BACK TO MY 2 CENTS: Where to from here?
“Isn’t the Journalism industry dead?”
Ever since my Community Wilcannia River Radio 103.1FM Debut in 2015 the biggest question I get is surrounding the supposed death of Journalism and Print Media.
I cannot speak much in defense of print media because as much as I love her two thirds of our adult population are functionally illiterate – and we are one of the lowest reading countries in the world with every single published genre (with the exlcusion of YA) losing increasing amounts of sales and profit on an annual basis since 2020.
In regards to Journalism, though, it would be unwise to kill her at this point in time. The entire world is undertaking huge amounts of change and turmoil in an attempt to transition into the modern world of technology and digital landscapes that evolve faster than we can process to begin with. This has come with huge amounts of mis+disinformation generated by an amalgmation of factors that are often also hot topics in public discourse and debate:
- ChatGPT
- ‘Fake News’ Thanks Trump
- Commercialised + Biased Media
- Loss of media literacy and reading comprehension in younger generations
- Deep fake generated content…
…and so on and so forth…
It is about to become more important than ever to have a source you can trust to dissemeniate through increasing amounts of noise and mis+disinformation and still be able to present that in a coherent and comprehendable way.
If the journalism industry can revive itself from it’s current toxicity. It can still be that trusted source.
Whether or not the industry survives is up to us who are currently placed inside it.
Ethics Frameworks V Personal Morals
One of the issues that arose most regularly in this report, and also arises in popular public discussion is the ethics and morals being used by journalists and news publishing companies + brands.
There is less and less of it every day.
I refuse to consume true crime on account of morally opposing their moral and ethical conduct. The sensalisation of people’s most traumatising events does not sit right with me. It is becoming harder and harder to find news sources that aren’t treating it more like entertainment than factual information about real people.
Alongside racism Australia has huge problems with domestic and gendered violence. These issues were also reflected back in the ‘Listen Loudly, Act Strongly Report’.
The reporting of those issues is equally abhorrent from ABC and other news outlets as racial ones.
Most reporting outlets will have their own policies of conduct, editorial guidelines, and ethics codes. There is also the Media of Entertainment and Arts Alliance code easily accessible on the internet for freelance journalists.
It is impossible to make these madatory as people will at the end of the day possess their free will but I make it part of my personal morals to avoid unethical journalism where possible.
Returning to ethical reporting that incorporates these guidelines will create more options for audiences to choose from when looking for news to consume. I believe that if you can consistently prove yourself to be reliable, factual, ethical, and accountable viewers will relearn to trust us as journalists.
Where possible, I also attempt to incorporate my personal morals when reporting.
Australia is a very small island. You would be hard-pressed to find someone who has never been on, or isn’t connected to anyone whose life has been affected by news media representation of themselves.
When you are consuming and creating news content think about how you would feel reading that article if it was yourself, or a loved one. If you feel uncomfortable you need to rewrite that.
The It stops with me campaign is getting an overhaul.
and Western Sydney anti-racism campaign has been running for rougly two decades now.
These are both good starting points if you are unfamilar with smaller aspects of racism.
Bonus Feature: Yindymarra
Yindyamarra winhanganha does not translate into English very well but it Charles Sturt University reckons it roughly translates to ‘the wisdom of respectfully knowing how to live well in a world worth living in.’
As mentioned by Stan Grant in your reading material way back at the start of this piece, for us Wiradyuri mob it is our way of life. It is who we are. It is how we live. Love. Learn.
Yindymarra reminds me to go slow. It reminds me to take a moment and breathe as often as I can. To take note of where I am and who I am with. How did we get here and where are we going? Who’s land are we on? How do I feel? How do they feel? It is the moment I allow myself before making an important decision. It is the think before I speak.
Everything anyone does no matter how big or small has a butterfly effect that ends up changing everyone around them. We are all constantly shaping each other no matter where we are or what we are doing and it is becoming more important than ever to start taking that into account.
This review and report have handed not only the ABC but the entire media and journalistic industry a chance to dig deeper and completly change the way we investigate and report on our news. The ‘Listen Loudly, Act Strongly’ report is a second chance for us as a Nation to right the wrong of the Indigenous Voice Referendum 2023 outcome.
By revolutionising media with listening, love, learning and compassion at its core we can both revive it as a respectable place to work and transform systemic racism into systemic love.
I hope to see you all there.
Lily 🙂
LilyInteractive 
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