Some journalists are as bad as politicians

Journalism has changed dramatically in the last couple of decades. When I trained in the 1960's and 70's, it was drummed into us that reporting facts was the essence of journalism. Now that ethos has been thrown out of the window in favour of presenting opinion. The spread of television has probably hastened the process – bringing in the era of 'personalities' masquerading as journalists rather than good old reporters. A Case in point is the reporting of the latest US election. So many commentators are still smarting obsessively at being wrong – they wanted Hilary Clinton to win and they can't forgive Donald Trump for confirming in the public mind that they are buffoons. They allowed their personal bias to infect their reporting. One opinionated presenter on ABC morning television went so far as to say that anyone who voted for Trump needed an IQ test. What a mindless thing to say. How dare she talk about US voters that way. She would have been sacked on the sport by my old Editor, Graham Perkin at The Age and probably by most of the other editors for whom I have worked. If the commentators had been objective in their reporting of the election campaign, they would have realised that Trump had a popular message and that US voters were keen on change – as Australians were at our last Federal election where the coalition just scraped back with a one seat majority in the lower house, and lost seats in the senate – hardly a ringing endorsement or a mandate for every policy they want to push through.