Australian Journalism Review - Volume 42, Issue 2, 2020

This article considers the role and standing of the history of journalism and media within the academy in Australia. The authors trace developments in the field in Australia since the late 1990s, considering its characteristics, achievements and its disciplinary strengths and weaknesses. They observe the small nature of the discipline and its relatively low status within the academy and consider the implications for future scholarship. This is examined through an analysis of the teaching of journalism and media history in j-education programmes. They argue that journalism and media history still does not receive the recognition it deserves as an essential aspect of journalism education and as one of many disciplines within media and communications.

In the past decade, journalism scholars have started to pay more attention to what we could call the precarization of journalism: the large-scale job loss and downsizing in the news industry (at least in some countries) combined with a shift towards per-item payment and production rather than permanent, full-time contracts. In this essay, I sketch a history of precarious work in journalism and argue that unionization and other forms of collective action in journalism has been made difficult due to an occupational culture rooted in this history of journalism as precarious work. In the late nineteenth century, journalists in many countries opted to create a culture rather than to create unions, and this culture has both mythologized and naturalized precarity. In Australia, however, journalists unionized early. Besides the obvious structural factors behind this early unionization, the existence of the cultural figure of the larrikin and its role in journalistic culture likely also encouraged taking on a worker identity rather than seeking to emulate an upper-class writerly culture.

The New York Times needs to expand to global audiences if it is to grow its digital subscription base. However, to do so it must balance difficult questions of colonial intentions with demands for inclusivity. By juxtaposing the case of the Times’ Australian expansion with its approach to global journalism as a whole, the power dynamics of American journalism imported from abroad to grow markets is explored. But the context is different from what most scholars critique as media imperialism: there is no capital surplus, the Times is not a global media firm, and in the case of Australia, traditional concerns of ‘first-world/third-world’ power flows are not present, although different modes of domination nonetheless prevail.

This article explores a general question – why and how we do media history – by examining a recent case, the ‘Australian Broadcasting’ entry in Oxford Bibliographies, prepared by this author with research assistance from Rosemary Curtis. Four questions are posed for this bibliography and the wider project of media history: why do we do it? For whom? Where and how do we make resources accessible and comprehensible? And finally, the question that occupies most of this article, what resources do we preserve and curate? The processes used to select and organize the ‘most important sources’ for the Australian Broadcasting entry are discussed, emphasizing the sources most relevant to Australian Journalism Review: News, Currents Affairs, Documentary and Talkback Radio programming.

This article considers the rise of discourses emerging with the digital ‘content revolution’ at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), in the context of severe budget cuts and restructures since the emergence of Brian Johns’ 1996 ‘One ABC’ policy. The article explores key decisions, rhetorics and thinking surrounding the radical dismembering of ABC’s unique ideas and cultural outlet Radio National (now ‘RN’) from 2012 onwards, as it was forced to jettison core parts of its programming and shed specialist and experienced staff. The article seeks to identify how – under the influence of an infectious complex of ideas and discourses associated with ‘digital convergence’, neo-liberalism and managerialism – conditions were in place that favoured the expansion of platform-agnostic journalism and of related topical ‘content’ across the ABC at the expense of other forms and understandings of this ‘rich mix’ network. Core aspects of the ‘project’ as it had evolved over decades were endangered and diluted. Drawing on important historical and comparative research, the article argues that RN is relinquishing its historic ‘special status’ as a media leader in ideas and cultural broadcasting in Australia.

In 1956, 22-year-old cadet journalist Eva Sommer won Australia’s first Walkley Award for a story about a supposedly stateless stowaway who was ‘doomed’ to sail between Italy and Australia because he had lost his memory. Sommer’s dedicated reporting skills revealed the man was a traumatized Holocaust survivor from Poland who had been granted asylum in Australia five years earlier. A ‘girl reporter’ had achieved in two days what immigration officials from two countries had failed to achieve in three months. Yet, despite Sommer’s remarkable story and her status as the inaugural Walkley winner, little is known of her writing or her life. This article aims to reinstate Eva Sommer to her rightful place in Australia’s journalism history through an analysis of how her three articles on the stowaway communicated emotions and virtues to readers. For the first time I will apply the Virtue Map, my analytical tool for examining the role of emotion and virtues in journalism, to a series of articles instead of a single long-form feature, illuminating a forgotten moment of Australia’s journalism history.

Censorship has had a long tradition in Australia, affecting books, films, theatre and artworks. In the 1930s, opposition to it began to be organized: this was initially a reaction to the banning of imported print material on the grounds of ‘indecency’ or sedition, but it was followed by protests against the political interference of radio broadcasts. These campaigns for freedom of expression on the air and in print invoked similar principles, as well as sharing leadership and tactics; while newspapers alerted the public to the issue of censorship, such commentary was also deployed to influence perceptions of the changing media landscape brought about by the development of public broadcasting. This article argues that 1930s activism over censorship prepared the ground for the expectation of impartial news reporting by the public broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Commission. It also demonstrates the advantage of considering diverse forms of media in tandem and sheds additional light on the role of the public in pursuit of the right of Australian citizens to hear opinion free from government interference and proprietorial diktat.

Despite its rare occurrence, severe mental illness is commonly linked to violence and crime in the news media. To reduce harmful effects of reporting, this study aimed to develop best practice guidelines for media reporting on mental illness in the context of violence and crime. Best practice was determined through the Delphi expert consensus method where experts rated statements according to importance for inclusion in the guidelines. In this study, the experts represented three groups: people with lived experience of severe mental illness, media professionals and mental health professionals. The 77 statements that were endorsed as ‘important’ or ‘essential’ by 80 per cent or more of experts were included in the guidelines, while 36 items were rejected from inclusion. There was a high degree of consensus among stakeholder groups. These guidelines expand on existing media guidelines, elaborating on accurate portrayals and appropriate language and extending coverage to areas of mental health literacy, considering impact, reporting relevant risk factors, using social media and implementation in news organizations.

Overweight and obesity are significant health issues for Australians. Fat people make up the majority of the population, yet they experience significant discrimination. Analyses of weight-related news demonstrate that blame for obesity is most often laid at the feet of fat people, despite a large body of evidence demonstrating the power of environmental drivers of obesity beyond individual control. There is growing criticism of how news frames obesity and illustrates news with ‘headless fatties’. This study is the first to analyse the ethics of reporting obesity using current journalists’ codes as the analytical framework. It reports an original ethical analysis of a unique dataset of weight-related news from a moment in history when obesity was framed as a crisis and coverage was unprecedented. Using the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) code of ethics as an analytical framework, the extent to which coverage meets standards of journalism ethics and professionalism and performs the watchdog role is interrogated. The analysis identifies how an opportunity to highlight for the public the power and significance of those drivers of weight gain beyond individual control was briefly seized and then dropped in the face of the dominant discourse of individual responsibility. Despite numerous calls to improve reporting of obesity and representations of people of size, the news media do too little to hold industry and government to account, and the paucity of voices of people of size suggests a lack of opportunity for reply. Strategies for a more ethical approach to obesity news are offered.

Review of: New Journalisms: Rethinking Practice, Theory and Pedagogy, Karen Fowler-Watt and Stephen Jukes (eds) (2020)

New York: Routledge, 212 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-138-59674-0, h/bk, $107.86

ISBN 978-1-138-59675-7, p/bk, $36.84

ISBN 978-0-429-48747-7, ebk, $42.70 (Buy), $8.46 (Rent)

Review of: Sharing News Online: Commendary Cultures and Social Media News Ecologies, Fiona Martin and Tim Dwyer (2019)

Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 324 pp.,

ISBN 978-3-030-17906-9, ebk, €58.84

Review of: To See and Be Seen: The Environments, Interactions and Identities behind News Images, T. J. Thomson (2019)

London and New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 186 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-78661-282-3, ebk, $43.99

Review of: Emotions, Media and Politics, Karin Wahl-Jorgensen (2018)

Cambridge and Medford, MA: Polity Press, 248 pp.,

ISBN 978-0-745-66105-6, p/bk, $35.95

ISBN 978-0-745-66104-9, h/bk, $115.95

ISBN 978-1-509-53143-1, ebk, $28.99

Review of: Journalism and Emotion, Stephen Jukes (2020)

London: SAGE, 200 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-5264-9797-0, p/bk, $76.10

ISBN 978-1-5264-9798-7, ebk, $43.60

Review of: Media and the Politics of Offence, Anne Graefer (ed.) (2019)

Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 258 pp.,

ISBN 978-3-030-17573-3, p/bk, €24.99

ISBN 978-3-030-17574-0, ebk, €21.39

Review of: Advocates and Persuaders, Mark J. Sheehan (ed.) (2019)

North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 257 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-925801-58-3, p/bk, $35

Ebook available from Amazon, $11.99; and Google Play, $8.44