Quality Journalism Essay

The contemporary media exudes features that are inconsistent with liberal democratic ideals and many scholars (Beecher, 2005: Curran and Gurevitch, 2005) have expressed concerns over this issue. Liberal democracy upholds the idea that media should be independent from government’s intervention and ownership of press should be diverse, preferably, privately- owned in order for media to be able to act as watchdog, information provider and facilitator of the public sphere. However, these ideals are not embedded and practiced by Australian media institution and media actors. Public’s growing disenchantment with current affair issues and growing economic competition has inclined media to produce news content that are not quality journalism. The media

Media is a commercialized product of its market. Like every other commercial business organisation, the primary objective of media organisations is to maximise profit and profitability. Liberal ideals may require media barons to uphold their social responsibility of enacting their assigned roles but the media market does not generate profitable revenue because the cost of producing quality journalism is higher than profits gained from member subscriptions, government subsidies and advertisements. So it is the financial survival of their organisation and determination to outdo their competitor that comes first to the barons in reality. With the understanding of consumer’s demand for entertainment, political news is compromised into infotainment, that is, reports are intended to inform and entertain consumers simultaneously. Instead of reporting on the issues discussed in open parliament debates, media focus on the tone of political parties and depict them as adversarial “combatants” (Summer year). This is an instance of infotainment produced in market in order to attract attention of consumers. It is the era of “information paradise” (Helberger 2011) where information is produced in large quantity and are easily accessible to the consumers with the growing digital media outlets. However, the quality of the press is compromised with the abundance of information production. A research conducted by Sally Young (2012) on news reporting of Australia’s federal election found that 95% of the times, five free news broadcasting outlets produced reports that has “striking degree of sameness” in its contents on 2007 election campaign. Homogeneous news reporting as such limits the public’s access to diverse information and undermine their ability to engage in rational debate (Curran and Gurevitch 2005). By failing to facilitate and encourage public’s participation in politics, media contribute to the cause of