handbook Rohan Rivett, the respected editor of the Adelaide News, noted that many successful journalists hesitated to put their sons into journalism. (Most political journalists were male-and still are.) They did not want them to experience the disenchantment that they had suffered.

Traditional journalism has always had its critics. One perennial complaint is that the journalist is radically ignorant of the real problems and dilemmas of government. Harry S. Truman, President of the USA (1945–53), summed up this view in a letter to a friend at the end of his presidency: ‘I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live and die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time.’ However overstated this perspective may be many politicians agree with it. Most journalists have a limited understanding of the economics, science, technology, sociology, or statistics at the core of government decision-making. They do not have the expertise of experienced public servants. They are too often taken by surprise by political developments.

Paul Hasluck, for many years a cabinet minister, shared Truman's view. Alan Reid wrote several painstakingly researched books on federal politics, but in The Chance of Politics (1997) Hasluck derided them as ‘unreliable, glittering, meretricious and second-hand’. He may have been settling a score with Reid, who had sometimes derided Hasluck, but his general view of journalists is characteristic of many politicians. It received a recent restatement from Mark Latham in his Latham Diaries (2005): Canberra journalists, he said, ‘wouldn't know diddly squat.’

Another perennial criticism is that journalists are ultimately servile to ‘the boss’. Most newspaper proprietors have at one or another time used journalists to advocate causes they deemed important. Warwick Fairfax engaged Maxwell Newton to write speeches for the Labor leader, Arthur Calwell, at the time of the 1961 election. Frank Packer engaged Alan Reid to undermine Prime Minister John Gorton and promote William McMahon in his place. Rupert Murdoch used his Australian newspapers to help bring down, in turn, the McMahon and the Whitlam governments. More recently he used them to support the Howard government's policy on the invasion of Iraq-although they also gave space to the anti-war view. Kerry Packer's media have supported Labor as well as Liberal governments, depending on the needs of his publishing, financial, gambling or other interests. No journalist will report, and no editor will publish, news or opinion that damages the proprietor's lobbying of the government of the day-for example for or against cross-media laws. Rudyard Kipling famously and contemptuously described the ‘media moguls’ and their journalists as exercising ‘power without responsibility-the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages’. But it is a prerogative inseparable from freedom of the press.

Despite these criticisms traditional journalists have persevered in their attempts to report the news as objectively as they could. But in recent decades several developments have weakened the old-fashioned ideal. One is the New Journalism that emerged in the 1960s-a reaction against the anonymous, drab, and often tabloid style that subordinated reporting to simplicity or easy clarity. The New Journalists openly injected their personality and leftist vision into their ‘stories’. The reporter with a by-line and unconcealed prejudices replaced the self-effacing reporter.

Another development has been the ‘investigative journalism’ that flourished throughout the English-speaking world following the publication in the US press in the early 1970s of ‘leaks’ of secret government information-especially the ‘Pentagon Papers’, which disclosed US government lies about the Vietnam War. Even more sensational was the investigation of a politically motivated burglary in the Watergate hotel complex in Washington DC. In one of the greatest coups in the history of journalism, the work of two junior police reporters on the Washington Post ultimately compelled the President of the USA to resign.

These US scandals seemed to elevate investigative journalism to the commanding heights. They strengthened the ambition of many Australian journalists to solicit and publish leaks of sensitive government documents of any kind-defence, budget, immigration-to expose and humiliate political leaders. If governments officially regard leaking as breaking the law, journalists often see it as ‘whistle-blowing’ and, at the very least, newsworthy. Judges regard a journalist's refusal to divulge the source of a leak as contempt of court.

Sometimes investigative journalism extends to the personal life or peccadilloes of public figures. Where this is mere populist prurience it is an obvious abuse of journalism. But when private passions influence the execution of public duties it is properly a matter of public concern.

Another development has been the emergence of academic ‘media studies’, giving new expression to the old doctrine of the journalist as an instrument of capitalist culture. These studies present journalists and their readers as robots whose conservative beliefs concerning women, homosexuals, race, work, and leisure are programmed by the structures in which they operate. But the same media studies, and the related cultural studies, go further and purport to help liberate the reporter from this indoctrination.

Where the Left had condemned traditional journalists as creatures of the conservative establishment, conservatives and social democrats now came to see them as insidious agents or ‘useful idiots’ of the Left. In 1971 a reporter in the Press Gallery shouted ‘You liar!’ at Prime Minister John Gorton, who was speaking in the House of Representatives-an almost unprecedented breach of the code governing the Press Gallery. The leader of the opposition, Arthur Calwell, called for the ‘animal’ to be dealt with. But the offender (Alan Ramsey) apologised to the prime minister, who let the matter drop. It remains a synecdoche of the era.

By 1973 there was an exodus of journalists into the service of the Whitlam government, and in the ensuing years a general enthusiasm in the Press Gallery for each new Labor party leader. According to critics of journalists-especially the conservative-a left, progressive bias has distorted much reporting and commentary, and is strongest among reporters from the ABC or the Fairfax Press. Consequently, Liberal and National party politicians prefer a ‘live’ interview to discussion with a press reporter who might distort their words. They also rely more heavily on advertising than reporting to get their messages accurately to the public. In election campaigns they keep the leader's itineraries and policies secret from ‘the boys in the bus’ until the last minute; otherwise, they are convinced, some journalists would quickly inform the Labor Party so that it would prepare a timely counter-blast.

More recently there has been a tentative ‘counter-revolution’. The rise of a new conservatism has influenced intellectual life including journalism. This was first apparent in the economic sphere, where the Left absorbed ideas of free market, free trade, and privatisation. But the new conservatism also produced many wide-ranging columnists who rejected the left-liberal bias of their colleagues. These commentators include Piers Akerman, Janet Albrechtsen, Andrew Bolt, and Miranda Devine.

Accompanying this development has been the emergence of independent magazines-now easier to publish using new and cheap printing technology-and Internet newsletters. Both are frequently critical of what they deem to be the bias or errors of the popular media. More influential still, especially among the political class, is the blogosphere. There are thousands of blogs in Australia and growing in number. Being dependent on the mainstream media for the news they do not employ large staffs of reporters, and are cheap to run. Many are expert and specialised, often able to expose what mainstream journalists conceal or do not know. The blogosphere claims to be a new watchdog of the public interest neglected by biased journalists. Tim Blair is one often-quoted conservative blogger.

Conservatives who recall the years of passionate, partisan, and unfair reporting are still rarely prepared to acknowledge the contribution political journalists make to public life. In his acceptance speech on receiving a Walkley Award in 1998 for leadership in journalism, the widely acclaimed Laurie Oakes spoke for most political journalists: ‘One of the reasons why we get bagged and why we rate 22 points below garbage collectors is that no one ever defends what we do. I am proud of what I do for a living. I get a buzz out of it. It's fun. But more to the point, I think it's valuable. I think it's worthwhile. I think it helps make our system work.’ This is as much a cri de coeur as a creed. It is a long way from the confidence of a Brian Penton or a Graham Perkin, or even of the Journalist's Craft authors. But even to ask why political journalism lacks defenders is a first step towards restoring public trust in it.