big paper

The big paper—broadsheet, literary, slightly left of centre—can’t compete with the small paper—tabloid, populist, right of Tony Abbott for numbers. Stuck-up little elitist that I’ve always been, I’ve only read the big paper from the age of about ten. The small paper sucks; it gives bad journalism a bad name.

The big paper doesn’t always impress: it does bad journalism all too often, but then bad reporting is de rigeur as part of the zeitgeist. Reporting is not factual; it’s spun by the use of emotive and value-laden words that try to tell us how we should think or feel. No politician today has a difficult task: they are embattled; no sportsperson loses a contest: they are bundled out of the tournament.

Only BBC World gives the public unvarnished facts using mostly unvarnished language. Everywhere else our intellects are disenfranchised. The media narrows debate as much as politicians’ slogans. The media set their own agendas, pursue populist causes rather than just causes, and give voice through talkback and comment columns to uninformed public idiocy. Just because someone has an opinion does not justify printing or broadcasting it.

What should be reporting now often becomes commentary. Commentary is fine in itself when contained in those pages dedicated to commentary and opinion pieces. The big paper provides plenty but confines it, appropriately, to pages 10 and 11.

The big paper’s Saturday edition is chockfull of fine writing on all manner of topics and themes. That so much good writing is possible is both marvellous and daunting. The ideas and intellectual discussion humbles a mere scribbler and lays bare the paucity of one’s own thinking, but offers the constant challenge to think harder and deeper.

Rock on.