Our Watch Fellow Gary Nunn on why you need to apply for the 2020 Fellowship
Applications are open now for the 2020 Our Watch Fellowship, a prestigious opportunity for 14 mid-career journos to learn more about reporting violence against women.
We spoke to one of the inaugural Our Watch Fellows, Gary Nunn, about how beneficial the program was for his reporting skills, and why you should apply for the 2020 Fellowship.
What were some of the key teachings or new information you took away from the Fellowship, in relation to reporting on violence against women?
It was like doing a course that gave us the language to best articulate the [violence against women] problem in Australia, and it gave you everything that a journalist could want. It gave us robust independent statistics so that we knew where to quote from and how up to date the statistics were, in terms of how prevalent the problem is in Australia.
Having those credible statistics enabled us to really build the story in a way that was engaging for an audience and was articulated in plain English so that people could understand, for example, that a woman in Australia is murdered every single week by her partner or former partner. Shocking statistics like that, articulated in a way that is simple, straightforward and to the point.
“The Fellowship gave us the language to articulate the issue in a way that is sensitive and doesn’t fall into the trap that some media reporting has fallen into in the past, such as victim blaming or perpetrator excusing”
Also, the Fellowship gave us the framework within which violence against women happens, and how to address those conditions and show that it is not inevitable. It exists within a society that’s patriarchal and the drivers that cause violence against women can absolutely be tackled.
The Fellowship gave us the language to articulate the issue in a way that is sensitive and doesn’t fall into the trap that some media reporting has fallen into in the past, such as victim blaming or perpetrator excusing. Giving us those tools and that language to properly articulate the problem, and also articulate the solutions available, was indispensable.
The other thing the Fellowship really helped us achieve was connection with our peers. As a freelance journalist — actually the only freelance journalist on the Fellowship — I also happened to be the only man. I hope that changes in future years, because one of the learnings, and things that should be obvious, is that violence against women is absolutely not a women’s issue that should just sit in the women’s section.
“It is an issue for everyone, and it is the biggest crime, social and equality story that is around in Australia today”
It is an issue for everyone, and it is the biggest crime, social and equality story that is around in Australia today — it can sit under any section. As a freelancer, that was really important to me because it’s absolutely not something that should just sit in the women’s sections of media outlets.
There was a lot of focus on how to report news of violence against women [and] as a features journalist, it was really helpful for me to hear from people who’d experienced violence against women themselves — both those who’d experienced it firsthand and their families and the people who had suffered bereavements as a result of a woman being murdered.
That was really helpful because we were given tips, advice and information about how to interview people who have been through something so traumatic and so tragic, when the media is there and want to report on the story in a way that is accurate and sensitive. To have people in the room who had been through it themselves was excellent because it gave me an opportunity to be a better journalist in how I interview people who have been through such trauma.
One of the things I really took away, for example, was what kind of questions to ask people who’d been through that experience. The thing that stuck with me was someone saying, “You could sit down and just say, what would you like to tell me? What would you like to tell me today?” And often that can lead to a 15, 20-minute discussion, and you can work with that person to ensure that they’re okay with what they’ve said and that it’s accurate; you can get them a read back service, etc.
I thought that was an excellent opening question and one that really just helps to give a framework and structure in which interviewees might like to respond to that kind of question. That was really, really helpful.
How have this fellowship helped with your work?
One of the things the Fellowship gave me as a freelance journalist was a peer group, and that’s been indispensable. We have a WhatsApp group. We help each other to report on sometimes very sensitive issues and keep an eye out for when someone within our organisation has done a story that perhaps hasn’t been as good as it can be, in terms of accurate reporting of violence against women.
Just sharing learnings, sharing stories and sharing experiences, and the networking and peer relationships that developed as a result of the Fellowship were absolutely essential to my job as a freelance journalist.
“Just sharing learnings, sharing stories and sharing experiences, and the networking and peer relationships that developed as a result of the Fellowship were absolutely essential to my job as a freelance journalist”
I’ve worked on stories since where I’ve been able to run a first draft by one of the other journalists in the Fellowship to ask, “Have I got this right? And is there anything you’d change and is the tone right?” That’s in addition to the harder learnings of avoiding victim blaming, perpetrator excusing, getting the language right, ensuring that the 1–800-RESPECT number is at the end of every single story on violence against women.
Those are the kind of 101 things that we now know we absolutely have to get right as journalists. But there are stories where tonally you might want to run it past one of your peers — and they’ve been really, really helpful in doing that.
Also, learning to look at other angles of how we can tell this story — the biggest crime, justice, social, educational and court story of our time, in Australia. Looking at ‘how do we ensure that we keep this on the news agenda, and we don’t just keep it in the news pages?’ Also ensuring that it’s told through features, sport sections, human interest stories, opinion pieces.
Having the ability to do that has enabled me to report with more authority and more confidence on the subject. For me, as a man and as the only man on the Fellowship, I think it’s not insignificant, because we want to empower more men to have this conversation and bring them in — have more male journalists be part of the fold that continue to report on this story and ensure that we keep it at the top of the agenda of editors in every newsroom in the country.
Has the Fellowship had an effect on the stories you think of as newsworthy, or the angle you take?
I reported on the landmark case of Sally Challen, who was convicted of murdering her husband. And what happened was, when her case was looked at again under appeal, it transpired that there were just two words that were going to help reduce that murder conviction to manslaughter. And those two words were ‘coercive control’. It was a new understanding of a form of violence against women and a form of abuse in relationships that was articulated extremely well by her son, David.
Sally had two sons, and one of her sons got really burnt by the media and decided not to engage with them anymore. The other son, David, decided to go the other way and to use the media and use this moment with his mum to concisely and eloquently articulate what coercive control looks like, and why it should be considered as abuse and a form of violence against women.
I happened to go to London last year. I’d been in the Australian Bureau of the BBC and had been doing some work in-house there, and then decided to go back to freelance journalism, writing pieces for The Guardian and the BBC, ABC, The Sydney Morning Herald and news.com.au. And I got to know David Challen quite well. I found out what happened on the day that his mum killed his dad. He got a phone call saying, “Your mum has killed your dad and she’s currently being talked down from a clifftop, where it looks like she’s about to take her own life, by a police negotiator, and she’s still there.”
So it was a really intense time for David and I used all the learnings of the Fellowship to develop trust with David, to meet him face-to-face and be able to tell David — knowing that his brother had been burned by an experience with another media outlet that I don’t write for — I was able to tell David, I have been through this Fellowship and I’ve done the training, and it helped me to gain that essential trust with a case study.
So I met David and we were able to connect, develop trust, develop a relationship. We both are passionate about the subject of violence against women and do not think it is a women’s issue. We’re both gay men. We both think that that perhaps puts us in a unique position whereby we can talk to women and relate to them in a different way, perhaps, that’s not insignificant. Once I built that relationship with him, I was able to persuade him to speak to me, and his family had links to Australia, his dad actually has a sister here. The Challens were about to move to Australia just before the incident, when his mum killed his dad.
When Sally’s appeal was going through to reduce her murder sentence to manslaughter, that’s when the issue of coercive control came up. And it was described by David as a form of psychological abuse that his dad inflicted upon his mom over many, many years, which included gaslighting, financial control, isolating, fat shaming, rape, complete humiliation and continual philandering. Each kind of behaviour hadn’t yet been grouped under this term ‘coercive control’. It was a new law that came into place in the UK and Sally’s case was the first ever case to use coercive control to help her successfully appeal — and she had already served the term of manslaughter.
“I did two big features [on coercive control laws in the UK]… and the New South Wales parliament has just launched an inquiry into criminalising coercive control… That’s an area I now feel equipped to report on and that’s thanks to the Fellowship”
I talked to David a few times and, as I met him in the UK, his mum had just been released from prison. It was huge news in the UK. We talked about how they were going to spend their first Christmas together and the kind of things his family has been through, and why he thinks coercive control is important to introduce on the statute books in legislatures outside of the UK. I did two big features for news.com.au, talking to David and helping him tell his story across borders and across oceans, so that it wasn’t just something that the UK heard, but something that Australia has heard.
As I speak this week, the New South Wales parliament has just launched an inquiry into criminalising coercive control, which will inform whether or not they choose to do so. So that’s an area I now feel equipped to report on and that’s thanks to the Fellowship, and thanks to the trust that I was able to build with David.
I think that trust came about purely because I was able to send him the Fellowship link and say, “Look at the training I’ve done. Here’s how I’m going to be able to report on this sensitively and accurately”, and that’s thanks to the Walkleys and Our Watch Fellowship.
I’m absolutely not deterred and I feel empowered to continue to tell this story, which is so important, until we drive down those statistics in Australia. It’s absolutely essential we do so.
“I feel empowered to continue to tell this story, which is so important, until we drive down those statistics in Australia. It’s absolutely essential we do so”
What would you say to other journalists and editors who are considering applying for the Fellowship?
We have a responsibility as journalists to work within all of the systems and structures in Australia to [drive down the statistics]. We have a huge pivotal role in doing that, and the Fellowship is empowering us to do that. So thank you. Thank you to Our Watch and thank you to the Walkleys.
Find out more about the 2020 Our Watch Fellowships here.
If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual assault or family violence, call 1800-RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or visit www.1800RESPECT.org.au.
Gary Nunn is a freelance journalist for the ABC, BBC Australia, Guardian Australia, The Sydney Morning Herald, news.com.au and other outlets. Nunn was a recipient of the inaugural Our Watch Fellowship, administered by the Walkleys, to promote better reporting of the issue of violence against women in Australia.
