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[00:00:32] Oh I think they can be a great force for good, still and do a lot of things I think.
[00:00:40] They've just got to change their business model and that's what we're about.
[00:00:43] We're thinking about that very hard and in fact working on it and going forward.
[00:00:50] The advertising is going to decline and it is, it has declined.
[00:00:54] A lot of it like small lads I don't think will come back.
[00:01:00] We have to look to our readers to pay us more so we have to get the better products,
[00:01:06] we have to have digital versions which we charge for properly.
[00:01:11] This is the Debunking Economics podcast with Steve Keen and Phil Dobbie.
[00:01:17] Well that was Rupert Merdoc giving a rare interview but it was to the Wall Street Journal which he owns
[00:01:22] and it was over 10 years ago talking about how there's less advertising
[00:01:26] and more subscriptions was the way forward for the media.
[00:01:29] What he probably wasn't reckoning on was a decade dominated by social media
[00:01:34] and less consumption of news generally.
[00:01:36] So is there a future for journalism or is it market failure
[00:01:41] and is there a market failure argument that says government needs to do more
[00:01:45] and get more involved or does that make things worse?
[00:01:48] That's this week on the Debunking Economics podcast.
[00:01:51] I had no idea that media economics is a thing.
[00:02:02] You can even take a degree in it and there's a journal of media economics
[00:02:06] which has been around since 1988 so let's take all those decades of that good work
[00:02:12] and get that three years of undergraduate study and condense it into a 30 or maybe 40 minute podcast
[00:02:17] under the headline banner of what future is there for a media industry.
[00:02:22] I mean I'm a media guy, Steve's an economist so we can do a bit of media economics surely
[00:02:26] because here's the thing whether you agree with the sun or not
[00:02:29] and obviously it is a bit of a trashy paper
[00:02:32] but three and a half million people used to buy a copy of it every week in the year 2000.
[00:02:37] In 2020 that was 1.2 million.
[00:02:41] In the same year the Guardian has a circulation of just 132,000.
[00:02:45] In 2000 it was over 400,000 so we're seeing this massive fall.
[00:02:50] Three quarters of the entire circulation of these newspapers is falling
[00:02:55] sometimes as much as 90% has dropped away and that direction is still heading down
[00:02:59] so try buying a paper at all in the United States.
[00:03:03] In fact the combined average daily print circulation of the 25 biggest dailies in the US
[00:03:09] was 2.6 million in 2023 so that is one in every 120 people in the country
[00:03:16] buying a newspaper and those circulation numbers were 14% down in one year
[00:03:21] so yes newspapers are a dead duck.
[00:03:26] The biggest earners are the news organizations on TV like Comcast
[00:03:31] which owns MSNBC and CNBC and Sky News in the UK
[00:03:36] which has a market cap of 186 billion.
[00:03:39] Reuters with a 58 billion market cap that's all a news corp well down the list
[00:03:45] this is just the newspaper and TV part of the whole news organization
[00:03:51] not the movies and all that sort of stuff.
[00:03:53] News Corp well down the list with a market cap of 12 billion.
[00:03:57] They all compare to Netflix with a market cap of 247 billion
[00:04:02] without the expense of creating all that throwaway daily news.
[00:04:07] I mean they make something against to gain the catalog.
[00:04:10] So you look at all of that Steve and you go how can anyone ever expect to make money out of news?
[00:04:15] Yeah and I mean there was a totally different world when you and I were young men
[00:04:19] because I mean for example just a simple physical illustration again
[00:04:23] of that being a Sydney side or I read The City Morning Herald
[00:04:26] and when it came on a Saturday I think there were about
[00:04:31] either four or six folios of it.
[00:04:34] We're talking a broad sheet newspaper so you could basically wall paper your house
[00:04:39] with each weekly edition of The City Morning Herald
[00:04:42] and even the weekday was massively thick probably
[00:04:46] I'm only guessing how many pages it might be
[00:04:49] but it would not have been unusual to be up to 100 pages
[00:04:52] and now I doubt that it would crack 30 as a physical paper.
[00:04:55] So there's been a huge decline in the revenue
[00:04:58] and the quality of course of media journalism as a result.
[00:05:04] Yeah well there was a show on because of course it's all moving online
[00:05:08] but even there it's struggling because of the fighting for the advertising dollar
[00:05:12] and the advertising dollar is going to social media
[00:05:15] because you know there's just so many more hits
[00:05:18] and then the BBC has been cut to oblivion as well in the UK
[00:05:22] so there's a show I've just watched called Scoop which is about Newsnight
[00:05:26] and how it managed to get Prince Andrew to agree to be interviewed
[00:05:30] about his friendship with Epstein.
[00:05:32] This was the big gotcha interview that basically where he came up
[00:05:36] with all sorts of crazy stuff like saying
[00:05:38] well it can't have been me because I was at a pizza restaurant that date
[00:05:41] and I don't think the date had even been mentioned at that stage
[00:05:43] and this girl who was saying he was sweating on the dance floor
[00:05:46] saying well it can't be me because I don't sweat
[00:05:48] I've got this special disease that means
[00:05:50] frankly it was just embarrassing
[00:05:53] and it basically showed that someone who is in line for the throne
[00:05:59] okay a long way down the line for the throne
[00:06:01] but one of the Queen's children was hanging around with pedophiles
[00:06:07] or a pedophile and it was a revelation
[00:06:11] and so this show called Scoop is a Netflix show
[00:06:15] actually ironically about how Newsnight lined all of that up
[00:06:19] now Netflix you know did a good job of that
[00:06:23] Newsnight obviously did the great job of that interview
[00:06:28] and but you know it won't happen again
[00:06:31] no more Scoops because Newsnight which has been running for 44 years
[00:06:35] is being canned by the BBC because they can't afford to do it anymore
[00:06:39] It's been a tragedy all the way through
[00:06:41] as it happened back in my...
[00:06:43] let's go back to say when you would regard the internet
[00:06:46] as actually starting which is sort of around the night in 90 points
[00:06:51] so 30 something 35 years ago
[00:06:53] you started getting the very beginning of online advertising
[00:06:56] and the thing that kept newspapers alive
[00:06:58] these are called the term was the rivers of gold
[00:07:01] and that was the classified news advertisements
[00:07:03] so forget about the actual part you decide to read
[00:07:08] for politics and science and anything else you're interested in
[00:07:13] it was all the ads of people selling their second hand television set
[00:07:18] that actually kept the money ticking through
[00:07:20] and of course particularly wheel of state ads
[00:07:22] so with the rivers of gold what you had was an absolutely
[00:07:26] compared to today absolutely brilliant resource
[00:07:29] news service sitting above it
[00:07:31] so way way back in 90...
[00:07:33] I've got to remember the actual dates
[00:07:35] from my past but in about...
[00:07:38] would it be in the 1970...
[00:07:41] 1977 to 1980 I went to a series of workshops
[00:07:45] for journalists on foreign news coverage
[00:07:47] and the concept that I was working for
[00:07:49] an overseas aid organisation called Freedom from Hunger
[00:07:52] and we had a library which is called
[00:07:54] the Ideas Centre very woke term
[00:07:56] and the concept behind the seminars was to have
[00:07:59] journalists from different countries
[00:08:01] read what was written about their country
[00:08:04] by journalists in the other country
[00:08:06] so we did a comparative study first of all
[00:08:08] of how the collapse of India's then
[00:08:11] Janata party occurred and Indira Gandhi came back
[00:08:14] after everybody had written her off
[00:08:15] and won the election after the Janata
[00:08:17] which means People's Party once more
[00:08:19] and then I followed that up with taking
[00:08:21] a group of Australian journalists to China
[00:08:24] for the first ever conference that Chinese journalists
[00:08:26] had with journalists from any other country
[00:08:28] and what I did was this is with the backing
[00:08:31] of the Australia-China Council
[00:08:33] I...with the help of a...
[00:08:37] an ex-school student of mine who is now
[00:08:39] a professor of media studies of all things
[00:08:42] in Melbourne, I went through every newspaper
[00:08:46] in the country and cut out and then
[00:08:49] classified every article on China over one year
[00:08:52] that generated a six volume set
[00:08:55] where the...which were...I'd say
[00:08:58] the number of pages of paper that was of
[00:09:01] Australia's coverage of China in one year
[00:09:04] was something like two or three thousand
[00:09:06] pages of paper and...and yeah it was huge
[00:09:10] and you know...and we then broke it down
[00:09:13] to six pages of the topic so economics, politics,
[00:09:15] agriculture was in there as a topic as well
[00:09:18] I've forgotten the other two foreign affairs
[00:09:21] whatever and we then met around
[00:09:24] a conference room in Beijing
[00:09:27] and went through Australia's coverage on those six topics
[00:09:30] of China and China's coverage of Australia on those
[00:09:33] six topics as well in its nascent news media
[00:09:36] now just a reason for that long ramble is that
[00:09:40] to build the actual database of news coverage
[00:09:44] I had to go to Sydney Morning Herald, The Age,
[00:09:47] The Australian, all the leading newspapers in Australia
[00:09:50] and get their clipping files and photocopy
[00:09:53] the clipping files and put those together
[00:09:55] and there was an entire...in each...each...
[00:09:58] each newspaper there was a library
[00:10:01] which would keep track of all the newspaper articles
[00:10:03] classify them and so on quite a substantial library
[00:10:06] and stuff and then leading parts
[00:10:10] of the newspaper would have their own research team
[00:10:12] so this is what used to be news
[00:10:14] and when the internet came along
[00:10:16] we'll talk about, you know, as we go through the show
[00:10:18] all that was cut because the rivers of gold
[00:10:21] were cut off, the advertising went online
[00:10:24] and the media organisation never worked out a way to fight that
[00:10:27] and have just plunged in readership
[00:10:29] and equally plunged in the quality of the research they can do
[00:10:32] Yeah, exactly. And it's been a long time...
[00:10:35] you know, it's shifting what has been a long time presence
[00:10:38] so The Times for example is 239 years old
[00:10:42] I think when it started its classified ads were on the front page
[00:10:46] Yeah, you'll look back at old newspapers
[00:10:48] and you'll see that there are ads
[00:10:50] and this is what... we had a great Australian media
[00:10:54] journalist called Humphrey McQueen
[00:10:57] Have you heard of him?
[00:10:58] No
[00:10:59] Okay, fantastically colourful character
[00:11:01] we hadn't given a lecture at Western Sydney
[00:11:04] it was back in the early 90s when I was there
[00:11:06] late 90s
[00:11:08] and Humphrey said that if you sit back
[00:11:10] after a day of reading the newspaper
[00:11:12] and watching the TV, you feel tired
[00:11:15] it's because you've been working
[00:11:17] you are the product
[00:11:19] isn't that you bought the TV or you bought the newspaper
[00:11:23] the newspaper was selling you to advertisers
[00:11:26] and that was the whole focus
[00:11:28] and of course the advertising
[00:11:30] was what kept the newspaper alive
[00:11:32] and when the internet came along
[00:11:35] the thing which was obvious to me at the time
[00:11:37] because I was actually working in computing at the same time
[00:11:40] is they had to work out a system of micro payments
[00:11:42] because you would fork out...
[00:11:44] in today's terms you would pay
[00:11:47] $2.50 or $3 a day
[00:11:49] for your newspaper coverage
[00:11:51] and then what would you continue doing that
[00:11:54] if you could actually access for free
[00:11:56] the content of some newspapers overseas
[00:11:58] for your foreign news coverage and so on
[00:12:00] and no, you would not
[00:12:02] so they started losing both readership
[00:12:05] and revenue from classified ads
[00:12:08] and that was the death knell of decent journalism
[00:12:11] Yeah, well I mean it has to go to the subscription model doesn't it
[00:12:14] and some newspapers are doing better than others at that
[00:12:17] but yeah, I think your point about the idea of micro payments
[00:12:21] is what if I don't want to subscribe to The Times
[00:12:23] but they have an interesting article that I want to reach
[00:12:25] and I'd just be able to pay to read that one article
[00:12:28] and I guess they'd say well yeah
[00:12:31] no, but we want you to pay for that one article
[00:12:34] and then subscribe to us
[00:12:35] and then forget you've got that subscription
[00:12:37] so we can keep on pulling and pulling
[00:12:39] because that's the way it works isn't it
[00:12:40] you subscribe to these things
[00:12:42] and then you lose track of what you subscribe to
[00:12:44] and that's how they make their money
[00:12:46] Yeah, I subscribe for quite some time
[00:12:48] the sitting morning here
[00:12:49] all the New York Times and The Guardian
[00:12:51] and I didn't simply describe to The Guardian
[00:12:53] because they had an open system
[00:12:55] I got annoyed at it
[00:12:57] and I was thinking I had to economize at some point
[00:13:00] financial difficulties struck
[00:13:02] and I stopped paying for The Guardian
[00:13:04] and with what you had as the open system
[00:13:06] was relying upon trust
[00:13:08] which is not a particularly
[00:13:10] strong product these days
[00:13:12] So you chose to abuse that trust
[00:13:14] I chose to abuse that trust, yeah
[00:13:16] but the New York Times and The Sitting Morning Herald
[00:13:20] they continued paying because I wanted access
[00:13:22] partly was actually having a war with Paul Krugman
[00:13:24] so I needed about to maintain access to his blogs
[00:13:27] and that's good
[00:13:28] they charge five bucks a month for that
[00:13:30] and it's much the same for The Sitting Morning Herald
[00:13:32] but if you go to read some
[00:13:34] like for example The Washington Post
[00:13:36] you'll see something put up on Twitter
[00:13:37] and you want to read the article
[00:13:38] on The Washington Post and bang
[00:13:40] you've got to subscribe for the paywall
[00:13:42] Now I ages ago subscribed to a service
[00:13:44] called INKL
[00:13:46] and that's a news aggregation service
[00:13:48] and that was the very the closest I ever saw
[00:13:50] to them getting the micro payments worked out
[00:13:52] and what they should have done is you'd
[00:13:54] subscribe to some
[00:13:56] and this is where a certain level of monopolization
[00:13:58] is vital
[00:14:00] you would subscribe to a service called
[00:14:02] I wouldn't use the word news because that's associated
[00:14:04] with Rupert Murdoch
[00:14:06] can I put a little joke in here
[00:14:08] at the moment? Yeah if you want
[00:14:10] I thought they were crying out for humor on this podcast
[00:14:12] They are indeed, it's pretty dull really
[00:14:14] anyway Murdoch
[00:14:16] of course has always been an absolutely responsible
[00:14:18] and trustworthy source
[00:14:20] that nobody ever criticizes
[00:14:22] so the asshole was involved
[00:14:24] in some struggle with the journalists
[00:14:26] and they were trying to come up with
[00:14:28] the left progressive parties
[00:14:30] were trying to come up with a slogan against
[00:14:32] and Mike came up with a slogan
[00:14:34] which is
[00:14:36] what was it again? Murdoch is bad news
[00:14:38] so that was fun
[00:14:40] but
[00:14:42] there were political struggles inside the newspapers as well
[00:14:44] so the management wanted to get
[00:14:46] to minimize the cost of the journalist and maximize
[00:14:48] the revenue
[00:14:50] they were focused on all that stuff
[00:14:52] and they completely less slipped the idea of building up
[00:14:54] a micro payment system
[00:14:56] but if you had to subscribe to some
[00:14:58] generic service
[00:15:00] which I'd call INFO
[00:15:02] so what you're talking about is like a Spotify
[00:15:06] for news isn't it really?
[00:15:08] Yeah you subscribe to INFO
[00:15:10] and then let me say
[00:15:12] you put in $30 a day
[00:15:14] which would be a reasonable rate
[00:15:16] and then you might read 13 articles
[00:15:18] from the New York Times
[00:15:20] 27 from the Times of London
[00:15:22] 45 from the City Morning Hurl
[00:15:24] blah blah blah
[00:15:26] and then they would cut up that would then change what your $30 went to
[00:15:28] that to me was a simple system
[00:15:30] nobody ever did it
[00:15:32] so INFO came along and they provide aggregation
[00:15:34] of some of the news sources
[00:15:36] I'm paying $15 a month
[00:15:38] I think it was what I used to pay
[00:15:40] something of that scale for INFO as well
[00:15:42] but what it means is that such a fragmented system
[00:15:44] you've got all these feats you can't break into
[00:15:46] and consequently the quality
[00:15:48] of journalism has plunged
[00:15:50] Yeah but you see I think the reason why that's not happened
[00:15:52] is because
[00:15:54] the newspapers would say
[00:15:56] well we are a brand
[00:15:58] we are the news
[00:16:00] we want people to subscribe and take our whole experience
[00:16:02] just as you used to buy
[00:16:04] a copy of whatever newspaper you buy at the weekend
[00:16:06] we want that experience replicated
[00:16:08] online so we don't want to water that down
[00:16:10] we want you to pay for
[00:16:12] all of our articles
[00:16:14] if you don't read them all that's your problem
[00:16:16] but we'd rather you're stuck with us
[00:16:18] rather than just dipping in for one or two stories
[00:16:20] I mean so it's all about
[00:16:22] share of wallet
[00:16:24] they want to get the maximum amount of you that they can
[00:16:26] have that
[00:16:28] disaggregated by
[00:16:30] having to pay
[00:16:32] or losing money to you
[00:16:34] paying to see some other stories
[00:16:36] in their competition
[00:16:38] But that was the problem
[00:16:40] They're brand rivalry
[00:16:42] which was fierce as you'd know from those days
[00:16:44] of journalism I'll give you some
[00:16:46] anecdotes of my experience of that
[00:16:48] but that was fierce competition
[00:16:50] over getting a story the whole idea of a scoop
[00:16:52] you mentioned earlier
[00:16:54] that was the dream
[00:16:56] of an academic is to get
[00:16:58] some new research result nobody has had before
[00:17:00] and you know approve some new theorem
[00:17:02] or eliminate some old belief
[00:17:04] and so on the dream of a journalist
[00:17:06] was to get that story first
[00:17:08] and that rivalry between different
[00:17:10] newspapers was huge so what would happen
[00:17:12] in the morning and every newspaper
[00:17:14] on the planet pretty much
[00:17:16] what are called the sub editors would get all
[00:17:18] the various newspapers together
[00:17:20] that particular day
[00:17:22] and look through the news stories
[00:17:24] and if there was a story which another newspaper
[00:17:26] got which you didn't got there was hell to
[00:17:28] pay why didn't we get that story
[00:17:30] and you'd be looking for your angle
[00:17:32] to follow it and steal the story back
[00:17:34] but the problem is
[00:17:36] the scoop these days
[00:17:38] is that
[00:17:40] you can spend a lot of money trying to
[00:17:42] get that scoop
[00:17:44] but the audience
[00:17:46] will follow you on social media probably
[00:17:48] increasingly and that scoop
[00:17:50] either shared or reshared
[00:17:52] often out of context
[00:17:54] by people or by organizations
[00:17:56] who made no effort
[00:17:58] to secure that scoop so that is the
[00:18:00] problem isn't it that's the real
[00:18:02] danger that the people are making money
[00:18:04] and the people are the
[00:18:06] Facebooks of the world the metters of the world
[00:18:08] who are allowing the
[00:18:10] resharing of stories which are seen
[00:18:12] in the context of ads
[00:18:14] that they are reaping the revenue from
[00:18:16] and the publishers on getting anything for it
[00:18:18] and that is the real problem
[00:18:20] people under 24
[00:18:22] numerous surveys now
[00:18:24] showing where do they get their news from
[00:18:26] they get it from social media
[00:18:28] they don't even bother going to
[00:18:30] the websites of
[00:18:32] the mainstream media
[00:18:34] I'm slightly over the age group
[00:18:36] but that's the same thing I do as well
[00:18:38] I do read the occasional newspaper
[00:18:40] but I get most of my information
[00:18:42] by reading through Twitter
[00:18:44] and others mainly Twitter
[00:18:46] but some other social media
[00:18:48] and the brand
[00:18:50] rivalry of the newspapers
[00:18:52] with fierce brand rivalry
[00:18:54] stop them inventing something like Twitter themselves
[00:18:56] that's what they should have done
[00:18:58] you put the article there you're all out and competing
[00:19:00] and then the emphasis would have been on quality journalism
[00:19:02] and scoops
[00:19:04] rather than the
[00:19:06] trivia that comes out of them these days
[00:19:08] where there is completely unresearch
[00:19:10] and now what you get mainly
[00:19:12] you'll get your news coming out
[00:19:14] of somebody's photograph of a flood
[00:19:16] in Sichuan province which turns up on Twitter
[00:19:18] and then you'll see a journalist saying
[00:19:20] can we use that photograph
[00:19:22] can we use that
[00:19:24] because they're going down the clickbait road
[00:19:26] because they've got nowhere else to go
[00:19:28] because they have to compete for clickbait
[00:19:30] because that's the anyway they're going to get
[00:19:32] any views which is a
[00:19:34] but they don't even have any journalists in those locations
[00:19:36] this is the other problem
[00:19:38] so in the old days
[00:19:40] I don't know how many it's any more in held
[00:19:42] foreign correspondence
[00:19:44] but it would have been certainly like 20 or so
[00:19:46] countries that would have had a foreign correspondent
[00:19:48] and often with the team backing them up
[00:19:50] so all that's gone
[00:19:52] and then what you don't
[00:19:54] the knowledge of what is news
[00:19:56] is no longer something which is part of
[00:19:58] the paraphernalia
[00:20:00] of reading information and news
[00:20:02] and we get, this is where the whole idea of fake
[00:20:04] news has come from to some extent
[00:20:06] you actually have
[00:20:08] because there's no one actually doing the reporting
[00:20:10] news on social media
[00:20:12] and news organizations aren't making any money
[00:20:14] out of originating the news in the first place
[00:20:16] then
[00:20:18] you are sharing stories which are probably created
[00:20:20] as you say
[00:20:22] just by somebody looking through a Twitter feed
[00:20:24] and finding a pretty
[00:20:26] weak story or even worse
[00:20:28] not even a person artificial intelligence
[00:20:30] creating that story so
[00:20:32] where is the origin of stories
[00:20:34] coming from it's disappearing and that is
[00:20:36] a, that's a threat to democracy
[00:20:38] isn't it?
[00:20:40] It means we are living a lie
[00:20:42] basically because there's no one there
[00:20:44] outsourcing the truth. Yeah and you can get
[00:20:46] AI makes it possible to make the news up
[00:20:48] these days as well, artificial
[00:20:50] news stories and so
[00:20:52] and what's actually happened, the major shift
[00:20:54] that I've seen as well is that
[00:20:56] back in the, up to the 90s
[00:20:58] it was commercial
[00:21:00] enterprises that mainly put out the news
[00:21:02] and you also had organized like this stream
[00:21:04] broadcasting commission, BBC
[00:21:06] government sources as well
[00:21:10] after the internet
[00:21:12] crew, the private organization
[00:21:14] no longer had that cash cow or the rivers of gold
[00:21:16] were gone but the governments
[00:21:18] could still continue funding their organizations
[00:21:20] and now you have Al Jazeera
[00:21:22] you know
[00:21:24] Press TV, a range of different news services
[00:21:26] China, global TV
[00:21:28] network etc etc
[00:21:30] and I've seen people complaining about
[00:21:32] that and saying I'll deal all
[00:21:34] with you reading government propaganda
[00:21:36] that's a result of the failure of the commercial
[00:21:38] system that we're in this situation in the first place
[00:21:40] and my approach of course is to read
[00:21:42] multiple of those government
[00:21:44] source ones to get
[00:21:46] try to do the new on seeing myself
[00:21:48] but that's not exactly common behavior
[00:21:50] No it's not, well you know
[00:21:52] it's interesting watching Al Jazeera to get one
[00:21:54] side of the whole story about what's going on in
[00:21:56] Palestine and Israel of course
[00:21:58] you have to treat a lot of
[00:22:00] this with a pinch of salt but it is good to do it
[00:22:02] because so long as you understand the biases
[00:22:04] that are there
[00:22:06] I guess just the same as you read Murdoch papers
[00:22:08] and you understand that the bias that's sitting behind those
[00:22:10] as well but look when we
[00:22:12] there is a failing though going on
[00:22:14] it's a dangerous situation that we find
[00:22:16] to ourselves is the way around it
[00:22:18] when we come back
[00:22:20] I want to look at you know
[00:22:22] the idea that
[00:22:24] newspapers used to be there to hold people
[00:22:26] to account
[00:22:28] and that's not happening now
[00:22:30] because of commercial pressures
[00:22:32] and economics so is it
[00:22:34] the failing of the economic system
[00:22:36] so we'll look at that when we come back on the
[00:22:38] debunking economics podcast me and Steve
[00:22:40] back in a moment
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[00:23:46] this is the debunking economics
[00:23:48] podcast with Steve Keane
[00:23:50] and Phil Dobby
[00:23:52] so Steve I guess one
[00:24:04] of the big issues is
[00:24:06] without people
[00:24:08] making sure that governments
[00:24:10] are behaving the way they should be
[00:24:12] then governments
[00:24:14] will try and get away with all sorts
[00:24:16] corruption becomes rife
[00:24:18] but if you have a trusted media
[00:24:20] that can sort out that corruption
[00:24:22] it can be rooted out and reported on
[00:24:24] then that's a good thing
[00:24:26] so there's an organization
[00:24:28] called transparency international
[00:24:30] they compile the corruption perceptions index
[00:24:32] I'm not sure if you've come across this before
[00:24:34] but basically to be top of the list
[00:24:36] it means that there is a low belief
[00:24:38] from the population that the country
[00:24:40] that you live in is corrupt
[00:24:42] so in 2023
[00:24:44] Denmark, Finland, New Zealand
[00:24:46] and Norway
[00:24:48] were all at the top
[00:24:50] will ignore the fact that Singapore comes next
[00:24:52] which does make you question the methodology
[00:24:54] a little bit
[00:24:56] but well down the list in equal 20th place
[00:24:58] is the UK just above the United States
[00:25:00] and Barbados if you go back
[00:25:02] 10 years the
[00:25:04] UK wasn't in 20th place it was
[00:25:06] 14th 10 years before that
[00:25:08] it was 11th so we're gone from 11th
[00:25:10] to 20th and he can't help thinking
[00:25:12] well a reason for that
[00:25:14] is because the media has
[00:25:16] just become less effective
[00:25:18] over those two decades
[00:25:20] and you've got a particular political actor
[00:25:22] I think your name might be Rupert
[00:25:24] who is intervening and using the media
[00:25:26] as a means of power
[00:25:28] and I've seen quite
[00:25:30] another anecdote I can give about
[00:25:32] seeing the power of Murdoch and the way
[00:25:34] he threw that power around
[00:25:36] so that has meant
[00:25:38] it's all about clickbait
[00:25:40] used to be tit bait now it's clickbait
[00:25:42] but getting people's attention
[00:25:44] and then sensationalizing stories
[00:25:46] but also having a definite political
[00:25:48] slant wanting to get
[00:25:50] both sides of politics to come across
[00:25:52] and support him so that's
[00:25:54] massively corrupted the new service around the world
[00:25:56] and again
[00:25:58] isn't just that the commercial
[00:26:00] media lost out because
[00:26:02] of the loss of the cash cows
[00:26:04] from the rivers of classified gold
[00:26:06] it's also the behavior of Murdoch
[00:26:08] which is a continuation
[00:26:10] of the old newspaper barons
[00:26:12] we used to get out of the days of
[00:26:14] the Hearst Empire and so on in the United States
[00:26:16] and Murdoch's
[00:26:18] ruthlessness
[00:26:20] has really damaged
[00:26:22] the entire media system
[00:26:24] in at least three
[00:26:26] major countries with two major
[00:26:28] one minor the UK, America
[00:26:30] and Australia
[00:26:32] and with that damage
[00:26:34] people no wonder you don't trust the media
[00:26:36] you're being fed a whole set of lines
[00:26:38] to destroy one part of politics
[00:26:40] and promote another by a media organization
[00:26:42] which has outlets all over the damn country
[00:26:44] and
[00:26:46] it's a cesspool these days
[00:26:48] compared to what it was back in the 90s
[00:26:50] but how do you control that
[00:26:52] how do you stop that happening
[00:26:54] I mean it's a commercial operation
[00:26:56] you'd say well okay he should be allowed
[00:26:58] to make money he's giving people
[00:27:00] what they want
[00:27:02] I was actually working with
[00:27:04] not directly but cooperating
[00:27:06] with Australian Journalists Association
[00:27:08] way back in the 90s and my argument
[00:27:10] was the only way you can actually avoid
[00:27:12] this sort of politically corrupt individual
[00:27:14] getting to the top of organization
[00:27:16] and then distorting the news
[00:27:18] to suit his own side was to have
[00:27:20] strong newspaper unions
[00:27:22] where the journalists would collaborate
[00:27:24] around a code of conduct which the journalists had
[00:27:26] about honesty and integrity in media
[00:27:28] and be able to fight off and not lose
[00:27:30] their jobs if they
[00:27:32] took on the boss
[00:27:34] but that never happened so like
[00:27:36] one other anecdote when I was trying to organize
[00:27:38] that conference in China
[00:27:40] we charged
[00:27:42] each of the media organization that sent along the rep
[00:27:44] two and a half thousand dollars
[00:27:46] roughly two and a half thousand US
[00:27:48] dollars now that's way back in
[00:27:50] 1980
[00:27:52] 1982 so we're talking more
[00:27:54] than 40 years ago so it's substantial
[00:27:56] amount of money but it was a damn good deal
[00:27:58] so the Australian China kind of transport
[00:28:00] some of the cost up and so did
[00:28:02] the media organizations now
[00:28:04] I didn't I got every
[00:28:06] the day the letter went out the next day
[00:28:08] that came to two and a half thousand
[00:28:10] dollar checks and the nominees from each of the newspapers
[00:28:12] except the Australian
[00:28:14] which turned us down and
[00:28:16] this is a long anecdote let me
[00:28:18] get away with this one
[00:28:20] before that I'd been involved in
[00:28:22] the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal
[00:28:24] was established
[00:28:26] in the 80s
[00:28:28] and its idea was that
[00:28:30] the radio
[00:28:32] and television spectrum is a public resource
[00:28:34] so you had to
[00:28:36] organization had to be vetted every three years
[00:28:38] that they were treating a public resource
[00:28:40] properly
[00:28:42] and then the reaction
[00:28:44] of the media empire that
[00:28:46] was just to take an incredible
[00:28:48] attack on anybody who
[00:28:50] was potentially taking away their ownership
[00:28:52] of that public resource
[00:28:54] or their control of that
[00:28:56] and there were I think there must have been
[00:28:58] about a hundred submissions made
[00:29:00] and only one of them made it through
[00:29:02] to really damage
[00:29:04] or potentially damage the new radio stations
[00:29:06] and that was mine
[00:29:08] not just me alone done with people from
[00:29:10] the Australian Catholic Relief
[00:29:12] Australian Council of Churches
[00:29:14] a community aid abroad which is now part of Oxfam
[00:29:16] so what we did
[00:29:18] was we started to do a very detailed analysis
[00:29:20] of how the newcomer
[00:29:22] on the block in Australia
[00:29:24] Channel 10 which is that time
[00:29:26] owned by Murdoch how they treated
[00:29:28] the invasion of
[00:29:30] how they treated foreign news for one week
[00:29:32] so we set up to do a really detailed
[00:29:34] survey and as luck would have it
[00:29:36] the week we chose the survey
[00:29:38] was the week that Vietnam chose to invade Cambodia
[00:29:42] so we did our trial run survey
[00:29:44] and we now had a detailed time sheet
[00:29:46] and how many men had spent on this and what the topic was
[00:29:48] and who was interviewed and so on all done by hand
[00:29:50] watching the TV
[00:29:52] and we noticed in our first trial run
[00:29:54] oh nothing on Cambodia
[00:29:56] being invaded by Vietnam yet
[00:29:58] we kept on going
[00:30:00] I think it was a 10 day survey we did
[00:30:02] and on the last day of the survey
[00:30:04] 10 days in
[00:30:06] finally two things happened
[00:30:08] non-pen fell
[00:30:10] and Channel 10 reported it
[00:30:12] so suddenly out of the blue having done nothing
[00:30:14] for nine days on
[00:30:16] day 10 bang here's this huge north
[00:30:18] story and if you'd be watching only Channel 10
[00:30:20] for your news you wouldn't even know the invasion
[00:30:22] it started so we had them by the balls
[00:30:24] basically and
[00:30:26] and the media
[00:30:28] organizations completely intimidated the chairman
[00:30:30] who was Bruce Gingel who was the very first person
[00:30:32] on Australian TV
[00:30:34] he ultimately found do you know Bruce Gingel
[00:30:36] did you know Bruce? No, no, no
[00:30:38] I know of him. Yeah, well he founded
[00:30:40] SBS after that the special broadcasting service
[00:30:42] which was the
[00:30:44] the ethnic
[00:30:46] equivalent of the Australian Broadcasting Commission
[00:30:48] so I brought up programs in all the various
[00:30:50] languages of people who were migrants to Australia
[00:30:52] which a fabulous service
[00:30:54] and he had been bashed about
[00:30:56] by these medium
[00:30:58] sides for all the other
[00:31:00] submissions all the others were knocked out
[00:31:02] and he said ours was the one that was going to win
[00:31:04] I know from people talking inside
[00:31:06] SBS afterwards
[00:31:08] and the Australian Broadcasting Commission
[00:31:10] that when our submission turned up
[00:31:12] he actually marched through the
[00:31:14] ABC officers
[00:31:16] waving about this is what we wanted from the public
[00:31:18] well
[00:31:20] along comes Murdoch, Murdoch's
[00:31:22] henchman and
[00:31:24] here's our study
[00:31:26] showing that they didn't even cover
[00:31:28] and they're trying to defend themselves and Gingel finally thinks he can push back
[00:31:30] with something so he's
[00:31:32] making it very obvious that
[00:31:34] unless they have a decent answer for this
[00:31:36] Channel 10 is going to lose its license
[00:31:38] guess who turned up in the room the next day?
[00:31:40] Murdoch
[00:31:42] Indeed, Murdoch was arrived
[00:31:44] Murdoch was in the room and he
[00:31:46] actually insisted the room be cleared
[00:31:48] he sat at the very back of the room
[00:31:50] and there's about 15 rows of benches
[00:31:52] towards where the legally oriented
[00:31:54] bench for the commissioners was
[00:31:56] and he sat at the back
[00:31:58] I was right next to the door
[00:32:00] so I could see him do this
[00:32:02] and there he is, he's leaning forward
[00:32:04] and intimidating Gingel
[00:32:06] and he's very new from the media
[00:32:08] and he said, okay take my license off me
[00:32:10] you can do that
[00:32:12] but I own the building, I own the tower
[00:32:14] you take it off me, I'll demolish the building
[00:32:16] I'll demolish the tower, somebody else have to build
[00:32:18] it was incredible seeing this display of force
[00:32:20] Gingel
[00:32:22] and that is the issue isn't it
[00:32:24] but there's another issue as well which Murdoch does
[00:32:26] and he can understand why he does it
[00:32:28] and it is this
[00:32:30] running a news business
[00:32:32] as a commercial business
[00:32:34] and I've seen it in radio circles
[00:32:36] in talk radio circles
[00:32:38] which is, I've not really worked in publishing
[00:32:40] but certainly done quite a bit in radio
[00:32:42] it's easier
[00:32:44] to dumb down than it is
[00:32:46] to explain stuff in detail
[00:32:48] oh yeah
[00:32:50] if you're in a situation where you can run ads
[00:32:52] by just repeating
[00:32:54] stuff that's simple to grasp
[00:32:56] even if it's only half the story
[00:32:58] and therefore half the truth
[00:33:00] then people get it
[00:33:02] and they keep listening or they keep reading
[00:33:04] if you have to say well yes
[00:33:06] but it's not that straightforward
[00:33:08] and then you start to muddy the waters
[00:33:10] by introducing complexity
[00:33:12] or what's that other word
[00:33:14] reality into the situation
[00:33:16] then people get confused
[00:33:18] oh no you make up reality TV
[00:33:20] that's easy you know
[00:33:22] we've got so much reality these days
[00:33:24] but yeah but I mean
[00:33:26] news is the ultimate reality
[00:33:28] but explaining it, so explaining the Vietnam war
[00:33:30] well it's complicated isn't it in the early days
[00:33:32] and you know so
[00:33:34] hence this decision
[00:33:36] not to spend a lot of time
[00:33:38] reporting on it and that's the problem
[00:33:40] it's the simplicity of
[00:33:42] an easy story
[00:33:44] and one that will elicit a response
[00:33:46] one that'll make people angry or make people
[00:33:48] scared I mean they'll
[00:33:50] push buttons and that's what Murdoch has been perfect at
[00:33:52] so and luckily
[00:33:54] have you seen Hugh Grant is now
[00:33:56] being paid an enormous amount
[00:33:58] of money as in his words
[00:34:00] to not cure the defamation case
[00:34:02] and the defamation laws
[00:34:04] let that happen because if Hugh's
[00:34:06] offered even one cent less than he was offered
[00:34:08] in the settlement yeah yeah that's right
[00:34:10] in the settlement he's got to pay legal
[00:34:12] cost both sides so that's what Murdoch
[00:34:14] has used he's used it but I'll finish
[00:34:16] off there's one little punchline to that
[00:34:18] anecdote having seen his behaviour
[00:34:20] in person the fact that I wasn't
[00:34:22] getting anybody from the Australian to sign
[00:34:24] up to my conference in China
[00:34:26] was a sign to me that Murdoch had said
[00:34:28] here's the ceiling you don't see many
[00:34:30] more than that and so Mahogany Rail
[00:34:32] which is the nickname that the journalist gave
[00:34:34] to the management section inside the Australia
[00:34:36] at Holt Street down in Sydney
[00:34:38] Mahogany Rail would have seen this and basically said
[00:34:40] no turn it down so at the time
[00:34:42] Jeffrey Blaney who was
[00:34:44] a very
[00:34:46] high intellect but right wing politically
[00:34:48] was a good friend of Murdoch's
[00:34:50] he was also the chairman of the Australia China Council
[00:34:52] so I said to the person running
[00:34:54] the bureaucrat running us Jocelyn Che
[00:34:56] I'm sure if we write a letter to
[00:34:58] Blaney and he
[00:35:00] tells Murdoch about this event which
[00:35:02] Murdoch would not have heard about I'll have a check on my
[00:35:04] deck for next day. I wrote the
[00:35:06] letter signed by Jeffrey Blaney this is
[00:35:08] back in the days when you send physical letters
[00:35:10] sent off to New York one day later I had
[00:35:12] a two and a half thousand dollar check on my table from
[00:35:14] the Australian
[00:35:16] so the
[00:35:18] extent to which he intimidated and
[00:35:20] perverted what was covered by his journalist
[00:35:22] it was a sense of power
[00:35:24] in how you were treated inside that newspaper
[00:35:26] yeah power share raw power
[00:35:28] which he had absolutely no qualms about
[00:35:30] displaying and as I saw in that
[00:35:32] I wish I'd had a TV
[00:35:34] crew filming Murdoch while I
[00:35:36] sought him intimidate the Australian
[00:35:38] Broadcasting Club. But it's interesting you know they're not
[00:35:40] the biggest player in the block you know Comcast
[00:35:42] is that much. Not by a long shot.
[00:35:44] Comcast is much bigger
[00:35:46] and Comcast but look at the figure
[00:35:48] who they get drove back
[00:35:50] by so Comcast has a net worth of
[00:35:52] 186 billion I think I said that earlier
[00:35:54] but Meta has a market cap
[00:35:56] of one and a quarter trillion
[00:35:58] and you know
[00:36:00] and so the power of these and I said
[00:36:02] how a lot of people are getting their news from Facebook
[00:36:04] in
[00:36:06] fact off-com
[00:36:08] which is the regulator in the UK
[00:36:10] as young people age 16 to 24
[00:36:12] where they got their news from
[00:36:14] 71% said so they access
[00:36:16] their news from social media
[00:36:18] but you know these platforms are not
[00:36:20] generally paying for the news they carry
[00:36:22] the media companies will post the stories
[00:36:24] or people will share it
[00:36:26] in the vain hope that they were going to get some click
[00:36:28] through so that people might see
[00:36:30] an ad when they do click through
[00:36:32] or you know
[00:36:34] or perhaps it will drive subscriptions
[00:36:36] but it probably won't
[00:36:38] but the reality is very often they're not clicking through
[00:36:40] people are happy with just the
[00:36:42] headline in the first paragraph so they're getting that
[00:36:44] from social media and it's been created by
[00:36:46] these companies and no wonder
[00:36:48] Meta has a market cap of
[00:36:50] one and a quarter trillion because they're getting
[00:36:52] they're selling advertising for content
[00:36:54] that other people create whether it's
[00:36:56] either their users or the media
[00:36:58] yeah and then the quality of journalism
[00:37:00] has gone down so much as a result of
[00:37:02] all that so the last time
[00:37:04] we and this is where Wikipedia and the Wikipedia
[00:37:06] pardon me WikiLeaks came in
[00:37:08] because it used to be the case that
[00:37:10] newspaper would be trying to find some
[00:37:12] story like that so the classical course is Watergate
[00:37:14] and the
[00:37:16] Watergate story is broken by the Washington Post
[00:37:18] from memory and the two
[00:37:20] journalists in that would be basically junior
[00:37:22] journalists but they saw
[00:37:24] something about a robbery at the hotel
[00:37:26] I think the Watergate hotel
[00:37:28] and a break-in at the Watergate hotel
[00:37:30] and then they followed
[00:37:32] that story up and without that
[00:37:34] Watergate has become part of
[00:37:36] the background
[00:37:38] ethos of human civilization
[00:37:40] everything is gay did you see the
[00:37:42] Elon Musk said that if there's ever a scandal about him
[00:37:44] please call it Elon Gay
[00:37:46] so what part of him
[00:37:48] is he talking about there I wonder
[00:37:50] so the other thing is there's also less
[00:37:52] consumption of news going on and that's because
[00:37:54] and I've got a theory on this as well
[00:37:56] I mean the reason that's very often given
[00:37:58] there's been a lot of research in this people saying well it's depressing
[00:38:00] we can't cope with all that
[00:38:02] disaster or that climate change
[00:38:04] or that war inflation
[00:38:06] health issues every time you turn on the BBC
[00:38:08] these days it's about how someone's got some sort of health issue
[00:38:10] migrant crisis
[00:38:12] disaster it's all so depressing
[00:38:14] no wonder people are turning off
[00:38:16] because there's less
[00:38:18] about what causes the problems
[00:38:20] and how to fix them
[00:38:22] and more stories about just how awful it is
[00:38:24] and how many problems there are
[00:38:26] yeah and I think it's
[00:38:28] that the fact that there's not a constructive
[00:38:30] solution we're going to have to come to
[00:38:32] a constructive solution for all the problems
[00:38:34] that we've talked about by the way because otherwise
[00:38:36] we'll be guilty as charged but there's not
[00:38:38] a constructive element
[00:38:40] but if there was perhaps we'd all feel
[00:38:42] better and people would be
[00:38:44] more engaged but the whole media
[00:38:46] business because of this need for clickbait
[00:38:48] has all been have you seen this it's awful
[00:38:50] rather than have you seen this
[00:38:52] I wonder why that happened and here's a possible
[00:38:54] solution to it
[00:38:56] which you know we used to be
[00:38:58] I used to think that was what made good
[00:39:00] talk radio would be talking about
[00:39:02] solutions rather than talking about issues
[00:39:04] but I was soon proven wrong on that
[00:39:06] because the audience is
[00:39:08] there if you just talk about problems
[00:39:10] they don't want the
[00:39:12] they don't seem to want the solutions
[00:39:14] so maybe I'm arguing against myself
[00:39:16] but I feel like if there was more of a
[00:39:18] resolution in the media it wouldn't be
[00:39:20] quite so depressing and therefore you'd engage more people
[00:39:22] well I think it's a large part of how
[00:39:24] the quality of political debate and decision
[00:39:26] making has been dumbed down in the last 40 years
[00:39:28] because again
[00:39:30] when you have like if you look at what we used
[00:39:32] to be the sitting morning heralds
[00:39:34] library the research
[00:39:36] staff that in a sense who there weren't you know
[00:39:38] PhDs but they were people who were
[00:39:40] dedicated to follow up stories follow
[00:39:42] up leads and so on and like my
[00:39:44] most recent here this is good to one reason I
[00:39:46] stopped recording to the Guardian and it's not
[00:39:48] George Montbillot's fault I'll add to that
[00:39:50] particular case but when I came up with
[00:39:52] when I discovered what economists have been doing
[00:39:54] on climate change and how tragically
[00:39:56] bad it was and I wrote a writing
[00:39:58] a paper called The Appalling the Bad
[00:40:00] Neoclassical Economics of Climate Change
[00:40:02] and I was in touch with George
[00:40:04] and he said yes send it to me and I'll report
[00:40:06] on it I sent it to him and nothing happened
[00:40:08] now and that was one reason
[00:40:10] I got angry at the Guardian though I gave them
[00:40:12] what I regarded as a scoop
[00:40:14] not just at the century possibly of the
[00:40:16] existence of human civilization
[00:40:18] economists who know bugger all about
[00:40:20] climate change had made up bullshit
[00:40:22] numbers that people were taking seriously
[00:40:24] in politics because they trusted economists
[00:40:26] do the right thing and I had it on paper
[00:40:28] and you could read it in the journals
[00:40:30] they hadn't done the right thing they'd made up
[00:40:32] their own stupid numbers about climate change
[00:40:34] George Montbillot clearly is interested
[00:40:36] in climate change surely George is the
[00:40:38] person to report on it I send it to him
[00:40:40] nothing happens so I was getting
[00:40:42] progressively angry that's one reason I
[00:40:44] dropped out of a couple of years later
[00:40:46] subscribing to the
[00:40:48] good Guardian and then at one stage
[00:40:50] I finally got angry enough to put it on Twitter
[00:40:52] so you'll find a tweet me criticizing George
[00:40:54] Montbillot about this and George wrote back
[00:40:56] an incredulous and said I'm a freelancer
[00:40:58] I don't have any research stuff
[00:41:00] I get hundreds of things like this
[00:41:02] so he didn't realize how big my story
[00:41:04] was so he picked up one other of the feeds
[00:41:06] he was getting through people from Twitter
[00:41:08] and emails writing to him and he wrote about that
[00:41:10] that day in mine fell by the wayside
[00:41:12] now and that's not his fault
[00:41:14] this is back to the point about
[00:41:16] there's a problem when you just employ freelancers
[00:41:18] because they're not sitting in an editorial meeting
[00:41:20] every day trying to decide what are the big stories
[00:41:22] half a dozen people helping them out
[00:41:24] and say George you should actually focus on this one
[00:41:26] there was nobody doing the filtering
[00:41:28] so the quality of ways we cover stories
[00:41:30] has been plunged by
[00:41:32] the failure of newspapers to develop
[00:41:34] that micro payment system
[00:41:36] and they're never going to do it
[00:41:38] I've given up on that
[00:41:40] I don't think it would have solved the problem
[00:41:42] I really don't think it would solve the problem
[00:41:44] I think it would
[00:41:46] so I think the problem is more
[00:41:48] the case that we
[00:41:50] are not wedded to news in the same way
[00:41:52] particularly there's a whole generation
[00:41:54] so 40% there's a red reset saying
[00:41:56] 40% of Americans
[00:41:58] avoid the news altogether
[00:42:00] they're quite happy to be oblivious
[00:42:02] to what's going on in the world
[00:42:04] so I don't know how you solve the problem
[00:42:06] but the issue is
[00:42:08] can news be a commercial business
[00:42:10] and what happens
[00:42:12] when it's just not commercially viable anymore
[00:42:14] we're getting very close to those days
[00:42:16] well 40% of Americans
[00:42:18] won't care too much if that's the case
[00:42:20] but what about, you know, what it does to
[00:42:22] society? Do we need to
[00:42:24] stick with public broadcasting
[00:42:26] for example, do we need to ramp that up
[00:42:28] and make sure that that remains
[00:42:30] fiercely independent
[00:42:32] and we can do that but what happens if it's just creating
[00:42:34] media that no one is consuming
[00:42:36] and if you say well there's got to be stuff
[00:42:38] that people consume does that therefore mean
[00:42:40] you go down the clickbait road
[00:42:42] you know where's the balance
[00:42:44] well the only balance I could see is if you had strong trade unions
[00:42:46] of journalists
[00:42:48] maintaining their integrity and being able to protect anybody
[00:42:50] who was potentially threatened by their news organization
[00:42:52] whether that's government owned
[00:42:54] or privately
[00:42:56] if they get excluded then there's major consequences
[00:42:58] for the power relations
[00:43:00] ultimately it's workers versus capitalists yet again
[00:43:02] and we have a far better system
[00:43:04] but the workers had more power and the capitalists had less
[00:43:06] and that's a cause equally to when the state's
[00:43:08] involved and the state takes the place of the employer
[00:43:10] something like that is necessary
[00:43:12] but it's not going to happen
[00:43:14] we've lived through the decay and decline of media
[00:43:16] and it's going to continue until such time
[00:43:18] as I think most media organizations simply won't exist
[00:43:20] there'll just be broadcasting snapchat photographs
[00:43:22] or should Meadow and the like
[00:43:24] should out of that
[00:43:26] you know out of that vast wealth
[00:43:28] that they are creating
[00:43:30] should they be taxed heavily to
[00:43:32] support media
[00:43:34] to support news creation
[00:43:36] something of that nature would but then the power
[00:43:38] policy could never going to let that happen
[00:43:40] so this is a bit like the way that I know
[00:43:42] now one of my colleagues said we should think about climate change
[00:43:44] it's not a problem it's a predicament
[00:43:46] and problems have solutions
[00:43:48] predicaments have consequences
[00:43:50] and our consequence is we've been dumbed down
[00:43:52] at the very time we need to have far more detailed
[00:43:54] knowledge about the situation we find ourselves
[00:43:56] on this planet in this ecosystem
[00:43:58] and it's going to be a shock to everybody
[00:44:00] when it starts falling apart
[00:44:02] because the sort of journalism
[00:44:04] effectively I've done you know high quality journalism
[00:44:06] pulling apart the papers of economists
[00:44:08] that should have been in the Sunday times
[00:44:10] that should have been something we're all aware of
[00:44:12] and not just when I first discovered it
[00:44:14] when the crap was first printed
[00:44:16] we should have known about this 30 years ago
[00:44:18] we don't because we don't have journalists
[00:44:20] buying journals reading them
[00:44:22] saying hey this bloke
[00:44:24] this young economist over in Yale
[00:44:26] this was William what's he William Nordhaus
[00:44:28] that's his name yeah
[00:44:30] he assumes that being having a roof over your head
[00:44:32] is going to protect you from climate change
[00:44:34] it's got to be a fool hasn't he Jack
[00:44:36] shouldn't we write a story about this Lunatic
[00:44:38] now that had happened he wouldn't got the Nobel Prize
[00:44:40] he would have been sacked and that'd be far better for him out of the world
[00:44:42] and that would be a good insect and that'd be far better for humanity
[00:44:44] if that had happened so we're suffering massively
[00:44:46] from the lack of quality journalism
[00:44:48] yeah which is a factor
[00:44:50] of it doesn't mean that there's not
[00:44:52] good journalists well there probably aren't that many
[00:44:54] because people aren't going into that
[00:44:56] line of business because there's no
[00:44:58] there's no end game
[00:45:00] I mean there's no money in it
[00:45:02] I mean you know I think
[00:45:04] the only way now you can make money
[00:45:06] which is what I'm doing which is you know
[00:45:08] sort of like selling out
[00:45:10] which is to
[00:45:12] the podcast
[00:45:14] creating a podcast for a bank that pays me
[00:45:16] to I mean
[00:45:18] actually there's you know it's pretty
[00:45:20] impartial really
[00:45:22] but it's you know
[00:45:24] it's from the National Australia Bank
[00:45:26] we're never going to say anything bad about now
[00:45:28] if now did something wrong
[00:45:30] I would studiously avoid talking
[00:45:32] about it but
[00:45:34] the same thing applied this is my
[00:45:36] this is important let's extend the podcast
[00:45:38] a bit because that's what I was interviewed on
[00:45:40] Russia today all the time and if I say
[00:45:42] oh Russia today you can't say anything bad about Putin
[00:45:44] I said no that's why I watch Al Jazeera
[00:45:46] or one of the others so
[00:45:48] you would trust
[00:45:50] the news from Russia today
[00:45:52] about everything except Russia
[00:45:54] you trust the news about Al Jazeera
[00:45:56] about everything except the Arabic part of the world
[00:45:58] not necessarily all of it but you trust everything
[00:46:00] about everything except Iran
[00:46:02] you trust China about everything except China
[00:46:04] and then by sampling that way
[00:46:06] you're getting a bit of skepticism
[00:46:08] you could get an overall picture that would be feasible
[00:46:10] but
[00:46:12] people simply
[00:46:14] puts you down because you're on a particular
[00:46:16] outlet how the hell else do you get
[00:46:18] an orthodox thought out there
[00:46:20] that's been my frustration for the last
[00:46:22] 20 something 30 years
[00:46:24] and I got some coverage
[00:46:26] of my expectations of a financial crisis
[00:46:28] back in 2007
[00:46:30] through the standard media
[00:46:32] but here I am
[00:46:34] talking about climate change
[00:46:36] and I can't even get into the bloody newspapers
[00:46:38] so it's far worse now
[00:46:40] than it was even 15 years ago
[00:46:42] and I guess you couldn't say anything bad
[00:46:44] about Murdoch on
[00:46:46] working for a Murdoch paper
[00:46:48] could you say that?
[00:46:50] I loved
[00:46:52] I hate did he just say a funny anecdote
[00:46:54] I think it was Matt Jooli on Times Radio
[00:46:56] Times obviously owned by Murdoch these days
[00:46:58] this is a year ago
[00:47:00] and they're talking about the latest series in succession
[00:47:02] which of course is all about
[00:47:04] you know it's not about the Murdochs
[00:47:06] of course but it is the Murdochs everyone knows
[00:47:08] and Matt Jooli
[00:47:10] just said yes
[00:47:12] that show that obviously is all about
[00:47:14] those very nasty people who run the Guardian
[00:47:18] which is his way of saying yes I know
[00:47:22] so I thought that was quite clever
[00:47:24] but anyway we'll leave it there
[00:47:26] so there's some glimmers of hope that
[00:47:28] there are people who are great and good
[00:47:30] but they are becoming few and far between
[00:47:32] and sadly I feel like
[00:47:34] we need you know it's an area of
[00:47:36] market failure isn't it pure and simple
[00:47:38] market failure? Absolutely, the only way to do
[00:47:40] was forget about the market
[00:47:42] they're never going to solve it it would have been workers
[00:47:44] trade unions could have done something about it
[00:47:46] to maintain inequality but they've been decimated as well
[00:47:48] so you've got to spend public money on it
[00:47:50] and then
[00:47:52] you've got to back away from it
[00:47:54] and you've got to get over this problem where
[00:47:56] public broadcasters feel like they're treading on egg shells
[00:47:58] and they don't want to upset the incumbent government
[00:48:00] because they're their paymasters
[00:48:02] you've got to get around that somehow
[00:48:04] which you could do through editorial boards
[00:48:06] and you know independent
[00:48:08] you know what are you supposed to go on
[00:48:10] independent regulator which would stop that happening
[00:48:12] but anyway
[00:48:14] but we are going the other way with government spending less
[00:48:16] and less money on the media
[00:48:18] and yet it's crucial to society
[00:48:20] isn't it? Imagine if the BBC
[00:48:22] disappeared what that would do to British society
[00:48:24] I think it's already happened hasn't it?
[00:48:26] Well it sort of has but I mean you know
[00:48:28] there's bits of it left behind
[00:48:30] and you know
[00:48:32] and it's part of the psyche of the country
[00:48:34] same as the ABC
[00:48:36] is in Australia
[00:48:38] if they disappear then
[00:48:40] it's a very sad situation
[00:48:42] so it's got to be
[00:48:44] part of the answer
[00:48:46] we've solved nothing Steve
[00:48:48] we just depressed ourselves again
[00:48:50] Indeed, I'll go scratch my wrist while I have breakfast
[00:48:52] Don't do that
[00:48:54] OK I want to have breakfast
[00:48:56] Have a nice breakfast and read the paper
[00:48:58] just don't read the single
[00:49:00] It's probably on the porch so I don't go into it
[00:49:02] You're in Australia at the moment I have no idea
[00:49:04] when you used paper you'd read because they're all a bit crap now
[00:49:06] at least we've still got some good ones left in the UK
[00:49:08] but the Sydney Morning Herald
[00:49:10] has just gone the way of Murdoch
[00:49:12] Tabloid doesn't it? Relatively
[00:49:14] not as bad as Murdoch but none of those CS
[00:49:16] It's gone a long way towards it
[00:49:18] Anyway I'll leave you with breakfast
[00:49:20] and the Herald, see you soon
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