Mission control: the press gallery squeezed by media-savvy politicians

Chris Graham edits the National Indigenous Times, a modest but politically robust publication with a circulation of about 10,000 and a website which scores about a million hits a month. It is published out of a downstairs office in Chris Graham's Canberra house.

On the morning of November 11, 2004, Graham was feeling good about that week's edition because it contained exclusive information on the Howard Government's plans to dismantle the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), the first policy-making body to be elected by Indigenous Australians. The leaked cabinet documents were a journalist's classic jackpot of good, spin-free primary documents.

But the editor's elation was interrupted by unexpected visitors. Still in his pyjamas, Graham opened the door to two plain-clothed Australian Federal Police officers. He noticed another three standing in his driveway. Graham's partner was called out of bed. Neither was given time to change, and while they were grilled and tape-recorded at the breakfast table, strangers searched their bedroom, rifling through their clothes and belongings and turning over the contents of drawers and cupboards. The officers had a search warrant for the entire house and, although Graham took them straight to the cabinet documents, the hunt continued for a further two hours.

Graham "gave the AFP the documents in the first half-hour. It wasn't hard, they were out on the desks downstairs ... In any event the horse had bolted, the paper was already out. [But] the warrant was for the whole premises. The AFP scoured the entire newspaper office area, my backyard and my car and my partner's car, even though she does not work for the newspaper."

In a related story also involving the National Indigenous Times, it was revealed in July 2006 that a public servant in the Howard Government's Office of Indigenous Policy Coordination (OIPC) had been suspended from her position for allegedly leaking information to the Times. Two days earlier the public servant's home had been raided by the AFP apparently in search of documents allegedly leaked from the OIPC veteran gallery journalist Alan Ramsey (Sydney Morning Herald) and reported in July 2006. In October the same year Justice Minister Ellison revealed to the Senate that between 2003 and 2006 a total of 38 cases referred to the Federal Police cost taxpayers $2 million and consumed almost 30,000 staff hours.

These actions of the AFP's "leak squad" are just two examples of the ways in which the Coalition government is restricting information to the media and instilling fear in the public service. Chris Graham believes that fear is now part of the Canberra political culture and that "it works. Many of my regular contacts are too scared to call."

Many journalists talk about a fear factor. Michelle Grattan, political editor of The Age, says she has no doubt that the effect of high-profile police raids is to deliberately intimidate the public service. "The impact of this goes far beyond access for the media - they are intimidated generally, which has quite profound implications for policy."

Geoff Kitney (then head of The Sydney Morning Herald Canberra bureau), believes public servants now find the prospect of briefing journalists "quite scary", and that off-the-record briefings are no longer a standard way of cross-checking facts or following up. "Now when you call a bureaucrat they say, 'Sorry I can't talk to you', and refer you to the press secretary. There's a sort of reporting-back process, which allows the government to monitor media inquiries."

Even journalists whose commentaries are often overtly pro-Howard, such as the political editor of The Australian, Denis Shanahan, point out that while tracking down leakers is not new, the system of pursuit and trying to stop leaks "is much more efficient and ruthless now than it ever was. I'm not talking about people, you know, seeking you out to try and slip you the plans of an atomic reactor or something, I'm talking about people willing to background you on a particular issue - they're just frightened to do it."

In 2005, a senior public servant was charged under the Commonwealth Crimes Act 1914 with allegedly leaking "unauthorised" information. Details of a Cabinet decision about war pensions had found their way to Canberra press gallery journalists Gerard McManus and Michael Harvey, and subsequently into Melbourne's Herald Sun. At pre-trial proceedings the journalists refused to name the leaker. Their defence - that the journalists' code of ethics requires that they protect the identity of confidential sources - carried no weight and they were charged with contempt of court. Their trial was set down for October 2005, and they faced a maximum penalty of two years' jail.

The week the McManus-Harvey trial was scheduled, Attorney-General Philip Ruddock suddenly intervened, asking the County Court of Victoria to exercise its discretion to dismiss contempt of court charges. At the time, the press gallery stalwart (and Bulletin columnist) Laurie Oakes wrote that "it is the threat of leaks that keeps politicians honest ... they are much more reluctant to lie or act improperly if they know they could be found out ... a society where government has tight control of the flow of information - that is, control of what the public is allowed to know - is not a democratic society."

Complaints from journalists about access to information are not new. Grattan, a political reporter since 1970, said in her 2005 Deakin Lecture "Gatekeepers and Gatecrashers": "It is an old message that media and politicians are both natural adversaries and in a parasitic relationship. Their interests are often at odds. Sometimes they are openly at war, constantly they are engaged in a struggle of wits. What's interesting is how this traditional conflict and co-operation plays out in new circumstances."

Louise Dodson (then head of the Canberra bureau of The Age) agrees. "There was much easier access under the Keating and Hawke governments. Now, public servants have told me, even departmental heads have told me, that in 1996, just after the Howard government got in, they had been rung up and told to report all calls by journalists to the prime minister's press office."

Kerry-Anne Walsh of the Sun-Herald describes an "octopus-like" network of media control extending from the prime minister's office to ministerial press secretaries, departmental press officers and electorate media officers. The Canberra Times' Ross Peake says the greatest challenge of the past five years has been working up against a new "barrage of press secretaries".

In 2001, the gallery-media officer relationship reached an all-time low with the "children overboard" affair. This controversy erupted after it became clear that misleading photographs had been given to the press. These were used to back false claims by John Howard and his defence minister, Peter Reith, that some asylum-seekers had thrown their children off a boat in a desperate bid to head off interception by the navy. Peake said disinformation during this incident led the press gallery to "totally re-examine what officials say to us and put it through a different filter".

Howard and his ministers later claimed they did not lie because they had not been told the truth, and journalists learnt they could not assume ministerial "spokespeople" were an extension of the minister, or that information to and from ministerial staff was known to, or endorsed by, the minister.

The blocking and distortion of information by ministerial staff is another change deplored by journalists. Prominent complaints are about the decline of "all-in" press conferences and the increase in the use of talkback radio to directly communicate policy decisions and issues to the public. Under the Coalition government, press conferences have become highly controlled and stage-managed. The former editor of The Canberra Times, Jack Waterford, has told ABC Radio National's Media Report that at times the gallery had bought a "pathetic bargain". "The prime minister will stride up in front of a lectern, say about five or six sentences and then walk away, answering no questions whatever, or giving only trivial answers to them. That's not submitting yourself to the scrutiny of the public."

In May 2006, when newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper adopted the Howard strategy, the Canadian press gallery called a strike.

Politicians have for years favoured commercial talkback radio as an effective means of talking directly to the public and avoiding difficult questions from journalists. Howard's favourite host is the Macquarie Network's Sydney-based Alan Jones. Who needs the gallery when you can talk to millions of voters with friendly talkback hosts and screened calls from the public?

Alison Carabine, who heads the two-journalist bureau at the Southern Cross Network, describes Howard's "savvy" way of fulfilling all daily media obligations in one go - a half-hour interview with Southern Cross radio host Neil Mitchell (3AW). It's a "three in one" session for the PM because a television crew always records it and the radio audio is transcribed. So "print and radio all feed off the one interview", and so do TV and radio "as the interview goes to air live so there is no editing".

"One day when I was setting the PM up in the studio for the interview, something exploded in the panel and smoke wafted up," Carabine said. "Now, it was my immediate reaction that we wouldn't do the interview in the studio and we should do it on the phone. But the prime minister disagreed, he just wanted to go ahead. The reason why he was so determined is because these interviews are always filmed by Channel 9 and get beamed out to the rest of the gallery; the prime minister's press office produces a transcript so everyone in the gallery gets it - and from there everyone in the entire country accesses this interview. The prime minister knew that if he didn't do it on camera that day, he would have to hold a press conference and [all] the television bureaus would be able to cover it."

Ian McPhedran, head of the News Ltd bureau, points out that "on any given day you might get four of five interview transcripts", but that attempts to follow these up with further questions always hit a dead-end with ministerial press officers because "they direct you [back] to the transcript". Political reporting based on government-distributed transcripts also causes concern to News Ltd political journalist Glenn Milne, who says transcript information "is not news at all".

Malcolm Farr, chief political correspondent for The Daily Telegraph, says: "The main difference under Howard has been the proportion of time given to the gallery. Hawke did not give a lot of formal access, but did provide a lot of informal information ... it is awful to see journalists captive to transcripts. Journalists shouldn't be waiting round for transcripts; the PM should be reacting to journalists, not the other way round."

Perhaps the next generation of journalists will find it hard to withstand the pressures of government media management and manipulation. Today's senior journalists talk about a hollowing-out of the gallery's expertise and point to the rapid turnover of young people among the 135 to 140 mainstream gallery journalists.

Tony Wright, national affairs editor of The Bulletin, detected the beginnings of this trend. "When I first came here in 1989, it was probably the end of that era where journalists would have killed to come to Canberra to report the big picture, to report federal politics. These days there is a small group of people who have been here for a very long time. They have the corporate memory that was once held by quite a lot more people, or a higher proportion of people. This is followed by a slightly smaller group, who have been here as long as I have, or a bit longer. Then there is a great gap to the majority of people who come here as young journalists ... They will spend a year or two, or even less, here, and then head off and be replaced."

The trend to devalue and avoid the critical expertise of the press gallery does not bode well for the future of political journalism federally, nor for public knowledge.