Rodney Tiffen

Sources in the News

In analysing the news medias role in serving the functions associated with democratic citizenship, the number, diversity and range of news sources are central. Research conducted on sources has overwhelmingly focused on individual national systems. However, studying variations in news source patterns across national environments enhances understanding of the medias role. This article is based on a larger project, “Media System, Political Context and Informed Citizenship: A Comparative Study”, involving 11 countries. It seeks, first, to identify differences between countries in the sources quoted in the news; second, to establish whether there are consistent differences across countries between types of media in their sourcing patterns; and, third, to trace any emergent consistent patterns of variation between different types of organization across different countries. A range of findings related to news media source practices is discussed that highlights variations and patterns across different media and countries, thereby questioning common generalizations about the use of sources by newspapers and public service broadcasters. Finally, a case is made for comparative media research that helps enhance the news medias key role as a social institution dedicated to informed citizenship.

Tip of the Iceberg or Moral Panic? Police Corruption Issues in Contemporary New South Wales

The most contentious issues in news coverage of scandals concern issues of proportion and prevalence. In New South Wales, the issue of police corruption has been on political and media agendas for more than three decades. The media reporting has included some landmark pieces of investigative reporting and dramatic revelations in trials and royal commissions but also sensationalism and rhetorical extravagance. Despite the prolonged attention and prolific coverage, serious questions remain about how well the extent and nature of corruption were reported and whether the media has conveyed the degree of reform in police practices.

Marching in time: Alliance politics, synchrony and the case for war in Iraq, 2002-2003

This article considers how three countries—the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia—approached the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 by examining how the leaders’ decision-making interacted, the commonalities of their policy-making processes, and the approach to policy justification taken in terms of their domestic political environments. In particular, it examines the extent to which their claims as to why invasion was necessary went in synchrony. Having decided on war, all three national leaders sought to persuade their publics of the moral imperative for invasion and the immediacy of the threat that needed to be eradicated, and each made secret intelligence public in so doing. The selective use of intelligence allowed the politial leaders to shift the focus of the blame from policy-makers to intelligence accuracy when the immediate threat from weapons of mass destruction turned out to be illusory.

CHANGES IN AUSTRALIAN NEWSPAPERS 1956–2006

In the 50 years between 1956 (when television began) and 2006, Australian newspapers grew and changed in fundamental ways. A content analysis of six of Australias leading papers, taken at decade intervals, showed, most obviously, that their size increased very substantially. The increase in editorial space was even greater, as the proportion of space taken by advertising declined. While in absolute terms, advertising volume grew steadily in the early decades, in the last two decades classified advertising declined both absolutely and proportionally, while the volume of feature advertising held up better. Newspapers in 2006 were very different visually from 1956. Several of these changes were introduced slowly, with only relatively modest changes between 1956 and 1976, but then change occurred at an accelerating rate, especially with the introduction of colour throughout the newspaper from the 1990s. The other significant trend in newspapers has been their increasing segmentation, with more specialised sections, many of them with distinctive advertising appeals.

Opinion Polls and the Media in Australia

Since 1943, every Australian election has been preceded by published opinion polls. Since 1972, every election has been preceded by at least three companies regularly conducting opinion polls for competing media groups. As early as the 1977 election, Goot and Beed (1979, p. 141) observed that ‘during an election, to talk about politics is to talk about the polls’, while in 2010, Young (2010, p. 186) found that in 2007, 44 per cent of election-related front page newspaper articles and 35 per cent of TV news stories contained some reference to opinion polls, a dramatic increase on the previous two elections. The prominent psephologist Peter Brent opined that ‘there must be some countries more obsessed with political opinion polls than Australia, although they’re yet to be found’ (2007, p. 131).

Understanding the civic impact of journalism: A realistic evaluation perspective

The importance of journalism to civil society is constantly proclaimed, but empirical evidence on journalisms impact, and how this operates, is surprisingly thin. Indeed, there is confusion even about what is meant by the term “impact”. Meanwhile, the issue of the role of journalism is becoming increasingly urgent as a consequence of the rapid changes engulfing the news media, brought about by technological change and the flow-on effect to the traditional advertising-supported business model. Assessing the impact of journalism has recently been the topic of debate among practitioners and scholars particularly in the United States, where philanthropists have responded to the perceived crisis in investigative journalism by funding not-for-profit newsrooms, with resulting new pressures being placed on journalists and editors to quantify their impact on society. These recent attempts have so far failed to achieve clarity or a satisfactory conclusion, which is not surprising given the complex web of causation within which journalism operates. In this paper, the authors propose a stratified definition of journalistic impact and function. They propose a methodology for studying impact drawing on realistic evaluation—a theory-based approach developed primarily to assess large social programmes occurring in open systems. The authors argue this could allow a conceptual and methodological advance on the question of media impacts, leading to research capable of usefully informing responses at a time of worrying change.

Contested Narratives, Ambiguous Impacts and Democratic Dilemmas: The Western News Media and the “War on Terror”

Abstract Because the essence of terrorism is to produce a psychological impact far greater than its physical impact, the relationship of contemporary international terrorism with the news media has often been called symbiotic, with publicity described as the oxygen on which terrorism lives. Although this view is in many respects true, it over-simplifies a more ambiguous, varied and complex reality, and in any case, the policy options open to Western democratic governments in limiting this ‘oxygen’ are very limited both normatively and pragmatically. Equally important, but attracting much less scholarly and popular attention, is the news medias role in the problematic politics of counterterrorism. Here the attraction of heroic narratives to both media and governments – for their own different reasons – creates coincidences of interest. Powerful metaphors such as the war on terror encourage strategies which may be substantially ineffective, perhaps even counter-productive, while politically benefiting the governments adopting them.

The Packer-Labor Alliance, 1978-95: RIP

One of the most well known and strange alliances in Australia, between Kerry Packer, one of Australias most powerful, controversial media barons and the Labor Party is finally over. The reasons for the relationship coming to an end are highlighted.

Looking back at MIA

Murray Goot and Rodney Tiffen were among the six editors appointed to manage MIA after Henry Mayers death in 1991. In this entry from A Companion to the Australian Media, they provide an overview of the journals 38-year history.