Monday, September 28 is World News Day.
Hold tight - we’re checking permissions before loading more content
It will probably pass mostly unnoticed, but Country Press Australia president Damian Morgan said it was a day to celebrate journalism, and the fact-based, verified information it produced.
He said it was also a good day to remind ourselves why that matters.
“Whether it's a real-world conversation around the water cooler at work, or an answer generated by AI, we need to be feeding the system — both human and robot — accurate, verified information,” Mr Morgan said.
“Get that wrong and the consequences can be catastrophic.”
“Truth matters – especially when the truth is less sexy than a more compelling story, told entertainingly by an advocate or influencer that gets more clicks on social media.
“And that's the problem. We are producing more information and ‘news’ than ever before, while having fewer journalists doing the work of checking it, challenging it and finding out whether it’s actually true.”
Mr Morgan said the increasing emergence of government into the news space, at all levels, had been spurred by it attracting former editors or long-serving scribes at the local paper with huge salaries to produce marketing and ‘news’ for the council or the government.
He said the same governments the same journalists once held to account now had some of the best journalistic talent producing their PR.
“We can't blame the journalists, they get paid more to do less,” Mr Morgan said.
“But it is worth asking — why has every level of government decided it needs to get into the news business?” he said.
“Most people don’t want their council, for example, to be a news organisation. They want it to do its job. Roads, rates and rubbish. Planning. Parks. Libraries. Local services.
“The things councils are actually there to do. We didn’t ask our council to establish a newsroom and yet that’s increasingly what is happening.
“They are building their own channels to ‘inform’ residents — websites, newsletters, videos, social media and publications which look increasingly like news services.”
But here, Mr Morgan said, was the problem.
He said a government communications operation existed to tell people what the government was doing.
While a newsroom exists to ask whether what the government is doing is any good.
“They’re not the same thing. One communicates. The other scrutinises,” Mr Morgan said.
“We shouldn’t kid ourselves this is just a harmless shift in the way they communicate. When government starts producing the news, it changes the information ecosystem.
“News is already a much-abused term — government and corporate PR departments produce ‘news’. Online advocates and influencers produce ‘news’.
“Marketing is dressed up as information. Opinion is dressed up as fact. Social media platforms are just as happy to host dangerous lies as they are the truth — they profit the same either way.
“There's an old maxim in journalism: news is what somebody doesn’t want printed — the rest is PR.”
Mr Morgan said a great local news service did much more than that, of course.
It builds connection, tells the stories of communities, celebrates local achievement and helps people understand the place they live.
But it must also do that first thing he said.
It must be prepared to ask the questions somebody doesn’t want asked. Because democracy depends on scrutiny.
“Stop scrolling. Question the things which simply confirm what you already believe,” Mr Morgan said.
“Be suspicious of certainty without evidence and remember not everything which looks like news is journalism.
“I hope this World News Day we all celebrated local news services and the journalists who work across regional Australia — and across your region.
“They are essential infrastructure for our democratic way of life.
“They are the people who help make sure the information we consume – in our communities, in our conversations and increasingly in our AI machines – is based on something more solid than whoever shouted the loudest or got the most clicks.”