Why we need journalists

By Venetia Sherson

When I entered my first newsroom, I was a few weeks short of 18. The Vietnam War had just begun, long-haired hippies were protesting in the streets, Ray Columbus was belting out Till We Kissed and there was no such thing as private radio and television.

Newsrooms in those days were havens for rogues and rebels.

The rebels in my newsroom included people like the late, great Michael King and legendary investigative journalist Warwick Roger. My good friend and former colleague, Denise Irvine, started in the same newsroom and still writes brilliantly there today. [Wintec chairman] Gordon Chesterman also worked there but he had slightly longer hair.

The rogues shall remain nameless but they all swore and drank and smoked too much - and that was on the job. One brought his dog to work, another regularly slept under his desk and a third had sex in the photographic darkroom. The editor smoked a pipe that filled the room with a rich and heady scent.

I tell this story, because it reminds me that in 45 years of journalism, I have tried never to forget the exhilaration of my first days as a journalist.

Journalism has been good to me and, like printers’ ink, it is in my blood. I am as passionate now about my craft as I was when I wrote my first story.

But over the 45 years of my career, I have also been compelled to think about why journalists are necessary.

I would like to try to sum that up.

Journalists get a lot of bad rap. In popularity stakes, we rank lower than used car salesmen and politicians. Most people have an opinion on us. Words like “scum” and “rat” come to mind. At a party, if you announce you are a journalist, people look anxious. They think we poke our noses into other people’s business. Which, of course, we do.

But I for one am very pleased to live in a world where journalists exist and where they are free to do their work without fear or favour.

In the past three months we have witnessed some extraordinary news events.

First came the Pike River coal mine explosion. Twenty-nine men were killed in that tragedy and we learned a lot about them as we waited and hoped for news that they would walk out alive. One of them was 17, his first day on the job; two were grandfathers. One had just restored his car; another was due to have his first child. Journalists told us these stories and brought to light the lives of ordinary people who were not just statistics in a mining accident.

Then came the February earthquake in Christchurch. I didn’t expect to see scenes such as those in my country. And again the stories kept coming. There were the remarkable stories of people who emerged alive from under tonnes of rubble, and the tragic stories of those who didn’t.

Christchurch-based TV3 reporter Natasha Utting, who usually files lighthearted stories, traipsed over liquefaction to hug her friends and neighbours and ask them how they had survived. Radio New Zealand National’s Kim Hill was brought back into the frontline of weekday journalism. Journalists at the Waikato Times and the Dominion Post helped their Christchurch Press colleagues produce their newspaper after their own building collapsed.

There were funny stories about Rocky the rock that fetched thousands of dollars on Trade Me; uplifting stories about the Farmy Army who drove their frontend loaders into town to clear the mud; and the amazing story of a blind man living in the CBD who wandered aimlessly for days before being rescued.

And now Japan. Literally hours after the massive tsunami wiped out whole villages, I watched a CNN reporter standing on the shoreline, where the wave had washed over, describing what she saw. This was an earthquake of such force that it shifted the earth’s axis by 10cm, shortened the day by 1.6 microseconds and moved Eastern Japan towards North America by nearly four metres. Boats and planes were washed on top of buildings. One man was still on the roof of his house when it was swept out to sea.

As people were fleeing, journalists turned their cameras on the devastation and described what was happening.

Last year, 95 journalists were killed in the course of their work; 258 were killed in the Iraq war. It is not my intention to portray them as heroes or martyrs.

But today I would like to pay tribute to the work they do.

Because journalists don’t just report what happened. They also ask why it happened.

When the Chernobyl nuclear power station exploded in the Ukraine 25 years ago, the world found it almost impossible to get information. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was silent for 18 days.

In New Zealand, in the wake of Pike River, I know journalists will continue to ask whether the mine was safe.

And in Christchurch, they will ask why the Canterbury Television building and Pyne Gould Corporation buildings crumbled like stacks of cards.

In Japan, they will continue to press for answers about whether the nuclear power plants posed a risk and whether people in the close vicinity should have been evacuated sooner.

Journalism is now at a crossroads as media moguls scratch their heads over the latest technology and try to decide how to win readers, listeners and viewers. Will it be websites or apps? Are newspapers still viable?

Yes, the tools are changing.

When I began my journalism career, an Apple was something you ate and a Mac was something you wore on wet days. Facebook wasn’t even a glint in a young geek’s eye.

My tools were a ballpoint pen, a reporter’s notebook and a manual typewriter.

What hasn’t changed, however, is journalism itself.

Good journalism, whether it is delivered via my iPad or my newspaper – has to do with accuracy, honesty, integrity and persistence.

It’s about asking the hard questions and not going away until they’re answered.

It’s about reminding people of promises not kept.

Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, once said that if it came to a choice between newspapers and government, he would prefer to have newspapers.

He was a man often vilified by the press. But he recognised the importance of journalist’s role.

In the wake of events now panning out in Libya, I’m very pleased there are journalists like Robert Fisk continuing to ask the curly questions.

* An excerpt from a speech to the Wintec School of Media Arts graduation ceremony, March 22, 2011 at which Venetia received an Honorary Master of Arts in recognition of her contribution to media and journalism in the Waikato region.

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