JOURNALISTIC ESSAY

27/05/2022

I was going to be an author. Creative writing was my foundation, my strength, my happiness. Why would I ever want to write about reality when I had endless opportunities of imagination? More so why would I want to write for the media?

 Growing up media had always been identified with negativity, propaganda, fake news, and perpetuating fear, especially growing into an adult during a pandemic. I grew addicted to the news, true or false, every morning I would know the case numbers, the deaths, the days in lockdown and what can be expected within the next 24 hours.  

When I pondered the thought of being a journalist, I didn’t think of the democratic freedom that I now know. I didn’t think of the creativity that was allowed or the people I would be able to meet. Still, in my first class, I was sceptical. How could I become part of this media fiasco that had caused so much anxiety in the past 24 months?

Australia’s experience with journalism was created by convicts and outspoken thinkers like William Wentworth and Robert Wardel. John Milton and his essay on Enlightenment opens journalism to free speech and freedom from censorship during the American Civil War. As the foundations of journalism were built it was poignant that journalists were made to act of their own will, they didn’t have the approval of authority and instead, they exploited the idea of liberty to begin criticising those who disapproved their criticism. This is reiterated by John Stuart Mill in 1859 in his essay On Liberty that solidifies journalism should be kept to facts to ensure civil order and proper representation.

These ideas are now balanced between two aspects of the media, soft and hard news. Hard news style showcases the facts, it allows for no interpretation and can apply to all kinds of writing or reporting. While soft news is the emotion of a story, it is the everyday person who has a story to tell and needs a journalist to voice it. These stories need angles, they need immediate news that would grasp the audience’s attention and get the story distributed to the right readers. Finally, the story should be balanced, objectivity (although impossible) should be undetectable and news should always come first. This was the information I absorbed only in the first two weeks of this course and will now forever stay with me throughout my career.

So why did this resonate with a creative writer who had no interest in becoming part of an institution they disliked so much? Voice. In my story with the community of Hume City Council, I found privilege that I could give their concerns a voice. This was not only through the soft news piece that focused on one man’s anguish with noise pollution and disruption but through hard news as well. Facts didn’t have to neglect my source’s voice which was a public outcry for governments to notice the impact of carbon emissions.

I realised that through all the negativity I associated with the media I was not focusing on the journalists themselves who were given the opportunity to interview ordinary people who needed a platform.

This has become more apparent with social media. The freedom the platforms have created for journalists to gain sources and new stories is abundant, voices are uncensored and open to a wide audience. News is immediate with most of the world gaining stories in seconds. Whilst the world has never seen such liberty, journalists have never felt so threatened.

The spread of fake news threatens the legitimacy of these passionate writers every day with false facts circulating the internet every day. Misinformation has no evidence, disinformation is formulated to trick people and trolls consistently dominate comment sections and forums.

Perhaps social media is the new balance the future of journalism will be weighted upon. It has created such a dominating presence in society that it could not survive without it however it will always have to prevail against its threats.

I cannot say I am immune to the lust for social media. This was clear when I tried almost every Thursday night to log onto Twitter and tweet about Q&A, building my page and presence as a journalist. This has become something I can’t imagine a career as a journalist without and may shape my future prospects.  

I can say though that the spell of journalism ultimately worked once I understood my role as an interviewer. I’ve always been a salesperson, but now I can sell stories. In an interview, I could twist words that would make two of the same questions sound completely different and ultimately get the answer I was looking for. In my first hard news story, I agreed to my source’s wish of being anonymous so that I could get her comments despite this possibly impacting my grade and clarity in my story.  

I could pull my consciousness away from the interview, focus on the story and remove any bias so I could absorb as much information as possible. Through my first story with Brittany Higgins and sexual assault in parliament, I was able to identify the newsworthiness of a speech and adapt that to questions for a second source. I learnt that my questions didn’t have to build every storyline and sometimes the public sphere had enough newsworthiness. This was important to learn as a journalist, to trust in society and build their stories.  

Perhaps the biggest challenge of journalism is its simplicity. It’s a creative writer’s job to go above and beyond but restricted to 25 words a par, a style guide for every institution you write for, quoting to be precise and every word being worthy of payment was entirely new. I found this most difficult in skills-based exercises, such as news value exercises and quoting where a large amount of information had to be simplified into one lead of a story.

However, I am only at the beginning of this chapter and there is still an entire book I’ve got to go through until my story is headlining. My perspective of being a journalist is now forever changed and I not only have the utmost respect for anyone who has done this course but for all those who have pursued this career against all its challenges.