Ben Espiner: First we tweak democracy - now we tweak journalism

That’s convenient, isn’t it? The pre-existing rules around fairness and balance in journalism that have worked for decades are suddenly in need of some tweaking, right as Stuff’s ‘Fire and Fury’ documentary is due to come before the Media Council for voiding its bowels all over a group of very disillusioned Kiwis and not bothering to speak to them.

Our very own Doctor of Journalism, Greg Treadwell, took leave of his senses this week for just long enough to publish an astonishing piece of writing in Newsroom, which lent itself almost entirely to being a literary back massage for Paula Penfold and her propaganda riddled documentary.

Dr Treadwell wraps his fingers tightly around his professorial pearls and clutches hard right until the very last word in this column. He cries repeatedly that ‘purveyors of disinformation’ mustn’t be allowed to ‘cast themselves even further as victims of the mainstream media’ lest the door be left ajar for ‘proto-fascist movements seeking to pollute our public sphere and wound our democracy’.

That, according to Treadwell, is reason enough for presenting a ludicrously one-sided account of one the biggest stories in the country and leaving its subjects out of the conversation entirely.

He goes on to say a Media Council ruling that a piece of journalism must be fair and balanced would be ‘unthinkable - despite any immediate logic to it’.

I would just take a moment here to remind the reader that this individual is the head of journalism school at AUT.

Perhaps the most tantalising nugget of irony in this whole misguided affair is that he goes on to condemn ‘disinformation merchants’ - presumably referring to the subjects of the documentary - for ‘using falsehoods to increase fear and misunderstanding’ for their own social and political purposes. Now that sounds familiar…

I could be barking up the wrong tree here, Greg, but I would cautiously suggest that implying that journalistic balance could lead to fascism is a prime example of tweaking reality to stir up fear for your own editorial gain. That’s what you’re not getting. That’s what people are tired of - the hypocrisy.

I think the reason it’s so unthinkable for the Media Council to rule that ‘Fire and Fury’ was unfair is because journalists aren’t so used to scrutiny. Hate messages and trolls – sure. Just not professional scrutiny. They much prefer being the purveyors of that.

That’s why suddenly, according to one of our top journalism academics, holding journalists like Penfold accountable for their content and its potential bias is analogous to fascist apologisim.

If I seem overly close to this story, it’s because I was only an email or two away from becoming a student of journalism myself.

Desperate to get a foot in the media’s creaking door, I met with a number of employers after graduating university – all of whom made it clear they wouldn’t give me a second look without a year of grooming from the academic gatekeepers of the industry.

It was the fear of being subjected to more of an ideological indoctrination than a degree that led me to try and make it work on my own.

I think we should be concerned about what our young journalists are learning about their role in a democracy from people like Treadwell. People who are supposed to be raising our next generation of reporters, yet appear increasingly to be abandoning their duty to convey the principles of balance and fairness in favour of drilling fear into their students over the entirely imagined danger of ‘platforming’ views they don’t like.

The fact that it’s near impossible to get a start in the media without a year of listening to academics bang on about ‘misinformation’ does not bode well for the future of journalistic story telling.

To Treadwell’s credit, he’s very dedicated to his philosophy. Like a true modern journalist, he writes an article that makes sweeping generalisations about a number of New Zealanders exercising their right to protest, advocates for historic changes to the ethos of a democratically essential practice, and when approached by The Platform for a conversation about his ideas, says ‘no’ and suggests we ‘have a think about why people don’t want to come on the show’.

Come on and tell us why Greg, cause I’m stumped.

Ben Espiner produces the breakfast show on The Platform. He has a BA in Political Science and English Literature from Victoria University of Wellington. This article was originally published by ThePlatform.kiwi and is published here with kind permission.