The Rise of the Fifth Estate: social media and blogging in Australian politics

Scribe Publications

THE RISE OF THE FIFTH ESTATE

Greg Jericho writes a weekly blog for ABC Online’s The Drum. From 2006 to 2011 he worked as a Commonwealth public servant, mostly in the film-policy division. He has a PhD in English literature and an honours degree in economics. He also writes, blogs, and tweets as his alter-ego, Grog’s Gamut.

For Gaynor, Lara, and Emma

Scribe Publications Pty Ltd

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First published by Scribe 2012

Copyright © Greg Jericho 2012

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publishers of this book.

National Library of Australia

Cataloguing-in-Publication data

Jericho, Greg.

The Rise of the Fifth Estate: social media and blogging in Australian politics.

9781921942877 (e-book.)

1. Social media–Australia. 2. Digital media–Australia. 3. Political science–Australia–Blogs. 4. Digital communications–Australia.

302.2310994

www.scribepublications.com.au

Contents

Introduction

1/Thrills and Spills

2/The Australian Blogosphere: where, what, how, who, why?

3/Where Are All the Women?

4/Never Read the Comments

5/The MSM v Bloggers: ‘let the professionals do their job’

6/How to Become a Hashtag

7/Journalists All a Twitter

8/One, Two, Three, Four, I Declare a Twitter War

9/How Many Votes Are There on Twitter?

Conclusion

Appendix: List of Australian Political Blogs

Notes

Acknowledgements

Introduction

THE VIEW OF BLOGS as constituting a ‘Fifth Estate’ was first postulated by American media academic Stephen D. Cooper in his book Watching the Watchdog: bloggers as the fifth estate, in 2006. William H. Dutton took it a step further in his 2007 work, Through the Network of Networks: the fifth estate, arguing that the Fifth Estate not only comprised bloggers, but also the networks established on the Internet — including what would be now called the ‘social media’. Indeed, the phrase was used in the 1960s to denote the ‘underground newspapers’ that some see as the precursor to blogs. In general, the phrase is used with the implicit assumption that the world of blogs is there to monitor the media, in much the same way that the media are believed to perform the role of watching the first three estates. ¹ With this assumption comes the suggestion that this makes the world of blogs and social media somehow superior to the mainstream media — known online as the ‘MSM’.

In Australia, especially regarding political coverage, this view has held great sway among the pro-blogger crowd, and lies behind much of the defensive manoeuvring and reporting from those within the MSM. In February 2012, Dylan Welch, the defence and national security correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, responded to comments on Twitter by independent journalist Antony Loewenstein that the MSM didn’t pay as much attention to the WikiLeaks story as they should have due to ‘fear of ignorance’. Welch pointed out that it was a journalist, Philip Dorling, who had brought WikiLeaks to Australia and that Welch himself had written over 100 articles on the subject, which hardly constituted ignorance. David Crowe (then with the Australian Financial Review, and now The Australian), viewing the response, tweeted, ‘Go Dylan. Big believer myself in #msmpride’. Welch also replied to others who were criticising the coverage, ‘I think by lumping us all in as #msm, you do the very many good journalists a real disservice.’

This is indeed one of the problems on both sides of the fence — the view that the MSM are made up of Rupert Murdoch shills and tabloid hacks who would struggle to find their way around anything more complex than a menu at a Canberra restaurant is equally and just as voraciously countered with claims that bloggers are adding no new content, but merely using what the MSM report and then criticising the way they do it. American journalist Dan Mitchell on his blog (ironically) in early 2012 wrote a post (since deleted) in which he criticised American academic Jay Rosen, Mike Godwin, and others as being ‘new media maximalists’ who, Mitchell suggested, always take the default view that ‘amateur journalists are superior to professional ones, simply by virtue of being amateurs.’ ²

Jay Rosen responded on his Google+ page that:

I don’t think amateur journalists are superior to pros, and I have never made a statement like that in my writing or speaking life …

What I actually believe is that the hybrid forms will prove most workable. That’s why I talk about ‘pro-am’ journalism, a term I helped to popularize starting in 2005. Alan Rusbridger of The Guardian calls it the ‘mutualisation’ of the craft. Pro journalists and the users work together in the production of high quality editorial goods.

Mike Godwin, in a comment on Rosen’s page, similarly stated:

I think that, in general, professional journalists are better than amateurs. In general, professional anything is better than amateur anything. Who could deny this? Occasionally an amateur exceeds professionals in some field or other. Who could deny this either?

Oddly, as we shall see, many deny it.

Indeed, there is a view that if you champion blogs, and at times see the quality of their work as exceeding that of the MSM, you see no worth in professional journalism; such a position has been ascribed to me as well. The Australian’s Ben Packham, in a discussion with me on Twitter after criticising me for being paid by the ABC, also tweeted, ‘you think selling news is wrong, no?’ To believe that critics of sensationalist forms of journalism and of some columnists and editorial positions of various newspapers are against all commercial media is an easy jump to make if you are not interested in seeing deficiencies in your own work. Similarly, believing that the MSM hold no value and is there merely to sell advertising may help you think your blog deserves wider prominence than it gets, but it doesn’t allow much room for reason and logic.

While there are many facets of journalism that may feel under threat from the Fifth Estate, this book focuses on the interaction of the blogosphere and social media with the overall coverage of Australian politics.

I began writing a blog in July 2008, a few years after having observed and contributed to political discussion on blogs such as William Bowe’s Poll Bludger. While I had long been resistant to some forms of social media — such as Facebook — I quickly became a convert to Twitter when I joined in July 2009, mostly because I appreciated the ability to engage with many outside the ‘blogosphere’, and also with members of the Canberra press gallery. Over time, I noted with interest the varied reactions that journalists had to the denizens of the Fifth Estate. In September 2010, I was able to experience their reactions first hand.

What sets the social media and blogosphere apart from the world of the MSM is exemplified by a stanza from WB Yeats’ famous poem ‘The Second Coming’:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

The MSM and those in power — politicians and governments — seek to hold the centre, but the Internet and the social-media world is a cyclone. It is a centrifugal force spinning control away from the centripetal forces of the establishment that is seeking to manage and formalise it.

Time and again, we see those desperate to keep things as they are portraying the world of blogs and social media as anarchic — where anonymous trolls hurl abuse, drowning the innocent, and where reason is forgone for passionate intensity. The history of the interactions between the establishment and the public on the blogs, initially, and then on Twitter and to a lesser degree Facebook, reflects these two forces.

This book examines how some of the participants within the two groups interact, and how those within the media and those who both sides seek to watch — the politicians — have reacted to the winds of change that seek to blow control away from the centre.

It begins with an examination of how social media affected the coverage of three leadership events — the Costello–Howard non-challenge of 2007, the Abbott defeat of Turnbull in 2009, and the Gillard defeat of Rudd in 2010.

It also examines the make-up of the Australian political blogosphere — noting that while it is a world frequently criticised, it is also largely unknown, including by those who write blogs.

Chapters Three and Four discuss two issues that both the MSM and the social-media world are forced to confront: the treatment of women, and the role of and difficulties involved with comments left on blogs and news articles.

The main critic of the Australian political blogosphere has been The Australian newspaper. Chapter Five examines this history and the broader anti-blog position held by many in the MSM, and notes the similar tactics and accusations employed in other countries. This leads into an account of my own experience when, in 2010, I was revealed by The Australian to be the blogger ‘Grog’s Gamut’.

While Facebook is a more popular social-media platform, Twitter has been by far more influential within Australia in terms of the engagement that takes place between journalists and politicians. Chapter Seven examines how journalists engage with and use the Twittersphere.

Chapter Eight takes a look at the fights that occur on Twitter, and the accusations by some in the media that it has become nasty and not like the good old days (meaning all of two years ago).

The final chapter looks at how Australia’s federal politicians have used social media — including long-time member of the blogosphere, but Twitter sceptic, Andrew Leigh; the politician widely regarded as the best user of social media, Malcolm Turnbull; and the federal politician who tweets most frequently, Labor’s Ed Husic.

In a single week in June 2012, the two major news organisations in Australia, Fairfax and News Limited, both announced major restructures of their companies. Both anticipated significant job losses across all facets of the organisations, from printers to journalists: Fairfax alone announced that around 380 editorial staff would be cut. The week’s announcements were viewed by many as a turning point — the moment when Australia’s media companies faced up to reality, and admitted that they could no longer rely on a twentieth-century business model.

In fact, the companies had been changing in stages for a number of years — the announcements seemed significant mostly because of the job losses involved, and also because of the sense that a point of no return had been reached. The changes, however, are not limited to the companies’ business models, but extend to how their journalists report and broadcast their work, and how that work is received.

Sky News editor John Bergin, who is also the network’s director of social media and digital news, has noted that passive media consumption is all but extinct. This book seeks to examine how, in a sector under enormous pressure, Australia’s political journalists have dealt with this change and have attempted to control the widening gyre of social media.

Chapter One

Thrills and Spills

FOR AS LONG AS THE MEDIA have had any say in how the news is to be provided to the public, journalists within its warm and self-protecting bosom have adopted the role of gatekeepers.

This is never more the case than when it comes to the Canberra press gallery. Imagine what it is like to be one of those few — well, actually, the not-so-few. The email list of the federal parliamentary press gallery runs to 11 pages, and contains over three hundred names. (The Australian has 19 by itself, and the ABC’s names run for over two pages.) But when you get down to it, the number of them who get by-lines, whose faces appear on television, and whose voices broadcast the news of the day are few and privileged.

Oh, to be one of those few. Imagine the power to be able to decide what to write — the angle, the slant, the lead. To be able to head off for dinner in Kingston or Manuka with some minister — either government or shadow — for a little off-the-record briefing (because we can safely assume that not all of those un-named ‘government sources’ are made up). Imagine being one of those who sit in the parliamentary gallery, overlooking the elected and deciding their fates. Oh, mighty Fourth Estate! Gatekeepers of the news; provider of opinions for us all!

And should you disagree with a particular opinion or with the presentation of the news, send an email, or get hold of pen and paper, and write a letter to the editor — and see the wonders of free speech and freedom of the press combined (ignoring the fact that the media are the gatekeepers of even the public’s views of the media).

Back in 2007, in the run-up to the November election, the world of political blogs in Australia was beginning to disrupt this nice, century-old tradition. The ‘old media’ — The Australian, most particularly — didn’t take it particularly well. This was odd, not only because it was strange that a paper that held itself up as the leading newspaper of the country should care what a few ‘amateurs’ might think, but also because at the time The Australian had one of its best journalists doing great work as a blogger.

The late Matt Price would have been perfect for the Twittersphere. A love of politics and sport, and the ability to mesh both with popular-culture references — such as when he compared the voting public’s declining attraction to John Howard with Price’s own inexplicable indifference to the band REM — along with an ability to see both sides of a debate, and also to find humour in all things, would have seen Price as assuredly the dominant Australian political journalist on Twitter.

In 2007, Price’s output on The Australian was also the only kind of writing that deserved the name of a ‘blog’ being posted on a mainstream-media website by a journalist. Sure, by this time, Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt had blogs running on The Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun websites, but Price’s blog was secondary to his work as a journalist. On news.com.au, Tim Dunlop was showing everybody how it should be done, as he spent long hours responding to comments, guiding the debate, providing updates and links, and moderating the comments. Dunlop, however, was a blogger from way back, and was an anomaly among the authors of new-fangled ‘blogs’ that News Limited websites were trying to fashion. While the newspapers would occasionally fire shots at the blogosphere, and journalists would obviously read the blogs — especially when their own name was mentioned — the interaction between the public and the gatekeepers remained as it ever had been.

This was a state of media stasis that, a mere five years later, seems quaint. A look back over recent years shows the great changes that have occurred in the way that political events are reported.

On 11 September 2007, news came through from Canberra of a possible leadership spill within the Liberal Party. In the morning, Sky News ran a story that Malcolm Turnbull and Alexander Downer were withdrawing their support for John Howard. Both Tim Dunlop and Andrew Bolt were onto the story quickly on their respective blogs. Bolt ran with ‘Downer, Turnbull give up on Howard’; Dunlop, with ‘The last days of chez Howard?’ But the best place for readers to find answers to their questions was from Matt Price, who was also covering the story on his blog with the tantalising opening stanza of ‘Something is on in Parliament House’.

What we saw this day would not be the end of the Howard prime ministership, but it was the start of social media breaking down the gate-kept world of Australian politics. Throughout the day, Price provided updates of events taking place:

On the way out of questions, Downer walked past a bunch of journalists and dismissed all this as much ado about nothing, declared nothign [sic] would happen with the leadership, and predicted we’d all get sick of idle speculation over the next six weeks or so.

Yes, even the odd typo would get through — something that bloggers and Twitter users know happens, and that only the most miserable of pedants worry about. The social-media space is fast and messy, and is not the environment for as perfect a news article as one that has passed under the watch of a vigilant sub-editor (back when sub-editors were employed directly and were valued).

However, Price was doing more than just providing updates; he was also responding to comments and questions from his readers. During the day he responded 14 times to readers’ comments.

Some of these involved his calming down the hopes of lefty readers:

LukeH Tue 11 Sep 07 (10.45am) looks and smells like D-Day has arrived for the PM. baseball bats ready?! present arms!

Matt Price Tue 11 Sep 07 (12.18pm) Not so sure, Luke. Howard will need to be blasted out.

Or the delusions of the right:

deadcato Tue 11 Sep 07 (11.35am) Matt, a hypothetical: Costello’s unelectable, Howard’s gone, Turnbull hasn’t had much cut-through despite being fairly high-profile: what are the chances of a genuinely fresh face being vaulted in? I’m thinking Julie Bishop- two months to tart her up, election in January?

Matt Price Tue 11 Sep 07 (12.29pm) You’re dreaming, Deadcato.

He also gave insights into how the system works, and how journalists are never passive agents during a leadership spill:

Jane Tue 11 Sep 07 (11.42am) Is this a case of the Canberra press gallery getting too excited or is it going to be one of those historic days in Federal politics?? I guess we’ll just have to stay online (with Sky news on in the background) to see what happens …

Matt Price Tue 11 Sep 07 (12.33pm) Let’s be clear about this, Jane. When leadership battles are on, MPs use the media to pressurise rivals and send messages to colleagues. I don’t believe David Speers is inventing his story on Sky — clearly, senior Libs are attempting to force JWH to quit.

And then a final summing-up:

nomad3 Tue 11 Sep 07 (01.23pm) Matt, someone asked you a question earlier … please respond … have you ever seen anything like this this close to an election … whats your take ? you think today is the day?

Matt Price Tue 11 Sep 07 (01.31pm) We’re in new territory, Nomad. Right now it seems Howard will hang in, but who one earth knows?

Over on Andrew Bolt’s blog, predictions were being made:

UPDATE 2: … Costello isn’t stirring any of this, but is ready to lead. He’ll be prime minister tomorrow

And Matt Price was being used as a primary source:

UPDATE 4: No confirmation from Matt Price, but a sense of end of empire …

This was the blogosphere come to the mainstream media — blogs referencing other blogs, readers discussing events with each other, and it all being done in a fluid and (in the case of Bolt’s prediction) messy way.

There is often a messiness to blogs that is tough for the traditional media to accept (except when they make similar errors). But while it is easy to go in hard on Bolt’s error of foresight, it is clear that he was expressing his gut reaction. On some occasions (such as, much later, when he speculated wrongly about the religion and motives of Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik), this can be unwise, and can lead to false conclusions being made that become fact in the minds of trusting readers. But in the case of the machinations of political parties, Bolt’s readers were after his insights and hunches — and they knew they were just that. No one was thinking it was fact that Costello would be prime minister on 12 September.

Such discussions were not new to the blogging world, but what made this day unique was the presence of Matt Price inside the walls — responding directly to readers, and not filtering them through his editor or the editor of the letters pages.

It was an indicator of where the media would be going, because it was where consumers were demanding the media go. Write a letter to the editor? Why on earth would you bother to do that, when you could leave a comment on a blog of the journalist who wrote the very piece about which you wished to comment? While Price’s responses to his readers showed the way, they were still just a taste of what could be. His 14 responses were written between 12.17 and 1.31pm. Most of them were in reply to comments written at least an hour earlier.

The nature of the moderation policy for blogs on media websites reduces the ability of the blogger/journalist to provide quick responses, and means that there is next to no chance for there to be quick dialogue between the commenters. Those blogs in September 2007 had brought the interaction between readers and journalists closer than ever before, but real-time responsiveness was still beyond reach. Readers could call out their comments, and know that the journalist would hear them, but the distance between producer and consumer was still there, and it could be measured by the lapse in time between query and response. The cheek-by-jowl closeness of Twitter was yet to arrive.

Even by the time the leadership of a political party next became the subject of urgent political discourse, little had changed in the social-media landscape of Australian politics. On 15 September 2008, when Malcolm Turnbull challenged Brendan Nelson, none of the journalists in the Canberra press gallery had yet joined Twitter.

There were a few early adopters who existed on the periphery — Sky News director John Bergin had joined on 3 September. The earliest joiner of Twitter from among the main political journalists in the country was news.com.au’s Paul Colgan, who had signed up at the extraordinarily early date of 7 April 2007. Political blogger Malcolm Farnsworth and Crikey blogger Possum Comitatus (Scott Steel) had joined respectively in April and May of 2008, but had little cause to use it. Of the over three hundred journalists who covered federal politics or national affairs, only ten were on Twitter at the time of Turnbull’s leadership challenge.

Some politicians were also on Twitter, but little to do with politics was happening or said there — and certainly not by them. The Greens’ Senator Sarah Hanson-Young was the first Australian politician on Twitter. She joined in April 2007, but she would not find another parliamentarian to tweet to until Malcolm Turnbull joined in October 2008 after his ascension to the leadership of the Liberal Party. Thus, for the social-media history of Australian politics, we can move swiftly past this glorious peak for the Member for Wentworth, and move to his awful valley.

Throughout 2009, Twitter — a social-media program that enabled conversations of 140 characters in length that had been around since March 2006 — suddenly became popular in the Australian political-media world. Journalists who would scarcely admit to reading blogs, let alone commenting on them, were suddenly joining up and putting themselves out in the world of the Internet, and ‘micro-blogging’.

At the end of 2008 there were 14 Canberra press gallery journalists and Australian political bloggers on Twitter: Paul Colgan, Malcolm Farnsworth, Scott Steel (‘Pollytics’), Michael Rowland, Sophie Black, John Kerrison, Tim Dunlop, Andrew Landeryou, Jonathan Green, John Bergin, Joshua Gans, James Massola, and Jessica Wright. By the end of March 2009, there were 46. Among the group that had joined were some of Australia’s most high-profile journalists — the ABC’s Leigh Sales (then with Lateline); Mark Colvin, the host of PM; Annabel Crabb, who quickly built up a large following, and remains the most followed Australian political journalist on Twitter; Crikey’s Canberra correspondent and ex-public servant Bernard Keane; The Age’s Misha Schubert; and News Limited’s David Penberthy.

After being badgered by Scott Steel on the Crikey blog Poll Bludger, I also decided to join — putting aside my concerns that not much of worth could be said in 140 characters, and after I was convinced it was not just a mini-Facebook. I joined in June 2009, by which time 73 journalists, political writers, and bloggers were on board. Others less political but ready to ride the social-media wave were aboard — Mia Freedman, having discarded the dead-tree magazine life, and finding branches online with her blog, Mamamia, had joined in February.

One of those journalists less well known to the broader public was Latika Bourke — a young reporter for Fairfax radio. She had joined in March, and quickly took to the medium in a manner that would bring her to a prominence well above what someone in her situation would normally command. She would be one of the first to grasp the possibilities that 140 characters afforded, and it would lead to her becoming one of the top-four most followed journalists covering federal politics — trailing, on the Twitter mountain, only Annabel Crabb, Laurie Oakes, and Leigh Sales.

Australian politicians were also joining in greater number during 2009. Malcolm Turnbull had been joined by Kevin Rudd on 17 October 2008, and they were later followed by others such as Rob Oakeshott, Steven Ciobo, George Christensen, Joe Hockey, and Jamie Briggs. Other than Rudd, Labor MPs and senators were somewhat slow on the uptake — the concerns of stuffing up in government being somewhat higher than when they were in opposition — but long-time social-media/Internet champion ACT senator Kate Lundy joined Twitter in February 2009, followed the next month by Kate Ellis and Tony Burke, whose Twitter style would be the source of amusement and notoriety 18 months later, during the 2010 election campaign.

This all led to a community of political writers, participants, and watchers who were ready to put the speed of Twitter to use. Twitter denizens who were confident that they would discover the news well before it made it onto a news website or radio bulletin boasted that Twitter was the future of news here and now. All that was needed was an event of such importance that it would galvanise everybody interested in Australian politics.

This event happened in the last sitting week of the parliamentary year in 2009. This, the traditional ‘killing week’ for party leaders, came about with remarkable speed. Malcolm Turnbull and his sidekick in negotiations, Ian Macfarlane, had been working their way through the Labor government’s proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. Then, just as things seemed to be coming to a head, up popped Kevin Andrews to say that not only did he not support the CPRS, but he was also prepared to be leader of the Liberal Party. In a saner time, such a position would