Media Criticism

The last portion of this week’s coverage of foreign media takes us to Australia. The independent website Crikey bridges the gap between stuffy journalism and the uncertainty of the blogosphere. I have read some of the free entries offered through Crikey’s website and think that the newspaper demonstrates the virtues and problems inherent in expanding independent media.

An entry about former Prime Minister and lieutenant of George W. Bush’s Team America John Howard shows the benefits of independent media. The title picture shows Howard receiving a glass bowl while grinning ear to ear. Bernard Keane lays out Howard’s tenuous conservatism and reactionary approach to politics thoroughly in the article. The writer’s criticism of Howard fleeing to the United States to gather among cloistered conservatives is a spot-on analysis of a discredited leader without a job. I enjoy the fact that Keane and other Crikey writers use their freedoms to express disgust at the hypocricies within their native political system.

Several problems with Crikey make wholesale belief in its journalist integrity difficult to achieve. Australia does not have an explicit constitutional or legal provision for freedom of speech and expression. The nation’s media relies on provincial and national judicial decisions to guide limitations on free speech. Australia has shifted away from Howard’s conservatism toward moderation that means that censorship may not be looming. It is not difficult to imagine, however, that a situation could arise where the judiciary, executive and legislative branches embrace reactionary control over the media.

I also think that the use of former political insiders as columnists can be troublesome. Writers like Christian Kerr provide invaluable insight into the inner workings of Australian government with an underlying agenda. This agenda may manifest due to frustration with party platforms, personal problems with particular leaders as well as future political ambitions. I would not say that Christian Kerr consciously thinks about his personal career when writing but writers often fail to recognize their own biases and perspectives. These problems with insider information are not unique to Crikey but readers in Australia should be skeptical about taking everything on the website for granted.