Consider what isn’t said and be discerning about what is

By CEO, Peter McDonald


As Australians. we’re lucky to have the freedom to information that we do that others in the world don’t enjoy. But the downside of the volume availed by this freedom is that to cut through, authors, journalists, bloggers, influencers, presenters, whomever, in attempting to motivate attention towards their editorial, are moving away from focus on facts to focus on adjectives and suggestion.

The standards for representation of fact and news these days are, in my opinion, lower than what they once were. Perhaps I just look at things differently now from what I used to having done a few more laps around the sun. Those of my generation and perhaps some either side of my vintage who were based in Sydney at the time will remember Brian Henderson as the Channel 9 evening newsreader. His bulletins were 30 minutes long, the reports were matter of fact, and forming perspective on the story was the viewer’s responsibility.

But I’m becoming increasingly alarmed by the sensationalism and bad news that dominates our feeds. What’s more, the evident – but sometime even more concerning subliminal – bias that’s being added to stories or publications or programs. Quite a dilemma.

Not living nearby to the office, I don’t have a lot of time in the morning to get ready and to work on time. The morning news shows are on in the background. What I’ve observed is that day after day, it’s the same pattern of storytelling – fires, car crashes, murders, wars, break-ins, economic pain, etc, etc. As awful and as serious as those things are, the reality is they’re not the only things happening in the country or world. Not only is it negative, its daily – and even within program – repetition is boring. How is it relevant to someone living in Adelaide that there was a motor vehicle accident in a northern Sydney suburb? Bottom line is it isn’t. The fact is that the relevance of such a story is more often than not limited to the people involved (acknowledging sadly that can include innocent victims), because its often the actions of people involved that caused it as opposed to a societal circumstance. But ultimately there’s not a national impact, yet countrywide this is what we all wake up to and sets the tone for our collective days.

Could you imagine if the pendulum swung the complete other direction, and the news was dominated by positive stories bulletin on bulletin, day on day? I suggest for a start that mental health issues would be reduced. And by no means do I diminish the seriousness of those in saying that. I’m simply offering that if we lived in more of a glass half full society, people would be more inclined to think more positively.

Each week there are national conferences, festivals, exhibitions and celebrations that could be reported upon. All of these events are adding value to people’s lives and national industries. But unless it’s a major sporting event, or something that has international cultural appeal like the Sydney Mardi Gras parade this weekend, there’s pretty much zippo coverage of events.

Not all doctors can get to medical conferences, not all builders can get to HIA conferences, and not all events practitioners can get to Evolve. But what if the news covered stories of industry developments revealed by their annual gatherings. Again, individually not of interest to everyone yet there is national relevance when something happens in any industry. The premise of such stories would likely be positivity. Afterall, what industry in its right mind talks itself down?

MEA issues media releases when we have good news to share – be those about students graduating from our College, program launches such as our Mentor Program just this week, partnerships we enter into to enable us to deliver the programs and events for the industry that we do, whatever. The reality is that these are infrequently picked up – even by trade media. Maybe they’re not deemed newsworthy? But I guess that speaks to my point.

Theres more going on than what gets reported. Its being determined for us what we need to be told about – and this is heavily influenced by publisher commercial arrangements, preferences, viewpoints, and objectives that will neither be necessarily clear nor disclosed to us.

I don’t suggest we all start to live in a fairyland and become oblivious to life’s realities. But looking at the situation critically, it seems clear that good news is of lesser importance. It’s said that the greatest motivator for an organic species – including humans – is fear. The survival instinct. But it’s gone too far.

It’s assumed that people who make a report are communicating researched, validated truth. Too often do we hear or read a number and then bookmark that as a frame of reference – all because someone said it. I’m not implying that all content authors – regardless of transmission medium – deliberately misrepresent data. What I am saying, and I’m speaking from personal experience in doing so, is that what gets reported may not be actual but may be an underinformed perspective or incorrectly reached conclusion and/or one that suits an agenda, or a potentially personally held viewpoint.

Keeping to my morning TV reference point, I’ve witnessed interviewers pose questions to their interviewee as ‘Wouldn’t you say that…’, and when this is not bought into in response its repeated with ‘Yeah, but wouldn’t you say that…’ Snippets from the interview are replayed later in the show that reinforce the show producer’s reporting angle. Many of us will have seen the MAFS ads where ‘experts’ comments are edited to look like they’re in response to a specific couple but come the show – for the record also on the background, as opposed to my being an avid watcher – they’re actually in response to another couple. This goes to my point, it’s all about the drama. What’s wrong with people being happy – and watching people being happy?

My point: Media plays a huge role in our lives; yet we will all do well to remain discerning and objective to what we read, hear, and see rather than consider it absolute, but also consider what’s not being said or reported – and contemplate why.