Sydney Morning Herald Political Editor Sean Nicholls spoke to a class of Year 10 Journalism students at Newington College about the fundamentals of journalism and the evolving nature of the profession.

With the ever growing online world, and the President of the United States Donald Trump waging a war on journalism, it is no secret there are some significant struggles the modern day journalist inevitably encounters.

Sean Nicholls is no stranger to these struggles, after dealing with a six-month long law suit in 2015 regarding his ‘Treasurer for sale’ headline, he sees himself as an ambassador for freedom of speech.

“As a journalist, this took up approximately six weeks of my life… I had to recreate every phone call, every email, every piece of correspondence and ended up with an affidavit 50 pages thick,” he said.

This story quickly led to the subject of objectivity in journalism.

“If I were to define objectivity… holding every single person and every single political party to the same standards, Journalism is the universal search for the truth,” Nicholls explained.

The objectivity of journalist’s and publishers has had significant airtime in the news lately with President of the United States, Donald Trump making consistent claims of ‘fake news’ against institutions such as CNN.

“Trump is calling journalists the enemy of the American people. The media has played a very important part in democracy for many years and it is very important to have a strong and free media,” said Nicholls.

The Journalism class was also visited by James Branson from Junkee.com, a Video Journalist who creates openly subjective features for his audience and is in some ways some in disagreement with Sean Nicholls as was quoted saying:

“The online world is different, sometimes it’s not about objectivity but about getting an audience’s attention and humour is best way to do that.

“The way news is delivered is changing and you have to find new ways to get your voice across. Humour is often better at getting people’s attention,” said James Branson.

Bailey Shannonhouse (10/MA)
Harry Quinn (10/KL)