Journalists raise their voices on press freedom
I knew I wanted to interview a series of journalists for my podcast. I didn’t realise how critical these conversations would become.
When I started producing The Journo Project podcast only a couple of months ago, I imagined it would be my independent homage to great journalists around Australia.
But I had no idea how important it would become.
It was the second series of my Streets of Your Town podcast, which after a year was well established on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Soundcloud and all the usual podcast providers. I thought this would continue with its small but dedicated following of subscribers and occasional downloaders.
I knew the vision I had for The Journo Project podcast from early on. All my interviews with journos had to be face to face quality, using no crappy phone lines or computer links, which would entail a lot of travel. But it would engender an intimacy, so that listeners feel like they are at the table having a conversation with us, and are more moved by the content.
Then in June, just as I was starting to pull together my list of interviewees, the Australian Federal police raids on News Corp reporter Annika Smethurst and ABC journalists Dan Oakes and Sam Clark triggered a major debate over press freedom.
From there, I was amazed how quickly The Journo Project became an important outlet for journalists to raise their concerns about press freedoms being slowly whittled away, and the podcast grew. I’d experienced this with my radio current affairs documentaries on disability rights in South Australia and boxing regulation in Queensland, how nimbly one could respond to a developing story with the radio medium. I soon realised I could tap into that nimble response in the podcast realm as well.
I hastily organised a launch party just before the end of the financial year, inviting journos, contacts and friends to celebrate great Australian journalism.
At the launch party I played part of the first episode with Hedley Thomas, with everyone crouched around my bluetooth speaker like it was a retro valve radio from the 1950s playing an ABC radio drama of old.
It fascinated me that such a new and evolving medium of podcasts could unite people in the way that audio always had — the warmth of people’s voices, removed from the distraction of pictures, connecting with listeners on an intimate and visceral level.
I also played an excerpt of my interview with Trent Dalton, where he reads part of his incredible book Boy Swallows Universe, after explaining how it was his 20-year apprenticeship in journalism that enabled him to write such a stunning debut novel.
And I also played part of my interview with Peter Greste, and his moving account of how the death of a colleague in Somalia was far more distressing for him than 400 days in an Egyptian jail.
These interviews capture the practice and passion of journalists who I greatly admire, and who I hoped would connect with the wider Australian public and show why press freedom in Australia shouldn’t be taken for granted.
I grew up in the Joh era in Queensland. It was one of my main motivations for becoming a journalist. I remember seeing Chris Masters’ pivotal ABC Four Corners piece “The Moonlight State” and thinking that this was the type of journalism I wanted to be part of. Exposing parts of our society that people knew about but didn’t want to acknowledge, and the ramifications of the collapse of the separations of police, government and the judiciary.
Last year I was lucky enough to host a 30th anniversary event with Chris Masters for Griffith University where we played The Moonlight State again, and he paused it at various times to discuss what was happening behind the scenes at that time.
31 years later, I wondered if I was alone in my concern about how far away we were from going down that slippery slope again, that anti-terrorism laws and a growing acceptance of surveillance as the norm could take us back to those dark days.
But I have found many of my journalism colleagues share those concerns, and jumped at the opportunity to take part in The Journo Project podcast to tell people why.
I’ve used an email newsletter platform called Substack as the host for The Journo Project, and found that sending out emails with the podcast embedded in it along with behind the scenes stories of my travels and journey along the way has encouraged people to subscribe and become part of the tribe.
And it has been great to be back on the road again.
It was wonderful to catch up with renowned investigative reporter Hedley Thomas, creator of the phenomenally successful podcast “The Teacher’s Pet” that has been downloaded more than 50 million times around the world, at the Brookfield cafe where he wrote many of his podcast scripts, and talk through the process he uses to find the incredible stories that have now won him two Gold Walkley awards.
He also talks on the podcast about why we should all be concerned about the implications of the recent Australian Federal police media raids on the ABC and News Limited journalists.
“My view is that it was significantly about intimidating would be whistleblowers, who will be seeing the very public spectacle of police going in en masse to the offices of the national public broadcaster, and into the home of one of my colleagues at News Corp. And the coverage of that has a chilling effect on people who know that bad things are happening, or being covered up, that need to be highlighted in the media,” he says.
“It was over the top. It was, I think, a very concerning spectacle, and the timing just after the election, please. I mean, seriously? Given the length of these cases, how that could be just coincidence, and not related to the election? No, I’m sorry, I don’t buy that.”
I flew to Melbourne to interview eight-time Walkley Award-winner Adele Ferguson. She is also concerned by these recent developments, and says whistleblowers deserve more protection in Australian society.
“It’s frightening because it just has a chilling effect on whistleblowers speaking up, you know, and the impact on the journalists and the organisation, it’s just horrendous,” she says.
“We have to campaign. I think having the three CEOs on the panel at the National Press Club a few weeks ago, backing independent journalism and whistleblowers and press freedom was a really good start because when different media organisations unite, politicians get very worried.
“The laws do not protect whistleblowers. It’s just shocking. In America, they have a whistleblower day. They get rewards.
“Here, they’re seen as snitchers and troublemakers and they’re punished.”
Peter Greste spoke to me at a cafe at the University of Queensland near his new office as UNESCO Chair in Journalism and Communications, and director of the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom. He told me raising awareness of the importance of media freedom in Australia could be as simple as reframing the way we debate it.
“If we asked Australians ‘Hands up those of you who would feel perfectly comfortable without a free press. Who think that all we need to run our democracy, all we need about the information about what takes place inside government are the Facebook posts and Twitter feeds of our politicians and senior civil servants. Hands up who is comfortable with that idea?’. I don’t think you’d see too many hands,” he says.
“I think most people would understand that even though the media works imperfectly, even though they don’t trust us a lot of the time, for reasons that I completely understand, the alternative is a good deal worse.
“That’s what we need to argue for. We need to recognise the importance of news as a public good. We need to understand and remember why it matters to our democracy.
“So what we need to be thinking about is what we need from our journalism. We need to think about what our journalism has to provide in a functioning democracy.
“I think we’ll come closer to a kind of conversation that we need to have to deliver good journalism and journalism that is sustainable over the long term.”
Trent Dalton spoke to me from his office underneath his house where he is writing his second book. His respect for journalism is profound, and he wants others in society to better understand its importance.
“It’s that terrifying notion, that Orwellian notion that gets back to those fundamental reasons why Steinbeck wrote and why Orwell wrote, is they were going for truth. And these raids stand at the heart of truth,” he says.
“I’m talking big picture, philosophical, what is at the heart of this? It is, there is a truth that they are trying to get at, and we are trying to get out. And they’re trying to hide it, and we are trying to get at it.”
In episode 4, Media Diversity Australia co-founder Antoinette Lattouf says journos themselves also need to get out of the twittersphere and more into the real world to explain why what we do is important.
“On Twitter, we’re all talking about it, but again journalists and people who are relying too much on Twitter sentiment, 20% of Australians are on Twitter, it’s a bit of an echo chamber, and it’s not reflective of how the broader public feels,” she says.
“So we might be enraged and my tweet might go viral, but that’s just amongst like-minded people in the same industry. I don’t think the concern is mirrored across just the general public.
“It’s at the same time, that I think there is a bit of a dislocation and distrust in mainstream media, either because people aren’t feeling reflected and represented, but also because I don’t think the media is held to account enough.”
I spoke to Hugh Riminton at the ABC Radio National studio where he records Sunday Extra in Sydney’s ABC Ultimo studios. He says the AFP raids were intended to intimidate journalists.
“Their whole purpose is to intimidate. The media is the secondary purpose,” he says.
“The primary purpose is to intimidate whistleblowers. And what we have to understand here is that we have a situation where people who find information out, that is really damaging to our fellow citizens. If they blow the whistle on it, they get punished.
“They might use the media to get it out, but they get punished. There are court cases at the moment where people are facing long periods of time in jail. A tax officer who revealed appalling practices within the tax office is now facing 160 years potentially in jail. And having gone public with it, they’ve had to change the way the tax office works. He did a good thing for the country and he risks going to jail.
“And all of these things are in the public interest to know how our government works, and that they’ve got a mechanism in place that will jail people for years for doing good things for the country and then harass and intimidate journalists.
“Everyone should be aware that, when people in good faith find out things that are wrong about the way things are operating, they have to be allowed to speak up for the good of the country and not face going to jail at the behest of some really unattractive bullies that we’ve allowed to take positions of power in this country.”
Renowned ABC investigative journalist Mark Willacy told The Journo Project how worrying recent developments are for not just journalism practice, but democracy in Australia.
“To me, that was just utterly ridiculous those raids. If you take the ABC raid, they’ve got a guy putting his hand up saying “I leaked it”. They’ve already charged him; he’s facing court. You’ve got a situation where this investigation kicked off two years ago, so why all of a sudden just after an election is that happening?
“We’re one of the few democracies that don’t have freedom of the press enshrined in some form of constitutional right or Bill of Rights, and that, to me, is a worry, because politicians, even the most shrill authoritarian versions of them, I think admit the press play an important role. And again, how would they even get their message out without a free press?
“I think it’s time for this debate to happen in Australia that maybe we need to enshrine freedom and independence of the press officially in our constitution or in a Bill of Rights of some form.
“Chris Masters, when he exposed police corruption in ‘The Moonlight State’ in 1987, I think showed that was our greatest piece of journalism committed in this state and it led to major change in this state, political, justice, law and order. It really changed this state.
“I think we can never take our freedoms for granted and I think the media needs to keep reminding people what those freedoms are and why we need to keep fighting for them.”
Willacy says investigative journalists are having to dust off some of their older methods as well as being across the latest digital technologies, to better protect sources in this environment.
“If we want to give sources 100% confidentiality, we have to also teach our sources what to do with their technology, so, for example, the use of Signal or WhatsApp. But we’re even sort of investigating better technology or more safe technology than that,” he says.
“For example, when I go to meetings with sources who I know are going to give me something, I leave my phone behind. That way if there was ever an investigation, my phone and the source’s phone aren’t going to be in the same spot.”
I’m hoping that my Streets of Your Town — The Journo Project podcast goes far beyond the realm of journalists, and by using this new and emerging and accessible technology of podcasting that the debate about the importance of media freedom can spread to schools, universities, cafes, pubs and barbecues around the country. And that comes down to us as journalists sharing why what we do is so important.
Perhaps the best person to end this on is Peter Greste — who in this era of digital disruption and job cutbacks, ended his podcast on a beautiful note of optimism, for the future of journalism.
“If we prioritise only those stories which are popular, then we’ll only end up with the McDonald’s of news. Now we all know that if all we consume is McDonald’s, we’ll end up with diabetes. So you’ve got to eat your greens, you’ve got to have your spinach, you’ve got to have some salads and some broccoli from time to time,” he says.
“It’s okay for some McDonald’s from time to time, that’s great. We all love it, we all need it, there’s nothing wrong with it. But you’ve also got to have a balanced diet. The same goes for our news.
“That’s what we need to argue for. We need to recognise the importance of news as a public good.
“We need to understand and remember why it matters to our democracy.
“It’s easy for us to get a bit depressed and grim about it all. But I also think it’s worth reminding ourselves of something really fundamental, that from the moment that humans have had the capacity to speak, we’ve had storytellers, we’ve had people, whether they’re bards or wandering minstrels or storytellers or journalists.
“We’ve always needed people to go out to gather stories of the world around us, to help us understand and make sense of the world, to keep us up-to-date with what’s taking place around our own little social sphere, and we will always need them.”
Streets of Your Town — The Journo Project podcast is up to episode 5 at https://soyt.substack.com, iTunes, Spotify, Soundcloud and your podcast provider of choice.
You can subscribe to the email updates and listen to all past episodes at https://soyt.substack.com. Future episodes will feature Mark Willacy, Isabella Higgins, Angelique Johnson, Peter Ryan, Maureen Mopio-Jane, Matthew Condon and more to be confirmed.
