Chris Masters, the longest-serving reporter on Four Corners, retired from the Australian broadcast ABC last week after 25 years.
I HAVE been talking about myself a lot lately - not always a comfortable circumstance for someone who has long argued the journalist is the storyteller and not the story.
A benefit has been a rare focus on positive elements of a beloved occupation.
I can understand some of the reasons why journalism has a bad name. When I see a pushy reporter harassing a comparatively powerless television repairman or the like, I too find myself looking into my hands, directing sympathy away from my own profession.
But for all that, I don't see the majority of reporters as exploitative and predatory. Most work harder for the public than they do for themselves. Many of our neighbours are better paid and spend more time with their families. Journalists regularly get into trouble for the sake of the community, often bearing community ire for doing so.
And now it is getting harder. While the communication revolution booms around us we watch our industry shrink. While our skill levels increase, our opportunities are narrowing. The Sunday program is gone from Channel Nine, and The Bulletin magazine is no longer there to run long-form print stories. Across our industry it is harder to find managers and proprietors who grasp the essence of journalism. It is difficult to reconcile that somehow, with all our communication skills, we fail to convey, even to our own employers, the worth of what we do.
I am pleased to be able to look back on a career and offer to the public a scorecard of public achievement. And, I am a long way from being the only one. The skills we develop as gatekeepers of public information embody values that outreach simple explanation.
We learn to make what is important interesting. We grade information, day by day, interview by interview, lie by lie - honing our talent for truth. We break into forbidden territory, challenging abuse of power and staring down the hypocrites. We try to give the public the facts, often when it is bad news - when they least want to know what they most need to know.
The thrill of it for me is this search for truth, a worthy life-long quest. Never quite getting there is probably what makes it so energising. My most important trick was collected from my mother, and that is finding nobility in the commonplace. Olga Masters was a suburban reporter who did not need a car crash to find a story. I got from her a sense of proceeding with whatever I had selected, or had come my way - and seeing where it took me. Every story, big and small, became a battle to find out as much as I could in the time that I had. Over time, I came to recognise the brilliance of this approach.
It made me less inclined to self-censor stories with a higher degree of difficulty, or adjust my focus to the easier ones that appeared to promise awards and acclaim - the "good get" as we often put it.
The preferred "next cab off the rank" approach can be more painful at first, but far more rewarding over time, as you find and develop narrative skills to make what is before you work. We become less fearful of inconvenient facts, and more inclined to allow the invisible hand of the story to choose the pathway, and move us closer to our best understanding of the truth. Checks and balances begin to organically apply. And rather than a nuisance, balance and fairness becomes a virtue.
The journalist who develops as a confident storyteller undergoes a process of liberation. When you are interested in the whole you don't so eagerly rely on an angle. Open-minded research propels us on a wild ride, which to me is where the job is at its most thrilling. Recognising nuances - integrating opposites - giving texture to the characters - surprising the reader. Good journalism is like good drama. It is life - and the more we allow ourselves to be alive to the intricacies of the yarn, the better the writer, the stronger the message and we would hope, public engagement with the story. I can see, looking back, that spending most of the first half of my career working in smaller communities had another benefit. There is nothing like waking up again and again in a place where nothing happens to advance your skills in investigative journalism. And it is that much harder to absolve yourself of moral responsibility when you are in direct touch with the audience. Journalism is supposed to connect with society.
So there is a lot to like about good journalism and a lot the public don't see that would improve our reputation. But it would be foolish to pretend that is all there is to see. My sense is our poor reputation has a lot to do with a perception that we capture public information first of all for our own benefit. Journalism is not an industry with a clear and uniform value system. It is hard to get a room full of reporters to agree on how and why we do what we do. Some reporters see information as public property, while others see that it belongs to them. Enormous institutional competitiveness encourages possessiveness and detachment from the element we all share - public responsibility.
To go on too much about all this is baying at the moon. But we could at least talk about it more. Just as journalists are secretive about stories, so too are they wary of sharing ideas. So here is one:
Get rid of the commentators. Not necessarily all of them, just the bloody great majority. The next time a reporter says they are sick of making all those phone calls and wish to settle into a regular opinion piece, let us agree to lead them into the snow.
Like those energy ratings symbols on the fridge, editors could insist on similar telephone-like icons accompanying each column. It is a treat when you read a column supported by visible research. Opinion without facts is worth little and yet the opinion columns have grown, as far as I can see sometimes influencing and invading news.
And now it is happening in my corner. In the US, TV news shows such as the one I work on are being replaced by so-called fearless commentators in mock attack on one another from opposing corners of a studio. It is useless TV foisted on us for no better reason than it is cheaper. It is not news.
And the coverage of daily news on TV more and more has a feel of external hands managing the process. Expensive outside broadcast vans, reporters and cameras assemble, working more it would seem in the business of event management than news reporting. When we are there in the crowd our instinct is to break free and find the real story. And that is what I am doing. I have loved working at Four Corners and am grateful for the generous support and opportunities given to me, in the same way it is given to reporters at this newspaper.
While The Australian and the ABC are often at odds there is a proud shared record of supporting investigative journalism. Never more has the importance of leadership in expressing the worth of what we do been more important.
As I see whenever I return from an overseas assignment, Australia is still a long way from Stasiland. We are lucky to live in a wonderful country and work in an exciting industry. Opportunities are still with us. While limits to press freedom crowd in, there is still enormous power in our own potential - and those stories waiting to be told.
