Balanced Media
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Dear Editor,
Free media are an essential component of democracy. Letting the people vote is a joke if they don’t have access to key information and diverse opinion on the issues facing their society.
But journalists are all partisan to some degree. As with politics and law, an adversarial line-up of competing media seems to be as close as a democracy can get to a fair airing of news and views.
There is no known exact procedure for ensuring a balance of media. So if you’ve already got it, don’t mess with it. Fairfax and the ABC consistently favour one side of politics. News Limited fills in other parts of the spectrum. Each medium should try for balance, because when they get too partisan, they lose credibility. But try as they might, no medium ever quite makes it to perfect balance. That’s why we need a diversity.
Strongly opinionated people naturally resent the media unsympathetic to their own world view. But it would be madness to try to hobble the Murdoch press in Australia. We’d run the risk of losing the spread of opinion and information that makes Australia one of the more genuine democracies.
Philip O'Carroll