I hope the point I was trying to make – the hypocrisy of journalists – was clear. I agree I have no right (nor wish) to know about such private matters as salaries and personal relationships, although a quick flip through the tabloids these days reveals that journalists are apparently the one group of employees in society, private or public, who still have a right to keep that sort of information quiet. Most curious. (MARGO: Stan and Tracey killed that off.)

However, the major point you implicitly raise concerns the delineation between the public and the non-public sphere. You have illuminated a fundamental self-delusion lingering among modern journalists, a professional blind-spot which is mostly responsible for the public’s growing disillusionment with your profession. And it is growing. The latest poll I saw placed journalists beneath even politicians on the credibility scale. If alarm bells aren’t going off, then they should be. (MARGO: My self-delusion must be chronic – my memory of that poll was that even we rated above pollies!)

Any delineation between the nominally public and non-public spheres is now a hair-splitting irrelevancy. Perhaps in strictly philosophical terms, you may have a point. Perhaps in a society in which the Public Polity still dominated most peoples lives, it would be valid to cite Laurie Oakes’ obligation to balance his commitment to the public with his duty to his commercial proprietor. (Incidentally, I was having a cheap crack at neither Mr Oakes nor Mr Packer. Mr Oakes’ professionalism speaks for itself, and Mr Packer is a tough businessman who has at least never pretended to be anything else.)

But herein lies the very real problem that journalists cannot ignore any longer. If, as you claim, you are there on behalf of the People, then your major target for scrutiny MUST now be the private (read commercial) sphere, rather than the public one, because it is the former which affects the lives of The People far more than the latter. Sorry, but this is the natural consequence of the relentless surrender of control over our lives to the Private Sector. (MARGO: Spot on. I sometimes feel I’m reporting the second rate in Canberra these days – that the talent and the ideas have moved on.)

For all the noise over Reith’s phone card, his stupidity/dishonesty only really matters indirectly to the average person. To give you an example: My part-time job got rationalised two weeks ago; I can assure you all that neither Mr Howard nor Mr Beasley had much to do with it happening, nor could they have stopped it (even if they’d wanted to).

Whether you like or not, it is now the Free (sic) Market which most requires scrutiny by the Free Press, not politicians, public servants or Pauline Hansons. Yet while you all zone in on relatively trivial matters like Presidential penises and Fools phone cards, McNikeSoft is cantering all the way to a New Improved World Order. Private issues? Public issues? Is Bill Gates a good bloke? Is Rupert a bastard? Who the hell cares?

What matters is that large Corporations are increasingly powerful, increasingly unaccountable, and most scary – increasingly uncontrollable (because they are hostage only to Market Forces ie nobody really runs them at all.). They are becoming all-consuming, and their activities need to be scrutinised relentlessly by the Press most of all. To date, you’re not doing it.

This is the fundamental problem that a Laurie Oakes, a Paul Kelly and even a Margo Kingston must soon grapple with. (Ms Kingston’s journo-friendly editor has just been replaced with a Bottom Line-friendly one.) The buggers who truly need to be kept honest these days are not the elected officials nor the Public Servants (though them, too), but whichever individuals still retain a modicum of influence within the Free (sic) Market.

And if, as is the case for many journalists, you are in the employ of those same larger Corporations yourselves, then no matter how much any given journalist might impress his or her colleagues with their professional and ethical approach, we the public will increasingly tend to be suspicious of you, your motives, and your independence.

If we distrust you on these basic grounds fairly or unfairly – then it just won’t matter how professional your colleagues know you to be. The fact is, Ms Kingston, it doesn’t matter if you regard Mr Oakes as one of the most ethical journalists around. What matters is what WE think of Mr Oakes, and while I’m sure any reasonable Australian would share your high regard for him, at the back of everyone’s mind is the problematic matter of for whom he works.

Once again, I’m not simply having a cheap crack at Mr Packer. I’m simply pointing out that the dominant paradigm these days is no longer the Public Sphere but the Private/Corporate one, and thus anyone who operates from within it is bound to have their credibility, fairly or not, queried. It’s not enough to be professional and independent. You have to be seen to be professional and independent, too.

I realise that this is the age old paradox that all journos have grappled with. But now, with the Public Sphere growing increasingly irrelevant, it is reaching a critical pitch. Any journalist who fails to see that pretty soon they will have to make some fairly profound professional choices is kidding themselves. Most younger journalists will be familiar with Authorial Deconstruction. I put it to you all that the time has arrived for you to turn your methodological tools upon yourselves. If you truly aspire to being a People’s Reporter, can you really get away with working for any major Corporation with significant interests beyond journalism, any longer?

You’re asking the Public to keep faith with you no matter how many jobs get rationalised or how many Rugby League clubs get axed. Maybe you can keep such regrettable yet inevitable Private consequences of a rampant Free (sic) Market compartmentalised safely away from your own daily Public toil on our behalf. The South Sydney Fan Clubs contempt for News Limited journalists these days (even the good ones) suggests that The People cannot, and/or will not. It’s not Paul Kelly’s fault that Mr Murdoch made a bit of a hash of things there, but ultimately, Paul Kelly’s effectiveness as a People’s Journalist has been damaged, hasn’t it? Certainly among The People who are Rabbitohs fans, anyway. I know that for a fact, because I’m one myself.

So why exactly should I continue to overlook who he chooses to work for? No-one else in our society gets the luxury of that professional benefit-of-the-doubt, after all.

MARGO: Dear Jack. You’re right, right, right. My brother, who’s an anarchist turned taxi driver, used to berate me every Christmas for working within the establishment and not outside it. (He changed his mind when David Oldfield publicly called me an anarchist – he said I must be doing something right.)

Journalists are ordinary people too, with the ordinary pressures of self-interest and feeding the family. But we also have the individual ethical and practical responsibility to uphold the standards and pursue the ideals of our “profession”. This is not just words – if we breach ethics and are caught, we are on the line individually, even when we’ve just done what the bosses told us to. In this way, principles of agency, where the employer is vicariously liable for the sins of an employee, don’t apply to us, just as they don’t with other professionals, like doctors, lawyers and accountants.

But the values of “professionalism” are also under attack by competition policy and the free market. Just another value system the pointy heads don’t value, often because they haven’t even thought about it.

To me, this tension is at the centre of journalism today. I’ve been thinking for the last two years – since the revelation of covering Pauline Hanson’s 1998 election campaign – about how we can separate in the public’s mind the journalist as individual from the corporation we work for.

One small way is through the Press Council’s complaints process. The reader complains, the Press Council, if the complaint has legs, calls the newspaper company and the complainant to a meeting. Invariably, the newspaper is represented by an executive. I’d like the journo to turn up, and speak directly with the complainant. That way, the journo gets across to the complainant and the Council members the context of the story, the compromises made for space reasons, and so on. The journalist thus becomes human, like the complainant. I did this once and at the end, the complainant felt the hearing had been fair and that we’d had a genuine conversation. We shook hands, and I reckon he believed he had power as a reader. (I won by the skin of my teeth.)

An interesting departure from trend for the major proprietors is the Australian’s media section in Thursday’s paper, which has built a solid reputation for fairness through critiquing News Limited as well as other media. I know not how the media section editor has managed it – I do know there have been tensions – but the result is enhanced credibility for the Australian, just as the South Sydney Rugby League club produced the opposite effect.

I’ve written an essay on the topic of media accountability in the context of the Hanson phenomenon, to be published this month in an annual book of Australian essays. I’ll put it on the site upon publication.

This article was first published in ‘Ink v Inc: Of hacks, bean-counters and the bottom line’, webdiary6Nov2000