BACK from my combined liver-cleansing/depilation/colonic irrigation/parliamentary prayer retreat at the Zeehan spa and home entertainment emporium … And let me tell you, the state of the Fourth Estate doesn’t look any healthier as a result of this physical and spiritual cleansing session.

No, the Fourth Estate isn’t that new sub-division heading out of Kingston — that’s the Fifth Estate. (For sales enquiries, phone 555 5305.)

Somebody in one of those centuries when people used to think about things declared newspapers to be the Fourth Estate — one of the pillars of parliamentary democracy. Without journalistic scrutiny of government, this wise person concluded, democracy was as lame as a three-legged donkey ridden by Douglas Wood in the Melbourne Cup.

Tasmanian law academic Rick Snell sounded the death knell for the Fourth Estate in Tasmania seven years ago, not long after the state edition of The 7.30 Report was axed.

He suggested Tasmanians were about to vote in a state election without the means to cast an informed vote now that this TV current affairs show wasn’t hammering the big issues. Snell said The 7.30 Report had either broken stories or provided solid follow-up on issues.

“What happens now however, is effectively, that it’s up to the newspapers to break the stories, and they tend to break fairly few stories and rely very much on a kind of mish-mash of press releases, and then responses from various parties to those press releases,” Snell told ABC Radio’s The Media Report on August 27, 1998.

The editor of The Mercury, Ian McCausland, was asked by The Media Report whether his newspaper was doing investigative work on the big state issues. His reply: “No, down here in Tasmania … the opportunity to undertake investigations is low, because we all know everything. People blow in our ears, and there’s not really too much to investigate.”

It’s an interesting theory. I’m not sure if it’s reflected in the content of the paper, though. More like the paper gets leaked what the powers that be want to get out. “Read all about it! Hot off the fax machine!”

But this column is not a naive plea for more investigative journalism. Investigative journalism is expensive and, basically, the news part of newspapers is just filler for the display ads and classifieds, the TV program, crosswords, horoscope and what’s on at the movies bits of the paper.

But the best journalism doesn’t have to be time-consuming and expensive. It can simply be reporting what is there to see — to grasp the essence of a situation and tell people about it … and to keep on telling until someone is made to answer for it.

For example, take a look at the Ken Bacon story — not the leaks that made him look like a complete dickhead, which splashed across the front pages, but the story about abuse of parliamentary process (it was buried at the back of the news pages for a while there).

In essence: Bacon was deliberately blinkered about the losses being incurred by the Spirit of Tasmanian ferry service to Sydney so he would be unable to answer questions about it in a parliamentary budget estimates hearing. Unwillingness to accept scrutiny of its actions is a trademark of the Tasmanian Government.

Local ABC Radio, under the direction of news chief Andrew Fisher, has grasped the essence of this story and has been pursuing it as well as a lone media voice can. But it takes a concerted effort. There were numerous ways a determined news organisation could have kicked this story along and built some momentum — to have stood up for the Tasmanian population and said, no we don’t deserve to be treated like a load of deadheads who don’t need to know what’s going on by Paul Lennon and his clique.

A media pack working in concert can be as deadly as a pack of wolves. The pack can easily bring down the weak and defenceless (just take a look at A Current Affair any night). But we are humans, not wolves: what about going after a powerful and well-defended target now and then?

Gabfest is a Tasmanian media professional.