‘My night with Malcolm’ a lesson to all reporters: Janine Perrett

Far be it for me to advise another female journalist in these fraught #MeToo times.

Former Australian prime minister Malcolm Fraser. Picture: AP

Far be it for me to advise another female journalist in these fraught Me Too times, but I have been wondering about the woman at the centre of the NSW Luke Foley harassment allegations.

The woman to whom he allegedly behaved inappropriately, a claim which the NSW Opposition leader vehemently denies and the ABC has asked for a report on, has remained conspicuously quiet during the entire scandal.

Like many of the women at the centre of these #metoo storms she has, for her own reasons, decided to remain silent and publicly anonymous despite the media frenzy.

Being a journalist she would know as well as anyone that despite this, her name is swirling around the gossip cesspool.

So wouldn’t you think an experienced reporter would want to write her own story?

After all Catherine Marriott did not have that luxury when journalists published her name in relation to sexual harassment allegations against Barnaby Joyce.

No doubt the ABC reporter prefers the story would go away. But given that male pollies from state parliament to the Senate are using it for their own political battles it would be good for her to treat it as any other story she would cover.

I did.

Three decades before it was given the #metoo moniker, I found myself in a similar situation with a powerful political figure — former prime minister Malcolm Fraser no less.

I was 25 and the New York correspondent for The Australian . Fraser was in New York as part of the UN’s “eminent persons” group on apartheid and after a press conference I ended up in a busy New York bar with him where he proceeded to get overly friendly. I fled to a cab to escape him but he jumped in after me, leading me to try pushing him away with my feet on his chest until the New York cabbie said, “I can see you are in trouble lady” and dropped me off at the next corner, speeding off with the bewildered Fraser. When I recounted the story, my colleagues were sceptical the dour Fraser would misbehave like that. More experienced hands felt it was not a story.

A few weeks later broke the bizarre story that Malcolm Fraser had been found in a Memphis motel missing his trousers after an “innocent” drink with a woman we later found was called Peaches.

It was naturally big news and most Australians were incredulous that Fraser could have been in anyway responsible for the unfortunate incident. I knew instantly that my experience with him was now part of the story, so promptly proceeded to detail exactly what happened. I thought I should own my own story and sent it to the then foreign editor to use if he thought fit.

The next day “Unforgettable Night With Malcolm” was plastered over the front page of The Weekend Australian and I became the subject of vitriol from many politicians and some sections of the press gallery who felt I had broken some unwritten rule about reporting on private encounters.

Bugger them.

To this day I believe that what is said off the record should remain so. However even back then I knew when someone stepped over the line and it became public that you must write it yourself.

As a journalist I had no choice. The story never defined me. If you do your job fairly and honestly it will simply be one of the stories you wrote rather than one you should have written.

Janine Perrett is Sky News presenter.