Why The 'Oldy' Media Risk Being The 'Mouldy' Media

A very interesting article by technology writer Tom Formeski which offers an interesting insight into how journalists see public relations (and by extension those who use PR companies). Here is Duncan's response:

Sorry Tom, but as a former journalist (12 years) and a current PR worker (10 years government and 8 years private), it seems clear to me you're pushing a mythical line when you suggest that journalists are pure as the driven snow, winkling out bias in search of the facts, and these poor innocents are often bamboozled by wicked, manipulative PR flacks who are out to hoodwink them or, worse, bribe them. The only real fact is, due to the overwhelming drive of human nature, most journalists write to their own biases and self-interest.

I was especially struck by this:

"The job of a journalist has always been one of trying to sort through many biased information sources and end up with a fair and accurate story... they know how to deal with the information they receive, what to use and what to leave behind. That’s what quality journalism is all about. That’s the role of a gatekeeper... But if certain news stories can rise to prominence because of manipulation by PR or other agencies — then the important role of the journalist, as society’s gatekeeper, becomes seriously compromised."

So journalists are 'gatekeepers', eh? A rather interesting public admission of what many of my former colleagues and current acquaintances generally keep amongst themselves.

However, their profession would actually be a lot more 'quality' if they weren't gatekeepers. It would mean, for example, that the international 'Climategate' scandal of falsified data by climate scientists in the UK and US (a story that broke in December) might actually be reported in Australia rather than being the subject of a virtual news blackout in that country due to their mainstream media's political bias.

In fact, in advocating the role of journalist as gatekeeper, what you're cheering on is exactly what is killing the old media, causing newspaper revenues to fall and jobs to be lost daily - it is that people have learned to get their information from a wider variety of sources on the internet and then sort that information through the filters of their own biases. And that's human nature too.