A vignette from 2010: I watched with
cringing embarrassment as one journalist apologised to the gentleman
at the front of the press conference, for the aggressive questions
from another journalist.
The gentleman subject to the questions
was the chairman of Indian company Tata Group at the time, Ratan
Tata. And his response was humorous and slightly confused, along the
lines of: “Oh, that wasn't impolite. In India, if journalists think
you're leaving a press conference without answering their questions,
they will put their hands on you to restrain you.”
I have no knowledge of Ratan Tata
himself – naughty or nice, clean or corrupt, venal or visionary.
But the vignette stuck with me, because Australian journalists wear a
level of politeness that is nakedly sycophantic, with few exceptions.
And it shits me to tears.
A couple of years ago now, Paul
Fletcher appeared in front of a bunch of tech journalists,
desperately ill-prepared for the event. He got questioned hard –
stood up, in fact – by a small handful of us.
Behind the stories, on a Website you
can't access because you need a login, there was serious criticism
that aggressive questions somehow represented ill-manners to an
invited guest.
I said then, privately, and say now,
publicly, “bollocks”. His job includes
suffering in public, and mine includes being rude in the face of bad
answers.
Let's move the time machine to April,
2013, when I tried to assert to Malcolm Turnbull that his favoured
model for Australia's broadband, the BT rollout in the UK, was
running behind schedule and over budget. I won't name my sources at
the time, but events proved I was right – here are some links:
and
and
and
When I pressed Malcolm Turnbull on this
point in a public press conference – recorded
here but I'm not going to seek out the exact minute right now – he
first responded with a simple “you're wrong” (I wasn't), before
recommending that I “model my civility” on the example of some
other journalist present (I know his name, and he dips as easily into
sycophancy as a drunk dips into gin, but why add to my list of
enemies?).
In the clip, I'm the journalist with the WTF waistcoat, having a bad-hair-day. I didn't have an invite to the press conference, I gate-crashed, and wasn't dressed appropriately. Okay?
Oh, and Malcolm Turnbull had spent the
past year deflecting questions about BT's experience by asking
journalists “why don't you call BT, as I have?” My answer to
that is, naturally, that I had no need to hear corporate bromides to
assess what was really happening.
But this is about journalistic manners
and the way that the death-mask of “professionalism” has been
pressed onto the clay of journalism to make it compliant and
well-behaved.
The worst thing that can befall a
journalist is that he or she be considered a “valued member” of
any community other than that of the reader. The interests of an
industry, a political class, or any insider clique, are not the
business of the journalist.
The second-worst thing is that the
journalist be cleaned up, made neat and presentable, and taught to
respond to peer pressure.
That peer pressure is used, manipulated
and abused, to remake journalism in the evil banality of their
surroundings. Instead of standing out, accepting the lightning
strikes and abuse, we're taught by peer pressure and “good manners”
not to challenge, not to demand answers, to serve the toxic club of
insiders that's too easy to inhabit.
We're taught to let the leaders frame
the debate, regardless of the facts (look at how climate change gets
abused, as an example).
Hence the idea among other journalists
that I and a couple of others behaved “unprofessionally” towards
a “guest”, or that I should “model my civility” on a member
of the inside club.
Bollocks. I don't owe anything to a
politician's spin-doctor's attempt to frame the debate in terms
favourable to his master. I don't even have to acknowledge the
attempt to frame the debate.
And yes: I have my punishment for
choosing truth over civility. The only way I'll ever get to a Malcolm
Turnbull press conference will be by subterfuge or leak. I'll never
be on the list of honoured insiders that are welcome because they'll
kiss the ring.
It bothers me not: the only way I've
ever been present in the same room as the communications minister is
by subterfuge or leak. I've only ever heard from him indirectly, when
a spinner demanded that I change a headline to remove an inference he
didn't like. It was this one:
“Turnbull floats e-vote, compulsory ID”.
I stand by that headline. Malcolm
Turnbull said what he said, and my inferences are my own and I'm damn
well not subject to a spinner's whines and whims. The advisor got the
best of my tongue on that call and an invitation to call my boss.
So I'm an outsider? It's more fun here
than licking boot-polish with the civil.
Compared to an Indian CEO, our
politicians are a protected class, accustomed to being surrounded by
lapdogs.
The result is a clique at the cloaca,
only consuming what the politicians choose to let fall from their
tails, and never going beyond the bounds of good manners.
All of which speaks to the stunning
lack of diversity in the media. There are too few outlets, so nobody
will dare ostracism or exclusion. The press is weakened by its
monolithic structure; and no journalist in Australia would dare stop
an interviewee from leaving the room for not answering questions.
Because if Fairfax gets ostracised and
News doesn't, or vice-versa, it's a bloody disaster: there aren't
another 20 outlets still demanding
answers.
Which
is why no politician in Australia will do anything serious about
media reform: the near-monoculture in the Canberra gallery is
controllable. Manageable. The threat of exclusion – not just from
invitations to pressers, as I “suffer”, but from leaks, whispers,
and parties – is too great.
And by
the way: I'll stalk our communications minister. He will have public
appearances in the next three years whose invitations are in the gift
of others. And life, and memory are long. I'll have fun.
