Freedom of speech and the ‘optimism bias’

Dr Mumbo was delighted to hear at this morning’s Future Forum that Newspaper Works CEO Mark Hollands firmly backs the concept of freedom of speech and the importance of a vibrant and questioning press for the functioning of our democracy.

It’s just a shame Mark didn’t pass the memo onto Network Ten’s Russel Howcroft who was moderating a panel session with the four top CEOs of the newspaper industry from Fairfax, News Corp, Seven West Media and APN.

And so for the second year in a row, instead of the normal format of taking questions from the floor, Russel vetted the questions asking people to text him what they wanted to ask. He also made a proviso “rule” about which questions he would take telling the crowd that it would be based on his “optimism bias”.

So, instead of being able to probe the four men on issues like the viability of EMMA, the recent Mike Carlton incident and fallout, the further decline of print circulations and revenues, or the future of the Press Council which has recently come under attack from at least one member of the panel the questions were generally of a softer nature…