The Australian: The country’s highly paid journalistic political elite is in crisis
The Australian newspaper has accused Canberra journalists of collective failure in their coverage of federal politics this year.
The Weekend Australian dedicated three pages if its Inquirer section to a series of reports arguing that “the biggest political story for 35 years”, the fall of Kevin Rudd, was missed.
In the lead article, journalist and former Malcolm Turnbull staffer Chris Kenny argued: “The journalists in the nation’s capital are some of the best paid in their profession and are assigned to the parliamentary building for the express purpose of delivering the inside story. Yet on this, the biggest political story for 35 years, they collectively failed at their task at least as spectacularly as had the outgoing prime minister.”
Pointing to the leaked Wikileaks cables, Kenny argued that US diplomats read the signals better than the journalists. He said:
“This is perhaps the most dramatic manifestation of Australian journalism’s blinkered coverage in a generation.”
Most of the criticism is aimed at rival Fairfax titles. A second piece in The Australian, which is owned by News Ltd, by national chief reporter Paul Dusevic quotes editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell as saying: “The Oz seems to have called the political and policy agenda dead right, even if it has been bagged by the government and the gallery.”
He added: “Other editors and news editors need to ask themselves why their staff, many on salaries much higher than a prime minister, got it so wrong.”
The paper also features a front page story, with a further page inside, dedicated to highlighting what it said was a series of errors in Fairfax’s coverage of the Wikileaks cables.
Wikileaks chose to share the cables with a journalist working for Fairfax, rather than with News Ltd. The Oz claimed that on several occasions the paper had said that cables were sent in the wrong month after muddling the USmonth/day/year format with the Australia day/month/year format. The Australian also claimed that at one point a comment was attributed to minister Mark Arbib – revealed as a US source – that was in fact made by Greg Rudd, the former PM’s brother.
The newspaper also returned to the issue in an editorial comment headlined “The price we pay when journalists lose the plot“.
It argued: “we believe it is time to turn the searchlight on our own profession and ask whether the media is doing its job of objectively reporting politics. The answer, sadly, must be no. Indeed there is a crisis in political journalism that mirrors the crisis in the political class.”
It said the problem was potentially because of “elite” journalists’ social backgrounds. It said:
“There is a deeper malaise… born of the tendency for journalists to come increasingly from a tertiary-educated elite with a ‘disdain for the vulgarity, ignorance and prejudices of working families and their suburbs’. This mind-set dominates the ABC and Fairfax press, generating a false narrative of politics.”
However, the paper also admits: “The Weekend Australian, too, must always seek to improve its coverage. While we have led the debate in many areas, we recognise there is more we could have done.”
Meanwhile, Fairfax returned fire this morning. In an item which appeared in the Sun-Herald, but under The Sydney Morning Herald masthead, the paper said that The Oz’s accusations of it getting its facts wrong were “unfounded”.
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large. He returned to Mumbrella as Publisher in January 2025
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Of course the Oz feels vindicated, but I don’t think the reasons they hysterically hyped up turned out to be the real cause of Rudd’s crisis at all. It’s easy for them to claim, in hindsight, that their aggressively anti-Rudd agenda was good journalism. In any case, I don’t think it’s very edifying seeing two newspapers taking shots at each other like rival factions. No wonder they both have appalling circulation drops.
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That the Australian calling out others for failing in “objectively reporting politics” is laughable. Next we’ll have an editorial from Chris Mitchell pointing out that suing another journalist is not ‘conducive to journalistic amity’.
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Day by day the Oz becomes more Lord of the Flies.
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Maybe the Daily Terrorgraph can sponsor a debate at Rooty Hill about it? Sarah Murdoch compere
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Have to laugh at the “elites” narrative. So hackneyed.
Speaking of Murdoch owned media, what about Foxtel’s “Happy Foxmas” ads?
FOXMAS?? Seriously. No shame at all.
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Didn’t Fairfax publish the David Marr essay “We need to talk about Kevin” which described Rudd, amongst other things as “moody, foul-mouthed, a slave-driving devil for detail”?
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I wonder whether there’s a bit more nuance to this than the comments so far are allowing.
It’s true that of late The Australian has dedicated a lot of space to justifying its position on the likes of climate change, Grog’s Gamut and now its political reporting.
But actually, there is a big debate to be had about the quality of serious political journalism.
Effectively, there are three major serious media voices when it comes to national policy debates – the ABC, Fairfax and The Australian.
Each of the three comes with an agenda – or at the very least enough of a reasonable suspicion of an agenda it’s worth talking about. But where does the conversation about that take place in the mainstream?
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
That sounds so fascinating, I never thought that they missed the story on the fall of Kevin Rudd but bringing up makes me notice that they did.
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Chris Mitchell needs to have a cup of tea, a Bex powder and a nice lie down for a month or two. His “we’re right, everyone else in wrong” carry-on knows no end. If his over-paid political and economic reporters who, funnily enough, all toe the Rupert line, are so go-getting why didn’t they sweep the Walkley awards this year? (The Oz got two – one to the Jakarta correspondent and one for art, nothing for politics or economics.) Oh, that’s right – the Walkleys are stacked against News Ltd, or so the conspiracy theory goes. That’s why they started their own News Awards – better known among the every day toilers, not the superstars, of course, as the “Kissing Your Sister Contest.” When they put the broom through News at the height of the GFC – something that never got a mention in the Oz media section, by the way – the word was that Mitchell only wanted those who could win him Walkleys. Time for another broom maybe – and sweep out Mitchell and his true believers to get a bit of even-handedness and considered reporting back in the rag. Someone should explain to him that instantly alienating half your potential readership isn’t good for the bottom-line which, after all, is what News Ltd has always been about.
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“There is a deeper malaise… born of the tendency for journalists to come increasingly from a tertiary-educated elite with a ‘disdain for the vulgarity, ignorance and prejudices of working families and their suburbs’.”
vulgarity, ignorance and prejudices: wow, who would have throught that these three virtues, enshrined in the pages of news’ hun and terrograph, would be something that you could possible show distain towards…
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There has always been a tendency for Canberra press gallery journalists to run with the pack. It was like that when I worked there many years ago and I see no evidence that much has changed. There are honourable exceptions, of course – Laurie Oakes being the prime example. However, if you run with the pack, you tend to miss what’s happening just a little out of the vision of the mob. I fear there are too many press gallery journalists intent on showing how clever they are and/or writing for their peers and not enough who can analyse a story and present it in terms of how it affects their readers/viewers/listeners.
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I work in the (print) media, and just about every word written by Chris Kenny is 100% accurate.
I find it sad that people refuse to acknowledge the truth when it’s in their face and shouting at them.
Truly, the gallery is full of smarty-pants who prefer to give their slanted version of events, rather than the events.
And ABC well and truly leads the charge with their ‘we’ll tell people what to think”.
Hence the ‘shock’ election results this year.
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Oh the irony of the most partisan media outlet in the Australia calling out others for their lack of journalistic probity!
That The Australian needs to continually justify it’s pro-corporate agenda speaks volumes. The Australian is nothing more than a cheerleader for the banks and mining companies and is against any social or political reform that does not directly benefit one of those industries. It’s against any government spending on health, education or social services but instead wants the government to spend billions on improving the infrastructure of the mining regions. Something the mining companies, who are earning untold billions, should step up to the plate themselves and provide.
The Australian has no mandate to speak for ordinary Australians – it speaks for the big end of town under the guise of rightwing populism – fortunately this agenda is so transparent that hardly anyone is taken in by it.
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Clearly, bleeding heart is not a regular reader of or has never read The Australian.
This is the paper that picked up the BER debacle, defending taxpayers money being wasted by huge corporations. Both Fairfax and the ABC also missed this story until it was right in their faces. It is the left wing agenda that is in bed with the big end of town. Big corporations are wimps and fear backlashes from unions and therefore are not overtly political.
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Yeah Sandy the ‘BER debacle’ where the independent review found only 2.5 percent dissatisfaction with the project and only slightly only half of those over value for money.
Just keep on swallowing whatever the Oz tells you.
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As a seasoned (and sometimes salty) survivor, now mercifully retired, of many decades in MSM newsrooms, I am saddened to note that the reactions in this thread to Kenny’s piece demonstrate precisely what the author of that column is talking about.
“Nick” dismisses Kenny’s observations as “hackneyed”, believes this observation representss informed criticism and signs off in triumph, presumably to enjoy a bit of private smuggery (or whatever else people like him do in private).
“zumabeach” then conscripts cliche (“Bex and a nice lie down”) in the same cause before compounding that laziness by citing the Walkleys as the yardstick for journalistic excellence. Alas that it were so.
First, the Walkleys do not honour Australia’s best reporting, they celebrate the best reporting by MEAA members. Non-members must pay an exorbitant fee per entry and I cannot recall a single non-unionist who has ever been honoured. (Full disclosure: I resigned many years ago from the old AJA because of its Trades Hall ties. While I have voted Labor, most recently in ’07, the very idea that an organisation for journalists should plight its troth with one side of politics is obscene.)
The Walkley judging and judges are nakedly political. Consider, caught-red-handed palgiarist Phillip Adams serving as a judge, which he has, or the award some years of the best radio story to an SBS broadcast on the sinking of the SIEVX refugee boat. Laughably, as the judges (including Mark Day) conceded, none could be speak Arabic nor understand a word of the broadcast. But it did assault the Howard Government and imply that the Australian Navy came across a group of floating survivors and sailed away, leaving them to drown. Prize-wining materia by the MEAA’s partisan reckoning! Did I mention that Margo Kingston — Margo, of all people — has been a Walkleys judge?
One point Zuma does get it right: The News Awards are indeed a joke. The proof: In the immediate aftermath of Bruce Guthrie’s sacking from the Herald Sun, that paper collected Newspaper Of The Year despite its rapid descent under new editorial leadership to a daily celebrity magazine. The award was needed to affirm the wisdom of John Hartigan’s endorsement of petty office politics, so that is where the award went.
Meanwhile “Bleeding Heart” drifts in from Green Left Weekly, vapid as a vindaloo fart and twice as noxious, to denounce entrepreneurialism, apparently because he believes central planners know best how tax receipts should be deployed.
Tellingly, not one of the Australian’s critics mentions the extended Cut & Paste which accompanied Kenny’s column. Entry after entry of Laura Tingle’s wishful thinking on behalf of the ALP and lots more of more of the same from Peter Hartcher. Surely those litanies of error and mischief are a greater threat to the business than Chris Mitchell’s quite obvious and open preference for governments with pro-business policies.
You want to know why the news business is staggering? Consider the opinions on this thread and know that people of this mindset, overgrown children for the most part, now dominate backbenches, newslists and newsrooms. They preach tolerance but actively exclude all who do not share their perspectives, except as the odd token rightard. And The Age cannot even manage that, having removed all right-leaning writers (and you can’t count a political hack like Costello) from its pages.
We had more proof only last week at Fairfax. Within hours of the refugee boat going down on Christmas Island someone at the Age/SMH noticed that the comments were running heavily against Gillard & Co. Those comments were taken down immedfiately and no story on the incident since then has allowed public commentary or reaction.
Actually, there was an exception: John Birmingham’s assault on Andrew Bolt at the Brisbane Times was allowed to spawn hundreds of comments — comments criticising him for expressing views of the sort that Fairfax was receiving in bulk but chose to suppress.
Yes, the Australian leans right. But Fairfax long ago canted so far left that it veered from the centre and lost its way on the outer reaches of the virtual, perpetual university common room, where it imagines virtue resigns.
I loved this business for many years. It is very sad to see a wankers collective laying it low.
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I suspect The Dirty Digger is upset cause his Tory Party lost the election.
@Grumpy Old Sub, love your life story…not. (Edited under Mumbrella’s comment moderation policy)
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It was meant for grown-ups, K Watson, so I’ll take your crit as an endorsement.
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I wonder whether you and Arthur Lowe’s [Dads Army] Captain Mainwaring are by any chance related? Pompous bile. Whot!
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Being a worn out media hack myself, I agree with Grumpy Old Sub to the extent that the Canberra gallery takes itself oh so seriously and thinks the rest of the country hangs on every word it writesor speaks – it doesn’t. These self-appointed gurus have to justify their inflated pay packets and so – excuse another cliche, Grumpy – they continually make mountains out of mole hills.The vast majority of folk out in real world Australia don’t give a hoot – they’ve got lives to lead, bills to pay, kids to raise. Out there is where the real stories are – and I know this because I’ve interviewed thousands of them over more years than I care to remember. Yes, the ABC and Fairfax are loaded with hand-wringing lefties and The Australian is over-run with Chris Mitchell’s right wing zealots. But, as stated, my problem with Mitchell’s hardline administration of The Australian is that there is never any give or take – he’s always right and the rest are always wrong. Gee, it must be wonderful to be so sure of yourself – and isn’t it wonderful how his views always line up with Uncle Rupert’s!
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As for that pull-quote … did the Australian manage to spell “coverage” and “generation” correctly … or is that you?
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That one was my bad, Mike. The full article was not online – it carried the first few paras, then an exhortation to buy the newspaper to see the whole thing.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
so why didn’t you buy the rest of it Tim?
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I’m happy to say that I invested by 2 bucks, or whatever the weekend cost is, and bought a souvenir print edition, Pete.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
K. Watson at #19:
As I am in the twilight of my decreptitude, the likeness is more to Godfrey than the robust Mainwaring. However, in this instance and in reference to yourself, the Captain and I in accord.
“Stupid boy!”
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Grumpy: Wanted to tell you how much I appreciated your first post.
In a few hours I will be sitting at a terminal in an office with more empty desks than reporters. We have hired almost no one in the last five years. If freelancers do any work for a guy who worked here and started his own magazine they get banned, no matter how good they are.
The brass know we’re losing it but they all make good money so no one talks back to the bean counters.
The newsroom is two tribes – the old folks who are hoping the paper lasts long enough for them to retire and the youngsters, who will do this for a few years until the nut out that they will never make any money and quit a dead industry.
I still think a good editor could turn things around but the one person who might be up to the job can never be hired because he was fired years ago.
We are stuffed because we deserve to be.
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What sour grapes. Fairfax got the scoop of the year by obtaining the cables exclusively, dominated News Ltd at the Walkleys, has taken home newspaper of the year several years in a row and hauled in several other awards like the best sports newspaper. And, I might add, Fairfax is whipping News on the web.
It’s clear why The Aus would be a bit miffed. But give me a break – can anyone really call The Aus’s climate change and NBN coverage, to name a few, “objective political reporting”.
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I read the Oz from time to time, but it seems to becoming like a Fox News of print.
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When will Arbib be sacked for spying for the Americans?
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Grumpy Old Sub, I can’t testify to how other people’s blogs are run, but every comment that comes into mine that isn’t defamatory, gets published and stays published. Of those hundreds of comments in response to my Bolt piece, a solid percentage (maybe 30-40%, I haven’t checked) are from his supporters, and they were given free reign to say as they pleased. Sure, I might mock them in return, but pretty gently in comparison to some of their crack brained gibberish.
As for Bolt, he is fond of strong rhetoric. I’m sure he got his fill in that blog.
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