Wooley: Some news stories are a poisoned chalice for everyone

Mark my words, there’s still more shat-tered dreams and poop on the stoop than you can poke a stick at, writes Charles Wooley

Charles Wooley is a Tasmanian-based journalist and Mercury columnist.

Once, as an innocent beginner in this rackety old business, I was sent out to report on a conflict between neighbours.

One neighbour had apparently “shat” on another’s doorstep. In the 1970s I used the word “defecated”, which back then could have puzzled some in the audience.

But you couldn’t say “shat” in those days.

I was just out of university with the highfalutin notion that journalism was about righting wrongs, defending democracy, protecting the environment and giving voice to the voiceless.

Wrong, Charlie. It was about ratings. Bums on seats. It was all about, as suggested by the proposed headline, “POOP ON THE STOOP”.

In some areas of journalism, but certainly not in this august journal, wars between neighbours are grist to the tabloid mill.

Thankfully here in River City, Nipalunatics prefer to fall out over big-ticket items such as colosseums and cable cars.

So, I’m sure you, my high-minded reader, are not remotely interested in what provoked that distant and unseemly unneighbourly dispute.

I do remember that the editor jokingly suggested I have the offending substance tested in case it was “sham poo”.

But truthfully, I cannot recollect whether the story even got a run. I may have successfully torpedoed it. I hope so. All I retain is the early career disillusionment when I realised that “poop on the stoop’’ stories were unlikely to turn me into an Australian Woodward and Bernstein.

Long ago I escaped from the worst of tabloid journalism, but the ogre is always lurking even in the highest places. There are more important stories that captivate the nation, but which can still be a poisoned chalice for all concerned. Such stories deeply upset their subjects, incite litigation while exciting public anger and dividing the nation.

Whichever side is taken (including the middle), inevitably even the teller will be compromised and, if honest, will feel a little grubby.

Bruce Lehrmann walks out of the Supreme Court in Sydney. Picture: NCA NewsWire/ Flavio Brancaleone

I have so far avoided the Higgins-Lehrmann imbroglio.

I haven’t written even an opinion piece until now. In fact, the truth is I don’t even know how this story could have been fairly reported.

Nor indeed if it ever will be.

From the very beginning the presumption of innocence, no matter how serious the allegations, seemed to have been abandoned. This was a matter of good or evil, black or white, with no equivocation, no shade of grey.

Either he did it or she was making it up. Across the nation, in pubs and at dinner parties, opinions are divided, and this week I can’t help you as much as I’d like because litigation is flying fast and thick. There is now so much to tell that can’t be told.

Just like the poop on the stoop story. which I now remember involved a company lawyer who told me: “Mate, can you prove scientifically whose poop it was? Otherwise, we can be sued.”

No wonder I have avoided the Higgins-Lehrmann story.

Here we have two fairly ordinary young people caught up in a scandal in Canberra, a tawdry city that exudes all the elements of Shakespearean tragedy: political ambition, lust, avarice and ruthlessness.

Brittany Higgins arrives at at the Magistrates Court in Canberra on October 27, 2022. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

We might never have heard of them, but now everyone knows them, and everyone has already passed judgment as Higgins and Lehrmann endure the process of a medieval town trial.

In 21st century Australia, justice hasn’t progressed much from the 14th century. Both contestants are drowning in media attention.

Channel 10’s Lisa Wilkinson has featured this week in an audio-recorded workshop with Higgins and her boyfriend, along with Wilkinson’s television producer.

The group war-gamed the strategy for an upcoming Brittany Higgins interview on The Project.

They discussed which politicians they knew who could be fired up in Parliamentary Question Time to best fuel the story.

Tanya Plibersek and Katy Gallagher are named as among “friendly MPs” who “will probe and continue it going”.

Ms Higgins is heard to say: “We’re doing a parliamentary showcase before it all starts. So it’s going to be great, we’re having fun.”

It sounded cynical, but I’m not suggesting conspiracy here. I know this kind of “workshopping” happens all the time behind the scenes in journalism. I have attended one or two, but I would never record them.

Finance Minister Katy Gallagher has been named as one of the “friendly MPs” who would “probe and continue it going”, to fuel the story in Parliamentary Question Time. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

That recorded discussion took place on January 27, 2021.

That was almost a year before Russia invaded Ukraine, so this is indeed the longest-running story still with much further to run.

By week’s end everyone was threatening legal action in all directions, and I now hear, on the “gripevine”, that one television network is likely to sue another over recent sensational disclosures.

We know from the Ben Roberts-Smith legal disaster that defamation litigation can be the best way to throw petrol on the fire. Along with $25m.

This week the affair was back in Parliament House, where it allegedly started in March 2019.

Back then Labor in opposition accused the Coalition of a “cover-up’’ concerning the rape allegations. Now the Liberal Opposition is accusing Labor of collusion given the high-profile (now ministerial) names mentioned in the sensational 2021 audio.

Senator Linda Reynolds has announced she will raise the Labor government’s compensation payment to Brittany Higgins, with the new anti-corruption commission. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Meanwhile, Liberal Senator Linda Reynolds has announced she will raise the Labor government’s compensation payment to Brittany Higgins (reportedly as much as $3m) with the new anti-corruption commission.

You see how this is a story that just won’t go away. And somehow a normally easily distracted public isn’t losing interest either.

The Lehrmann interview on Channel 7 this week was a ratings winner.

The papers have been chockers with the same story.

Such matters always excite great public interest because they are prurient, sensational and upsetting. On television they rate highly. In print they sell papers, and online they are click-bait.

H.L. Mencken, the great American journalist, could have been talking about us when he observed: “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.”

And as has been revealed this week, the tendency to appeal to our baser public tastes can also bring out the worst in journalism.

This time the muck is on the doorstep of Parliament House in Canberra, but I am thinking, all that time ago, my much younger self was surprisingly wise and prescient in wanting to shy away from that “poop on the stoop’’ story.

Charles Wooley is a Tasmanian-based journalist.