Signal 08.06: The damage to news trust in Australia is unfortunately a self inflicted wound

I have to admit when the news about Peter Costello's airport departure broke on Thursday it was a moment of despair.

Here's the Chairman of a media company which has endured 2-3 weeks of trust destruction, doing nothing to help reverse that decline.

It was worse that the other party involved is a journalist, and Costello chairs a company that is one of the leading employees and champions of journalism in Australia.

It is a challenging time for the news industry as it grapples with commercial sustainability challenges. It's also grappling with a challenge around engagement of audiences under 40. Its competition now for engagement and ad dollars aren't similar sized and cultured media organisations, they are trillion dollar tech platforms who make their own rules.

But the greatest issue facing news, and why the Costello incident was so frustrating, is the fact people in general don't trust news organisations and journalists.

The Edelman Trust Barometer for 2024 in Australia found 59% of people believe journalists are purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations. 38% trust them to tell the truth. That is the lowest of all professions sampled.

Australian's trust in news in general is at 43% according to the University of Canberra Digital News Report 2023.

Per the Edelman research, media has a net competence score of -24, and a net ethical score of -13. It is perceived as the worst industry in both.

As someone working in media these scores don't reflect what I see as someone amongst it. I work alongside journalists every day and I see how seriously they take their work, the responsibility they have to their audiences and society. I believe strongly in the importance of journalism and journalists. And I spend my professional energy working to ensure journalism remains sustainable and supported, and the value is communicated effectively to readers and advertising partners.

But I'm also a realist and the challenges we face right now with trust are significant. And my worry is it could get worse. The entire premise of news and news media is predicated on trust. Without it you're just another person with a megaphone in a world where every single person has a megaphone for whatever insanity they want to spew and digital platforms are willing to platform these views unless pressured to remove them.

Over the year to date the coverage of the business of news has been the worst I've seen in my 20 year media career. We had the Bruce Lehrmann and Ten dirty laundry dragged out for all to see. Then, Seven was brought into that process and that unveiled a brand new basket of soiled intrigue that became the news cycle for almost a month. We have the Nine incidents which had played out over another 3 weeks recently, which were then compounded with a secondary issue. On Wednesday we had Michael Miller defending the harassment of women by specific journalists ("it wasn't intended to bully") and defending what academics called misinformation (e.g Peta Credlin stating The Voice was about treaty and compensation, incorrectly) around pieces published by Newscorp on the voice referendum by telling the journalist (the very experienced Anna Henderson) "you need to understand the difference between news reporting and opinion and commentary."

Then on Thursday we had Costello. He could have diffused the situation by simply helping the journalist up to his feet. Instead he stood over him and stared him down. All caught on camera. All now being broadcast for millions to see. Every hour. Every day. Ultimately it doesn't matter if the fall was intended or not. The perception of viewers will become that aggression and intimidation to challenge is a cultural norm approved at the highest levels.

No wonder we have a trust issue with news. And it's an area we as an industry need to collectively demand more of each other on. Because the trust issue won't pick and choose its victims, these views are generally held across all participants and they erode the sustainability of us all. People like me can contest whether these trust issues are fair and rooted in fact (as stated I deeply believe in journalism and believe on the whole it is vitally important to society and democracy) but we also can't argue with the data here and the perception challenges we unfortunately face.

The news business faces a barrage of external challenges that many of us are fighting every day to overcome. But right now, here in Australia, the most damage is being self inflicted.