The Media
The media play a crucial role in a modern democracy in informing the people. To do this, they must be accessible. The media agree that there is an ethical requirement that fact and comment be distinguishable and that the news should be as truthful as possible. As the editor of the Manchester Guardian famously declared in 1921, “Comment is free, but facts are sacred.” But while the private media are entitled to editorialise, this is not a luxury which the taxpayer-funded public media, the ABC and SBS, can adequately have. In the 1999 referendum, the media were mainly and strongly in favour of change. What became clear was that this seriously affected the presentation of the news. As the international authority, and in his earlier career a highly respected editor, Lord Deedes wrote in the London Daily Telegraph: “I have rarely attended elections in any country, certainly not a democratic one, in […]