Problems, the world has a few...and are journalists one of them?

For the last 54 years, countless writers have lived by the words of the late author Graham Greene who wrote that writers should have a “splinter of ice in the heart”. He meant that we need to maintain a critical distance from the events we cover, in order to remain objective.

But have journalists become part of the world’s problems, with our focus on catastrophes?

Today, international and political editor, Peter Hartcher, on the argument that some journalists have been “bad friends” to all of you, and the clarion call for a new type of writing, to meet this moment of calamity that we find ourselves in.

 

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Episode Transcript

S1 (00:02):
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Selinger Morris. It's Thursday,
July 31st. For the last 54 years, countless writers have
lived by the words of the late author Graham Greene,
who wrote that writers should have a splinter of ice

(00:23):
in the heart. He meant that we need to maintain
a critical distance from the events we cover in order
to remain objective. But have journalists become part of the
world's problems with our focus on catastrophes? Today, international and
political editor Peter Hartcher, on the argument that some journalists
have been bad friends to all of you, and the

(00:44):
clarion call for a new type of writing to meet
this moment of calamity that we find ourselves in. So, Peter,
you start your piece by referring to the old journalism adage,
if it bleeds, it leads. Now you've been in the
game for 40 plus years, so I'm dying to ask

(01:06):
you just how much this rings true. You know, when
was the last time you wrote a happy story?

S2 (01:14):
Well, of course it of course it rings true. I mean,
the broad concept is that what's going wrong in the
world is what is news. There's no news in things
that go right, generally speaking. And that's the rule by
which our industry operates. The last time I wrote a
positive story, apart from this one, we're discussing today about
constructive journalism. Um, well, generally you and I talk about

(01:38):
global catastrophes. Um, and sadly, there are too many going on. Um,
there's Donald Trump dismantling the world order. There's Vladimir Putin
waging war against Europe. There's XI Jinping waging the biggest
military build up we've seen since the Cold War and
massively expanding China's nuclear stockpile. There's climate change, which continues

(02:03):
to to aggravate, and social media takes all of those
existing problems and conflicts, magnifies them, and intensifies arguments about
everything and foments hatred and bitterness. And on top of that,
we've now got new anxieties about what's going to happen
with artificial intelligence. So this complex of crises, overlapping and
interconnected has been called the the poly crisis or the

(02:27):
Pluri crisis. And it's going on around us, and it's
an unusually fraught time in world affairs to have so
much major crisis occurring at once. So in our business, Samantha,
that just leads for a lot of pretty depressing, upsetting,
yet realistic coverage. I do want to, however, give myself

(02:50):
a tiny pat on the back because I look when you.
When I saw you were going to ask this question,
I look back through my last eight stories. Eight columns
of those, seven have been either mildly positive, positive or neutral,
or actually quite hopeful. And that's largely because with the
re-election of the Albanese government and the fact that they're

(03:12):
about to convene a productivity roundtable to look for consensus
based ideas for improving our country and its economy, it
is actually an unusual moment of hope, at least in
Australian domestic affairs. But I'm not going to claim that
all my work or or 7/8 of it generally is positive.
It's generally dealing as frankly and as analytically as possible

(03:33):
with a lot of big problems.

S1 (03:35):
Let's speak about the crux of your piece, because you've
just spoken to a very senior journalist who wants to
upend this very longstanding model of journalism. You know, if
it bleeds, it leads. So tell us who he is
and what he wants. You and I and I gather
every other journalist to actually do.

S2 (03:52):
Well, his name is Ulrik Haagerup, and Ulrik was at
the very top of his profession in his native Denmark.
He was the director of news at the national broadcaster
and he quit his job. In 2017. He set up
a thing called the Constructive Institute in Denmark, in Copenhagen,

(04:14):
with the revolutionary idea of trying to popularize and democratize
constructive journalism, not just the sort that leaves us feeling
a bit depressed and a bit exhausted. He says we
are aiming to change the world's news culture. This is
a very ambitious aim, he said. We gave ourselves five years,

(04:38):
but then the funding ran out and we're now into
years eight nine and got some more funding and we're
still hoping.

S1 (04:45):
I loved it, and he had a particular, I guess,
tip almost or directive I guess, to journalists, which is
that we add a two word question, you know, whenever
we write something and it's focusing on a problem. He's
not saying we shouldn't focus on problems. He's saying Absolutely.
But he's saying we should add this two word question
to our reporting. Tell us what he said, Peter.

S2 (05:04):
Well, the two words, first of you describe, analyze, document
the problem. And that is the the chief burden of
what we do. We expose wrongdoing. We find the miscreants.
We label the problem, we analyze them. And that is
essential in in any system, in any society. You have
to identify a problem before you can fix it. If

(05:25):
you can't fix a problem, if you don't know it's there.
So there is good social value in our what what
is bad news reporting? But he says, then ask these
two words. Now what? What do you do about that problem?
And his whole point is that we need to be
providing stories about solutions. What works. You know that cities

(05:50):
and countries, towns around the world have similar problems. How
did the people in the next town fix their problem?
This is this is an interesting, interesting question. And the
readers are interested in that's the sort of approach that
he wants to popularize.

S1 (06:07):
And I wanted to ask you a very simple question,
which is why does he want to change the focus
of journalism? You know, what's the problem here? And I
might just lead you to give us the anecdote he
told us about. He said that headline writers have become
bad friends. So tell us what he meant by that,
because I think it sort of points to what he
thinks is a psychological impact of all of this sort

(06:28):
of negative journalism.

S2 (06:30):
Yes. Well, in broad his point is that by simply
bombarding people with news about what's going wrong and problems
and crises, all of which, of course, is then aggravated
by social media, whose algorithms intensify every conflict, aggravate audiences

(06:51):
and make profit from people's engagements with the most angry,
bitter and intense emotional disputes and frictions, um, that that
is destroying both democracy and destroying society. It can lead
to a sense of despair that all there is are problems,

(07:15):
and that the world just seems to get worse. Nothing
is solvable, which breeds defeatism and cynicism. What's the point
of participating in society or in a democracy? What's the
point of being politically active if nothing is solvable and
everything is just an endless series of crises and people
bickering and arguing about it? As for the way that

(07:36):
we in the news media can be bad friends to
our audiences, says says Ulrik Haagerup, what do you want
in a friend? Do you want someone who calls you
up all the time and says, the castle is on fire?
Do you want somebody who complains to you about everything
all the time? Do you want somebody who's trying to
make money out of you? We are bad friends, he says.

(07:59):
And we need to improve that. Is it possible? I'll
give you two anecdotes. Is this a utopian project? I
said to him, is this just impossible? And the example
I gave him, we were sitting in a square in
the middle of Copenhagen, hundreds of people walking past us,
and I said, look, all these people getting on with

(08:19):
their day, everything's fine. There's no news there. But if
a couple of them start a fistfight, that's the news.
How do you change that innate human interest in what's
going wrong? His response was, he said, yeah, but what
if everyone is fighting and there's a few people not fighting?
How have they done that? What are they doing? Right.
That's intriguing. What's aberrant in that situation is intriguing. So

(08:45):
the solutions based journalism can actually, and especially in a
world where more and more people are fighting and more
and more things are going wrong, the aberration increasingly becomes
what's going right and the peaceful. Therefore, that's his point,
that it is possible to turn around that conception of
journalism always being about bad news. But the point, the

(09:05):
metaphor that he uses and that you're inviting me to
offer here, Samantha, he says about 30 or 30 plus
years ago, Denmark was invaded by the fast food industry.
He said, we saw hamburger joints, kebab shops, pizza shops
everywhere and a group of chefs, Danish chefs, were sitting

(09:27):
around one day bemoaning this problem. And what what the
hell's gone wrong with our industry? And why is this
stuff so successful? It's just it's cheap. It's fast, but
it's unhealthy. And they decided to do something about it.
And their constructive approach was to start a restaurant called Noma.
Noma quickly became famous. It became the case study in

(09:51):
a whole new wave of quality. It's fine dining, but
based on local quality ingredients and a bit of imagination
and authentic food is the way that they put it.
Chefs came from all around the world, they studied Noma
and it revolutionized the industry. And even McDonald's in Denmark

(10:12):
at least started offering gourmet burgers dreamt up by famous chefs.
And they changed them over every now and then. So
he said, is it possible to revolutionize an industry? The
answer is yes. That's his metaphor.

S1 (10:30):
Okay, so if I was to apply this to journalism
because I was I was thinking about what he had
told you and I was thinking, okay, well, if we
applied this instead of, let's just say, let's just take
one of Donald Trump's crazier utterances from, from just this
morning as we record this, you know, he's been in
Scotland and he, of course, has ranted about windmills and
how they're causing whales to wash ashore and die, which is, uh,

(10:52):
which is false, as I understand it anyway, is the
point that if we were to apply Ulrich's, uh, you know,
parallel that instead of reporting on that which arguably doesn't
add anything, we could have something about how we could
actually help save whales. Like, is that the journalistic equivalent?
Instead of flooding the zone with, you know, the junk
food of journalism, which is Trump's rants, there could be
something that actually could help.

S2 (11:15):
Yes. And in fact, the mastheads that we work for Samantha,
The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, uh, have for
some time now been running something called explainers and that
an opportunity like that, that is an opportunity for to
run an explainer. What is the effect of wind turbines? Um,

(11:36):
do the whales bump into the wind turbines in the
ocean and wash up dead on the beach? Uh, goodness.
How do they manage to navigate everything else in the ocean? Uh,
if they can't navigate a concrete pylon in front of them?

S1 (11:52):
That's right. They could even, you know, really investigate Trump's
claim that it makes them go loco. Sorry, I had
to quote him there.

S2 (12:00):
Well thank you. I appreciate your, uh, your rigorous journalistic
accuracy there. So, yes, these things do present opportunities for
constructive journalism and for informing readers. So absolutely, there is
an opportunity there. And can I add that the the
constructive institute that Ulrik Haagerup started in Denmark has now

(12:22):
established an offshoot in Australia, in Melbourne, uh, hosted by
Monash University. It's called the Constructive Institute, Asia Pacific Hub,
and it's run by Kate Torney, who was the former
news director for ABC, the national broadcaster in Australia.

S1 (12:40):
And tell us what she told you about why this
type of journalism is, is so important. And I guess
the impact that it's had on her to constantly be
reporting on, you know, quite catastrophic events. And then now
to look at journalism through this perspective. Of.

S2 (12:54):
Well, yes, that she realized that it was exhausting and
depressing audiences. And one consequence of that, apart from the
effect you're having on them immediately, is that fewer and
fewer people want to hear all that and are inclined
to switch it off. So, uh, that was her conclusion.

(13:14):
She offered a good anecdote, a good example of how
another country's national broadcaster in Norway has started applying this
constructive journalism approach. The national broadcaster in Norway on its radio,
has a regular political radio debate, and she said that
they changed the format so that instead of just having
politicians going head to head in a classic debate format

(13:36):
with a winner and a loser, the producers now require
that the two contestants come back at a later date
with three points of agreement that they've managed to come to,
and that this has completely changed the nature of the program.
It's been really well received by listeners and it's had
a big impact. I think there are more than eight

(13:57):
now major mastheads, news outlets in Germany and the Nordic
countries that have started to implement constructive journalism in a
systematic way.

S1 (14:08):
We'll be right back. And so, Peter, I have to
ask you, what do you think the chances are that
journalists across the world might really take up this constructive
journalism more broadly? And, and I guess what's your perspective?
Has this conversation with Ulrich been enough to do you

(14:30):
want to shift your own reporting even more than you
have done?

S2 (14:34):
Well it's interesting. Um, he has scattered these seeds. There
are similar efforts underway. There's an Australian based outfit called
Threesixty Info run by Andrew Jaspan, who is a former
editor of The Age in Melbourne that has a positive,
solutions based approach to the material that they publish. There

(14:55):
are other people in this area, people nibbling at it already.
I talked to the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald,
Bevan Shields, and he said, you know, we've been tentative
about it so far, but there is real audience interest
and appetite for more solutions based journalism. And he's clearly
interested in trying to expand that in the case of

(15:16):
news mastheads. One of our reporters, Liam Mannix, went and
did a course with the Constructive Institute, came back. It
changed the way he approaches his journalism, and he's written
a string of constructive stories looking at solutions, not just problems,
including one about how train travel can help take up
emissions and some of the discomfort out of air travel.

(15:40):
He's written another one about how a bloke went to
see his doctor to get his knee replaced, and discovered
he didn't need his knee replaced at all, that there
are other ways of treating knee pain and that's, you know,
for for blokes of my age. Samantha, that's particularly heartening news. Um,
but but there is, um, this, uh, popularising, spreading concept.

(16:04):
It can never replace and never will replace the hard news,
the bad news. Because, as I said, you need to
know the problem before you can look for the solution.
But it can certainly constructively contribute to society, democracy, and
making our societies more functional.

S1 (16:20):
And it is instructive, I think, that you mentioned Liam
Mannix there, because your piece led me to to ask
Liam about his experience. Like you said, he actually took
a course at this constructive journalism institute in Denmark. And
I said, well, what did you think about this before
you went? And he said, actually, I was skeptical. I
was quite skeptical. He said, I was concerned that they
were naive about journalism and about what effective journalism was.

(16:44):
And I said, oh, well, how do you feel now afterwards?
And he said, you know, I, I, he didn't use
the word converted, but he essentially said, you know, he
really has changed his mind, he said. I was very
compelled by the argument my father makes. His father apparently
used to be an ABC manager and a journalist, and
his perspective was that journalism should be a force of
common good. And this is Liam speaking. I think a

(17:04):
lot of the problems that we face in modern society
are ones that require collective action to address, he said.
Climate change is a perfect example, and he said he's
really on board with that. So do you feel the same?
Because I feel like when I read your reporting, I've
always felt that the subtext is, is that you have
a strong feeling that we do have a responsibility as
journalists to sort of help bring about, you know, the

(17:25):
common good. Do I have that right, Peter?

S2 (17:28):
Yes, I think so. And I think our country is
in many ways a case study, a model, an example
of how countries can be better, as well as obviously
a country that's full of problems, which country isn't. And
I think that it is useful for ourselves. I mean,

(17:50):
a country that becomes defeatist and forgets its its advantages
and its triumphs. I can't improve if you've given up
before you've even started. So I've always thought it's important
that we point out, celebrate our our own many successes
as one of the most functional, successful, prosperous and harmonious
nations on planet Earth. And that, you know, we need

(18:14):
always to keep in mind that when we are beset
by problems, there are also solutions.

S1 (18:19):
Yeah, it'll it'll be interesting to see how much this
does spread, because after I read your piece, I was
thinking of that famous quote by the late author and
journalist Graham Greene, and he had famously stated that every
writer should possess, quote, A splinter of Ice in the heart.
And I and I think he didn't mean that in
a cruel way. I think he meant that, you know,
we need to keep a critical distance from events that

(18:40):
journalists report on in order to really sort of illuminate
the public. But this sort of, I think, adds a
different nuance, you know. So it'll be interesting to see.

S2 (18:49):
Indeed.

S1 (18:50):
Thanks so much, Peter, for your time.

S2 (18:51):
Pleasure, Samantha.

S1 (19:02):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by myself
and Kai Wong. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills. Tom
McKendrick is our head of audio. To listen to our
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(19:24):
visit The Age or smh.com.au. Subscribe and to stay up
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inbox every morning. Links are in the show. Notes. I'm
Samantha Selinger Morris. Thanks for listening.