Farewell Old Friend or Bye-Bye Bully Boy? The Closure of a ‘Media Icon’ and Challenging the ‘Free Press’ Paradigm

Abstract

The closure of The Bulletin magazine was widely reported and commented on by journalists and others in the media who sought to apportion blame for this rupture, to explain it as an aberration and to reassert the norm of the ‘free’ press and the Fourth Estate. In the past, such paradigm repair would have gone unchallenged as those in the media controlled what appeared there. With the advent of accessible digital information and communication technologies, however, members of the public are encouraged to have their say. This study compared the ways in which journalists and their sources and members of the public framed the closure of The Bulletin. In the era of dialogic mediated communications, journalists and others in the media can no longer assume that contrary voices will be silenced.