BY KATE HUNTER
I realised I couldn’t be a journalist in the first five minutes of my first journalism lecture.
It was February 1985, my seat was sticky with sweat and the lecturer’s pen was leaking a purple splodge into the pocket of his short-sleeved shirt. I remember watching that stain spread. I remember being bored, and I remember thinking, if this is journalism, I’ve made a hideous mistake.
The lecture was about media ownership. I didn’t care about it then, and I’m not all that interested it now. Which is odd; I’m a voracious consumer of all kinds of media, some of my best mates are journalists and I know who owns what is very important.
But here’s my selection criteria: If it’s interesting, I’ll read it, watch it, listen to it. If it’s boring, I won’t.
Does that make me a mindless consumer? Possibly, but it seems that recently, when something unpalatable is written the response is, ‘Typical Fairfax,’ or ‘There’s Murdoch, up to his old tricks,’ or yes, even, ‘Here we go, Mia Freedman has rallied her acolytes again.’
It’s much cooler in some circles to discuss who owned the media than the actual message. I know one academic who says to his newsagent of a Saturday morning, ‘I’ll take a Fairfax and two Murdochs, thanks.’ What a toss.