Podcasting's Karl problem

Thousands of words have been devoted to last week’s move by Nine to rid itself of its one-time star Karl Stefanovic. Every angle of Stefanovic’s exit from the network that made him a wealthy, famous and much-loved personality has been trawled over - but one. And that angle concerns Australia’s burgeoning world of unregulated issues-based podcasts performed (sometimes) by people who earned notoriety and trust as journalists but have left the world of mainstream media, funded by who knows who, only to pivot sharply to the left or right on the political spectrum. On the upside, that’s diversity! But on the downside …

Nine’s decision to show Karl Stefanovic the door over his interview with a far-right extremist from another continent on his independently-owned podcast shows us that legacy media does actually understand and value journalism conducted according to the established rules of fairness, accuracy, impartiality and independence; what Stefanovic does on his eponymous podcast is very different to what Nine would expect him to do as a journalist. It's also shown us that there’s not much that can be done to protect people against mis- and dis-information from obnoxious people, such as the extremist Stefanovic lost his job over, Tommy Robinson, because podcasting is the wild west. There are few rules. 

We don't even get to know whether these operators are being funded beyond subscriptions; there’s speculation in The Australian that Stefanovic is being funded by Gina Rinehart. (The billionaire’s intense interest in media is the subject of Derek’s piece, below). If Rinehart is funding Stefanovic, that might be useful information for listeners. Unless a podcaster breaches hate, discrimination or defamation laws, they can carry on unimpeded. Perhaps concern about hate laws is why Stefanovic has pulled down his Robinson interview from his podcast sites on Apple and Spotify; Robinson spent an hour besmirching all Muslims in the UK, and without evidence warning that Australians too face unspecified atrocities from Muslim Australians. There was not one question seeking to put Robinon’s wild assertions to the test.

In the world of commentary podcasting, Stefanovic’s laid-back, unprobing interviews are not that different in character to the ‘singing to the choir’ podcasts that come from the left, except that he has so clearly aligned his output with the populist guff of a political party - One Nation. All these podcasts seem to indulge advocacy to advance their arguments, which are aimed at convincing rather than (and sometimes as well as) informing. All seem to leverage the trust built as journalists to bring in an audience that believe what they are hearing is a considered, structured, well-interrogated arrival at fact rather than opinion, or worse, propaganda.

Even when these podcasters present evidence for their opinions, they raise a problem for audiences whose expectation of them is that they will continue to act as journalists, when what the audience is hearing is at best a mix of journalism and opinion. Apple Podcasts doesn't even have a commentary category into which these commentary podcasts might be suitably slotted. The Karl Stefanovic Show is currently listed as Apple Podcasts' number 1 ‘news’ podcast.

It's an important issue because the Digital News Report for Australia has found that 43% of us are sourcing news from content creators and influencers. And the shift is even bigger among 18- to 24-year-olds, of whom some 70% rely on social media influencers for news. Apart from the clear problem those statistics present for social cohesion, which at least in part relies on the now quaint notion of shared facts, they also present a profound problem for journalism of the old kind – the kind of journalism that believes that information should be collected impartially, interrogated fairly, verified independently and presented accurately.

If more and more one-time journalists are entering this arena, in the dubious hope of striking the riches some US podcasters have found or because they don’t like the strictures that come with doing journalism, does their rewriting of the rules around information collection put us all in danger of living with increasing levels of division and misinformation? With more people, particularly young people, flocking to podcast influencers, perhaps even finding them via provider listings under the ‘news’ tab, is it time to regulate this wild west arena? Is it time to make sure that people understand that what they are listening to is not always journalism? And is it time for content creators to divulge who is funding them and what steps they’ve taken to ensure accuracy?  

Of course, regulating podcasting would strike a blow to our belief in free speech even if it could be defended as a means of minimising mis- and dis-information. However, Stefanovic and others in the genre can be characterised as presenting current affairs programs precisely because they are dealing with current issues such as those raised in the Robinson program.

The answer may lie in the codes of practice that apply to conventional news and current affairs programs.  Typically, these codes have rules about respect for privacy, declaration of conflicts, and not misrepresenting people’s opinions. Unlike news, they don’t impose a requirement to be impartial, but there is one crucial requirement that’s found in the major standards schemes – the rule that factual content must be accurate. Accuracy requires a lot more effort to achieve than just sitting on a couch in front of a camera and having a back-slapping conversation with an extremist.