Journalism and Advertising - a Slippery Slope
October 29th 2006 04:01
Journalistic independence is a funny thing. It is easy to see the importance of having media that is free of government control / ownership / interference. What may not be so obvious is the importance of having media that is free of commercial interference. Just ask News Ltd. As reported on Media Watch, the Herald Sun, the Courier Mail and the Hobart Mercury all published an article recently that claimed that ANZ had its main call centre in Bangalore. How wrong they were. ANZ were happy to admit they had staff in India, just not in call centres. As they told the reporter, “ANZ has committed to retaining customer facing roles, including call centres, in Australia.
The following day the journalist, Luke McIlveen, wrote that “ANZ has led the charge to India” with 1,300 “mainly” IT staff located in Bangalore. The big bank wasn’t happy. So unhappy, in fact, that they removed (according to Media Watch) $4 million worth of advertising from News Ltd newspapers (and other outlets) before the end of the day. The move had the desired affect – the next day at least one of the papers concerned published an apology, explicitly stating that they were wrong to say that ANZ has call centres in India. How did the mistake happen? According to the Daily Telegraph – in classic journalese – “in production”.
This is just one example of why it is critical that the ABC retain its’ commercial independence. Otherwise it is a slippery slope. While advertising shouldn’t necessarily affect the work of good journalists, it can become problematic. The ABC is slave to no master – no, not even the government. Just look at the Howard Government’s concern about “left-wing bias” in the ABC. So let’s hope the ABC remains ad free: how awful it would be to have no (truly) independent media outlets in Australia. In the meantime, we can only trust that ANZ really is keeping its’ call centres in Australia.
This is just one example of why it is critical that the ABC retain its’ commercial independence. Otherwise it is a slippery slope. While advertising shouldn’t necessarily affect the work of good journalists, it can become problematic. The ABC is slave to no master – no, not even the government. Just look at the Howard Government’s concern about “left-wing bias” in the ABC. So let’s hope the ABC remains ad free: how awful it would be to have no (truly) independent media outlets in Australia. In the meantime, we can only trust that ANZ really is keeping its’ call centres in Australia.
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