The early lessons were many, they came thick and fast, my teachers were two old-school reporters who impressed upon me that my stories were to be entirely factual, comment or opinion had no place in a news story.
Unless, of course, adjectives such as “tragedy”, “catastrophic”, “disaster” were descriptive terms used by someone either involved in or who witnessed the event.
Naturally, those from the various authorities following up after the event describe what happened in any way they chose, and those words, it was explained to me, could be freely used in a newspaper report.
It was the reader, it was further explained, who had the right to decide whether or not an event was a tragedy, an occasion of sporting glory, a pinnacle of academic success or dreadful behaviour.
As an example, recent events at Sydney’s Bondi saw reporters thumbing through their thesaurus in search of words to enhance their stories about the shooting of nearly 20 people.
I suggest they didn’t need to add any descriptive words to explain what happened — the facts themselves were ample; two heavily armed men had fired into an unsuspecting and unarmed group of people celebrating a religious event.
Readers, I’m sure, could add whatever adjectives they chose as the facts of the event became clear.
It is not the role of the reporter to do that, they are there to assemble the facts and put them into a story ready for the reader.
And, of course, it was for the reader to decide the shooting was a tragedy or otherwise, remembering something of which I’m certain, some in our wider community would see the event quite differently, in that it would be something to celebrate.
Reporters, from the outset, described the shooting as an “act of terrorism”, a phrase so uncommon it was never used when I sat before a typewriter all those decades ago.
Use of the phase wearied me as I always wondered were they really terrorists in the extreme or simply two disillusioned fellows who had drank too deeply from cups of hate and race.
It seemed to me it was the latter, despite the seemingly untiring efforts of reporters to paint them as terrorists.
I have a powerful ideological view that certain segments of our community are taking us straight to hell, and so if I was to act with violence against the fossil fuel companies, the military industrial complex or the extractive capitalist system, would I be a terrorist or rather someone simply exercising my beliefs?
Writing in the new book A Time for Bravery: What happens with Australians are Courageous, the co-chief executive of The Australia Institute, Richard Denniss, discussed the idea of who gets to hold the microphone.
He said: “When business leaders speak, our media and parliaments listen. But when people converge to protest, those same parliaments rush through new regulations to punish them.
“For example, within 24 hours of protesters interrupting a gas-industry conference in Adelaide in 2023, the government of Premier Malinauskas passed new laws that increased fines for protesters who recklessly obstruct passage in a public space from $750 to $50,000 as well as introducing possible jail time of up to three months for non-violent protesters.
“And some people actually think it’s impossible to get governments to act quickly.”
As a 16-year-old reporter, I was far from brave. I was certainly naive, but even then, I understood it was not a reporter’s job to comment.
However, as time has passed, it seems the rules have changed, and now it is invariably the reporter who declares events such as those at Bondi, a tragedy.
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