George Negus: News in Media & Society in the 21st Century

by Lee Duffield

George Negus is a celebrated Australian television presenter and interviewer, over the years talking to thousands in front of hundreds of thousands - millions all told. In 2006 he hosts the SBS flagship current affairs program Dateline, following on from a long period as a reporter and presenter on Channel Nine's Sixty Minutes and the Today Show. He has had many roles with the ABC, most recently hosting trends and issues programs, and Foreign Correspondent. In recent times, with partner Kirsty Cockburn, he lived in Northern New South Wales, establishing a family and working together on a wide-ranging series of films and books. George says that as time permits he enjoys conference facilitating and consultancy work for business or government. George Negus was brought up in Queensland, he is presently based in Sydney, and has accepted an appointment as an Adjunct Professor at Queensland University of Technology to take effect in 2007.

George Negus has an inside perspective on mass media, being for over thirty-five years one of the dominant figures of television current affairs, and here he steps out of his familiar world to take an over-all look at media in its social and cultural contexts. He is first and foremost a current affairs journalist, with plenty of field experience, but most familiar to television audiences as a studio presenter and interviewer with a good natured and persistently questioning style. At the ABC he was among the team of young journalists who revelled in the relatively new medium of television, among them colleagues like the late Richard Carleton, confronting recalcitrant Ministers of government, and many others, in ways they had never encountered before. 

Those interviews and investigations on programs like Today-Tonight produced a great break-through in public accountability. Negus today considers it all hinged on the determination of the journalists to get answers to the one persistent question - why? He told me, for M/C Dialogue, that's "the best question any journalist can ask, and it's not asked enough". He is persisting with the why question in his current work on SBS, arguing that where news reporting leaves off, the current affairs programs step in to fill in with the explanations.

From my own perspective of a long background in journalism with the ABC, mostly radio news and current affairs, it looks to be a fair argument. With the news you find the best indication you can for the reason why, and you make sure it goes in, but very soon you have to move on. In the current affairs show later you get more time; you do not have to cover everything any more, so there is more time to look at stories you choose, and more time on air; which brings in a tough and persistent questioner like George Negus.

The interview takes in Negus's observations on media and society going into the 21st Century, with a main theme: more consideration is needed of strictly social values and cultural meanings in the news: "These days at the moment you are some kind of limp-wristed wuss if you talk about society's needs as distinct from the economy's needs … It's a sign of economic obsessiveness and technological preoccupation."The discussion moves on to ideas that will be not-unexpected but heart-felt, the television commentator and the social observer being fairly restless about the future but prepared to give it a go. He sees domination of the social and economic scene by efforts to live off new technology is "obsessive", blotting out ordinary social concern, at least until things change once more. Democratising media, where everybody can be a journalist, may not make much difference, because "journalists get it wrong; there are a lot of people who are going to be wrong occasionally". Content providers for media like George Negus himself will continue at work while the flow of information surges confusingly, because, "the information being available to you, you'll probably require assistance sifting it". Re-enter current affairs, the leading portals and leading exponents of that art.

At the heart of this work as he sees it is drawing attention to the real world and its crises, like the issue of sexual abuse in aboriginal communities, which he identifies as a field of failure and neglect by news media that makes him "furious". To George Negus, journalists have not been standing back to scrutinise, to identify the roots of a burning national problem, centuries of harm to aboriginal culture: "What is more important than crime and punishment, law and order, and traditional versus British codes of justice, is why these things happen." That concern is consistent with the questioning style and image of the kindly buccaneer.

Cultural Thinker

So here is the view of a self-declared humanitarian in the mass media, believing that individuals can make commitments and make a difference, and asked now about becoming a "cultural thinker".

LD: Does doing so much journalism and media work over a long time in an exposed position turn you into a cultural thinker?

GN: I suspect I was a self-styled cultural thinker before I became a journalist. So much of my journalism, my social or even political activity, I see as being fundamentally "cultural." To me it is all part of this complicated mess we call society…

As a classic example, I am furious about a particular story that's in the news right now and the way it is being handled. The cultural aspects of this whole aboriginal sex abuse issue are being ignored.

The whole thing stems from the protracted destruction of aboriginal culture. That's why these indigenous blokes do what they do. I'm angry. It's very hard to find anybody in the media - who love getting involved in these slightly soiled things - who's standing off far enough to deal with the issue in a socio-cultural way.

LD: Give it more analysis?

GN: Yes. So, I see that, in a way, everything I do journalistically can be placed under the broad title of culture.

LD: Looking at the Century we are going into, it seems that all economic production and social life also will have a huge component of communication or information in it. If forced to declare your feeling about that situation would you be optimistic or pessimistic?

GN: Well it seems to me that despite all of our best and most persistent efforts to stuff up our entire existence, we always fail. So I'm optimistic. Nothing surprises me when we get things wrong. That said, I'm always delighted when we don't. Thinking over the time I've been an adult - say, forty odd years - somehow we've managed to make it through the decades.

on being overwhelmed by new communication technology …

GN: The obsession we currently have with all things economic and technological bothers me. But it would bother me more if we have not thought about other times in history and, thinking over the time I have been an adult, forty odd years, I think what we have now, everything we do, is driven almost beyond our control by economic rationalism and so-called technological advances, so that we are in grave danger of losing the point of the whole exercise. That's the stage we are going through - economic and technological "advancement" almost for its own sake, as distinct from a better society.

And that last word - society - is so important even though it hardly ever gets used by the media these days. At the moment, you are some kind of limp wristed wuss if you talk about society's needs, as distinct from the economy's needs. It's a sign of economic obsessiveness and technological preoccupation…