Competition prevents media pack groupthink
Updated
And this morning, in place of regional media, we take you to Canberra, and look at how Australian journalists cover the stories emerging from the nation's seat of political power.
Presenter: Sen Lam
Speaker: Karen Middleton is chief political correspondent for the SBS television network, and President of the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery
LAM: Karen Middleton thank you very much for speaking to Connect Asia this morning at Parliament House. You travelled with Kevin Rudd recently on his worldwind world tour. How is that different with say covering his predecessor John Howard?
MIDDLETON: Well we had slightly changed arrangements under the new Prime Minister so this time we had a plane that was chartered that we travelled on. So previously we've always travelled as the media we've always travelled on a commercial aircraft and had to play catch-up a little bit with the Prime Minister and the prime ministerial travel schedules get increasingly complicated. So whereas the Prime Minister was able to get from a place in regional China say to a place in regional Turkey pretty directly, we had to go the long way and we found it quite frustrating. It's better under the new system with a dedicated aircraft. It means our schedule can mirror his schedule and we can keep up. In terms of the speed of the travel it seems to be faster and busier under Kevin Rudd. John Howard was never a slouch in terms of travel but Mr Rudd's got a reputation of doing an awful lot and he's living up to that.
LAM: Indeed much has been made in the past week about bureaucrats and government media advisors being terribly stressed out by the workload under the PM who as you say has a reputation for being a bit of a workhorse. Has that had any impact on how you operate here at Parliament House?
MIDDLETON: Sure I think well not necessarily at parliament, certainly when we travel we didn't sleep very much. I think at one point in the last trip over four days I think I got nine hours sleep total, so we're all suffering that a little bit and if that's how we are I imagine that his staff and officials are having a pretty tough time of it. Here in Parliament House things don't change all that much. There obviously is a level of activity associated with a new government and Mr Rudd has made it clear that he's got a big agenda and he's got a lot to do. So he's very busy and that always keeps us very busy. We've certainly had weekend engagements that we may not necessarily have had as much under the previous government. We came back from the around the world trip and the following weekend was the 20/20 summit here at Parliament House, which meant that we all had to work and a lot of the bureaucrats had to work too. So it's quite busy but as I say often with a new government it will be. But both prime ministers have been pretty reasonable, both the previous one and this one have been pretty reasonable in giving us access. We have complained sometimes that they've tended to prefer to do one-on-one radio interviews and then just allow us to film them and use that as their media fodder for the day rather than do a full news conference. We would always argue we'd rather have a full news conference because then the nation's media get to ask the questions that they want to ask and we're not limited to just taking the material based on the questions of one radio host.
LAM: There is a saying that whoever is in government hates the ABC, Radio Australia's parent body, and accuses it of bias simply because the ABC is unbiased I guess and tries to report things accurately and fearlessly. Does that apply to the press gallery here in Canberra that because journalists keep the government accountable that there's always a slight suspicion from whoever is in office?
MIDDLETON: Oh look we're forever accused of bias and bias is always in the eye of the beholder I guess. And a press gallery is often accused from those outside of it of being closeted and out of touch and not being in touch with the real Australia. I guess a lot of journalists who are based here find that a little bit offensive because we've got pretty wide, between us a pretty wide experience of life. A lot of people have come from elsewhere to Canberra to work here and just because we work in Canberra for a long period of time doesn't necessarily mean that we don't understand how things are in the rest of Australia. We've got family, we live elsewhere, we've got friends who live elsewhere, a lot of us have contact with people who don't have the same socio-economic backgrounds as us, so I think we've got a fairly wide level of experience. And politicians often like to use that as an argument if they don't like what we're reporting or they don't like being under pressure then the classic thing is to shoot the messenger. They would argue that sometimes they've got good grounds for criticising us, I would never shy away from criticism and I will always cop criticism if I think it's fair. Sometimes I don't think it's fair and I think they are using it for their own political ends, yeah.
LAM: Well during the last government the conservative government of the Liberal Party, of John Howard, one of his ministers described the press gallery here at Parliament House as a bunch of left-leaning journos. Do you behave as a group in a kind of pack mentality that you are a bunch of left-leaning journos?
MIDDLETON: Well I would dispute any analysis that we were all a bunch of left-leaning journos. I think there are probably people with all kinds of personal politics here, some people actually have been quite stridently in favour of the coalition parties, perhaps more so than a street news reporter would normally be. But I also dispute this analysis that we have a pack mentality that we only think with one brain.
LAM: So this group think business you don't agree with that?
MIDDLETON: My analysis is that people treat us as a group far more than we behave as one. The reason for that is that we're all physically based in Parliament House, it's a very unusual setting. If you go to other capital cities where the media headquarters are say in Sydney they're spread out all over the city. But here in Canberra we're all together, we're all in the press gallery physically together, we're easy to contact as a group. So members of parliament and lobby groups and other associations will come and contact us and address us as one group because they can do it all at once. We here are highly competitive, in Canberra you can get seven daily newspapers on your front lawn in the morning, national newspapers. Now that makes us competitive because we can look at each other's work, we can see TV broadcasts, hear radio broadcasts. We are a highly competitive group. Yes there is a common understanding and we're working off a common base because we're physically located together, and we're all working on the same subject matter. So where you see similarities in people's stories it's because we are all following the same issues, we're aware when there's a new development. So it's not really that surprising that we would seize on similar material. So it's not necessarily about we stand around in corridors and work out what we're going to say.
LAM: But at the end of the day you do not allow your personal politics to colour the way you cover the stories?
MIDDLETON: Well I certainly try not to, I can't speak for my colleagues. I try to be fair. But of course everything in the end is a little bit subjective because in selecting the facts you want to include in the story, in selecting what kind of issues you want to cover, and in selecting how you write a story you're always projecting a little bit of your own understanding of the world into that. So you do have to work hard to try and be fair and balanced, and I think a lot of people achieve that around here.
LAM: Karen Middleton thank you very much for your time.
MIDDLETON: Thank you it's a pleasure.
