In all the fuss over Zaky Mallah's appearance on Q&A last week, there was one comment by Malcolm Turnbull that seems just about the most extraordinary development, writes Tim Dunlop.

The Minister for Communications, Malcolm Turnbull, made an extraordinary comment on the weekend. Speaking in light of the controversy over last week's episode of Q&A, he said:

[The ABC] is independent of government, but it has a higher duty, it has a duty of objectivity that the rest of the media does not. They can be as opinionated as they like.

Just let that sink in: according to the actual Minister for Communications, a man who is often lauded for his reasonableness and intelligence, the non-ABC media are allowed to be as opinionated as they like. Only the ABC has a higher duty to objectivity.

In all the fuss over Zaky Mallah's appearance on Q&A last week, this, to me, seems just about the most extraordinary development.

If the Minister really believes that, then the problem is not that he doesn't understand media, but that he doesn't understand democracy.

Now, there is certainly a discussion to be had about the very notion of "objectivity" in reporting (and it has been had many times, for example in this excellent exchange between journalist Glenn Greenwald and former New York Times editor, Bill Keller), but the basic point is that the word itself is often used as proxy for the overall standard of reporting.

"Objectivity" encompasses some pretty basic values to do with fairness and accuracy, values that are generally held in contrast to the notion of being merely "opinionated".

So the idea that just because media companies are privately owned they are allowed to be "as opinionated as they like" is nonsense, and what's more, the industry itself thinks it is nonsense.

One of the more comprehensive surveys in Australia of what journalists and editors think about their role was carried out by the Walkley Foundation. The opening lines of that report go straight to the issue of integrity:

For almost 200 years, journalism has played a central role in democratic societies, informing the public and exercising independent scrutiny over institutions such as the parliament, business and the justice system, as well as over the functions of government such as education, health, welfare and beyond. More broadly, the news media has been a forum for commentary and conversation about social and cultural issues. At its best, journalism has been a professional practice that has done all these things ethically and fairly.

As the report makes clear, media is not just another industry. It is a cornerstone of democratic practice and governance, and the idea that journalists could abandon standards of accuracy in the name of saying whatever they want completely undermines the key justification for the media's existence as a civic institution.

Yes, there is a tension between their commercial and their civic duties, but as the report says, "Australian journalists resemble their counterparts in Western liberal democracies ... They [value] objective reporting and universal ethical rules, but [are] fundamentally pragmatic, and [try] to find a balance between giving audiences what they [want], and reporting news that journalists [think] they should know."

In other words, the industry itself understands that much of the privilege it has in regard to access to information and its ability to hold the powerful accountable comes from the tacit understanding that it is not just fulfilling a commercial mandate but a civic one as well.

The issue has particular pertinence in Australia, where media ownership is concentrated in so few hands. As Crikey pointed out recently:

In recent months, News Corp has added strategic ownership stakes in the Ten Network and APN newspaper/radio organisation. The company - through its director, shareholder, management or "associate" proxies - now owns or has the key influence over: The vast majority of metro newspapers;

The vast majority of metro newspapers; The vast majority of suburban newspapers;

The vast majority of suburban newspapers; The majority of regional daily newspapers;

The majority of regional daily newspapers; Two key radio networks;

Two key radio networks; One of three free-to-air TV networks; and

One of three free-to-air TV networks; and Australia's only pay-TV network. ...There has never been anything like this in any mature democracy in history.

Such concentration of ownership should not release media owners from their obligations to accuracy and fairness. If anything, it should increase them.

Unfortunately, that doesn't necessarily follow, as we all know.

The News Corp tabloids in particular continue to disgrace themselves. No matter how clueless you thought Q&A was in allowing Zaky Mallah to appear, the response from some of News Corp's flagship mastheads was borderline insane, implying that the ABC might be on the side of terrorists.

Now, you can argue about that point as much as you like, but however valid you think such headlines are, no one can argue that they are anything other than at the gutter-end of what we call journalism.

So it is really depressing that the Minister for Communication is actively encouraging this sort of debasing of public debate. Or worse, seems unaware that it is even an issue.

Part of the reason the media itself and the politicians they report on are held in such low regard by the general public is precisely because of the rising prevalence of this sort of take-no-prisoners, attack-dog approach to debate (indeed, the tabloids mentioned above said nothing that wasn't also suggested by the Prime Minister himself, to his endless shame).

This approach poisons the well of public discussion and makes it harder and harder for the country to rationally debate important issues.

Key topics have simply moved beyond the scope of reasonable discussion and it is destroying us. Asylum seekers, climate change, border control, violence against women, data retention. All of these are now difficult to discuss outside the parameters of useless partisanship or outright bullying.

Under such circumstances you would hope the Minister for Communications would be arguing in favour of raising standards. You would hope that he would be reminding us all that while the media are certainly entitled to express an opinion and turn a profit, their obligations extend beyond mere commerce to the democratic health of the nation.

It's pretty simple really: the media are granted the freedom they enjoy because we understand that democratic accountability depends on a free press. In return, we-the-people have a reasonable expectation that they will use their privileged position to report accurately and fairly, and not just be "as opinionated as they like".

What a disgraceful thing that the Minister for Communications doesn't seem to recognise this basic fact.

Tim Dunlop is the author of The New Front Page: New Media and the Rise of the Audience. He writes regularly for The Drum and a number of other publications. You can follow him on Twitter.