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Authors: Steve Lewis & Chris Uhlmann
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If Bruce Paxton wanted a fight, they were holding pretty good artillery of their own. If he wanted a full-scale battle, well, that was fine too â the Minister would discover soon enough he was dealing with trained killers.
April 1, 2011
It was like writing a haiku.
Jonathan Robbie pondered his script. Every word had to count, and every word was counted. A small box at the top of the INews template on his computer screen remorselessly ticked off the seconds.
A word had to add something because it stole a fraction of a second. So none could be wasted, inappropriate or out of place. Those print profligates donât really appreciate words, Robbie thought; they have the luxury of too many of them.
Robbie worked in the most punishing place in media, as a senior political reporter for Channel Nine, one of Australiaâs three commercial TV news stations. The 6 p.m. bulletin was still where most Australians got their news and each night 1.2 million of them tuned to Nine. The competition was fierce; more so now that advertising dollars were hemorrhaging to cable TV, free digital stations and new media. Everyoneâs profits were down,nobody knew what the future held and so the pressure for an ever bigger, attention-grabbing splash grew.
âI donât care what the fuck you write,â Robbieâs news director would say. âJust donât bore me with pointy-headed policy. Politics is about conflict. Cover the fight. And cover it first.â
Each night, if he made the cut against fatal crashes, crime, fires and heart-rending animal stories, Robbie had just one minute and twenty seconds to make an impression. One minute and twenty seconds to grab the nation by the balls.
It had been a long road to this job and for the first time in his journalistic career he really felt the pressure of the daily demand for something dramatically new.
Robbie was a latecomer to journalism. He didnât fall into it until he was thirty, and was hired by the Daily Telegraph as probably the worldâs oldest cadet. Heâd never looked back, and made his name covering lurid crimes on the Sydney tabloidâs police beat.
Then came an unusual approach. With the pending retirement of press gallery legend Laurie Oakes, Channel Nine came knocking, even though Robbie had never worked in TV and knew nothing about politics. Desperate to maintain its dominance of the 6 p.m. bulletin on the east coast, Nine had poached Sevenâs news director, the ageing and irascible Paul Blackmore. He immediately sacked a host of people and reset Nineâs news sensibilities to the shock and scandal end of the scale.
But politics still mattered and getting the Canberra bureau right was crucial. Blackmore wanted a presence. He wanted someone with flair, someone who could take the piss and whoknew how to sell stories to punters. And thatâs what he liked about Robbie. Putting someone who had never written a TV story into such a tough gig was a risk. But Blackmore was a gambler.
It was a challenge Robbie would have found hard to resist at any price. But the price on offer was breathtaking.
Robbie was no Laurie Oakes. All he cared about was making a splash, not accuracy. He found the competition in the press gallery brutal, and making the contacts he needed to break news took time he didnât feel he had. He was prepared to cut corners to make an immediate impression. He was the press gallery version of a radio shock-jock.
Robbie never set out to make anything up â but near enough was always good enough. He would run on the mere sniff of a story, never waiting for a second source to confirm something that sounded good.
And tonight, ironically April Foolsâ Day, he had a yarn that would put a torpedo hole in the side of Opposition leader, Elizabeth Scott. He was about to break the news that a Canberra bureaucrat was a Liberal Party mole â leaking information to Scott to damage the Toohey
If Bruce Paxton wanted a fight, they were holding pretty good artillery of their own. If he wanted a full-scale battle, well, that was fine too â the Minister would discover soon enough he was dealing with trained killers.
April 1, 2011
It was like writing a haiku.
Jonathan Robbie pondered his script. Every word had to count, and every word was counted. A small box at the top of the INews template on his computer screen remorselessly ticked off the seconds.
A word had to add something because it stole a fraction of a second. So none could be wasted, inappropriate or out of place. Those print profligates donât really appreciate words, Robbie thought; they have the luxury of too many of them.
Robbie worked in the most punishing place in media, as a senior political reporter for Channel Nine, one of Australiaâs three commercial TV news stations. The 6 p.m. bulletin was still where most Australians got their news and each night 1.2 million of them tuned to Nine. The competition was fierce; more so now that advertising dollars were hemorrhaging to cable TV, free digital stations and new media. Everyoneâs profits were down,nobody knew what the future held and so the pressure for an ever bigger, attention-grabbing splash grew.
âI donât care what the fuck you write,â Robbieâs news director would say. âJust donât bore me with pointy-headed policy. Politics is about conflict. Cover the fight. And cover it first.â
Each night, if he made the cut against fatal crashes, crime, fires and heart-rending animal stories, Robbie had just one minute and twenty seconds to make an impression. One minute and twenty seconds to grab the nation by the balls.
It had been a long road to this job and for the first time in his journalistic career he really felt the pressure of the daily demand for something dramatically new.
Robbie was a latecomer to journalism. He didnât fall into it until he was thirty, and was hired by the Daily Telegraph as probably the worldâs oldest cadet. Heâd never looked back, and made his name covering lurid crimes on the Sydney tabloidâs police beat.
Then came an unusual approach. With the pending retirement of press gallery legend Laurie Oakes, Channel Nine came knocking, even though Robbie had never worked in TV and knew nothing about politics. Desperate to maintain its dominance of the 6 p.m. bulletin on the east coast, Nine had poached Sevenâs news director, the ageing and irascible Paul Blackmore. He immediately sacked a host of people and reset Nineâs news sensibilities to the shock and scandal end of the scale.
But politics still mattered and getting the Canberra bureau right was crucial. Blackmore wanted a presence. He wanted someone with flair, someone who could take the piss and whoknew how to sell stories to punters. And thatâs what he liked about Robbie. Putting someone who had never written a TV story into such a tough gig was a risk. But Blackmore was a gambler.
It was a challenge Robbie would have found hard to resist at any price. But the price on offer was breathtaking.
Robbie was no Laurie Oakes. All he cared about was making a splash, not accuracy. He found the competition in the press gallery brutal, and making the contacts he needed to break news took time he didnât feel he had. He was prepared to cut corners to make an immediate impression. He was the press gallery version of a radio shock-jock.
Robbie never set out to make anything up â but near enough was always good enough. He would run on the mere sniff of a story, never waiting for a second source to confirm something that sounded good.
And tonight, ironically April Foolsâ Day, he had a yarn that would put a torpedo hole in the side of Opposition leader, Elizabeth Scott. He was about to break the news that a Canberra bureaucrat was a Liberal Party mole â leaking information to Scott to damage the Toohey
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