Meet the Solutionists transcript and episode notes - season 3, episode 5

Mark Scott 00:01

This podcast is recorded at the University of Sydney's Camperdown campus on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. They've been discovering and sharing knowledge here for 10s of 1000s of years. I pay my respects to Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

Trust intro

Donald Trump 00:25

Attacking our news category. You are fake news Sir...

Scott Morrison 00:28

We don't trust in governments. We don't trust in the United Nations. Thank goodness.

Angela Rayner UK MP 00:33

If this government can't get the public money back, they can't be trusted with anything else.

Anthony Albanese 00:38

Undermine public confidence in government.

Donald Trump 00:45

And I want you all to know that we are fighting the fake news. It's fake, phony, fake.

Mark Scott 01:01

Today, we're in the middle of what I would call a crisis of trust. Trust in our leaders, our politicians and the media, is at an all-time low. We seem to be less optimistic, more polarised, even our ability to come together around accepted truths is shaky. So I want to know what's broken the trust? Is it possible for leaders to helm ambitious change, and at a time we're facing so many challenges, is there a path for repair? For many years, Walkley Award winning journalist Lenore Taylor has been one of our most astute observers of power and politics. She started her career in the Parliamentary Press Gallery for the Canberra Times in the late 1980s and she's now editor in chief of The Guardian Australia. Lenore, let's get right into it. Who do you trust?

Lenore Taylor 01:56

Wow, I try to trust as many people as I possibly can. I don't come to most relationships or most conversations from a position of mistrust or cynicism. I try to come to them with an open mind. But then, if you know people aren't worthy of trust, that changes pretty damn fast.

Mark Scott 02:19

Let's talk about what's been changing. In a recent Edelman Trust report, business was ranked higher than government in terms of competence and ethics and the media, well, it ranked last. Is this a new phenomenon? Have journalists ever been a trusted bunch?

Lenore Taylor 02:34

No, I don't think particularly. I mean, we always sort of rank down there with used car salesman. But you're right that mistrust in the media has been rising alongside mistrust in most institutions, and I guess you sort of need to put a caveat on that. I mean, if someone asked me, do I trust the media, there'd be parts of it I trust very much, and parts of it I don't trust at all. But I think it's the right question to be asking, because the media is supposed to hold everyone else to account, and we're supposed to be the place where the conversation that is civic discourse takes place. So if people don't trust us, it's not just a problem for us, it's a systemic problem for all the other institutions as well. So yeah, I think mistrust in the media is growing. I think it's a really hard environment to create trust in the media, but I think it's absolutely crucial that we do not just for the media, but for the sort of the democracy, if I can be highfalutin about it.

Mark Scott 03:29

What factors today are helping mistrust to flourish?

Lenore Taylor 03:35

Well, one of the things that is sort of close to what I do is the way people get information, the way people find out about the world, which is increasingly from social media. And social media, the algorithms that drive social media are designed to push people to the extremes. You share extreme emotions or extreme views, and social media is designed to make it almost impossible to go viral with nuance, a very opinionated story taking a very firm and extreme view, that story will go viral. And increasingly, people get their news and their views in that way, and so the more extreme ideas get more currency. And that kind of means that the considered, calm ideas in the middle, or the considered analyses of, you know, what a government might be doing right or what business might be doing right, get less currency, and I think that's a big part of it.

Mark Scott 04:37

And as part of the social media thing as well, that you and your supporters and your view are right and everyone else is wrong.

Lenore Taylor 04:44

So I think there are political actors, and there are some players in the media who really play up what you're saying, that you don't just disagree with someone, you don't have a difference of opinion, which is what politics is supposed to be. You attribute evil intent, or, you know, bad motivation, to someone who you disagree with. And you know, we know that there are politicians who do this, but there's also people in the media who do it. And from the point of view of some people in the media, it is that, because of the way that social media is where people get the news ,we all know that is making the business model of the media more difficult. What you want to do above all else is bring people to your site, back to you, and stick them there and keep them tight. And one way to do that is to create a kind of team, a club. We're all right, and those evil people over there who disagree with us are all wrong. And you can see the sort of end game of that kind of argument in the United States, where there really isn't a sort of a centrist player in the media, and there are people who are sort of in a whole closed loop ecosystem where they can be convinced, 40% of Americans, for instance, can be convinced that Donald Trump won an election which every factual analysis says that he lost. Because I guess once you get to that point where you think someone you disagree with is bad, you have a psychological kind of switch that filters information and only takes in the information that supports your team, or supports your prejudice or your preconceived view. And then you can go into a media environment like, say, truth social or, you know, the one America network where you only hear views that support your view. And so you become, it becomes a totally closed loop. You're impervious to any other view, any other idea, any other fact.

Mark Scott 06:42

So to what extent do you think this changing media ecosystem has been a driver of the loss of trust in politicians and political leadership?

Lenore Taylor 06:51

Yeah, I think it is certainly part of it. I think it is more difficult for the media to run a considered and deeply thought through argument. So when I first started in the press gallery, you had all day to write a story, because there was one deadline at the end of the day, so you had a lot of time to do research and talk to people. That is just not the case anymore. It also works the other way. When a politician is trying to make an argument, they have to do it in very small sound grabs, and it's very hard, I think, much harder, now, to mount an argument for a deep reform, a complicated reform, like, let's say, the way John Howard made the argument for the GST or Paul Keating made the argument for liberalising the economy. I think that would be a very hard thing to do now. Mark: Because of the way the media operates? Lenore: In part, yes, because I think it's more difficult to get a longer considered argument into the media, and it's much easier to combat it or knock it down with short, quick social media memes, short, quick slogans and grabs. So it's harder to mount the case and it's much easier to knock the case down. So you could say that happened when Bill Shorten tried to make the case for reforming the housing market with changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax. I mean, that's a complicated argument to make. It requires a lot of lengthy interviews to explain that and take people with you, and it's a very easy thing to knock down with arguments directed towards people who, you know, might want an investment property or that sort of thing. I guess The Voice was another example. Now, I don't think the Yes case made their case particularly well, but the No case had a much easier run of it, if you like, because they just had to sort of knock it down. And they knocked it down with sort of slogans and memes, so I do think it's a much harder environment.

Mark Scott 08:45

And a harder environment to make the complex case for change, rather than simply rebut and refute.

Lenore Taylor 08:50

And then we're in this difficult position where people feel like institutions aren't serving them the way they would want them to. They feel like the system's broken. They feel like we need big change, but it's harder to make the argument for big change, so I guess that just creates a sort of a cycle where mistrust grows more.

Mark Scott 09:11

When you think of your political career, can you see a watershed moment where you felt that there was a major breakdown in trust?

Lenore Taylor 09:18

I can think, I mean, it's a slightly different way of answering your question, but I can think of the time when facts didn't work for me for the first time, like facts is what I deal with, facts is what, facts are what I use. And the first time they didn't work for me was when I was reporting on Tony Abbott's arguments against the carbon pricing scheme. And now, you know, I'm not saying there aren't arguments to be made against a carbon pricing scheme. Yes, they are, but the way he mounted that campaign was not fact based at all.

Tony Abbott 09:52

Everyone's prices are going to go up and up and up because that's the nature of a carbon tax. It will hit everyone's power bills. Later, it will hit everyone's transport bills. It's just going to go up and up and up. And from today, people are paying the price of Julia Gillard's betrayal.

ABC Journalist 10:11

But do you accept some of the coalition's claims have been exaggerations? Roasts aren't going to cost $100 are they?

Tony Abbott 10:18

But they are going to be significantly more expensive. And that's the point, everything will be more expensive under this bad tax based on a lie.

Lenore Taylor 10:31

And I can remember following around after him, where, for once, he'd go say to a butcher shop, and he'd say, you know, no one will be able to afford to buy meat, and this butcher shop is going to go out of business because of the carbon price. And it would take, you know, you'd have to do the sum. So I'd have to find out what the power bill was at that butcher shop and what their turnover was, and then you do the sums and go, wait a minute, this is going to put, like, .2% onto the cost of the butcher shop. That's like two cents a kilo for mints. And anybody who was shopping at the butcher shop, if they were a lower middle income earner, they were going to get compensation. So actually, there was not going to be a problem at the butcher shop. But by that time, the whole thing had moved on. The whole caravan had moved on to the next thing. And I think that was a time when I think the media was in Australia was confronted for the first time with the situation where just reporting what someone said and what someone else said didn't do the business, didn't actually serve the readers, because we weren't, it was very, we had to call out what he's saying doesn't make sense in this instance, this argument against the carbon pricing scheme is not valid for these reasons. And I don't think very many media did that at that time. And so, you know, we entered into a whole decade of not having a valid policy on the biggest crisis that is confronting us in our lifetime. And then I think a lot of people felt very disaffected with governments for not having a valid policy on the biggest crisis affecting us in our lifetime. So that was the time I first felt like facts weren't working for me.

Mark Scott 12:09

What do you think this era of AI is going to mean for the integrity of the media and trust in the media?

Lenore Taylor 12:15

So you can look at AI two ways. You can look at it in terms of how the media might use AI to write news, and that's complicated. There are already media outlets that are sort of using AI to write content which is not very valuable content, but content that they can nevertheless get advertising eyeballs to. And that's one problem with AI, and we're experimenting with it. It hasn't proved very useful in very many ways yet, because the technology is still difficult, still hallucinates, still doesn't, you know, we tried an experiment to see whether AI might be able to summarise a live blog, you know, make a live blogger's life easier, and it just made shit up, right? Just wasn't good enough for the task. Mark: Not up to it. Lenore: Not up to it. But the bit of AI that really worries me is the sort of, you know, they, they've always been content farms, people sort of just flooding the internet with information dressed up as news, but with AI, the ability to do that is just infinite. So you know, Trump's former advisor, Steve Bannon, said that the way you overcome the media, the way you defeat the media is to flood the zone. Well, Steve Bannon never dreamed of what AI can do to flood the zone. I mean, it can just swap. It's a tsunami across the zone, and you can see it now if you Google something, and you get a whole list of answers that are clearly AI generated. I was writing a speech recently, and I asked ChatGPT to write a profile of me, and it was a very flattering profile. I mean, it was lovely. It was all bullshit, but it was really lovely. I mean, I won all these awards, and I did all this stuff, and it was really credible. I mean, there was enough sort of fact points in there that if you didn't know, you might think it was true.

Mark Scott 14:06

Yes, I did a similar one on me and an interesting summary of my career, including my time running Disney in Australia. Lenore: Nice! Mark: Which came as a shock to me. Lenore: I won the press Mark: As I had no recollection.

Lenore Taylor 14:15

Yeah, I won the press freedom medal, which is great, except there is not one.

Mark Scott 14:19

So tell us about how you're using AI, and you're an editor now, but if you're out there reporting, would it be an important part of your reporting inventory?

Lenore Taylor 14:27

We're not using AI, and my reporters are not using AI at the moment, we're looking at ways that we might use AI. We have a code, a publicly available code, for readers about how we would use it if we ever did, including being transparent about it, but at the moment, it's too problematic, and we're not using it.

Mark Scott 14:50

If we look at all the royal commissions that we've had over the last decade, you know, banks, aged care facilities, sexual abuse in major institutions like churches and schools, these have all uncovered serious misconduct and deep harm. When a royal commission is called, almost invariably, it means there's been a breakdown in trust. We've talked a bit about a loss of trust in politics and politicians. Why, more broadly across society, do you think we're seeing a failure of trust?

Lenore Taylor 15:21

So I don't know. I mean, I feel like royal commissions can serve a really important purpose. And oftentimes a royal commission follows really good reporting on an issue that goes as far as reporting can, and then the Royal Commission is what can, really, you know, get to the bottom of the problem. So the Aged Care Royal Commission came after some brilliant reporting by the ABC, and it made a whole lot of very important findings. I guess we did a lot of reporting on Robodebt, and there was a Royal Commission that made really important findings. I think the breakdown in trust comes at the other end of that scenario where the Royal Commission makes the findings, and then the government has to actually implement them. And I think that comes back to what I was saying earlier about, can governments actually solve big problems to the satisfaction of the voting public? Can they measure up to the sort of change that people want to see.

Mark Scott 16:22

Do you ever worry that our political system as it's evolved is not robust enough to deal with the complex issues that we need to encounter?

Lenore Taylor 16:30

Sure, sometimes I really do. I mean, climate policy is a case in point. You know, we have been faffing around for 15 years trying to get a policy that will actually reduce our emissions. We knew exactly what we had to do. Had we started 15 years ago, the task would have been cheaper and easier, and now we're having another discussion about whether we should completely upend what we've been doing so far and move to nuclear, which would take another 15 years to start. I mean, it's an existential crisis, and I have been at times, very disheartened about whether our political system can cope with it.

Mark Scott 17:06

One of the interesting things about climate, I certainly found this when I was with the ABC, was there was this extraordinary pressure to put all voices to air around a range of different views. And I'm reminded of the line of the American Senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who said “everyone's entitled to their own opinions, but not everyone's entitled to their own facts.” The extent to which climate was riddled by almost factual debates that weren't really factual debates.

Lenore Taylor 17:35

Absolutely. I mean, I can remember being at the Copenhagen Climate Conference one of the most horrible reporting assignments of my life, because it was just so discombobulating. And I was working for The Australian at the time, and you know, there were 130 world leaders there, and they're trying to sort of do a deal about the future of the planet. And my Editor kept saying, could I please go across Copenhagen to another conference where there were sort of 30 old fellows in a room who were all climate skeptics. And eventually I did, and I wrote a sort of a slightly sassy comment piece about them, but I was asked to go there in the interests of balance. And I actually don't think that's balance. I mean, if there is one overwhelmingly factual, overwhelmingly important thing going on and another point of view being put over here, which is not factual and very fringe, I don't think objectivity or balance means giving them equal weighting at all. And I think that kind of view of objectivity is part of what the media had to deal with, struggle with, think about, as this kind of trust problem grew, and I think the answer for the media is objectivity of methods. So, you know, The Guardian is a progressive publication. We look at the world through a progressive lens, but we always follow the facts, even if the facts take you somewhere which you'd, you know, which isn't where you'd prefer for the debate to go. So you can come to the table with a point of view, as long as you're transparent about that, and the point of view doesn't color where you go. And like one example, I mean, I won a Walkley Award for an article in which I revealed that Kevin Rudd had shelved his climate policy, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, and I knew when I was writing that story that it could well have an impact on making sure that that policy was followed through with. And I actually, personally, thought it was a really good policy, and I really wanted to see it succeed, from my own point of view, but I didn't have the right to not write a story because it might lead to an outcome that I didn't like. That's not what journalism is. And I think keeping journalistic debates within the guardrails of facts is really what we have to do. And I think the climate debate, to go back to your question, is a perfect example of where false equivalence and false balance has been absolutely rife. I see no reason to platform climate denial because it is not factual.

Mark Scott 20:01

Some have said that that this great rise in lack of trust in society coincides with the rise of smartphones and social media, but it also goes all the way back to the global financial crisis, which had such a profound impact, but you had rise of phrases like the 1% and there was a sense that there was a very small percentage of society that was constantly advantaged and escaped any consequences for the decisions that they made, but everyone else suffered. And there's been a mindset of grievance since that time, that people feel that the system is out to get them and that life is stacked against them in some ways. Do you think it's true that there's a sense of grievance across Australian society now?

Lenore Taylor 20:46

So going back to the GFC, I think certainly in the US and the UK after the GFC, there was a period of sort of austerity. So there was the spending that governments all around the world did to sort of get through that time and then say, in the UK, that period of austerity, which really did increase inequality in the UK in quite a shocking way, and really did lead to a breakdown in services and, you know, basic things that people took for granted in their lives. And did, I think, lead to the disaffection that eventually led to Brexit, that led to the whole horror show that has been UK politics for the last decade. I think in Australia, we didn't have a period of austerity after the GFC. We did the Keynesian response, and then governments just kind of grew their way out of the problem.

Mark Scott 21:41

We did have five prime ministers in

Lenore Taylor 21:42

We did, we did, but, but I don't think we saw the extremes of inequality that led to those extreme political reactions that we saw in the UK and the US with Trump and with Brexit. We also had a functioning social safety net, which, as much as you might criticise, it kind of works. And I think that's one of the things that means our political pendulum doesn't swing, that and compulsory voting, means we don't sort of swing, like everything Mark: Violently. Lenore: Yeah. But I think we're growing a problem here in intergenerational equity, which is sort of going to the sense of grievance that you're talking about. And I think in a way, it's a kind of almost a justified sense of grievance, that for people our age, my age, your age, you know, we got free educations, we could buy a house, and we could live fairly comfortable lives. And for younger generations, they come out of university with a massive HECS debt. There's no way on God's earth they're going to be able to buy a house anywhere in the vicinity of Sydney or Melbourne, and they see that their life is materially harder than their parents' lives. And they can see that intergenerational equity happens, because if their friends have rich parents, their rich parents can help them find stable accommodation, and if they don't, they can't. The thing I'm interested in is, I think it's like only a couple of elections time the baby boomers won't be a majority anymore. And I do wonder whether at that point we will make the policy changes that might actually change the ridiculous housing bubble here, like we will be able to reform the taxation system in relation to housing, we will be able to maybe change rental laws so that you can rent in a stable way and bring up a family in a nice rental house and not have to move around. We will change things at that point, but I think that's the point where there's a real sense of grievance in Australia.

Mark Scott 23:36

Does that mean, though, that, you know, we're going to see more politics which is based around articulating grievance, and that's the pathway. Because, in a sense, that's the Donald Trump thing, isn't it, that if you can speak for the grievance and, in a sense, try and associate with those people who feel that they're being ripped off by the system, that's the pathway to political success, even if you don't have solutions for those problems?

Lenore Taylor 24:01

Well we're seeing a kind of real, live experiment in America about this, aren't we? You can speak to grievance with a sense of you've been hard done by or you can speak to grievance with hope, here are the solutions. And I hope that hopeful solutions went out at the end of the day. The thing I do wonder about, though, which I think is quite interesting, is I think a lot of younger people come into politics or are engaged in politics on an issue by issue basis. And I do wonder where political parties are going to fit in over the decades to come, because they're not really ideological anymore, right? Like, I mean, the Liberal Party is no longer the party of small government in big business and Labor is no longer really sort of a left-wing party in the way that it would have been ideologically in the past. It's all blurring a bit, and people aren't joining political parties, but young people are getting really super engaged in particular political issues, and I wonder whether issues based independents might become more of a thing, having more independents who are more into grassroots issues in their electorates, whether that's going to change politics and actually be a conduit that people can express what they want to express, rather than political parties that have become, I don't know that they're that fit for purpose anymore, to be honest.

Mark Scott 25:21

Do you think candidates and politicians like the Teals are more likely to attract high trust from the electorate because they're not part of political parties?

Lenore Taylor 25:29

Yeah, I think the mistrust of politics is that they're in it for themselves, and they're in it to further their own sort of power and their own careers within the institution of the parties. And yeah, I do think people trust independents and Teals more because they're kind of closer to the group of people who've elected them.

Mark Scott 25:46

You know, it used to be a rarity when I was growing up that an Australian government would lose power. They seem to be in power for considerable periods of time. We're seeing far greater churn now, changes in government, certainly changes in leadership. It almost feels like it's easier to be in opposition, easier to critique, easier to tear down, than it is to come up with complex solutions, complex changes, to problems in government. So how do you as a media outlet get that balance right? Yes, the opposition's voice, but the more complex, nuanced government response to that.

Lenore Taylor 26:23

I think it goes to something that I have to think about a lot. Sometimes the opposition, sometimes other media organisations are clearly out to sort of pick a fight for having a fight sake, for political advantage. And the question is, when do we engage in that discussion rather than write about the issues that we think are important and the things that we want to be talking about? So to give you an example, in an election campaign, for instance, a politician might want to talk a whole lot about whether trans women should be competing in women's sport. Now, personally, I don't actually think that's the issue that is uppermost in the minds of most voters in a cost of living crisis, so I have to make a judgment, is this issue going to successfully become part of the discourse to an extent that I really need to put resources into it, to be part of that discussion, or can I kind of ignore it and keep going with the things that we think are important? And that kind of decision making comes up all the time, and I guess it is more often oppositions of whatever flavor that are trying to, sort of like throw bombs into the debate, if you like, which are not intended to have any long-term political consequence. They're just intended to have a short-term benefit to the political party throwing the bomb. And the question is, when do you engage and when do you stick with the issues that are going to have a material impact on people's lives?

Mark Scott 27:57

But don't you think a lot of the media is complicit in that, in that, you know, conflict drives clicks, right?

Lenore Taylor 28:03

Yes, I do. I do. I absolutely do. And it is really hard to make those judgments on a day to day basis. Also, sometimes our readers really want you to engage in the conflict. Really want you to go and have the fight, have the argument, have the debate on the terms of the people who are trying to throw a bomb, but in the longer term, I think we're better served by being judicious about when we do that and by continuing to report on the issues that we know are consequential.

Mark Scott 28:41

I'm Mark Scott, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney, and Lenore Taylor is the Editor in Chief of The Guardian Australia. You can hear Lenore on her podcast, Full Story, every Friday, where she discusses media and politics for The Guardian Australia. And if you're interested in hearing more about rebuilding trust in our most vital institutions, you'll like Time for Trust, the University of Sydney podcast hosted by ARC Laureate Professor, Terry Flew.

Terry Flew 29:09

Join me on Time for Trust to hear Ben Moffitt on the rise of populism in Australia.

Ben Moffitt 29:16

In Hanson's case, there's a story to be told about the role that light entertainment media played in her rehabilitation.

Terry Flew 29:23

Siva Vaidhyanathan on how platform companies are undermining democracy.

Siva Vaidhyanathan 29:28

All over the world I was seeing these authoritarian figures deploying the processes of Facebook toward their own ends.

Terry Flew 29:34

And The Guardian’s Lorena Allam on The Voice referendum’s impact on First Nations communities trust in governments and the media.

Lorena Allam 29:42

Aboriginal people have very low trust in governments, and when you understand our history, you can see why that's perfectly rational response.

Voice 29:49

Time for Trust with ARC Laureate Professor Terry Flew.

Mark Scott 29:53

Find that for free wherever you listen to podcasts. The Solutionists is a podcast from the University of Sydney, produced by Deadset Studios. This episode was recorded at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences media room, and our thanks to the technical staff here.

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Meet the Solutionists, with Mark Scott

Episode 5: Trust Breakdown - Lenore Taylor on why faith in public institutions is eroding

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Listen to The Solutionists, with Mark Scott