9 - Challenging Power: Reporting in the 1980s

Summary

‘We can only be suspicious that the law was bent … to oblige a friend, a common, but tolerated, source of trouble in this community.’

Greg Sullivan QC, NSW Solicitor-General, 1984

The innovations during the 1960s and 1970s set the scene for profound change during the 1980s. During this decade, Australian journalism moved to assert its place as an equal contender in the political process.

The development of this standing occurred in three distinct phases. Much of the reporting focused on disclosing official corruption. Journalists adopted a critical attitude towards public figures and elected officials. This was far removed from the approach described as appropriate in the 1930s, in which news was the statement of facts by responsible men which journalists had no responsibility to judge. By the 1980s, position afforded little protection, and journalists and editors routinely made judgements about veracity. Many of the journalists who came to prominence during the 1980s had formulated their approach to journalism during the politically turbulent 1970s.

While a number of the major articles published and broadcast in the 1980s built on work that had been done before, the more assertive investigative reporting of the 1980s did not develop in a simple linear fashion. The crafting of news stories and the practice of journalism does not lend itself to such certainties: the quest for sources and confirmation is more chaotic. Articles published during the 1980s particularly by the National Times, Age, Sydney Morning Herald, Bulletin and Courier-Mail, and broadcast by Four Corners and 60 Minutes, built on what had been reported before, but took it to new levels of significance.