When The Hon Ray Finkelstein delivered his 'Independent Media Enquiry' report in February of this year, it confirmed and quantified what many of us already knew about the Australian media and journalism: they no longer demanded the trust of the Australian public.
A basic criterion of media performance is accuracy. Public perceptions of the performance of Australia’s media on this criterion are not flattering. These are the findings of several surveys.
Also from The Finkelstein Report;
New technology, particularly the internet, has revolutionised access to the news. The result has been a reduction in the circulation of newspapers and a reduction in revenue from classified advertising. The advertising expenditure is now spread across platforms. Main news organisations are recovering only a small proportion of these revenues by moving to online publishing
After the invention of the printing press there was a long period of societal restructuring as the technology facilitated mass communication for the first time. Ideas were shared more widely and faster than ever before and all forms of society were re-organised by this communication revolution; government, education and religious organisations were all disrupted. The internet is as revolutionary a technology as the printing press and we are currently experiencing a period of change on a scale comparable with the scale of the societal reorganisation that accompanied the printing press. How far we are into this period of change and how much change lies ahead of us is hard to gauge, but when it comes to our news media and journalism we are really only starting to see the beginning of that change.
It was this backdrop that lead us to explore open journalism as a new way of considering journalism in this digital age. Much of our understanding of the role of journalism and the journalist is rooted in an age of mass media. Not only is the way we access news changing, the way that people relate to and understand journalism is changing too. And journalism needs to change with these technological and societal changes.
Open Journalism is our way of conceptualising and understanding the new journalism. A model that sees the current journalistic environment as an ecosystem of journalists, bloggers, citizen reporters and social media user. Our model places the journalist at the centre of this ecosystem of reporting.
Throughout this project we will be exploring the problems facing journalism today, the changing media environment and how our concept of open journalism can be applied to journalism.
A basic criterion of media performance is accuracy. Public perceptions of the performance of Australia’s media on this criterion are not flattering. These are the findings of several surveys.
- Only 35 per cent of respondents to a 2011 survey by Essential Media agreed that ‘the media usually report the news accurately’. As with trust, however, perceptions varied for different media.
- A 1976 survey by Saulwick found 66 per cent of respondents believed ABC television presented political news accurately; 51 per cent believed commercial television did so. Only 39 per cent believed newspapers presented political news accurately. In a subsequent survey in 1990 by Saulwick 76 per cent of respondents said television (undifferentiated between ABC and commercial) presented news accurately, but only 50 per cent said the same of newspapers.
Also from The Finkelstein Report;
New technology, particularly the internet, has revolutionised access to the news. The result has been a reduction in the circulation of newspapers and a reduction in revenue from classified advertising. The advertising expenditure is now spread across platforms. Main news organisations are recovering only a small proportion of these revenues by moving to online publishing
After the invention of the printing press there was a long period of societal restructuring as the technology facilitated mass communication for the first time. Ideas were shared more widely and faster than ever before and all forms of society were re-organised by this communication revolution; government, education and religious organisations were all disrupted. The internet is as revolutionary a technology as the printing press and we are currently experiencing a period of change on a scale comparable with the scale of the societal reorganisation that accompanied the printing press. How far we are into this period of change and how much change lies ahead of us is hard to gauge, but when it comes to our news media and journalism we are really only starting to see the beginning of that change.
It was this backdrop that lead us to explore open journalism as a new way of considering journalism in this digital age. Much of our understanding of the role of journalism and the journalist is rooted in an age of mass media. Not only is the way we access news changing, the way that people relate to and understand journalism is changing too. And journalism needs to change with these technological and societal changes.
Open Journalism is our way of conceptualising and understanding the new journalism. A model that sees the current journalistic environment as an ecosystem of journalists, bloggers, citizen reporters and social media user. Our model places the journalist at the centre of this ecosystem of reporting.
Throughout this project we will be exploring the problems facing journalism today, the changing media environment and how our concept of open journalism can be applied to journalism.