I can’t be at the Media 140 conference today, sadly, but apart from the coverage provided yesterday on this blog, I thought I would mention some personal  high and low lights, as well as some thoughts that occurred to me through the day.

The low lights came from conceptual confusions, it seemed to me. Namely the several highly respected and competent journalists who, quite apart from being clearly terrified by the arrival of the audience in the news making process, also can’t tell the difference between:

• A platform, and a process. Twitter, which is undoubtedly in my mind the greatest single disruption to traditional news processes so far this decade, is a platform. It is not a journalistic process. Just as people can have inane or boring telephone conversations, so too they can have silly Tweets. But to say, as so many persist in saying, that bloggers don’t check facts, or that Twitter is unreliable, is as silly as saying that telephone conversations are unreliable. The fact is that some are, and some aren’t. When a blogger checks facts or reports with care and integrity, then they are engaged in a journalistic process. When a journalist regurgitates a media release, distorts or miquotes, they are not engaged in such a process.Journalism is the process. Many people can do it in many different places and using many different platforms. Twitter (and facebook, and blogs) are platforms.
• Objectivity and integrity. As I said in my presentation yesterday, the word objectivity is frequently deployed in these debates, but rarely examined. What do we mean by it? Sometimes it seems we mean balance. But what does that mean? Clearly it cannot only mean giving equal weight to two sides of a debate. In the 1970s would it have been right to give equal weight to what James Hardie says about asbestos, for example? Or the tobacco industry? And of course there are always many more than two sides. Journalists select which sides to represent all the time, and that involves a subjective (but not necessarily craven) act of judgement. How do we decide who to talk to and and who to report? Usually by who is available and who we have in our contact books. Certainly one of the virtues of the traditional newsroom (when it is working well) is to force journalists to go beyond their comfort zones and put aside personal prejudice when deciding who and how to report. But to equate a highly selective “take” with objectivity is deceptive. I think true objectivity lies in the process by which a journalist brings material to the public. It lies in having a hypothesis – even a point of view – and going out and seeking evidence, largely in an effort to test or disprove that hypothesis. It lies in going beyond personal prejudice and desire to seek out that evidence. Then it lies in the act of judgement involved in trying to convey the results of that process to the public with integrity and disinterest.

Once again, anyone can do these things, although there is no doubt in my mind that training and experience help enormously. Also no doubt in my mind that few people would consistently do the dirty work of cold calling, bastard questions and making people angry unless they were paid for it.

So what has changed? Social media and the ease of publication mean that whereas the process of objective reporting used to involve the reporter, their contacts and the subject matter, the audience is now part of the process. The comments, interactions, additions, clarifications and information provided by the audience both during the process of research and after publication are now potentially a means of adding to the kind of objectivity I am describing. At the very least it means many more people than those in the journo’s contact book can be heard.

Can the participation of the audience replace the traditional virtues of the newsroom (when it is working well)? I don’t know. But before we run scared from the audience, we should at least clarify our terms, in particular what we mean by objectivity. Because I agree that the idea of disinterested journalism of integrity is indeed one of the things that is important about what we do, and which we must do our best to both conserve and evolve as the world changes.

So, with that lengthy preamble, personal highlights. I thought that of the traditional journalists, the best presentation was from John Bergin (@theburgerman on Twitter) who is Digital Channel Manager at Sky News. You can read his presentation here. I liked what he said because, without fear or conceptual confusion, he spoke with bell like clarity about the process of journalism, and how to carry good process into social media.

And the last session yesterday, which featured Crikey commentator Stilgherrian, Social media consultant Laurel Papworth (@silkcharm on Twitter) and New media consultant Bronwen Clune was the one that I found most interesting and challenging, and really the only one that went beyond the highly predictable. Cop this outtake from Papworth:

Stop for a moment and think about your great great great great grandmother. Who was she? Do you have videos or even photos of her? Do you know what she did when she was 17 and half? Where she went on holiday at 33 years of age? What she wrote about at 64? Now move forward in time and consider what the next generation and the next generation and the one after will know about their great great great grandparents. For the first time in human evolution we are co-creating the Human Narrative, never again will our histories be held hostage to the victors, our stories forgotten, unwritten, unscribed.

It’s not YOUR content. It’s our content. Our stories. We didn’t give you the Human Story we loaned it to you, and now we’re taking it back. Feel free to retire your press card and pick up a keyboard – the sooner you become part of the Community and not outside of it, the more likely you will be to survive. Indeed, thrive.

Read the whole speech here. UPDATE: Watch it (and read more of Papworth) here.

And the last word from Clune. She took up Professor Jay Rosen’s frequently quoted words about “the people formerly known as the audience” and turned them on their head.

Journalists are the audience formerly known as the media.

Challenging stuff.

*Declaration: Clune is a director of the Foundation for Public Interest Journalism, of which I am the chair.

There must have been something in what Caroline Overington let slip at Media140 today. News Limited types have been heard grumbling about it. (See previous post if you haven’t a clue what I’m talking about.)

One of the most interesting and confronting sessions at Media 140 conference so far has been the session on the real impact of Tweeting In Iran.

Here is Mark Colvin’s original and challenging presentation.

And here is Jason Wilson.

As this is posted, ABC Managing Director Mark Scott gets to his feet to address the Media 140 conference in Sydney to make three announcements about the future of the ABC in the digital age.

Together, the announcements envision an ABC that is a porous institution; not only making content, but also helping the audience  to make content; not only broadcasting content, but allowing anyone else including, probably, commercial organisations to use some of the content paid for by the taxpayer.

The announcements anticipate an ABC that will be a generator, commissioner, distributor and enabler, rather than a rigid institution based around a static collection of platforms.

But how comfortable will the ABC’s traditional audiences be with the idea of ABC content popping  in dozens of different environments, many of them bizarre and some of them probably commercial?

Scott’s first announcement concerns the ABC Open Project, which will see more than 50 digital media producers stationed in ABC centres with a brief to work with local communities to help them create their own media. This announcement delivers on the rhetoric of Scott’s recent AN Smith lecture, in which he asserted that the ABC was to explore  pro-am collaborations with the audience. Scott describes the Open Project as giving the ABC a role in educating Australians about the use of new media, just as it educated people about radio and television in the early days of those platforms

The second announcement – and the one that seems to me to be potentially controversial – will be the launch of “ABC Widgets” which will allow anyone to run ABC news feeds on  websites  and social networking pages. Scott says:

“By giving individuals the ability to add ABC news stories to their life on the web, we improve the ease with which they can access our content – it’s another example of providing content to audiences in a format they want”

The intention, I gather, is that the news feed will be available to individuals wanting to enrich their Facebook pages and blogs.

But last night Scott seemed unclear on whether commercial media organisations selling ads would also be allowed to use the widgets. Would he be happy, for example, for Crikey to run an ABC news feed and sell ads around it? “I’ll have to think about that,” he said. What about News Limited or Fairfax or Ninemsn?

It is hard to imagine that less than a decade ago, the ABC hoped to make big money from selling its online content to other web providers.

And only a few months ago, controversy raged about whether the ABC should carry advertising on some of its associated sites, and sell content to commercial organisations that wanted to surround it with ads.

Are those controversies over? Are they even relevant any more?

Scott said the content contained in the news feeds would not be complete stories – merely headlines and tasters. The arrangement was quite separate from the existing ABC licensing deals. Guidelines were in place to make sure that the integrity of the content was maintained, and that ABC content was clearly identified. Any grossly inappropriate use of the content would be tracked down and stopped.

As Scott said in his AN Smith lecture, there is a pressing need to experiment and innovate. But it seems to me that the ABC Widgets do raise questions about just how porous the ABC should be.

On the other hand, it could be seen as putting the ABC basic news service on the same footing as the weather bureau, which makes its prediction service available for anyone to use, without charge. Is the ABC news feed such a utility?

Scott’s final announcement will be guidelines for ABC staff using social networking platforms. They are only four of them, and they are very simple.

• do not mix professional and personal in ways likely to bring the ABC into disrepute,
• do not undermine your effectiveness at work,
• do not imply ABC endorsement of personal views and
• do not disclose confidential information obtained at work.

This at a time when, as I have reported previously, other media organisations are restricting their staff members’ rights to use social media.

More later today in the Crikey email.

The ABC will seek more money and  commitment from government to allow the public broadcaster to carry its services to the world in an ambitious roll out involving many new overseas news bureaus, Arabic language services and ultimately a new satellite.

At a speech at Macquarie University tomorrow night  ABC Managing Director Mark Scott will outline a plan to place the ABC at the forefront of Australia’s “soft diplomacy”, with resources and reach to  rival the BBC and CNN as a  provider of news and information in our region.

Scott’s speech is significant both in its own right and as another example of the ABC’s increasingly assertive brand of media politics.

It is  a pre-emptive strike against the commercial television stations seeking to win the Government contract for the Australian Network television presence – which is up for renewal in 18 months time.

The speech is also a continuation of Scott’s strategy of marrying the ABC’s aspirations to other aspects of Government policy. His pitch for funding in the last budget round was largely organised around the Government’s need to encourage take up of digital television technology and the rationale for the National Broadband Network.

In the  speech tomorrow night, Scott places the ABC’s international presence in the context of Rudd’s moves to create the G20 as the pre-eminent global institution for economic policy making. Scott will say:

We have an important role to play and we have to use all the tools at our disposal to continue to do so – one of these tools is soft diplomacy – using the media to put our nation’s culture, values and policies on show.

Scott will announce that the ABC’s Australia Network international television presence, which is funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, is to be merged with Radio Australia to become a single “brand”, working seamlessly with online content, podcasting and internet based catch up services.

He will argue that the government needs to spend more money on international broadcasting to become the dominant regional provider of news, information and English language learning material. Without more investment, he says, Australia will risk being overtaken and dominated by China, India and other countries of the region.

Scott is (although he doesn’t say it in so many words) taking the fight up to pay and commercial free to air television. He is positioning public broadcasting as indispensable to Australia’s national interests at a time when many see the ABC’s claim on the taxpayer purse as less justifiable in the new era of media plenty, and when pay television providers are arguing that they can do most of what the ABC does without calling on the public purse.

Scott lays out three steps to enhance Australia’s regional media presence, starting with five new regional news bureaus to make a total of 14 in Asia, the Pacific and India – more than either CNN or the BBC.

In our sights are the two biggest regional markets – China and India. We are intent on securing the all important “landing rights” for the service in China. And we are concious of the need to significantly expand our presence in what is now the third largest television market in the world, India.

Step two, Scott says, would be to expand into Africa and the Middle East with additional news bureaus and Arabic language content for radio and online.

Step three would be a roll out into Latin America, which would require carriage on a new satellite. Also on the cards is a use of broadband delivery to break into the North American and European markets, to find a place amidst their saturation subscription television markets.

Scott describes the blueprint as ambitious, but lists the increasing amounts being spent by other G20 countries  on their international media presence.

Even a doubling of our existing effort adds up to less than half of the budget of Baz Luhmann’s Australia. And for that money, we would be able to showcase the best of Australia, our news, sport and entertainment, our values and our culture, our democracy, round the clock, day in day out, in tens of millions of homes, across the region, across the world.

In our view, a relatively modest investment, certainly in comparison to the vast sums being spent by our fellow members of the G20, would yield immediate, tangible benefits.

Without directly mentioning the challenge from pay television for government money, Scott argues that only the ABC can deliver the benefits.

When you look at the expansion of international broadcasting as an arm of soft diplomacy, Governments are using their public broadcasters to do this work. You shouldn’t outsource your diplomatic efforts.

He argues that the ABC is better placed for the task because it is free of any commercial agenda “that could conflict with its public duty role.”

Scott is giving so many landmark speeches recently that even he is getting the names muddled up. In the AN Smith at Melbourne University a couple of weeks ago, he laid into Murdoch and reflected on the demise of media empires. Tomorrow morning Scott will be talking again on new media at the Media140 conference in Sydney. There will be more announcements there – watch this space.

But the speech scheduled for tomorrow night is a doozy. Scott signals he thinks the Government should spend up to twice as much on the international media effort, and give it all to the ABC.

Expect return fire shortly from pay and free to air commercial television interests. You read it here first.