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The Carleton Blues

Stephen Smith's last contrinution to Webdiary was The Hot Air of Tony Blair. Some very memorable pieces have been Fear and Loathing in Cronulla and Is New Orleans the beginning of the end of the war in Iraq?

by Stephen Smith

The sudden death of Richard Carleton occurred in a media scrum outside the Beaconsfield mine. Carleton had just finished his question when he turned past the camera, gave a wry kind of smile and slipped away to the back of the crowd. These were to be his last dozen steps.

Carleton was one of the few faces remaining from the TV current affairs revolution launched by the ABC’s This Day Tonight (TDT). Indeed, he was one of its last on air survivors. A late colleague of his also springs to mind: Paul Lyneham of the ABC’s The 7.30 Report. Lyneham had a fearless manner but also a larrikin streak first expressed in a student rock band he fronted called The Bitter Lemons. One of their tunes was an adaptation of the classic Bourgeois Blues called Canberra Blues. The band reformed to perform the song at the closing party of Old Parliament House in 1988. The song became a downbeat anthem for the way in which hopes and dreams and journalistic ideals inevitably become compromised. In Carleton’s case it had lead him, one year earlier in 1987, out of the ABC to join Nine’s 60 Minutes. It was here that Carleton grew in stature to become not just a reporter of news but also part of the news.

How to judge Carleton’s career? The analogy we shall use here, and with which to gauge his contribution, is that of ‘Chaucer’s Guide’. In his ability to interpret, ask the ‘mongrel’ question, and tell us the yarn, Carleton fits the description of a guide through troubled times.

In Medieval literature, a trusted figure, or ‘Chaucer’s Guide’ was indispensable. Anyone who wanted to visit an enchanted (or diabolical) place would need such a guide. In his works Chaucer used the figure of Mercury to bring messages and guide souls. (Mercury was messenger of the Roman gods.)

In modern mythology, ‘Chaucer’s Guide’ might well describe the journalist, reporter or news anchor. At various times they have all been figures the public trusts. They are experienced travelers to exotic places and zones of conflict, and know all the best ‘sources’ and experts. In front of the camera or in print they become a virtual guide to understanding. To this extent, the news media is more than a vocation: it has cultural authority. But in comparison to medieval times, the modern guide’s bag of tricks has Blue Tooth and all the gadgets of the digital age.

The Guide role lives on in what US author Barbie Zelizer sees as the role of journalists as an “interpretative community”. In her book Covering the Body she looks at the Kennedy assassination and the reaction of the media over those few days. The media gave meaning to the event not only because of the details provided. Further, she argues, their presence was meaningful “because of their ability to narrate a gripping public drama”. In this way they were able to “guide the American people through shock, grief, and reconciliation”.

In the same spirit of the guide, Richard Carleton helped to pioneer the success of current affairs in TV prime time. First with the TDT team and then the late night Carleton-Walsh Report. Having forged this beachhead, he took the next shot at ‘embedded’ journalism. Embedded, that is, in entertainment.

How do his colleagues now perceive him? Jack Waterford gives these perceptive comments (9 May) in The Canberra Times.

His departure to the lush pastures of Channel Nine and 60 Minutes saw him turned into an entertainer, a brand.

The result of which was that he “became submerged in celebrity pieces, playing to audience prejudices”. At worst he was prone to “embarrassing and sometimes pompous compering”.

Even so, Waterford says, Carleton’s pedigree still showed true in the sum of his work.

Even if Richard Carleton gave us a mixed bag at Nine, he held his ability to distill the story to its essence, and to tell the yarn.

Waterford rates among Carleton’s best work his reports from the trouble spots of Africa, the Balkans, the Middle East and Timor. Pieces that did “probably as much to inform popular opinion as anything on the ABC”.

Perhaps the single greatest change to news and current affairs over Carleton’s working life was the rise of an Orwellian like language. Terms such as “shock and awe” do not guide us. On the contrary, the deception is in both language and narrative.

In assessing a new book, Unspeak, by Steven Poole, The Canberra Times reviewer James Grieve makes the following points. In defining what he means by ‘unspeak’, Poole says it is a use of words “that smuggles in a political opinion”. Journalists. Poole says, are “directly culpable in the spread of Unspeak today”. As Grieve finds, ‘Unspeak’ invents soothing names for violence, so that it no longer surprises the deadened mind. Poole’s book would appear to be a rigorous analysis of language. And yet to be content with this fierce jab at the media would be to pull our punches. Language – or ‘Unspeak’ – is but one component of an overall narrative that journalists engage in.

In the case of the Iraq war, the biggest failing of TV news has been to follow a pre-set narrative. As David Edwardshas found, the media has reported events according to the myth of the ‘Just War’. As he informs us:

For highly-trained, highly professional journalists the issue is more complex – there are caveats, nuances. But in truth, in their minds, this is just another campaign in the West’s permanent Just War. There are different units, different campaigns, different enemies – but it’s basically always the same righteous, liberating Just War.

He continues with this case in point.

So, for our media, Fallujah is on a par with the Battle for Normandy, it is another phase of Operation Desert Storm.

Edwards also points out how Hollywood seems to inspire much of the on camera work from journalists in Fallujah.

“We see footage of a marine in action. The marine turns and growls to the camera:
We’re going in, we’re taking the city this time.

As Edwards says:

This is a classic moment from Hollywood versions of the Just War. This is John Wayne, Richard Widmark, Tom Hanks – we recognise this dialogue, we recognise this figure.

Narrative and drama influence the style of programs such as 60 Minutes. Here, the posturing of its presenters serves up a ‘black and white’ world of heroes and villains; good vs evil; and where the raw footage shot may do little to alter the pre-set shape and direction of the story. Yet it is perhaps too easy to blame the media for its portrayals.

As an audience, how deep is our own engagement in stories of war and famine? Do we recoil from the image itself, or react to what the images actually depict? In consuming news as entertainment, we need to ask if this consumption also implies consent.

For Richard and his colleagues, the song Canberra Blues symbolises the dilemma of the Canberra press gallery and all journalists. They may have sung along about a “bourgeois town”. But now the fearless guides who once looked in from the outside find themselves trapped on the inside; they have become caught in the daily ‘spin’ of politics. Thanks to Carleton and his mates, journalism broke into the richly rewarding world of the small screen. The task for those who follow is so much more than to confront the major players. Rather, it is to challenge the very language and narrative that the media has been guilty of perpetuating. Journalists need to follow in the steps of ‘Chaucer’s Guide’; and by this path retain their culture as an interpretative community. To lose it would be to struggle to compete with a gaggle of ‘experts’ and other celebrities.

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Kochie

Jenny,

Like you I gave up buying newspapers years ago. Even when I did buy them it was mainly for the horse racing form guides. Today I get all the news I want from the net and see no point at all in ever reading an Editorial on one of the major media sites.

The Beaconsfield charge of the Light Brigade made me sick to my core. Channel 7 advertising "What they told Kochie in the ambulance" really just topped most self interested promos I've seen. Media presenters are the story today and any info is secondary to serious questions like "Is my lippy OK", or "Is my tie right, blue or red, what do you think?"

I saw the end of a brief "survey" that Naomi Robson presented as an item recently. It was about who we, the public, you remember them, the public, disliked the most of the media presenters. At the conclusion of that little ripper the presenter summed it up by saying "The really bad thing about this list is if your name isn't on it", followed by Naomi filling the screen and in a smug self put down she smiled and said something along the lines of "I guess I didn't make it". She's wrong, she's on my list.

Every time there's a new tragedy which may last for days the media stampedes the area and uses up all the resources in looking after themselves while the people affected go on suffering in front of the camera lights. If I see one more Ray Martin on the spot extravaganza I think I'll have to become a sniper. I just can't stand the glee with which they report body counts, misery adding on misery simply to pucs their own images and ratings.

I was quite torn in feelings about the Beaconsfield survivors. On one hand I dreaded what they would be put through only to be forgotten later. On the other hand I felt that any money Eddie could pay should be taken. I didn't watch any of those Channel 9 soap operas about these guys but I know that when their personal lives fall apart Eddie etc will be nowhere to be seen.

I just wish they had told Howard and the pollies to bugger off but I guess when you take the money you agree to all that PR rubbish. Howard toasting them as heroes. What a blatantly political use of these poor men, well not so poor anymore, except perhaps in spirit.

Who decides which tragedies qualify for coverage? So many who deserve equal support never get heard by anyone except perhaps their families and neighbours. And of course the sick part is if one Channel/media mob pick a tragedy then they all run for it too. If only someone would set them up in such an event. What fun that would be.

Watching and reading less and less

Stephen: I am sure you saw the SMH report on how Nine got sprung in East Timor by the good Brigadier. Seems Nine placed a few armed soldiers behind him for effect as he was interviewed, then drew on the fact of their presence to question the Brig on the security situation, given the need for his armed guards! The Brig pointed out he did not need them, they had put them there. Beautiful!

I get quite disgusted at this sort of manipulation and know it is quite common. I think the Beaconsfield story showed us the media well and truly in overdrive, and for what it has become today.

But I am wondering how far Jane is correct in her view of the power and influence of the media these days. To have influence it has to be taken seriously and more importantly be read, watched and listened to. Maybe I am in the minority but these days I rarely bother to watch the evening news, almost never buy a newspaper and never listen to talk back radio. I have found I can live most happily without the media and mostly only tune in if there is a crisis that I need to know about. For instance when Canberra began to burn. With the authorities seemingly asleep at the wheel, ABC 666 stepped in to fill the gap and virtually ran a fire information control centre. They carried out a vital public service.

I mostly just scan the headlines on the SMH website, ignore the pop up ads and never bother with the opinion pieces. They are so light weight these days, it is not worth the wait of our slow connection to put them up! As for the glossy mags. They provide a bit of excitement at the supermarket check out while languishing in the queue!

The web is becoming far more important as a conveyor of information. It is mostly free and the keyboard gives us all the control we need. And it allows us to communicate with each other, and with people of interest world wide on every conceivable subject. Who needs the media? I think Blog sites like Webdiary and the links people give are far more stimulating.

I frankly could not care less what the background of the media moguls was. Big business and Government control them so who cares who they are. SBS's Dateline and especially Insight I find quite stimulating but Four Corners, a must for me once, seems to lack the depth and breadth it once had.

As for the media personalities themselves. Well most of them have been around so long they are just part of the furniture. Same old faces, same old line, same style, same stories, so boring. Who actually bothers to tune in? None of them have much influence with me. Am I an exception? I would be very surprised if I am. A survey of the younger voters might tell us something. Somehow I cannot see the media having much influence on them these days. They live on their mobiles, and their PC's. That is where the real power will lie. Whoever controls the web will control our minds in the future.  I'll bet the moguls are working on that.

.

Who's pulling the strings?

Stephen. Whenever I feel fed up with the media, I give myself a dose of Dateline to restore my equilibrium. I’m vaguely aware of the video journalism you speak of, and will look out for it more closely. The technique has exciting possibilities, but we still come back to the subjectivity of media selection.

I often wonder why, considering the power and influence of the media, that the lives and careers of the editors-in chief of the major newspapers, and the heads of the main news media networks, are not subject to much more public scrutiny. How many of us can name the editor-in-chief of the Australian? Who runs the New York Times? Who is the head of Reuters? Yet they wield more power than their own heads of state.

Even if we could name them, what do we know of their politics? Certainly, the information is somewhere in the public domain for those who have the time and motivation to look it up, but compared to the public knowledge of politicians, entertainers, sports stars and other culturally influential people, their identities and politics are shrouded in mystery.

Their lives and careers are the very antithesis of the people they so ruthlessly expose.

We can be heroes

Jane, you make an interesting point about the media becoming the new high priests in place of science and religion. While many in the media see themselves in this light they are also attracted to news stories where the subjects can in turn be anointed as heroes and celebrities. We saw this with the Beaconsfield miners. They were heroes of the folklore variety. But TV is not content with that - because the people would have ownership over their heroes. What these reporters seek instead is to make the rescued miners most like them – rewarded with inflated riches. The $6 million of chequebook journalism only serves to steal the heroes of folk culture. 

The same day we heard of another incredible story of escape, from the Torres Strait. Those survivors on the boat were all but ignored by TV. They did not fit the stereotype of the media created hero. How do we judge what acts of survival are heroic? Is a young child who grows to maturity in Arnhem Land and attains a university degree and a career the ultimate survivor? The greatest hero? Not in the eyes of the media who want instant celebrity in their own image. Yes, that is scary.

As a ray of hope I would look out for the ‘video journalism’ as seen on the SBS Dateline program. Here the sole reporter with a handheld device is nearly invisible. It allows them to capture the story from a strong personal point of view. Yet at the same time be unobtrusive enough to allow the story and its subjects to develop in a natural way. In terms of my original topic – the journalist as ‘Guide’ – this style of video journalism is the most exciting.

The passing of an oracle?

Stephen, I first read this essay about a week ago, and was interested in what others might have to say. I’m … ah … still interested in what others might have to say.

It seems strange to me that so few people these days think much about the horrendously powerful influence of people like Richard Carleton … and John Laws, and Alan Jones, and Four Corners (yes, Four Corners). We live in an era in which journalists have become oracles and high priests, yet we forget that they too have mortgages and egos. The media can make or break governments, yet they are unelected by the people.

It is often claimed that science has replaced religion. That may have been the case in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, but as science fell from favour in the post-nuclear age, it was the media that stepped into the spiritual vacuum.

With a few notable exceptions such as John Pilger and Robert Fisk, the journalism profession still subscribes to its own ridiculous myth that it simply mirrors society, instead of shrouding it in smoke – that it records public opinion, when all the time it’s manipulating it.

Carleton’s death may signal the passing of an era, but it’s the one replacing it that has me scared witless! 

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