Principal speaker
Associate Professor Susan Forde
Presented by Associate Professor Susan Forde.
The news media now operate in a world dominated by a 24-hour news cycle. Websites and social media off-shoots provide a limitless capacity for news content. The media have undergone a seismic shift over the past decade and the number of journalists reporting on an ever-more complex political scene is plummeting. Decreasing revenues have led to an urgent need to build audiences by whatever means necessary. For many news organisations, this means giving Donald Trump three times as much coverage as Hillary Clinton during the US election campaign because readers are far more likely to ‘click' on a Trump story; or reporting a Paris robbery involving reality TV celebrity Kim Kardashian as the top news item of the day.
This lecture reflects on the rise of 'post-truth' and considers how our media might better respond to reporting major issues in these dangerous and precarious times.
In an increasingly fake and superficial world, where truth is as expendable in democracy as it is in ‘Keeping up with the Kardashians', what's a journalist to do?
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