Chris Harrison | December 3rd, 2011
I was a budding young journalist. You could tell by the cliché.
I was also wet behind the ears, a complete novice, and the world was at my feet...
Actually, the world was upside down, given my first assignment was a story on the daredevil sport of aerobatics, for which I strapped myself into a cross between a bullet and a bucking bronco.
In truth, it wasn’t an assignment, it was more of a gamble. Fresh out of university, I was desperate to get a start in journalism, to get something published beyond shopping lists on the fridge. I’d pitched the story to an editor who said he’d be interested in seeing something on spec, which, if you’ll pardon the pun, meant winging it.
I did a bit of research (as they say in the trade) and called Tom Moon, aka Mr Magic, Australia’s best performer at the World Aerobatics Championships, and explained that I was putting together a "yarn" (I thought industry-speak would make me appear part of that industry) on his sport and asked him to take me flying.
When he asked who I worked for I conjured a cough and replied "Inside Sport" under my breath. If I failed as a journalist there was a glorious career awaiting me in ventriloquy.
I must have convinced him because he agreed to take me up, though his safety brief suggested I was expendable. As we taxied towards the runway at Sydney’s Bankstown airport, avgas in the air, he outlined the emergency procedures and concluded with the casual information that he had a parachute and I didn’t.
No bother, as an intrepid reporter on the front lines of cutting-edge journalism, I had a 196-page notepad to break my fall. I just prayed I didn’t break my Dictaphone.
After the flight and subsequent interview, Mr Magic asked when the feature would be appearing. And I thought the flight would put the lump in my throat.
"Sometime in the next few months," I replied, fighting off that pesky cough. Fortunately I was right. The editor bought the story and my journalism career, ahem, took off,
I often wonder if Mr Magic would have taken me flying and given me his story if I’d told him the truth about my credentials. Unfortunately it’s a question he’s no longer around to answer, since he crashed in 2009 while flying too low to use that parachute.
Apart from the above ride in a frantic machine that resembled a farting balloon, and fearless trips to Prague, Stockholm, St. Petersburg and Cairns Regional Council chambers, my career has been a yawn in the danger stakes. Unlike that of some of my The Cairns Post colleagues, a couple of whom bravely headed for Innisfail during cyclone Yasi.
Journalists go to great lengths to get a story. Julian Assange risked his liberty in the name of his trade, while also demonstrating that free speech can prove expensive. And foreign correspondents, such as the ABC’s Sally Sara in Afghanistan, often endanger their own lives so others can watch from safety.
Yet even their efforts pale in comparison to those of a young PNG journalist who put his body on the line – quite literally – in an attempt to change the status quo in his country.
The Post-Courier’s Simon Eroro trekked across jungles and rivers to interview a group of rebels known as the OPM – the Free West Papua movement – who had secretly been entering PNG from Indonesia. The trek itself wasn’t the intrepid bit – Simon once walked for two days to get a story. The real obstacle arose when Simon reached the remote tribe.
Before agreeing to speak to Simon, the tribe’s elders insisted he undergo a "cleansing ceremony" involving – here’s the intrepid bit – circumcision with a piece of bamboo. Rather than call his union representative to check the terms and conditions of his contract, Simon consented to what would have had every Western journalist I can think of, myself included, running for the hills.
When I first heard Simon’s story I must confess to thinking him foolish. This was because I was foolishly putting myself in his shoes. Then I spoke to a colleague of Simon’s, a journalist by the name of Frank Genaia, who The Cairns Post
recently had the privilege of hosting as part of Frank’s training for
his impending editorship of the
Post-Courier.
Frank explained the many challenges facing journalists in PNG, where covering sensitive issues such as politics and corruption can result in death threats and the need for entire families to relocate. But PNG journalists strive to overcome these challenges because they know their country’s progressive future depends on a vibrant media industry to push their country forward.
"No matter how big or small a story," explained Frank, "our people must be informed, educated and made aware of issues and developments. Journalism is the voice and ears of the people in PNG."
In my hasty judgment of Simon, I was also forgetting one of the first facilitators of journalism and indeed of any effective exchange of communication: to find common ground with your subject. Bruce Parry’s BBC documentary Amazon succeeded because he went to great lengths to integrate with his jungle-dwelling hosts, at one point even taking their mind-altering drugs, which made him violently ill.
Simon’s is an extreme example, but one which highlights the extreme nature of doing journalism in PNG. It’s our nearest neighbour yet far removed in terms of the dangers facing those hoping to hold it to account. His subsequent story exposed the cross-border movements of OPM militants from Indonesia into PNG, resulting in the police commissioner launching a major operation to tighten porous borders and close down the OPM refugee camps.
It also won Simon Scoop of the Year at the recent News Awards in Sydney.
This from a man with no formal training, who went on to become an award-winning journalist. He never even bothered to be "budding". But Simon strikes me as far from cliché.
Next time I reflect on my journalism career, on embellishing my credentials, on the "two-men-one-parachute" anecdote, I think I’ll skip the word "intrepid".
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