The story behind the story
To investigate the stories of asylum seekers is to walk a very fine ethical line, balancing the needs of traumatised interview subjects with that of the wider public interest. It was a long road for a freelancer, but one I’m glad I took.
“He won’t talk to you. No one is going to talk.”
The phone cut out on what had to be my hundredth call seeking an interview. I contemplated giving up, yet again.
For almost 12 months I had been calling every advocate, migration agent and lawyer who worked with refugees I could find.
I’d already established that there were systemic issues in the way Australia assessed the claims of gay refugees seeking asylum onshore on the basis of sexuality and the fear of persecution overseas.
Over the last few decades, thousands had applied for asylum but only a trickle ever succeeded. Many were essentially told they were not gay enough by the body tasked with hearing their final appeals, the powerful and secretive Refugee Division of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.
With the media’s gaze firmly fixed on refugees in detention on Nauru and Manus Island, the plight of refugees applying onshore is often forgotten, but I knew there was a powerful story that was being missed.
I’d called, emailed, gone for countless coffees and interviewed scores of people, but I was still no closer to talking to a gay refugee, a relatable human thread that would draw the reader through a story about a bureaucratic nightmare. Many of the people I spoke to were sympathetic, others told me firmly that they couldn’t even ask anyone to talk to a journalist, as they considered it unethical to expose vulnerable clients.
Then one day the phone rang. It was a young gay refugee, and he wanted to talk. The next 12 months brought the most challenging relationship with an interview subject of my career.
The time it takes to nurture and gain the trust of a source is one of the reasons so many journalists do not tackle these stories. In my case it took months to build rapport and trust with a number of key sources. With one refugee I interviewed, it took a year.
In the case of the two refugees I ultimately quoted in my story, it was a slow and often excruciating series of negotiations before they’d even agree to meet in person to reveal any details. On their side there were language barriers and trauma. They often agreed to meet and then changed their minds. On my side, I felt the pressure of walking a very fine ethical line, balancing the needs of the interview subject with that of the wider public interest.
For the two young men I worked with, Farhad from Iran and Ahmer from Pakistan, choosing to share their story was incredibly brave. For me it meant months of slowly building trust and sifting through their stories to try to build a cohesive narrative.
Once we’d agreed to confidentiality, there was a slow back and forth over what details could be safely revealed. Too little detail and the characters would seem abstract and unreal; too much, and I ran the risk of identifying a source.
The stakes were especially high for Farhad, who was still awaiting final determination of his refugee application at the time I was interviewing him. Ultimately a lot of detail was left out to avoid placing the men at risk.
This created challenges when it came to the editing process. When I started this story I had no idea how big it would be, or indeed how long it would take.
I originally thought it was going to be a fairly straight news investigation, so it never occurred to me to take note of things like the colour of someone’s eyes or what they drank. Yet the editors at the Good Weekend pushed for colour and nuance, no easy thing when dealing with people who are vulnerable and incredibly reticent with their stories.
You can imagine having to go back several times to verify seemingly unimportant details with a refugee who barely speaks English. “Can I just check — were you wearing a singlet top? Was it green? You drank a coffee, or was it water?”
These questions must have seemed odd, and were usually met with suspicion. “Why are you asking this stuff? Why is the story not out yet? What is taking so long?”
At the other end I had editors, subs, lawyers and fact checkers with a thousand questions. “Why did you write that? How do you know this is fact?”
They were valid questions, but some of my notes and interviews dated back more than a year. I had to go through thousands of pages of notes, timelines and interviews many times. Note-taking, transcribing and organising hundreds of documents became a way of life, something I’ll know to do from the beginning in future investigations. As tedious as it may seem, a filing system will save you many times over down the line.
Like almost every area of what we used to know as journalism, investigative reporting is in decline. The media is under siege, technologically, economically, socially; investigative journalism, always a tenuous enterprise, is often the first thing to be cut.
Most big media companies still have small dedicated teams, but these have been shrinking for years. Many newsrooms now rarely tackle the sort of investigations that dig deep and effect serious change. It simply takes too many resources at a time when most newsrooms can barely cover the news itself, let alone investigations that can require multiple journalists and weeks, months, or years at a time. All with no guarantee there will even be story at the end!
Investigations are now the preserve of specialised teams, or rely on collaborations between competing media organisations to get stories across the line.
Vanishing resources are chipping away at institutional knowledge: experienced staff who know how to deal with investigative stories on sensitive and controversial topics. Who have dealt with and learned from a range of real-life scenarios. For newer journalists, this of course means that there are fewer peers from whom they can learn. Those that are left are increasingly overworked; further limiting the training opportunities and support they can provide.
The loss of talented staff and institutional will to take on these stories means that even when a journalist finds a story and wants to take it on, the support structure simply isn’t there.
For freelancers it can be even harder. Beyond your own skills and an editor who says they will consider the story once completed, you are on your own. For my refugee investigation I gave up many weekends and weeknights to get the job done while still working a full time job.
The story was published in December. (You can read it online, here). It had been 18 months since I started the story, including; three months of editing while working full time in another job.
Farhad has dropped out of contact and I have no idea what happened to his bid for refugee status or if he ever saw the story. I asked Ahmer if he saw the story and he said he did, but said he does not believe it will change much for people like him. While there was a strong response to the story from readers, there was stony silence from the Tribunal, and it appears that so far they have learnt little from the scrutiny. The biggest concern is that the practices exposed continue to this day.
If only the challenges unique to the story were all a journalist had to worry about.
Robert Burton Bradley is a Sydney based journalist who currently works as a senior digital editor for SBS.
Alan Moir is a two-time Walkley-winning cartoonist. Subscribe to receive his daily cartoons via email at www.moir.com.au
Judy Horacek is a freelance cartoonist, illustrator and children’s book creator. Find her work at www.horacek.com.au
