The Times They Are a’Changin’

Fifty-five years since Bob Dylan penned “The Times They Are a’Changin’” I’ve got it on repeat on Spotify. Not my favourite Dylan song but it feels really apt this week.

Here are some things that have happened:

Super-band Coldplay won’t be going on tour to promote their new album until they’ve figured out how a tour “can be not only sustainable (but) how can it be actively beneficial.” They’ve recorded the video of a concert available free on YouTube.com

In the past seven days 56 million pieces of plastic landed in the ocean, at the rate of 8 million a day, on top of the billions that are floating around making the oceans rubbish dumps and killing marine life.

Authorities in Australia warned of “catastrophic danger” as bushfires burned in every Australian state and territory on Thursday. “It’s not every weather event that is the direct result of climate change. But when you see trends... it becomes undeniably linked to global climate change,” said an ecologist at the University of Sydney.

Meanwhile in political news:

Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi says she will go to the International Court of Justice to defend the military that imprisoned her for 15 years, from charges of genocide.

Hong Kong voters delivered a stinging rebuke to pro-Beijing (anti-democracy candidates) in elections after months of sometimes violent protests.

The day after the first leaders debate in the UK General Election (to be held on 12 December) the topline or lede in the mainstream media coverage was not about anything Prime Minister Boris Johnson or Opposition Leader Jeremy Corbyn had said nor about the frequent but unprecedented laughter during the debate, but about how the ruling Conservative Party press office had dishonestly rebranded itself as a fact-checker on Twitter.

Election/Brexit news was firmly knocked off top story status by the latest royal scandal. A member of the British royal family has quit public life after an interview that will be played in public relations and media training sessions for the rest of time as a lesson in what not to say when facing allegations of having raped trafficked women at the home of his friend notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein who was convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor and facing charges of running “a vast network” of children for sex.

Another of Epstein’s long time friends is Donald Trump who said he’d known him for 15 years in 2002 and called him “a terrific guy.” 

The US President’s note to himself to prepare to respond to bombshell testimony at the impeachment inquiry against him was set to music in the style of The Ramones and The Smiths in satire for our times on social media.

“I want nothing.

“I want nothing.

“I want no quid pro quo,” Trump’s note read.

It’s not exactly Dylan.

This survey of news stories started out as a way of explaining the way 2019 is rounding out as being a year that I think historians will look back on as being something of a pivotal moment for human civilisation: in technology, science and politics there is an acute self awareness of the chasm between what needs to be done for peaceful survival and coexistence and what is actually being done by our leaders.

But it also reminds me of my days reading several live newscasts and the head-spinning speed at which teams of people with vastly diverse backgrounds would haul together their skills, judgment and experience into discussions and then production to put together a really good newscast.

The set of stories that would go into the final rundown for a newscast, would be chosen on the basis of what was new, compelling and important as well as what we had pictures of and where we had correspondents available to report. I was always proudest of the work that the team put into the “Al Jazeera Newshour” from Kuala Lumpur, putting together really stunning sequences including video walls, graphics, live reports from remote locations and finding the best experts to put the stories into context as well as politicians to answer forensic questioning on the hot story of the moment. The mantra for the “Al Jazeera Interview” was that no-one gets a free ride on the channel. Poor old Harrison Ford got ambushed by me when he came to us live from the UN Biodiversity Conference, though he probably didn’t realise that underneath it all we may have been a little starstruck and restraining ourselves from calling him Indy and Captain Solo.

People still sometimes ask me what it is that qualifies as news and who decides it, in understandable frustration over the nature of news and information in the social media age, or what some have even called the “fake news age” or the “post-truth era.” I think it’s more useful and empowering to understand that we are no longer living in an “age of deference,” but an “age of reference.”

Nowadays, I think We, the people, We, the consumers of news, We are all journalists ourselves. We must learn to judiciously discriminate and curate the sources and stories that we think are most relevant, new, compelling and important. Just as journalists have always done, now anyone who uses information must consider the nature of a story in depth and refer to more than one source, rather than deferring to any one source, whether it be government, newsroom, website, social media, corporation or the family next door. Trust must be earned over and over again and credibility is not something that can be earned through trolling or paid for by big money.

So, yes the times are changing, the planet needs saving, the politicians need checking, the people are in the streets and on their smartphones and we are the people.