Channel Seven’s grubby Spotlight ‘exclusive’ puts my beloved trade to shame

“Exclusive” may be the most over-used adjective in journalism. Still, it’s a word that causes editors to salivate. In print and television newsrooms around the world.

These days, it hangs off endless tabloid and TV yarns like gaudy “sale” signs in department stores on Boxing Day.

“Exclusive”. When it obviously is not.

Bruce Lehrmann during the 2023 Spotlight interview.Credit: Seven

For decades, tireless investigators – such as Kate McClymont in this masthead and Chris Masters on ABC television – have adorned the profession with their groundbreaking exclusives. As a society, we all benefit from their exemplary journalism.

But, at the other end of the “exclusive” scale, is the tawdry, bungled saga of Channel Seven’s ho-hum interview with Bruce Lehrmann. And the salacious intrigue of sex, drugs and lies that now surrounds this network coup.

It comes at a time when journalism is reeling from social media diatribes, relentless and senseless attacks on the ABC, along with the asinine allegations of so-called “fake news” by Donald Trump and his camp followers, in Australia and elsewhere.

When I first began at the ABC – almost 60 years ago – journalism rated slightly above used-car dealers and real estate salesmen as a trustworthy profession. Today, I suspect, it ranks below them both. Rank being the operative word.

I am saddened by the fact that journalism is on the nose. I honestly shake my head at how often a complete stranger will rhetorically ask me, in a cafe or the local newspaper shop: “What’s happened to journalism?”

I have no quick answer.

I remember – in the midst of the national tragedy that was the Port Arthur massacre in April 1996 – being offered an exclusive interview with Walter Mikac. His wife, Nanette, and tiny daughters, Alannah and Madeline, had been murdered in the peaceful grounds of the old sandstone jail. I walked through a small army of fellow journalists, posted outside the Mikac family home, to probably the saddest, exclusive story I ever told.

I admit that few of us are immune to the allure of a great story.

Thankfully, Walter Mikac helped convince prime minister John Howard to toughen Australia’s gun laws, as a result of that interview.

Still, the satisfaction – and adrenalin rush – of beating opposition journalists to a big story is what drives us all. I am sure successful lawyers, money traders, sales executives and sports stars – even academic researchers – have a similar motivation. Journalism is a highly competitive, take-no-prisoners, often ruthless business. That’s the nature of the beast.

But I can see no excuse for the kind of abhorrent behaviour we’ve heard about at Channel 7 over recent days. There are, of course, ethical rules that are sometimes stretched but must never be breached in obtaining such exclusive stories. Never.

Mind you, it’s not just journalism where the guidelines are sometimes broken.

I am reminded of colonial rule in Australia regarding Indigenous people. The powers that be – in London’s Whitehall offices – insisted that “the natives” should be treated kindly at all times. But. On the ground, 12,000 miles away, countless massacres occurred and the killers were rarely punished. Out of sight.

Like Whitehall, news editors and network executives sometimes prefer not to know the sordid details, of the kind alleged by former Seven Spotlight producer Taylor Auerbach before Justice Michael Lee this past week. Fleet Street and news empires worldwide have a catalogue of notorious, exclusive “war stories”, which are only ever recounted over beers at the local journos’ watering hole.

Few of them are as outrageous, or as grubby, as the misconduct being alleged at Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation trial, with bizarre tales of network babysitting, misuse of police evidence and 20-drinks-a-day booze habits, along with hookers and cocaine.

I do remember Sydney in the 1960s, when competition was fiercely out of control between the afternoon tabloids, The Daily Mirror and The Sun newspapers. Journalists were known to steal private family photographs, off the mantelpiece, of a missing or murdered child to beat the opposition’s coverage.

An Australian cinematographer colleague filmed for the ABC during the Vietnam War in the early 1970s. He told me of evacuating a deadly firefight in the Central Highlands – on an American helicopter – with a couple of badly wounded GIs and two network cameramen. While one cameraman slept, the other American discovered – to his horror – that his film magazine had jammed and he had missed all the action. So, without hesitating, he kicked the other’s good film magazine out the open helicopter door, into the jungle below.

That’s how fierce news competition can get.

Network rivalry in Australia can be just as brutal. Like the tales of Hollywood Babylon.

Yesterday, I ran into an old, highly ethical journalist friend I used to work with at 60 Minutes. Understandably, we chatted about the ongoing sordid Spotlight saga. The worst thing is, we agreed, this appalling behaviour reflects badly on every TV network, every news brand and every journalist. And it truly does.

Clearly, the big loser in this compelling, but toxic, Canberra soap opera is journalism.

Ray Martin is a veteran Australian television journalist whose career highlights include 60 Minutes, A Current Affair and Four Corners.