And then, of course, everybody would unpack this.

This

At this point, I decided to go back to Margaret Simons, who is an absolute Australian leader and pioneer in the field of journalism and journalism education and talk to her about how educating the general public about news media, about information consumption, about critical thinking when it comes to all of those things will contribute going forward.

Learning how to sift information, and this goes beyond just news information, obviously that's the topic we're talking about, learning how to assess and sift information and how to think, basically, about it, is fundamental and begins with birth, if not before.

Certainly schools play an important part in that, but so do all sorts of civil society groups, from scouting troops to neighbourhood watch to all sorts of things.

At every level, I think we have to develop societies which are inoculated to some extent against believing.

The latest thing which might confirm your own sense of disconsent or suspicion or whatever, but is in fact bullshit, you know, the heart of conspiracy theories...

Making sure that we do still have the gatekeepers, the established media organisations, reasonably well resourced, that are standing on the edge of this sewer, commentating and policing it, is part of that.

The first question I wanted to talk to Margaret about was, "Who gets to represent a community?"

There is a massive, and I do mean massive, academic literature on sourcing in journalism and on precisely this question, who gets to be a source.

Um, if I can try and summarize that massive literature in a couple of sentences.

Having been the source once means that you're more likely to be a source again.

[laughs] Um, journalists tend to go back to the same people, um, again and again.

They also tend to look for people who have already have some sort of institutional power.

So for example, if they're an office holder in an organization or something of that sort, or they've already been given the imprimatur of somebody or the other.

[gentle music] I asked Margaret about her views on social media and whether she's still active on social media platforms.