Debate underpins good democracy

“HOW has journalism changed during your career?” was the topic I was invited to speak on recently, ending my three-year retirement from public speaking.

My journalism career started as a 19-year-old back in 1958.

I left the Geelong Junior Tech, at the age of 15 and started work as a fitting and turning apprentice, but only lasted three months, then spent nine months invoice clerking and three years as a trainee industrial chemist.

I was in national service, when I remembered my sixth grade teacher’s advice to me at Swanston Street State School: “Young Daryl, you’ve got a way with words. You should go to Geelong High, they’ll nurture that.”

Dad, however, saw a trade as security and off I went to Geelong Junior Tech.

But soon after Nasho I took on a correspondence course in journalism and some months later became a cadet journo at the

Addy. It was a different world back then, pretty simple, compared to today.

Anyway, soon after joining the Geelong Advertiser, the chief subeditor called me to his desk, where he had in front of him the copy of a story I had typed. There was a red mark through a word.

“That’s an adjective,” he said. “You don’t have adjectives in news stories unless you are quoting someone. You report fairly and accurately, and let readers make up their own minds. No interpretation or comment … that’s for the Opinion page, not for the news pages.

“And if someone criticises someone, you get a response from the person criticised and then we’ll run the story.”

Pretty simple stuff, wasn’t it? And a bit different to today, especially at state and national level and with television, radio and now social media news, where interpretation and comment seems to have replaced reporting and public debate.

Back in 1963, when I became a reporter on The Scotsman, Scotland’s national newspaper, in Edinburgh, the old principles still applied and also on the ABC when I was a casual reporter there for a few months on my return to Australia several years later.

When I lectured in journalism at The Gordon Institute and later Deakin University, in the 1970s, we continued to advocate the principles we had been brought up with by our editors and sub-editors.

I reckon change started to slip in during the late 1980s and ’90s and the past two decades have seen interpretation and comment – some might even call some of it propaganda – replace the traditional “straight reporting” of my era.

Regional daily newspapers and local weeklies still seem, in many instances, to report rather than interpret the news, but I think a lot of the “new journalism” is now taught in journalism schools at our universities.

Is it right or wrong?

Times change and, while I have my opinions, I was brought up in a different era.

In short, as some younger people politely remind me, I am “yesterday’s man”.

But they don’t tell me to shut up and keep my views to myself as some of our more aggressive television and radio commentators seem to enjoy doing to those they disagree with.

I think the media in a democracy exists to encourage debate and then, through editorials and opinion articles, allow others to express their opinions.

It saddens me that our taxpayer-funded ABC does not do this, but pushes a left-wing agenda.

On the other hand, our Addy, at local level has columnists such as Ross Mueller, Graeme Vincent, Peter Judd, Noel Murphy, Karen Matthews, Keith Fagg, Rachel Schutze and myself – and others from time-to-time – coming at issues from different perspectives.

None of us is perfect. We all make mistakes, but readers do get to see that most issues of the day can be seen in different ways and quite legitimately.

Debate is what underpins democracy.

So let’s all work together to ensure that democracy remains strong by making sure that those trying to close down debate on the major issues confronting us are unable to do so.

The more debate the better and, hopefully, the more informed the final decisions are on issues because of this.

LET’S ALL WORK TOGETHER TO ENSURE THAT DEMOCRACY REMAINS STRONG BY MAKING SURE THAT THOSE TRYING TO CLOSE DOWN DEBATE ON THE MAJOR ISSUES CONFRONTING US ARE UNABLE TO DO SO.