Deborah Coddington: Academic forgets his own past in criticism of media

Last week Joe Atkinson, political scientist from Auckland University, declared journalism is "heading for hell in a handbasket".

It's a sweeping generalisation from someone who, to my knowledge, has never done the journeyman stuff of reporting.

By that, I mean sitting in filthy houses within inches of wife-beaters, rapists, and child-killers, interviewing them for stories that will take weeks and thousands of words to write, or combing through boring company files to unmask the slick paper trail of fraudulent corporate deals some flash Harry has tried to hide from unsuspecting investors.

Anyway, Atkinson has organised a six-part winter lecture series for academics to discuss "other options" for funding journalism because "the Fairfaxes of this world" don't care about anything except the bottom line.

Interesting. In the mid-1990s ACP (Australian Consolidated Press) - a "Fairfax of this world" - spent thousands of dollars fighting an important legal issue, the right for columnists to voice their honest opinion of politicians.

There arose out of it a new form of qualified privilege, after Atkinson, then a columnist for North & South magazine, represented Prime Minister David Lange as lazy. This case is known as Lange v Atkinson.

Perhaps Atkinson has forgotten this important stand his then-editor, Robyn Langwell, and ACP, took on his behalf.

He was, after all, the first defendant and all of us at North & South had to curtail spending and forgo pay rises while the company spent thousands of dollars fighting this principle.

I think ACP did care about more than the bottom line and now, a decade later, when I read North & South, I still don't see a magazine going to hell in a handbasket.

Nor do I see a publication close to inferno when my NZ Listener arrives each week.

Published by APN Media (another "Fairfax of this world"), the mag won a clutch of awards just after editor Pamela Stirling collected the holy grail, the Wolfson Fellowship, at Qantas last month.

So does Atkinson include Stirling in his handbasket to hell? Shrewd observer of the political bear pit Jane Clifton, or David Lomas with his skill for simplifying complicated legal points in his stand-out crime features on family killers, the Clayton Weatherston trial, and Tony Veitch's plea bargaining?

What about Fairfax business journalist Jenni McManus, or Andrea Fox for her dogged investigation of the Crafar farms? Political journalists (Atkinson's area) such as John Armstrong? I could go on but I won't bother.

It's akin to saying all business people are heading for bankruptcy because a bunch of finance companies went belly-up. It's what I'd expect from someone down the pub on Friday night, three sheets to the wind, but it's sloppy coming from a respected PhD and senior lecturer.

Atkinson's website has a precis of his latest research project, exploring "the causes and consequences of two tendencies in the contemporary news media: towards journalistic self-absorption and celebrification on the one hand, and towards more variegated and populist modes of news presentation on the other".

Impenetrable prose notwithstanding, Atkinson may argue his focus is television. In which case, Tuesday night's Bryan Bruce documentary knocked his criticism flat, as TVNZ proved it does screen high-quality investigative and controversial journalism.

But that is not an isolated case. On Q+A, Paul Holmes proves he is still one of the country's best interviewers, asking deceptively simple questions of international guests about worldwide events, with fascinating results.

Those who doubt me should ask to see the preparation Holmes does before every interview - it's phenomenal.

I'm not saying the media is perfect. Recently I sat in on a judicial process. It's a complicated constitutional case and none of the journalists there reported it correctly. But then none of them introduced themselves to counsel and asked for help. Why not? Were they scared, or do they think they know it all?

Not everything on television or the newspapers is deep and meaningful. This is a small country; not a lot happens. Sometimes we scrabble for news and good commentators.

But is every book you read magnificent? I doubt it. So why expect every current affairs item to be perfect? Atkinson could use his own money and publish, and televisions do have off switches.