Prince Harry’s recent legal win against the Murdoch media empire brings to mind just how low the ethics of some modern journalists and metropolitan media outlets have fallen.
With over 70 years of working experience as a journalist, foreign correspondent and editor, I have sadly noticed just how many former reputable and leading newspapers in various parts of the world have turned their backs on the old rules and regulations governing our once noble profession.
The reason for this, of course, is the present-day call for sensationalism to sell more papers and gather bigger TV and radio audiences — and thereby obtain more advertising dollars. All this at the expense of losing reader trust in the written and spoken word.
In the old days, London’s famed Fleet Street — the original mecca of accurate reporting — was manned by serious men and women writers dedicated to the absolute truth of any particular situation in the great interests of the general public and their national security and development.
To now find this level of good, straight journalism one has to largely rely on smaller local and regional newspapers (such as the Clarence Valley Independent) which still report on their community matters in a fair and square way. These ‘salt of the earth’ publications largely provide a good and accurate mirror of what is happening in town at least. So, what actually has gone wrong?
In former days, young people wishing to enter the media industry as would-be journalists were originally preferred to first hold a substantial university degree. But before they could put pen to paper, they were employed as copy messengers and providers of morning, afternoon and midnight teas to the around-the-clock journalists working with them.
It was only after an introductory period that they were offered a five-year ‘apprenticeship’ coupled with their attending night classes on the law and ethics. They also mostly had to pass an up to 240 words-a-minute shorthand test to ensure accuracy in their speech notetaking in the absence, at the time, of electronic recording machines as used today.
Once they were accepted as ‘cub reporters’, these new entrants to journalism made their way through the mandatory five years of work before they could indeed call themselves fully trained senior journalists.
This former and well-trusted way of entry into the profession of accurate journalism has in recent decades been generally ignored by major news outlets at various points around the globe and two or three-year media courses at university have taken hold as the only professional criteria for new entrants to the newspaper game.
As a result of this abridged education of today, young journalists now leave university as fully blown professionals but they often suffer a severe lack of real hands-on experience which can only be gained at the rockface in the average reporters’ or sub-editors’ room.
This current state of circumstances now all too often results in some relatively inexperienced newcomers advising the world how it should be run through the use of sometimes inadequate initial decisions, grammar, spelling and punctuation.
Another noticeable effect of the trend in modern journalistic education is the habit to blend fact with comment or analysis in the same article or news item, leaving readers to wonder where exactly the true facts lie.
The relentless spread of TV and commercial radio in more recent decades has also seen signs of newsgathering and investigation being turned into a form of entertainment with truth giving way to surmise.
That is why I and my older colleagues largely ignore what is only said or promised by the majority of newsworthy people we interview. Instead, we have learned to be only interested in what actually does happen as a result of promises or threats and to save ourselves from later being accused of having been sucked in by political and commercial unreality.
Mention of this brings me back to Prince Harry and his long-standing legal fight against the Murdock media on allegations of spying on royalty, using over 100 private detectives to intrude on his family life and on that of his late mother, Princess Diana, who died while being chased by over-zealous photographers bent on getting an indecent scoop.
In the old book of journalism, news researchers were forbidden from stealing information and photographs or behaving and exaggerating in any unethical ways. Instead, we were taught to “publish and be damned” as long as we knew our facts to be absolutely true and ethically honest.
I worked closely with one of the most ethical editors in history when I was following my trade in Africa. This man was the late Laurence Owen Vines Gandar who headed the Daily Mail in Johannesburg and was totally outspoken against the South African Government’s legislated Apartheid cruelties.
Gandar never gave in to publishing the real truths of Apartheid until his subsequent arrest and gaoling and the official closing down of his world Freedom-of-the-Press awarded newspaper originally founded by the well-known writer and novelist, Edgar Wallace.
In the 1950/60s, all Daily Mail journalists stoically refused to give in to South African government censorship and managed to survive the Afrikaner regime’s tactics because they always stuck to the true facts provable in any international court of law.
The growing presence of social media platforms and podcasts today has made big inroads into the telling of the news in the most reliable and correct way. Total accuracy is unfortunately sometimes swamped by making news stories more entertaining through the addition of what are called “colourful facts” and descriptions.
Another increasing problem in the professional newspaper world is the fact that every man, woman and teenage person now believes they are journalists when they pontificate on the Web. This further muddies the waters for readers who can never be sure that what they are reading is indeed fact or half fiction.
It is also very apparent today that certain ‘news’ items are presented as news while in fact supporting a clever marketing campaign for certain products or political propaganda or brainwashing purposes.
With subtle advertising creeping far too prominently into the electronic media, one is often left to wonder whether stories presented as news are being sponsored to have a direct reverse effect on our democratic elections and governance in the West.