Is the media just another business? Or does it owe a duty to democracy?

Readers of this column know I have contempt for “savvy journalism” — the Jay Rosen description of the cynical, knowing, inside-the-beltway journalistic style that dominates the American and Australian press. 

Indeed, as Rosen noted pointedly the last time he was in Oz, this cabal of self-described “insiders” turns the media away from its mission of exposing corruption, speaking truth to power, and keeping the bastards honest. Instead they find common cause with the bastards and become collaborators — either by facilitating the deliberate strategy of populists and would-be authoritarians of confusing citizens about what is true, and whether truth even exists, or by becoming active co-conspirators in the theft of democracy itself. 

This came to mind this week when a talking-head reporter explained the reduced airtime Fox News is giving Donald Trump with the savvy claim that the move was about business. Fox “is a business”, said Jeremy Peters. “They are in the business of getting as many people as possible to watch that network”. 

Objection, your honour! Yes, it’s the case that for-profit entities have been included among those who write the first draft of history and assume the indispensable roles recognised in democratic theory — and validated by present-day reality — for an ethical and responsible fourth estate. 

However, it’s one thing to include the making of a buck as a necessity that must co-exist among higher-order duties and requirements. It’s another to act like the news is no different from any other economic widget, something created solely to satisfy consumer preferences — and which, should it fail to do so, can be reconfigured as often as required to please them again. 

It is not. Something made clear by the election of an entirely incompetent chief executive to the presidency, followed by a multipronged self-coup with lashings of violence that he orchestrated so he didn’t have to leave. An election that Fox was created to achieve, and would never have been possible without it. 

The whole affair was a dereliction of duty — the duty every news organisation, regardless of its political leaning, has to the political systems that make its existence possible but also essential. A dereliction of duty that anyone who has watched Sky News would know poses the same risks to Australian democracy as Fox did to American democracy, should something like the Donald come our way. 

That is, should Australians find ourselves with a populist buffoon and wanna-be authoritarian to which enough citizens take a shine, Rupert Murdoch will give them as much airtime as he believes they are financially worth. Even if they are pouring doubt on the security of our voting system or some other vital component of our democratic system, with corrupt intent and no evidence. Even after watching what his support of such dangerous buffoonery did to the social relationships and political system of his adopted country. 

Because we, like the Americans, have no way of stopping him.

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