John Singleton with Bob HowardRip Van Australia (Stanmore: Cassell Australia, 1977), pp. 139-40, under the heading “Journalism”.

Feed pigs swill.
ANON.

Journalism, and newspapers in particular, provide an interesting example of the need for business people to concern themselves about long-term consequences. Newspapers and journalists today enjoy a very low reputation, because for too long they have sought to take short-cuts, and promote sales through distortions, exaggerations, sensationalism and half truths.

Few people today would be surprised when, after being tempted to buy an afternoon paper by a provocative display dodger, they find that the dodger statement was only ambiguously true and, in fact, deliberately misleading. It has happened so often that the sucker reader merely calls himself a fool for being caught yet again, and mentally relegates newspapers another notch lower in his estimation. And the same is true of advertising.

Once again, it is to a degree a vicious circle with journalists coming into regular contact with some of the worst aspects of humanity and thus eventually developing a very cynical outlook on people and social institutions. It is hard to think of any less inspiring task than being a journalist reporting politics or social events. Both areas show people as mean, conniving, evasive, dishonest, ambitious, greedy, power-hungry, snobbish, pretentious, rude, overbearing and pandering, none of which would foster a feeling of respect for his or her fellow man in any journalist, or anyone, for that matter. But just because others are that way, is no excuse for journalists to avoid the responsibility of maintaining their own personal standards. Once journalists (and/or their journals) take on the attitude that “people are shit” and begin to treat them accordingly, they sign their own long-term death warrant.

If private individuals and companies default on the responsibility of maintaining their own standards, then they provide the ammunition for those who seek to enforce standards upon them. So, when a political party or a government comes up with a scheme to regulate the Press, there is widespread public support for it because the general public believes that it’s about time someone moved to clean it up. This is the long-term backlash.

Furthermore, many journalists seem to be increasingly unable to appreciate the difference between objectivity and prejudice, and seem more interested in sensationalism than fair and accurate reporting. In this regard, in particular, the vicious circle becomes really vicious. Reporters are perpetually frustrated by the evasiveness and non-committal blurb dished out by politicians — but politicians do this because, quite often, they’ve been burned too often by reporters twisting, misinterpreting and sensationalising their comments.

We naturally believe that newspaper proprietors have the right to print what they like, however biased it might be. We do not believe in equal time or equal space rules being foisted upon anyone. We do not believe that anyone — especially journalists — can rightfully be forced to give all sides of a story. In other words, while many of us might disagree with what a newspaper says and how it says it, (and try and hope to convince them to say it differently) we should all in the last analysis, fight for the right of all individuals to say what they think as they please.

The only thing that anyone should be prosecuted for publishing is material that is fraudulent, and can be proven to be so. Of course, the question of intent has to be considered in this regard. Just as in the distinction between manslaughter and murder, from the point of views of the victim, the result is the same, therefore, restitution must be the same. But just as you yourself can insure to cover the possibility of manslaughter, so in newspaper reporting you can insure yourself against the possibility of accidental fraud, thus lifting from oneself the burden of paying the damages. But no insurance company would leave itself open to having to make a payout to cover murder or intentional fraud.

The Australian libel and slander laws as they presently exist should be repealed. We cannot (however unfortunately) claim to own our reputations, as they exist in the minds of other people. The only laws required are those that outlaw fraud. The present libel and slander laws encourage people to be non-discriminating about what they read. The attitude is: it must be true, otherwise he’d sue.

It has also been pointed out that our libel laws would have prevented an event such as Watergate from occurring in this country. But with no libel or slander laws, criticisms could be more readily made, and people would come to demand more in the way of documentation of claims, before they believed them. Newspapers might even be worth reading.