One of the great press barons, Beaverbrook of Northcliffe, I think, said, “”News is what someone somewhere wants suppressed all else is advertising.”
That quote no longer applies.
I want John Laws suppressed. He’s not news; he’s advertising.
Then again, I wanted all that nauseating drivel about John Kennedy suppressed, and it, bizarrely, became news.
Why did the death of a New York publisher who had contributed nothing to public life or the great public-policy debates, who had not created an artwork, who did not rate one sporting achievement to his name and who neither invented nor discovered anything of scientific interest, merit more than just a paragraph of “”news”? Novice pilot dies in crash. The pilot was the son of a former president. End of story.
But we seemed to have joined John Laws. We are now marketers, entrepreneurs and entertainers.
It was beyond me. I am supposed to be acting editor and have the power to control these things, at least as far as The Canberra Times is concerned. But “”news” is not like that. News is what everyone, everywhere does not want suppressed. Kennedy’s death hit the airwaves and the television. It could not be ignored.
News is supposed to be the first draft of history. If so, we overplayed the small footnote of history that happened in Massachusetts at the weekend.
On his own, John Kennedy, jun, he did not amount to much – a mid-rank New York publisher. Yet his death scored a very high news rating. He was famous for being famous. More correctly he was famous for being the son of the famous. John Kennedy, jun, had been in the limelight in the US on that score. So why did we bother in Australia?
Why did the Kennedy story get so much coverage when it had so little moment in the lives of Australians?
First, the event itself. The “”what”. Young pilot dies in plane crash killing wife and sister in law. That of itself rates. The doctor and his wife and two passengers from Albury killed in a light place crash hit Page One on the eastern seaboard. Secondly, the “”who”. Son of former US President dies. A Nixon, Reagan or Carter child would rate at least the world news page. Thirdly, the timing. The “”when”. This news event got momentum. It started with a missing plane. The human drama built up with the waiting family. It gave time for journalists to get to the spot. Other timing elements were important. The wedding they were flying to was postponed. The 30th anniversary of the moon landing had Kennedy connections.
Fourthly, there is the economics of news. John Howard had just been in the US. Quite a few Australian television and radio journalists happened to be in the US. They had already invested in their airfares. They were on the spot. So why not stay on? So besides the correspondent permanently in the US, the Australian contingent had a few extras. For those without correspondents, we have the inverse cost law of journalism. Local news costs 10 times more than national news and national news costs 10 times more than international news.
When we send a journalist and photographer out to cover an event in Canberra, it is usually only used by The Canberra Times (or sometimes the Chronicle). We pay the full gathering cost with no on-sell to other news organisations. Rarely, the event will be of such import that we do get some on-sell – jetliner crashes in Parliament House. But we can buy a national news service, covering Australia, from Australian Associated Press and we can buy photographs from other newspapers (as they buy from us) for a tenth of the cost of doing it ourselves. And then we can buy international services for 100th of the cost of covering the world ourselves.
So the Kennedy stuff spewed into our computer databases: pictures, feature articles, news items, you name it.
Fifthly, there is the US factor. The US spends more money on media than any nation on earth. Pictures and words are syndicated through news services throughout the world, including to The Canberra Times. The sheer volume makes it assume an importance it doesn’t have. And the volume becomes self-perpetuating. The more volume about the US, the more US matters get run, the more people become familiar with them, the more they want to know about them.
Sixthly, the event is abnormal. The curse of the Kennedys. No other family gets this much tragedy.
So we had a combination of factors that is greater than the sum of the parts. So that is how an event of so little import to most Australians gets so much “”news” coverage.