POSITION PAPER 1

on

 The Sydney Morning Herald

Reading or watching international news online is incredibly interesting and something that I find exciting. I love to travel, but since living as a college student and on a student budget makes it difficult to do that often, reading international news gives me a glimpse into a country and can almost make it feel like I am there. There is a plethora of international news publications to pick from when choosing one to write about. I had a difficult time when choosing which part of the world I wanted to look at and, more specifically, which country I wanted to focus on. I ultimately decided that I wanted to look into an Australian newspaper that can give me insight into what news the country is receiving every day.

As a whole, the paper’s political stance is on the conservative side although it generally does not come across as harsh as most American news publications in the area of politics. The Sydney Morning Herald covers a huge variety of topics such as politics, business, world, national, and opinion among many other subjects. Overall, searching through the paper’s website was very familiar in the layout because it closely resembled many American newspapers that I have studied before. Just from simply scrolling through the home page, it looks like most of the stories are specific to Sydney or Australia in general. One thing that I found particularly interesting was how the website has an ongoing COVID-19 data watch on the side of the home page that continuously keeps readers updated with the number of vaccinations in New South Wales (NSW) and in Australia. The data count also keeps you updated with the amount of COVID cases in NSW and Australia. 

    The Sydney Morning Herald is a daily newspaper published in Sydney, Australia. This is actually Australia’s oldest newspaper, dating all the way back to 1831, and also one of the country’s most influential publications. Originally called “The Sydney Herald”, the paper was started by three English emigrants named William McGarvie, Alfred Ward Stephens, and Frederick Stokes. The paper transformed from a weekly newspaper to a daily newspaper in 1840, one year before another Englishman named John Fairfax bought the newspaper and added the word “morning” to its name. 

    Australia lives under a mixed system of government, combining both a representative government and a constitutional monarchy. With them operating under a mixed government, their freedoms and rights can be very different from what we experience in the United States. Speaking from the perspective of news publications and journalism, Australia’s freedom of speech is different than that of the U.S.. The Australian Constitution does not explicitly allow freedom of speech. However, it does have an implied freedom of political speech. The constitution does state two specific rights in the area of freedom of speech: “Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference” and “Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.”


    Next, I wanted to focus on a few news stories from the paper that I found interesting and that I feel reflects the type of writing that is done in The Sydney Morning Herald. First, I wanted to look at one of the hard news stories that is specific to Sydney, Australia. The title of this story is, “Sydney bus drivers refuse to return to work until rapid testing is introduced”. This story talks about how close to 180 bus drivers in Sydney have walked off the job after one of their colleagues tested positive for Covid. Now, the drivers are saying that they will not return until rapid testing is introduced. This story is very similar to a hard news story that we would see in the United States and I thought it was a good overall look to what the paper typically writes.


    While the Sydney Morning Herald has an abundance of hard news stories, they also have a specific section on the website that is devoted to Opinion stories. One of these opinion stories that I found interesting, and slightly humorous, is one called “The referees will always be in crisis — but let’s stop moaning about them” written by Andrew Webster who is a chief sports writer for the Sydney Morning Herald. This article was focused on the National Rugby League (NRL) and how people have gotten into the habit of slamming the referees when they do not call the game the way people want them too. With the U.S. being a huge sports country as well, this story reminds me of an opinion paper that we might see on an American news publication in current times. 


    Along with having a huge following in their physical paper and website, The Sydney Morning Herald also uses many social media platforms to connect with their audience. On their Twitter, the newspaper has almost 900,000 followers and post daily and hourly. The Sydney Morning Herald’s Facebook is also extremely active, although it seems that they post pretty much the same things that are on their Twitter profile. The paper’s Instagram is slightly less popular and active, although they do post multiple times a day and have about 230,000 followers.

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