Last week the Australian journalists’ union staged the final of a series of major conferences looking at the future of journalism. Telstra hosted the event in its Melbourne headquarters and I was pleased to be able to attend.
Older journalists who spoke were full of doom and gloom, lamenting the end of the world as they knew it.
In their view, the 'traditional media model' is slowly being undermined by the internet. As a result, journalists face huge challenges in maintaining ' traditional standards' for balance and accuracy.
I chose to sit with student journalists who were live blogging at the back of the room and they couldn’t believe what they were hearing. They see a whole new world of opportunities.
And if you ask anyone who's been on the receiving end of Australian media coverage what they think about ' traditional media standards ' being undermined, they would probably wonder what planet the journalists' union is living on.
Recent coverage of Telstra's participation in the Federal Government's NBN tender provides plenty of examples that demonstrate how some of Australia's most highly-paid journalists working at the most well-resourced newspapers seemingly incapable of providing informed, balanced and objective commentary.
First and foremost, consider all the commentary suggesting Telstra was simply out to "entrench its monopoly" (www.theaustralian.news.com.au). This is a line taken straight from SingTel's propaganda manual. Ask anyone in the street if they were aware Telstra had a monopoly in Australia and they'd think you'd just come out of a 20 year coma. (The only company that comes to monopolising an industry in Australia is News Limited and its domination of the dead wood newspaper industry.) The only company wanting a monopoly in Australia is SingTel and its quisling cartel mates. Telstra wants as much network investment and competition as possible. Sadly, most in the media want to overlook that fact.
Then there are the stories suggesting Telstra was out to play some sort of game (www.news.com.au) with the tender process.
Certainly the tender process itself was a charade given nobody other than Telstra has the capacity to build the network.
While there has been plenty of gaming going on, the reality is that Telstra has been the only party doing its level best to avoid being a player. All Telstra wants is to get on with business and avoid further risks that force the company to subsidise competitors.
By far the biggest game player has been Optus Terria – first pretending it was a broad coalition of companies actually wanting to build something when it's really just a front for SingTel wanting to prevent the NBN happening so it can keep creaming subsidies off Telstra's copper.
It even played silly little side games like flying its mouthpiece to rural NSW and telling country folk that if it won the tender it would want to serve Australia's rural communities first. What a joke. The only reason it would do that would be out of self interest in an attempt to protect its Telstra-subsidised city profits for even longer.
Has anyone in the media taken SingTel to task for its blatant deception? Not that I'm aware of.
Some in the media are still barracking for SingTel to be given $4.7 billion of Australian taxpayers' dollars. That outcome would result in the dismemberment of Telstra's network and forced handover of assets including the Telstra customer base to the Singapore Government-controlled company. The fact that some Australian journalists believe this should happen and are willing it to happen is just staggering.
Equally silly to the point of being laughable is the often repeated suggestion that building the NBN and switching customers across to it is a relatively simple straightforward job that any old contractor can do.
And where is the serious analysis of the funding situation? Can an Australian Government turn its back on an Australian company willing to invest $5 billion in infrastructure and jobs in this economic climate? Which business journalist has seriously looked at that?
Perhaps the most stomach churning of all the millions of empty words written so far has come from the man who is reportedly the highest paid newspaper columnist in Australia, writing the Australian's "Martin Collins" business column.
This genius and some of his lesser colleagues are now taking their lead from the juvenile anti-Telstra haters on the Whirlpool chat site and referring to Telstra as "Solstra".
Apparently the implication is that Telstra is no longer really the company Australians have known and loved to hate - but it has now been taken over and held hostage by one Sol Trujillo. Get it? And this is what passes as top grade business commentary! (Note to The Australian - the Whirlpool geeks are even cleverer as they've added a dollar sign to make the word 'Sol$tra' -isn't that hilarious!)
So what motivates intelligent journalists to stoop to silly name calling?
Sure, it must be hard coming up with entertaining copy that sells newspapers every day, but that's no excuse.
Maybe it comes down to pushing the boss's interests. Rupert Murdoch has made it no secret that he'd like to see Telstra broken up. If that means pushing Singapore's propaganda, perhaps that's the price we have to pay.
Possibly it's payback given that Telstra has chosen not to advertise in The Australian for more than a year because of its record of unbalanced and inaccurate reporting.
Whatever the reason, it makes a mockery of the journalists' union's belief that standards of fairness and accuracy need to be upheld. They seem to have left the building a long time ago.