Time for Trust

For some years now, local newspapers have been closing down in the United States. The problem’s especially pronounced in regional areas, where ‘news deserts’ have emerged as the last local journalists shut up shop. More recently, hundreds of new websites that claim to contain local news have arrived to try to fill this void. On examination, many turn out to be full of what’s become known as ‘pink slime’ – poor quality news that often contain misinformation or is overtly partisan. So, what exactly is being lost in an age of many more publishers, but far fewer ethical journalists? And what can be done about it? Should US regulators crack down on content that might be more accurately categorised as campaign material? Today’s guest, Philip Napoli, explored these questions in a lecture at the University of Sydney on the 19th of June, ahead of the International Communications Association conference on the Gold Coast. His answers have major implications for public trust, and democracy. Philip Napoli is James R. Shepley Distinguished Professor of Public Policy in Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy. He’s Director of the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy. His research focuses on media institutions, regulation and policy, and he’s collaborating on the University of Sydney’s Australian Research Council-funded project Valuing News: Aligning Individual, Institutional and Societal Perspectives.Professor Napoli’s books include 2001’s Foundations of Communications Policy: Principles and Process in the Regulation of Electronic Media; 2003’s Audience Economics: Media Institutions and the Audience Marketplace; 2011’s Audience Evolution: New Technologies and the Transformation of Media Audiences; and 2019’s Social Media and the Public Interest: Media Regulation in the Disinformation Age. 

In 2024, forty countries are holding elections, representing 41% of the world’s population. In some respects, it’s a banner year for democracy – but also, a year in which many commentators and political scientists have charted the rise of right-wing populist movements – some of which seek to undermine public trust in the fairness of elections, in the institutions that run them, and the media that reports on them. So what exactly is populism, and how valid are the concerns of those who see it as a threat to democracy itself?Today’s guest, Benjamin Moffitt, is Associate Professor of Politics and Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow at the National School of Arts and Humanities at ACU (Melbourne). He describes his research as located at the intersection of comparative politics, contemporary political theory and political communications, and focusing on contemporary populism across the globe.Benjamin is the author of three books on populism: 'Populism' (Polity, 2020), 'Political Meritocracy and Populism: Curse or Cure?' (with Mark Chou & Octavia Bryant, Routledge, 2020), and 'The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style and Representation' (Stanford University Press, 2016). He’s also the editor of ‘Populism in Global Perspective: A Performative and Discursive Approach’ (with Pierre Ostiguy and Francisco Panizza). In recent times, Benjamin has been researching how populists use visual media, and how visual media covers populist leaders, for an Australian Research Council-funded project called 'The Visual Politics of Populism'. He has also been examining how democracy can be defended in times of political discontent and democratic instability, focusing on the role of social integration and welfare.The photos of Donald Trump with 300 burgers discussed in this episode can be seen here.

What really happens when we Google something? When we post to Facebook or Instagram, how much are we sharing alongside that snap of our family holiday, or our latte art? More broadly, how are these companies’ attempt to privatise our public square impacting democracy – and even the nature of information itself?Today’s guest, Siva Vaidhyanathan, has written extensively about the shortcomings of the platform companies that are such a major part of modern life. He’s the Robertson Professor of Media Studies, and director of the Center for Media and Citizenship, at the University of Virginia.His books include Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2018), The Googlization of Everything -- and Why We Should Worry (University of California Press, 2011), The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control Is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System (Basic Books, 2004), along with several books about intellectual property. He is currently writing about Elon Musk.

Lorena Allam is descended from the Gamilaraay and Yawalaraay nations of north-west NSW. She has been the Guardian's Indigenous affairs editor since 2018, following a long career as an ABC journalist. She also worked with the Australian Human Rights Commission on its landmark report about the forcible removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, Bringing Them Home, and with the National Film and Sound Archive, where she led the indigenous collection. She has been awarded the Barbara Dunstan Churchill Fellowship to investigate the relationship between Indigenous truth-telling processes and the media.

Social cohesion is spiralling, with a survey last year finding that Australians’ sense of belonging, national pride and trust were reaching all-time lows. Citizens are turning off the news in record numbers, undermining the media’s role in safeguarding democracy. And dozens of regional newspapers have been closing across Australia, or going online in a greatly reduced capacity, with some areas now considered parts of a ‘news desert’. These are just a few topics connected to mediated trust that Professor Julianne Schultz AM has recently covered in her influential fortnightly column for The Guardian. She has had an exceptionally eminent and diverse career as a media practitioner, executive, board member, and most recently, academic at Griffith University. Julianne was the publisher and founding editor of the Griffith Review from 2003 to 2021, and is now Professor Emerita, Media and Culture at Griffith. Among her many senior roles in industry, Julianne was the chair of The Conversation Media Group, and its editorial advisory board before that. She was also chair at the Australian Film TV and Radio School, and has served on the boards of the Copyright Agency, Grattan Institute and Australia’s national broadcaster, the ABC, where she formerly headed strategy and communications. Earlier in her career, she was a journalist for the Australian Financial Review and Courier-Mail.

Our first guest, journalist, author, pollster, commentator, and activist Peter Lewis, has written extensively about the lessons from Australia’s Voice referendum for understanding how trust relates to participation in public life, and distrust to disengagement.  Peter brings a long and varied career of engagement with issues relating to trust. In this episode, he also considers whether our attitudes to digital platforms such as Facebook have been changing over time, and both the potential and the limits of online collective organising. We also consider Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code, how Peter found himself on an unexpected unity ticket with Rupert Murdoch, and how AI is challenging our understanding of both trust and truth itself. Peter was the founding director of the Centre for Responsible Technology, established in 2019 as part of The Australia Institute. He hosts the Burning Platforms podcast and has recently established the Centre of the Public Square, an initiative to build better models of citizen collaboration and strengthen civil society by imagining new methodologies and alternate technologies to anchor this public space, as an initiative of the independent think tank Per Capita. He has also founded Civility Australia, which aims to build a better model of citizen engagement by giving civil society the tools to design and execute compelling collaborations that build a broader community consensus.