Last week, Australian Signals Directorate Director-General Mike Burgess gave an on-the-record speech to ASPI’s artificial intelligence and national security masterclass. Following his speech, he took some tough questions from the media and the audience.

Public speeches by Australian security and intelligence chiefs are rare. Too rare. The website of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, for example, very appropriately uses the singular ‘speech’ to capture the one time, six years ago, when a former director-general spoke to the Australian public.

A lot has changed since 2012 when we last heard from a director-general of ASIS. We are living in a time of global uncertainty where the rules-based international order isn’t what it once was. Our most important security alliances and economic relationships face fresh, often unexpected, challenges and pressures, many of which we aren’t well prepared for. And technology and cyberspace have helped create new threats, while also breathing life into old threats.

Has there ever been a more important time for this rarity to end?

This limited public engagement is more than just a neglect of—or indifference to—public communications. It has actually created problems for Australia at a time when our place in the world is under strain. It means, for example, that people are understandably sceptical when ‘national security concerns’ are cited to explain the latest international stance or policy position.

What does ‘national security concerns’ really mean when it’s said by one of our politicians or senior public servants? And does it mean the same thing every time it’s used by the government?

The Australian Financial Review’s Angus Grigg touched on this tension recently in ‘Can we trust the spies on China’s Huawei?’:

This refusal to divulge the details of Huawei’s alleged miss-steps, beyond the umbrella term of ‘national security concerns’, has been grudgingly accepted over the past six years.

But we shouldn’t have to grudgingly accept anything. If our national security agencies have evidence that is being used to underpin policy decisions—and that information can be shared without revealing sources, methods and access—then the government needs to work harder to get that information into the public domain (for example, by being more strategic with public messaging or releasing redacted/unclassified versions of reports).

Parts of the Australian intelligence and security community won’t like taking on more of this responsibility, and it won’t be easy. Ministers will have to empower senior officials to speak more freely and frequently. But ministers can’t shy away from this. After all, ensuring the public are as informed as possible about national security threats is in their interests. More importantly, it’s squarely within Australia’s interests.

Getting more information out into the public domain will also require a cultural shift in how Australia’s security and intelligence agencies have traditionally seen their place within government. But it’s a cultural shift that’s long overdue, and one that is already underway in other countries around the world (see every hyperlink in this paragraph).

Why is this so important? Because the ‘just trust us’ line is getting tired.

Having senior intelligence and security officials speak more freely and frequently will help inform, it will help build confidence and it will help foster public trust.

As my colleague Tom Uren wrote recently, some stories need to actually be told.

If the Australian government expects us to get on board with national security decisions, it’s going to have to be more proactive about getting out into the public domain to explain some of these issues, and the various tensions that colour them. But it’s not just the Australian government that must shoulder more responsibility for better informing public discourse on foreign policy and international security issues. Australia’s academics, think-tankers and journalists already play a vital role, but they, too, must become more proactive.

For example, there’s nothing more important to Australia’s future prosperity than understanding and navigating China’s rise, and Australia needs to invest in understanding its political, security and economic implications. As things stand, can we really say Australia is producing enough high-quality, relevant, timely and inquisitive research and reporting that helps us all understand this phenomenon? And understand it from a range of different perspectives?

One major problem is that at a time when we need them the most, our media outlets are retreating from reporting on the world and retreating from getting Australian reporting to the world. It’s no secret that Australia’s most talented journalists working on international, security and China-focused issues are already swamped trying to cover their expanding patches with precious few resources. In such an environment, important stories will of course be missed. Or, too often, they’re ‘covered’ by republishing American reporting (which leaves us wondering: what does this mean for Australia?).

On the research front, do we really have enough analysis coming out of our think tanks, universities and NGOs? Research undertaken by an assortment of specialists who bring different expertise to the tables? Specialists with a deep knowledge of the Chinese Communist Party and its structure; a proficiency in Chinese languages; and a strong understanding of China’s legal system, the lessons to be learned from history, and the current reforms undergoing in the People’s Liberation Army or the changing shape of China’s economy.

I’m going to say no.

Perhaps I’m saying ‘no’ because I’m greedy—I want more. And I want more from all disciplines. Democracy and decision-making are improved by better information and more informed debate, from diverse perspectives.

As ‘just trust us’ continues to hold less and less weight, we need to think carefully about, when it’s eventually ousted for good, what replaces it. We do not need more poorly informed research and reporting, valueless talking points or ‘whataboutism’. What we do need is more evidenced arguments, high-quality investigative reporting, policy-relevant research and analytical depth.

If we want to navigate Australia’s changing place in the world from the best position possible, we should all be working together—across government, media, industry and civil society—to avoid what we don’t need and encourage bucketloads of what we do need. Adding a ‘speeches’ tab to the barren websites of our various intelligence agencies would be a good place to start.

Sofia Patel absolutely nails the nexus between media reportage and terror. Terrorism is a strategy of desperation—that’s why it’s embraced by the marginalised. We in the media offer such actors a microphone, allowing them to disseminate their message. Journalism implicitly legitimises such groups by treating them as genuine actors. It amplifies their activities.

This is bad, but what’s the alternative?

My difficulty comes not with Patel’s diagnosis of the problem but rather with her implied solution. ‘Media outlets,’ she opines, ‘have a responsibility to dispel such myths and rumours, to minimise harm—both physical and rhetorical—when reporting on terror.’

That’s actually not true. Most importantly, it displays a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the media.

As a journalist I was always told my job was to report the truth. Only by doing this could I enable the audience to trust what was being reported.

It’s obvious that no individual reporter could ever have a handle on the whole truth, nor perhaps even be confident that the particular event being reported occurred exactly the way described. Nevertheless, we do attempt to ensure any reporting is as perfect a representation of what’s occurred as possible.

The premise on which this style of reporting is based is both simple and obvious. That’s why it persists.

But Patel wants us to censor our reporting. That’s wrong.

When I began working for the ABC, I was taught that each individual story, every small report (no matter how seemingly inconsequential), added a sliver of reality to the audience’s total picture of how and why the world works. The aim of the reporter was simply to ensure that their reports were as accurate as possible. By the time they reached the end of the bulletin, the aim was to ensure that the listener, viewer or reader was in possession of the most complete picture that could be presented of what’s occurring in the world, offered in a manner that’s of direct relevance and interest to them.

Our trade remains to report, as accurately and rapidly as possible, on events of interest to our audience. Any attempt to interfere with this process risks sounding suspiciously like censorship.

What’s changed, as a result of the internet, is the velocity with which news travels and with which it can be wrapped up with opinion.

People are still demanding to know (in detail) not simply who did what to whom, and when and how things happened. The big difference is the speed with which news travels and the demand to know why things have happened.

This ‘why’ is critical to our understanding of events. Without understanding the cause of events, we can’t really know what’s occurring in our society. Perhaps most significantly, it also enables us to attempt to draw conclusions about what might happen next, and about what occurrences that might affect us. This is the appeal of news. As you get closer to events, however, you become aware that determining exactly why they’re happening is actually very difficult.

This is rarely an issue, however, for someone poised in front of their keyboard. That’s why what’s occurring on the internet is very different from journalism.

Journalism is a product. Our stories are designed around the requirements of individuals, just like clothes. A shopper will pick something up, try it on, and discard anything they think doesn’t suit them. It’s no use insisting, for example, that ties really are sartorially elegant—too many young men have already decided that they don’t need to wear them. News has a similar problem. People don’t want the old-fashioned product any more: it’s far more boring and uninteresting than opinion.

I wish the very best of luck to anyone advocating that ‘online platforms [should] work with news media outlets to develop appropriate ethical, editorial and practical guidelines’ as a means of curbing ‘the spread of misinformation or “fake news”’. It’s a lovely idea. It’s also similar to suggesting that Little Red Riding Hood should work proactively with the Big Bad Wolf to combat world hunger. It’s a great concept, but somewhat harder to understand how it might actually work in practice.

The problem is that there are three, or perhaps really four, players in the media environment. The motivations and interests of each of these participants are utterly divergent. We need to call these out for what they are, because that will make quite clear why there’s no chance of them co-operating with one another.

Firstly, we have the public. It demands to know what’s happening as soon as it happens. Quite naturally, audiences come to events with preconceptions based on their own prejudices and experience. Some are also prone to conspiracy theories and racism.

Secondly, there are the journalists or ‘old media’. With a disintegrating financial model, we’re reduced to pandering to smaller and smaller audiences. Is it any wonder there’s such insistent pressure from editors to grab eyeballs in any way possible?

Thirdly, there’s the new media. That’s Facebook and Twitter, or whatever platform is coming next to distribute news, gossip or voices. These sites emphasise that they have absolutely no interest, none whatsoever, in editorial control or standards. They pretend they don’t influence or editorialise, whereas the reality is that they do. After all, this is the entire point of an algorithm. They exist simply to prioritise particular types of content, which is the definition of editorial. They won’t admit this, of course, because it would mean destroying their business model.

And finally, although we often forget them, there are those with political barrows to push. These are the very groups and individuals who aim to profit from sowing division and capitalising on the real and significant problems identified in Patel’s post.

Perhaps this time, instead of blaming the media, we could instead call for politicians to come together and resolve society’s problems by working ethically and harmoniously together.

Unfortunately, I just don’t see that happening.

Sofia Patel responds:

I thank Nic Stuart for responding to my piece on Media and terror in the age of social media but I feel compelled to reply to some clear misinterpretations. I never suggested that the media should be censored. I said the media should not speculate in the aftermath of an attack and called for proportionate reporting based on facts. That’s responsible journalism, not censorship.

Nic claims that calling for the media to ‘dispel myths and rumours, to minimise harm—both physical and rhetorical—when reporting on terror’ demonstrates a ‘fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the media’. If the job of a journalist is to report the truth (which it is), then dispelling myths and rumours consolidates this ethos rather than undermining it.

I focussed on the complexities of being a journalist in a social media age. The nuance required to wade through the range of fake news and misinformation is challenging especially when attempting to maintain journalistic integrity.

There’s no ready made way to counter fake news and misinformation. International research suggests that we must develop appropriate policy and legislative frameworks that are flexible and adaptable; there are roles to play for government, tech companies and media corporations here—it’s not the role of any one party.