Thursday 8 December Journalism and Sources
10.30-11.00: Recap and discussion
10.30-11.00: SBS Documentary Series Fine Line Episode One: On the record
Episode One reveals something of the trade craft of journalism. We go into the Fairfax empire and watch senior reporter Frank Walker’s struggle to persuade reluctant newsmakers to go “on the record”. In interviews with Walker and several other prominent Australian journalists we reveal the dilemmas this seduction poses for reporters; how they struggle with the competing rules of journalism: the requirement to tell a good yarn and scoop the competition versus the requirement to minimise harm to people and institutions and behave in an ethical way. Well known reporters talk about occasions when they have betrayed interviewees and sources, for good reason and bad. The episode concludes with a case study of “The Morosi Affair”. Newspaper reporter Tony McRae recalls breaking the Cairns/Morosi "a kind of love" story and debates whether she should have published all she knew about the relationship while ABC Radio’s John Cleary reveals how he anguished over his decision, thirty years later, to broadcast Dr Cairns’ belated confession of the affair.
Interviewees: Frank Walker, deputy editor Peter Lynch, The Sun Herald; Kate McClymont, The Sydney Morning Herald; Liz Jackson, Four Corners, ABC TV; documentary maker and presenter of SBS TV’s Insight Jenny Brockie; Toni McCrae; John Cleary, ABC Radio.
11.00-11.30:Discussion
11.30-12.00:Morning Tea
12.00-1.00:Readings: Journalists and their Sources
1.00-2.00: Lunch
2.00-5.00: Workshop: Judith Miller and the CIA Leak Case
