Spotlight on: Michael Green
Speed isn’t everything for this Walkley-winning freelance journalist. “I’m proud of working slowly, carefully and collaboratively — to try to tease out complexity and nuance in an issue and, also, to try tell those stories with heart.”
Radio/Audio Feature category winner, 2017 Walkley Awards
Michael Green and the Behind the Wire/Wheeler Centre team, “The Messenger”
An unprecedented insight into daily life in detention on Manus Island, The Messenger podcast wove a narrative from thousands of WhatsApp voice messages sent from a smuggled mobile phone by refugee Abdul Aziz Muhamat to journalist Michael Green. This smart, innovative work had emotional impact and humanised a political issue.
The Messenger is a co-production of Behind The Wire (Michael Green, André Dao, Hannah Reich, Bec Fary, Abdul Aziz Muhamat) and the Wheeler Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas (Jon Tjhia, Sophie Black) in Melbourne, Australia. Behind the Wire is a volunteer-run oral history project, documenting the stories of people who have been detained by the Australian government after seeking asylum in Australia.
How did you find/get started on this story?
Back in early 2016, when I first spoke to Abdul Aziz Muhamat, I’d already been working on stories about immigration detention for two years, for a related project — a book called They Cannot Take the Sky. Some contacts suggested I get in touch with Aziz on Manus Island. At the time, mobile phones were banned and not much information was getting out. Aziz got hold of a smuggled phone, but he could only use it secretly in his room. We exchanged streams of voice messages almost everyday for months before we knew what we’d do with all the recordings. And it was months more before I was able to visit and meet him in person.
One major dilemma was balancing potential risks for Aziz — for his personal safety and his chance of resettlement, for example — against his desire to speak out. I really wanted to be sure that he was making an informed decision.
Then there was the huge challenge of putting it all together. We had a dedicated and talented team of writers and sound editors — André Dao, Hannah Reich and Bec Fary from Behind the Wire and Jon Tjhia and Sophie Black from The Wheeler Centre. Plus great logistical support from The Wheeler Centre, and extra fact-checking from Ben Doherty from The Guardian. It takes a village, and a heck of a long time, to make a longform narrative podcast.
What impact did the story have?
On October 24 it was announced that Aziz has been shortlisted for the Martin Ennals Award, a major international prize for human rights defenders. In the time since we began working on The Messenger, and the situation has lurched from crisis to crisis, he’s become increasingly outspoken in all sorts of media. Our podcast is just one part of a crucial body of journalism about Australia’s offshore detention system, but there is something immediate and different about the way listeners get to know Aziz, through his voice and over such a period of time. Many people have contacted him directly after following the show. Aziz is still there, along with more than 700 other men in PNG. And that means the show is still going; we’re working on a new episode right now.
How did you shape this story?
We were working with more than four thousand voice messages, as well as many hours of face-to-face interviews with Aziz and other people. To keep track of it all, we transcribed everything — and that took countless hours — I simply couldn’t have kept up without the help of some tireless volunteers. We created a searchable database with the transcripts, so we could find the messages we needed as we wrote the scripts and cut the episodes. It was also challenging sonically; to piece together a compelling and smooth-listening story from such disjointed recordings. Jon Tjhia and Bec Fary did an extraordinary job with the sound design.
What made you want to be a journalist?
I wanted to learn and write about things I think are important. I’d been a public servant and then a labourer before I started writing, and it floored me when I realised I could just call the people who know best about something and ask them questions… and they would answer! More than anything, I love meeting people and spending a lot of time listening to them. I feel very lucky to call that my job and to accept the responsibilities that come along with it.
What are you most proud of about the stories you’ve told?
I’m proud of working slowly, carefully and collaboratively — to try to tease out complexity and nuance in an issue and, also, to try tell those stories with heart. In-depth reporting of that kind seems to be in increasingly short supply, but I desperately want to keep doing it.
What’s your message to Australians about why quality journalism needs their support?
It can take a long time to uncover what’s going on behind the daily news cycle and to do it with integrity. That kind of work is a public good. It’s indispensable for our society. Quite literally, if we don’t support quality journalism in Australia, we won’t have a functioning democracy. The stakes are very high!
What’s the best thing about receiving this award? What have you been up to?
When we first spoke, Aziz said he wanted to be able to speak out on behalf of the other men detained on Manus Island. The award was a powerful acknowledgement that he’d done just that. It was also recognition of independent journalism, that we’d pulled off an ambitious project without the support of the major media institutions.
I was on Manus Island when the award was announced last year, so I missed the big night, but this year I’ve been fortunate to work on two Walkley-shortlisted projects for SBS about the Rohingya community in Melbourne and the refugee mega-camp in Bangladesh: an illustrated feature; and a documentary delivered via Instagram, She Called Me Red.
Michael Green is a freelance journalist and producer in Melbourne. He’s the host of The Messenger podcast, which has won several national and international awards, including the Walkley Award for Radio/Audio Feature in 2017. He is the co-editor of the book They Cannot Take the Sky: Stories from detention, which won the Australian Human Rights Commission Media Award in 2017. He has worked on multimedia documentaries, exhibitions, and sound and video installations, and written for Harper’s Magazine, SBS, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, Nature Energy, Nature Climate Change, Nautilus,Right Now and Overland Journal, among others.
See all the winners of the 2017 Walkley Awards here.
Follow Michael on Twitter: @michaelbgreen
Read Michael’s essay for the Walkley Mag online here.
*Interview by Gemma Courtney, The Walkley Foundation
The 2017 Walkley Award for Radio/Audio Feature was supported by QUT.
