I have been waiting for someone, anyone, to evaluate each sides policies..not their hairstyles,budgy smugglers or the so called circus..which of course it is..why, because the media reports it instead of attending to matters the the public want to hear about..POLICIES

Another thing that has been disturbing me lately with Journos, aside from the He Said – She Said nature of reporting, is the lack of accountability on basic details and mistakes.

I heard the below on ABC NewsRadio (who have been particularly bad with HS-SS reporting and insipid ‘analysis’) but thought I may have misheard the figures involved.

But here on the ABC website: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/20/2958427.htm

I’m not the greatest with numbers, but Ireland having a budget deficit of $4 trillion seemed a little, err, excessive to me.

(Happy to be held to account if I am the wrong one on this)

This is only one of many mistakes I have either read or heard on air.

Anyhew, will gladly send some HS-SS examples!

If anyone takes that debate seriously and hasn’t otherwise seen it, they may be interested in Kartinyeri v The Commonwealth [1998] HCA 22.

Have a look, for instance, at the joint reasons for judgment of Brennan CJ and McHugh J at [9] (footnotes omitted). They say, “The Bridge Act is an instance of what F A R Bennion calls ‘indirect express amendment’. It effects a partial repeal of the Heritage Protection Act, albeit the text of the Heritage Protection Act is unchanged.”

It’s first-year law school stuff that a law can be amended even though the text of it isn’t altered in terms.

A typical blog does not do “he said, she said” but instead does “he said, but what does this really mean and is it correct?”

Blogs also include links where further details can be found. (In this case, say, links to the actual, written legal advice, if it is publicly available.) Mainstream media – even those on-line – rarely do this.

It is early days, but blogs seem to be slowly entering the consciousness of the mainstream media.

Perhaps, in the future, we will have “this blogger said, that blogger said”. Those who are interested can read the details on the respective blogs and make up their own mind.

I also think saying “most scientists disagree…” is newsworthy.

However, the straight up facts or news of what the people said are “I believe”, and “I don’t”. That’s the fact, that’s the news. It’s only news once though.

As for Question Time, I don’t think it should ever be broadcast or reported upon for exactly the reasons you name. I am still struggling to find where the real decisions and real negotiations take place within the realms of parliament though.

I think we agree but disagree with the semantics.

Are journalists more than just news reporters? If not, all they’re obliged to do is report the he said, she said lines of the day. Anything more becomes an opinion piece.

Ummm, no. They are supposed to report on what happened, not on what people said happened. Similarly, what is fact and not what is the opinion of people serving an agenda.

Nick Davies described this threat of journalist neutrality best in his book “Flat Earth News”.

Neutrality requires the journalist to become invisible, to refrain deliberately (under threat of discipline) from expressing the judgements which are essential for journalism. Neutrality requires the packaging of conflicting claims, which is precisely the opposite of truth-telling. If two men go to mow a meadow and one comes back and say ‘The job’s done’ and the other comes back and says ‘We never cut a single blade of grass’, neutrality requires the journalist to report a controversy surrounding the state of the meadow, to throw together both men’s claims and shove it out to the world with an implicit sign over the top declaring, ‘We don’t know what’s happening – you decide.’

We need to know the state of the meadow, not what two opposing sides say about it. If one side’s claims are demonstrably false, we need to know. That is journalism. And such journalism should be exempted from attacks of bias. It isn’t bias to show that one claim is wrong while another is supported by evidence.

I’m afraid I think your argument is pretty superficial Senexx. If it’s a fact that the leader of the opposition says that climate change is ‘crap’ and a fact that the PM says it’s not, is it not also a fact that a large majority of qualified scientists think it’s not crap?

Why report 1, 2 and not 3?

And why should a reporter (or the editor who deploys them) think that the most important and useful use of the reporter’s time would be to attend some ‘he said she said’ function (like question time) at which people will be issuing scripted lines which are entirely predictable, (not least because they’ve already been used on the last previous relevant occasion)?

Balance the scales, it’s election time
More to journalism than he said, she said. I think.