A famous line from the 1942 movie Casablanca is a good description for the limited outlook of our news media: “Round up the usual suspects”.

No, I am not suggesting that journalists are as duplicitous as Vichy French police prefect Captain Louis Renault, even if he used the phrase to throw his colleagues off the scent (after witnessing Humphrey Bogart’s character shoot a Nazi). Rather, the phrase is a useful way of describing the relatively narrow range of voices we see and hear from our news outlets.

There is a predictability about the sources and the way they are depicted. This is no more so than in the range of opinion writers we see in our newspapers and whose views are replicated on associated digital platforms.

The vast majority are journalists, former journalists, and people with past (or present) associations with the political process. Don’t get me wrong: They make useful contributions to public discourse, but they fall well short of the Habermasian ideal of the public sphere.

Jürgen Habermas had an idealised view that everyone could participate as equals in rational discussion in pursuit of truth and the public good. However, he knew the reality was significantly more limited. That should not stop us, however, for seeking an ever-widening public sphere.

For that reason, I was heartened to see Stuff Digital editor-in-chief Keith Lynch’s call for new contributors to the Stuff platform. Last week he launched a competition of sorts. Its aim is to add different voices to the Stuff conversation. It is a mission I applaud. Continue reading “A bid to round up more than the usual suspects” →