 In Martin Flanagan’s school memoir, ‘An Empty Honour Board’ he writes of journalism: “I did a law degree that taught me valuable lessons that benefited me as a journalist, the biggest being that if your work is being scrutinised by trained minds, you won’t get away with bullshit.”
Lately, it seems that not only is journalistic ‘work’ not being scrutinised (or even read) by minds remotely trained in any way, the minds of ‘journalists’ themselves – and anyone associated with much of our current media - seem not to be trained at all. Hence, bullshit reigns supreme! Take, for instance the prevalence of rubbish writing appearing on Sky news and other Murdoch productions. The other day, a Sky news broadcaster announced that a sporting team was going to “verse” another team. I have heard a noted ‘journalist’ twice recently say that a politician ‘should of’ made a different decision. Or perhaps it was ‘could of’. I think I was so stunned that I have now forgotten the ‘mis-spoken’ phrase, as she ignored the word, ‘have’! Minor errors or misspeak, you may think – and maybe you are correct in not worrying too much about these modern (wrong) usages of words. But there are far more serious consequences of broadcasting actually falsified stuff, A survey recently undertaken concerning the percentage of negative and false reports of info concerning The Voice to Parliament showed that somewhere around 80% of reports offered by Sky News was pushing a “NO” vote and much, if not all, of it was completely false. (“Sky News is regularly promoting anti-voice misinformation that is demonstrably false..”. - Malcolm Turnbull & Sharan Burrow, The Guardian 25.7.23). And yet this rubbish is provided by the Australian media, to the Australian public. Apparently, SKY News now has a channel devoted solely to The Voice ‘Debate’. (Hang on to your hats, anyone mad enough to seek it out!) Not everyone has the time to check the veracity of statements they read in newspapers or hear on television, so naysayers and mischief-makers are able to broadcast and brainwash the public in any way they wish. We deserve more scrutiny and honesty from our media and far less blatant bullshit and ignorant broadcasting. (Can’t see it happening). PS: Sorry about using the term ‘bullshit’, but cannot find another word that truly fits. AND…Just in: 50 individual claims by ‘NO’ advocates have been investigated and found to be false by the independent AAP Factcheck unit since May 2022.
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