About a week ago, perched on the couch with my dad, he turned his phone towards me and shouted “Look at this!” in anticipation. Pictured on the screen was a particularly well-groomed dog. Its fur was that of a show dog: gorgeous, soft, glistening. I was almost mesmerised, it was one beautiful dog. He zooms out to show me a headline:
“Man spends $22,000 to become a rough collie dog”.
I laughed in utter disbelief. At first, I had the same thought that any rational person living in this botched economy would have: “$22,000 for a dog costume???!!” That’s essentially my HECS debt only a year and a half into an arts degree. Somewhere in this world, there is a man walking around on all fours, wearing my HECS debt.
After trying to comprehend why we are attracted to spending money on the most banal things, I began to question the fact that this story was somehow newsworthy? Who approved this? Which direction is our idea of news headed?
What vexed me was the fact that this was not an isolated instance. Across Australia, news has become increasingly geared towards clickbait and anything remotely entertaining. According to the journalism study The Evolution of Objective and Interpretative Journalism in the Western Press: Comparing Six News Systems since the 1960s, conducted in 2014, the news paradigm and how we have come to understand it has evolved immensely: so much so that what was newsworthy fifty years ago is drastically different to what is newsworthy now.
We have developed a culture of making news more digestible, inserting sensationalised fluff amidst the most serious of news, and this is no accident.
The rapid growth of press systems coupled with globalisation has allowed media and news companies to invariably fall victim to corporatisation. Unfortunately, this has increasingly polluted the journalistic waters, presenting a multitude of issues. With corporatisation came a shift in the journalistic methods that we now see today. News broadcasts contained more frequent commercial breaks, and wrapped up news with tributes to sponsoring brands and companies. In print, journalists opt for sensationalist headlines like Eerie detail emerges amid investigation into mushroom death mystery. Evidently, this inclination towards entertainment driven content was in pursuit of higher ratings, chasing after a quick buck.
Unsurprisingly, capitalism comes at a cost.
The problem is that all the issues a corporatised media system encourages — a diminishing amount of investigative journalism, underpaying journalists, and increased sensationalism — have come together to reinforce privileged patterns prevalent in our society. Privilege is inherent in a settler-colonial society, embedded into the most insignificant of things and thus, there is no outrunning it. Addressing privilege in critical discussions of media is integral to understanding what we can do better. The mere ability to move on from critical, hard hitting news to a cute, light-hearted story is a privilege we must recognise.
Absolutely nothing irks me more than hearing the segue from an intense story, because some journalistic outlet decided that Tom Cruise at the premiere of the sixtieth Mission Impossible film is definitely just as important as the rampant erasure of Palestinians in Israel.
The way that grassroots media like the Palestine Chronicle provide news is in contrast to these phenomena, based on what they deem as urgent. News in a society plagued by catastrophe such as Palestine differs drastically to that of our own, in that they do not have the same privilege we have to overlook the murder of a child, or the constant night raids and seizures of homes. It is so disturbingly easy for us to choose not to acknowledge the tragedy of the Palestinian people. You and I can rest easy tonight with the knowledge that our family home will not be raided by the military.
They do not have this same choice.
Grassroots non-profit newspapers such as the Palestine Chronicle are the epitome of what Australian news should look like, and a microcosm of what it once was. What do they have that we don’t? News that matters, news that makes a difference, and no extra nonsense. Not a trace of entertainment or sensationalism, because living under Israeli occupation needs no exaggeration.
How is it that a non-profit news platform is able to produce more rigorous news than institutions worth millions? It’s simple, they understand how to allocate time and resources to the stuff that matters, keeping investigative journalism alive and maintaining the original purpose of news within the realm of journalism. News that is informative, noteworthy, and fundamentally matters. It goes without saying, but, anyone of sound mind would never willingly write a story on a Flight attendant’s top seat pick for sleep on a plane — a real 9 News article title — when you live under Israeli apartheid.
