The day the Mercury shot Bambi

Dr Niall Doran

Bryce’s actual speech will receive different responses from different quarters. It was powerful, evocative and provocative. It might not have been to all tastes, but a ridiculous level of paranoia exists within this State if the speech (as given) has provoked such a reaction and interpretation from reporters and industry. The dominance of such single focus speaks volumes about the damage that the neverending forestry debate has inflicted on our society, especially when it swamps what was actually a positive and enthusiastic event relating to other issues. All the more need for responsible, appropriate media reporting to help our State progress.

On the 8th of September 2008, a new environmental scholarship program was launched in Tasmania. The BookEnd program ( www.bookendtrust.com ) has the aims of improving school retention rates and student enthusiasm, while also addressing environmental problems and boosting public awareness of them in a positive, progressive way. Two hundred people from a wide variety of backgrounds attended the launch, including politicians, academics, business leaders and teachers.

The overwhelming response was extremely positive and enthusiastic, as it had been in the lead up to this day. The program had already received the support of the three main State political parties, with one politician commenting that it was such a great and positive idea that it shouldn’t have any problems. “That would be like shooting Bambi”, he said. So no one – the organisers, the supporters, or the attendees at the launch – was expecting the Mercury to ride into town and blast Bambi with both barrels.

I have let the dust settle on the events of that week before commenting publicly. I have also considered very carefully what I am about to commit to the public domain. I had even thought that we had resolved the matter with the Mercury, but that newspaper subsequently continued to print substantial comment upon those events without being prepared to admit or correct its own involvement in a controversy that the paper itself had largely engineered. The record therefore needs to be set straight, for the good of the program involved and for the sake of the students and issues that it seeks to help.

The event
Whatever scepticism people hold for the press, society is largely dependent on the media to report and interpret events on our behalf. We therefore need to ask what role we expect the media to play in helping build and maintain our society. Should the media simply report events, or should it try to shape them? Either way, do we want the media to help promote positive change, or to drag us back into division and controversy that we could otherwise move beyond?

As described, the BookEnd launch on 8 September was attended by a notably large and wide ranging audience, who heard extremely positive and uplifting presentations about a proposal to address two outstanding issues for Tasmania – education and environment – in progressive ways. As part of this, high profile names – including Bryce Courtenay, Saul Eslake and Andy Muirhead – were involved, demonstrating their direct commitment to our students and upcoming generations. Professionals, businesses and the general public were also uniting to contribute to this cause. That, any reasonable person would have thought, was the story of the day.

The event garnered a significant media coverage, including ABC and Southern Cross television news services, Stateline, The Examiner, and multiple radio interviews. These media outlets fairly presented the event, and did not shy away from difficult issues or topics: e.g. alongside reporting the launch, The Examiner report also referred to Bryce’s personal views on industry and the environment, while several other outlets followed up on his provocative call for new “happy tax” to fund environmental work and a quick, colourful sound bite he gave in response to post-launch media questions about the proposed pulp mill. Fair enough: these were part of the day, and part of the reporting mix. But our State’s premier newspaper could find no such balance in how it presented the story.

“Author spitting chips” came the Mercury headline on 9 September, followed by “Bestselling author Bryce Courtenay has delivered a scathing attack on Tasmania’s forestry industry, calling for a $5 visitor tax to halt the “graffiti of physical destruction.” Speaking at the launch of an environment and education grant scheme in Hobart, Mr Courtenay shook with emotion as he told of his love for the Tasmanian environment.” [Note: this text is quoted from the paper copy, online wording varied slightly].

Thousands of Mercury readers, commentators and industry representatives built their impression of the event from this description alone. But this was blatantly wrong. These people were not aware of how the paper had replaced the positive tone of the event with one of division and controversy, of how different elements of the day had been mixed to support this impression, and of how the level and content of forestry comment had been misrepresented to manufacture this reaction. While the press needs to have the freedom to interpret and report on events as it sees appropriate, it equally has the responsibility to do so honestly and professionally. The way the Mercury chose to mould the event to fit its own story failed to do so for all of the reasons that follow.

First, a disclaimer: none of the comments that follow are intended to downplay the ongoing significance of the pro/anti forestry debate. That issue clearly plays a major role in current society, and I openly provide objective scientific advice to both ‘sides’ in a professional capacity as required. However, whatever side of the debate you fall on, no one can dispute that the arguments that have arisen have been amongst the more poisonous and divisive for the Tasmanian community since the Franklin River campaign. It is surely a significant concern when such an issue swamps events that have nothing to do with it, and torpedoes any attempts to move more constructively beyond it.

Misrepresentation
So how did the Mercury misrepresent the event? Re-read in detail those first sentences of the newspaper report: “Bestselling author Bryce Courtenay has delivered a scathing attack on Tasmania’s forestry industry… Speaking at the launch of an environment and education grant scheme in Hobart, Mr Courtenay shook with emotion as he told of his love for the Tasmanian environment.”

Anyone reading this would incorrectly assume that Bryce’s speech was simply an angry, anti-forestry tirade. But now take the time to actually read the transcript of the speech, direct from the recordings of the day (http://www.bookendtrust.com/BookEnd_speeches.pdf).

As you read the transcript, you’ll notice that Bryce doesn’t single out forestry, or even mention it more than in passing. He instead talks about general environmental issues (environmental graffiti refers to a lot more than just forestry), and the responsibility that we all carry. In fact, Bryce provided much more detail in describing the conservation issues that arise from fishing practices for shark fin soup. Yes – he did speak very passionately and emotionally about his love for Tasmania, but very clearly not in an all-out “scathing attack” on one specific industry as the Mercury claimed.

So if the Mercury was not reporting events as they actually happened (i.e. the actual “news”), what was it reporting? In questions after the launch, Bryce was certainly asked about the pulp mill and related issues, and gave a typically frank (and highly quotable) answer. Fair enough: Bryce is not a politician requiring constant minding and media management, and he is more than welcome to state his views on anything he’s asked (you try to stop him) – whether that’s forestry, pulp mills, or green cheese on Mars.

These views can justifiably be reported as part of the day – a la the television news and The Examiner report – but to have them completely dominate a report to the exclusion of the actual event is at best simplistic and poor reporting. At worst, there’s an agenda here, to either promote division and controversy for its own sake, or to attack a specific target/industry/issue whatever the story involved. People hear what they want to hear, which says more about the intent and agenda of the listener than the speaker. And that brings us back to the role of the media and its responsibilities in reporting.

Look at how the same Mercury article twists other facts. The report very prominently quotes Lisa Singh MP referring to Bryce Courtenay’s speech as “inspirational”. But Lisa’s comment was on the speech that Bryce actually gave – not on the Mercury’s misrepresentation of that speech, or on answers that Bryce gave to media questions after the event. Yet this distinction is not at all clear, as Lisa’s comment is instead juxtaposed with a retort from Barry Chipman on the forestry issue (itself based on the the Mercury’s presentation of events, not on the speech itself). Two prominent public names are therefore manoeuvred into opposing positions via either misrepresenting the context of a quote, or relaying a distorted version of the event to someone who hadn’t been there.

I repeat that I am not making any statement on the forestry debate itself or on the views that people on either side of the debate may hold. Instead, I am pointing out that media reporting needs to be honest and accurate, rather than artificially trying to enflame that debate by misrepresenting the “news” it claims to present. The forest industry may not like or agree with what Bryce did actually say in his speech, but misleading reporting ensured that the cage was well and truly rattled.

The response from industry that the Mercury reported the next day, 10 September ( “Author under attack: Forestry slams Courtenay” ) continued this tack. Bear in mind that this reaction only happened because of the Mercury report in the first place. The Mercury’s wording changed from Bryce telling of his “love for the Tasmanian environment” (September 9) to telling “of his love for Tasmania’s forests” (September 10), a small but significant difference. The same follow up article blatantly states “Mr Courtenay also was scathing about the wood chip industry in his speech to the Bookend Trust”. I’m sorry? Let’s go back to that transcript shall we? The Mercury again blatantly misrepresented what was said and when, in a way that was guaranteed to provoke a dramatic response. Read the transcript: the claimed statements simply are not in there.

Both the September 9 and 10 articles speak of Bryce referring specifically to “timber workers”, but again if you read the speech this distinction is never made. No wonder the industry in question responded vigorously, yet forestry claims that Bryce’s speech was hypocritical and misinformed should have been directed at the Mercury and its reporters.

Bryce’s actual speech will receive different responses from different quarters. It was powerful, evocative and provocative. It might not have been to all tastes, but a ridiculous level of paranoia exists within this State if the speech (as given) has provoked such a reaction and interpretation from reporters and industry. The dominance of such single focus speaks volumes about the damage that the neverending forestry debate has inflicted on our society, especially when it swamps what was actually a positive and enthusiastic event relating to other issues. All the more need for responsible, appropriate media reporting to help our State progress.

Newsworthiness and ethics
When the 9 September Mercury article was printed, I contacted the journalist concerned to complain that the positive messages of the actual event had been completely lost to division and controversy. I was told that an article on the aims of the BookEnd program had not been included as the forestry story “was extremely newsworthy”.

Consider that: a story on high profile people taking an interest in Tasmanian students and working with local professionals and voluntary donations from businesses to provide environmental scholarships and to try to boost poor Tasmanian education retention rates was not as “newsworthy” as simply running another “celebrity bags forestry” story. This is despite the latter story being a deliberate misrepresentation of that event, as a construct from post-event questions used to stir reactions from other parties (i.e. becoming a media generated event in its own right rather than a report of an event).

The question of Bryce’s stance over conservation and forestry issues is not even itself a scoop. Going back to the Latham federal election and before, he has been very public and vocal on these matters. And if his or any other high profile opinion was that keenly wanted by the Mercury on any matter, the paper is free to contact these people at any time. To ignore a positive event to do it, and to not even make the connection that someone who may voice such concerns is also stepping forward to help the issue rather than just throwing stones, is lazy and poor.

In a subsequent conversation with the editor of the Mercury (more on this below), I was told it was our fault for letting Bryce “off the leash”. When I pointed out that the article did not at all reflect the actual content of the speeches that we had recorded, he said the anti-forestry comments had instead come afterwards and at a subsequent ‘unsupervised’ photo-shoot in Fern Tree. First, I refer to my comments above regarding the blatantly misleading presentation of articles stating that the comments were part of the speech given at the launch, and also implying that the quotes from other parties were in response to these comments. Second, I refer to my prior comment that Bryce is his own entity, and we in no way sought to control or manage what he chose to say (and imagine the media response if we had!).

On the day, we gave the media complete and unfettered access to everything we were doing, in good faith that they would in turn report with reasonable accuracy on what they saw. There are never any guarantees, but you should be able to expect reports to be in the same ballpark as reality. We probably did more to accommodate Mercury requests than for any other outlet on the day, including answering several follow up enquiries to “check facts” (oh, the irony), including very personal details on how we had built, funded and established the BookEnd program from scratch.

One of the follow-up Mercury requests was for a photo “in a more natural setting” to go with the article that was being written. The only option was to arrange for a Mercury photographer to meet Bryce at Fern Tree between leaving the launch to collect his luggage and heading to the airport – this was the ‘unsupervised’ meeting referred to above, which was arranged in good faith. So much for helping out: I am reminded of the story of the scorpion asking for a ride across a river…

Notably, and despite our requests to the Mercury regarding strict timing, the impromptu photo shoot also derailed a scheduled phone interview for radio about the launch. To cap all this off, the reporter finished a follow up call to me by asking if I really thought that the BookEnd program could remain apolitical. At the time, I misinterpreted this as a question, not a challenge.

Do as we say, not as we do
As originally mentioned, I do not raise issue with most of the media coverage that we received. Some was excellent, other bits varied between the messages we wanted to convey and less crucial information, but that is the nature of the beast. It is the Mercury reporting and what happened next that I take issue with.

Perhaps we were naive in our expectations and dealings with the State’s primary newspaper. However, the particularly disappointing element is the failure of the Mercury to live up to the standards that it proclaims to hold and that it expects of others.

Two days before our launch (Saturday 6 September), the Mercury editorial “It’s as simple as ABC” identified education as “the single most important factor in Tasmania’s economic, social and environmental future.” The editorial went on to talk about the need to address school retention rates, skilled career opportunities and to improve community understanding in order to remove division over environmental issues. These were the very issues that were presented and discussed at the BookEnd launch. Yet presented with a program to help address these very challenges, the Mercury dropped the ball, failed to report the real story and instead dragged everything back into the usual division, controversy and recrimination that it had only just decried.

The Mercury editorial on 29 September ( “Exercise your rights” ), talks about the need to recognise Tasmania’s potential, not just its shortfalls, and the need for citizens to engage with their politicians rather than tearing them down. Yet the same paper chose to promote division by misrepresenting the context of comments by our elected representatives and other public figures as described above. As Anthony McClelland commented on ABC Radio on 25 September, the continued risk is that good people won’t get involved in politics when they see how they are presented by the media.

I’ll stop shooting fish in a barrel (e.g. more editorial comment from the Mercury on educational needs on October 9 and other dates), but the upshot is that we need our State’s primary newspaper to live up to the standards it happily sets for others. Is it simple hypocrisy? Or are such counterproductive actions driven by the paper’s own concerns that it can’t remain “visionary” if societal conditions actually do change for the better?

Media self-perception and self-evaluation is a hard nut to crack. It is sobering that the events related here should occur within days of News Ltd chairman and chief executive John Hartigan urging “academics to be impartial and relevant when researching the media industry” (The Australian, September 5), commenting that they could do better in assessing the media’s integrity, objectivity and contribution to public life …

Ongoing exploitation
In late August, Tony Yianni from Davies Brothers ( publishers of the Mercury ) advised me that I had been selected as a finalist for the Pride of Australia Medal as a result of my work developing the BookEnd program. I was happy that this might provide an additional avenue to promote the work that the program was trying to achieve.

However, the coverage of the launch provided by the Mercury and the ensuing internet and printed debate that flared left me with little enthusiasm for remaining within the Pride of Australia consideration. I therefore wrote to Mr Yianni, stating:

“Dear Mr Yianni,

If this is the way that Davies Brothers Pty Ltd regards the good works that it is supposedly trying to encourage, then I do not wish to be associated with the Pride of Australia program. Please remove my name from consideration for the award, and advise the judges of my reasons for doing so.”

My letter prompted a quick reply from Garry Bailey (editor of the Mercury), asking me to reconsider. This discussion yielded many of the facts referred to earlier in this article, along with an apology for lack of coverage of the actual BookEnd program – which he commented was already being rectified. I responded that I would think it over before making a final decision.

A brief article on the BookEnd program was published on 10 September ( “Scholarships to benefit sharks, wildlife”, p16), but this was three pages deeper into the paper than the follow-up article on the Mercury-initiated Bryce/forestry “controversy” (p13). In contrast, the original Bryce/forestry article had been run on page 3 and had nearly filled the entire page. In the letters page and on the web, the forestry argument the article had provoked continued unabated.

Undecided over the Pride of Australia issue, I spoke with Tony Yianni, who insisted that the PoA program was only about positive, good news stories – much as we had intended the BookEnd launch to be. (Notably, the Pride of Australia program and Davies Brothers require you to sign a declaration that you will not bring them into disrepute; however, no similar declaration is offered in return). Accepting that little could now be done with the needless public debate that had been triggered other than to let it die down, I decided that the Pride of Australia Medal might offer another opportunity to promote the BookEnd program once the dust had settled. I advised Gary Bailey of my decision to remain involved and to start afresh, and he commented that it would let them “set the record straight”.

But rather than let the issue die down, the Mercury chose to print ongoing columns based on its own original articles without correcting the misinformation that they had contained. On September 14, Bruce Felmingham’s column openly attacked Bryce Courtenay, largely based on the controversy the paper had artificially created rather than the actual issues, event and content of the speech itself. Felmingham accused Bryce of jumping on the bandwagon and commented on the “useless nature of the fly-in celebrity contribution to the forestry debate” – a criticism that is wildly irrelevant when you read the original speech, and when you note that none of the scholarships awarded even relate to forestry.

Felmingham referred to the lost opportunity for positive contributions and complained about “inaccurate comments”, yet was oblivious of the inaccurate reporting that had created this impression and excluded the educational and broader environmental component. Felmingham also commented that the mill may become a divisive issue if/when it is constructed, and that Bryce’s sound bite relating to the mill wouldn’t help ease that. True, but this was a brief part of the day in response to media questioning – and the sole reason the mill was raised as a question was exactly because it is already a highly divisive issue, hence the entire chain of events under discussion here.

While Felmingham did at least comment on other issues than forestry (i.e. the “happy tax” suggestion that at least stimulated more constructive debate), the column by Greg Barns on September 15 focussed solely on forestry. Ironically entitled “Missing the forest for the trees” Barns attacked Bryce for not addressing the “propensity [for Tasmanian students] to leave school at Year 10” and asked “When do Courtenay and Flanagan get behind government efforts to lift Tasmania’s appallingly bad literacy and numeracy rates? Never, it seems.” Had Barns read the speeches or even the background material on the program that Bryce was launching – and contributing to – he would have realised that these topics were very much the point of the day in question.

Barns accused Bryce of a sole focus on trees: yet this was the invention of the Mercury itself. Barns also asked why the newspaper was so regularly deluged with forestry letters, stating that this was no fault of the paper itself but instead reflected the obsessions and directed campaigns of its readers. Yet the Mercury was demonstrably responsible for the entire revival of that debate, and for the stress and antagonism that this had provoked between all parties involved.

Felmingham (as an academic) and Barns (as a lawyer) should be more wary of relying solely on what they read in the press, a secondary source, without adequate research into the original event. However, they should equally expect to be able to trust the standards of the very media outlet they are writing for. I agree with the comment by Greg Barns asking why this one issue (forestry) is allowed to hijack everything else, but he needs to ask that closer to home.

Improving education and good environmental management were the themes of the launch, running through all of the speeches that were given. The Mercury simply chose not to report this, and to instead rely on a provocative and misleading headline. All subsequent letters and columns in the paper reflect that choice, not the event itself. Barns’ accusation of being “intellectually lazy” unfairly assumes this single-issue focus was Bryce’s, and it does Bryce the disservice of not recognising the time and contribution that he is making to Tasmanian education – the very cause that Barns asserts he should be supporting.

On September 16, the Mercury did publish a small piece mentioning the aims of the BookEnd Trust, but this was very brief in comparison to the column space covered by the Felmingham and Barns articles printed on the days before. Whether this was incidental or a means of trying to keep the air clear after the PoA discussions is unknown, but it felt very much as though the Mercury was offering a treat with one hand (a laced carrot for Bambi perhaps?) while still clubbing brains out with the other. Clearly the threat of my PoA withdrawal had not resolved the issue, but we’ll see if this expose torpedoes my chances once and for all. As the Mercury has milked the Bryce/forestry issue for all they can, it is far more important that I put these details on the public record.

Finally, I note that the appointment of Don Burke – presumably another of Felmingham’s ‘fly-ins’ – as a spokesperson for the pulp mill only rated a third of page 7 when reported by the Mercury (October 10), despite the paper now having two celebrity gardeners prepared to speak at length with opposing viewpoints of the development. Perhaps it’s less interesting to go into more detail when the facts are available and that’s what the participants intend.

Reflection
The biggest victims here are not Bryce, the forest industry, misled columnists or us – each of these people/groups are big enough to look after themselves. The people who have lost out the most are the students that the BookEnd program is intended to help. These students and what the program can offer are affected by negative publicity that detracts from awareness of and participation in the program, and they are affected by anything that diverts effort from the program itself. The time I have had to waste setting the record straight with articles such as this, is time not spent developing projects or dealing with potential sponsors, supporters or schools.

Division and controversy are the easy way to promote news, but we have to ask whether positive stories and efforts to boost the potential of the next generation are really that hard to sell? Does the Mercury really expect us to believe that a short, passing sound bite on the pulp mill, an ongoing issue that has already been subject to substantial celebrity comment, really outweighs the rest of a day’s events of the scale and intent described here? The unsung donations of time, money and expertise from our patrons, project team and supporting individuals have been provided at a time of high credit pressure for the benefit of Tasmanian education and the environment; not so a media outlet can reap benefit by capitalising on misrepresentation and sensationalism, leaving increased misunderstanding and division in its wake.

The Mercury benefitted from days of articles, columns and letters arising from its approach, but if this really made a difference to the paper’s sales perhaps we should send an invoice. Then the paper could actually contribute to the BookEnd program alongside those other businesses that have chosen to help at their own expense rather than benefit.

The media is in a powerful position in society, and needs to carefully consider whether its role is to report news or to create it, to inform debate or cause it. The media also does its credibility few favours when it repeatedly doesn’t live up to its responsibilities. Of the people who attended the launch, a high number were disgusted at the way the Mercury reportedf the event, while others dismissed it as “typical” having seen such media misrepresentation before. It also does a disservice to the majority of the media and their efforts in reporting what actually occurred.

As a silver lining, we have a better idea of the media outlets we can rely on to represent events with accuracy, and our own journalism, media and communications students – currently writing an assessment of the experience – have had first hand exposure of what not to do, and of how poor reporting affects those involved. And of course, we’re not alone. To quote apiary researchers in the UK following on their own media experiences: “ Ever since [the] article… none of us have been able to do any of our work because all our time has been spent in phone calls and e-mails trying to set things straight. This is a horror story for every researcher to have your study reduced to this. Now we are trying to force things back to normal.” I refer you back to Mr Hartigan’s comments on academics needing to cut the media more slack …

Summing up and challenge
When we were building the BookEnd program, a potential mainland donor said to us with bemusement: “And you’re trying to do all this from Tasmania?”

This is the type of attitude that our State needs to overcome, and to do that we need our community – including the media – to work together. We will not overcome such perceptions if we continually focus on the negative, and continually undercut attempts to improve. We are trying to get our students to think outside the square and beyond the attitude of “business as normal”. Is it too much to ask such key parts of the media to do the same?

The Mercury editorial on 8 October called the Reserve Bank’s decision to dramatically reduce interest rates in response to the economic crisis “uncharacteristically bold”. The same paper continues to push for greater accountability, transparency and forward thinking in our political leaders. But all such calls are undermined when the supposed guardians of public information are equally at question. If we expect the bearers of public office to scrutinise and improve their actions, then we should expect the media – first and foremost in pointing the finger at others – to do the same for itself.

I challenge the Mercury to truly help make the differences to education that it has been calling for, and to support our students and the community in moving forward.

Does it have the guts?

Dr Niall Doran has a strong background in threatened species and environmental management, gained through extensive prior work in both government and the private sector. This has included on-ground fieldwork and the development of environmental policy and legislation, including work with threatened/endangered fauna, World Heritage Area management, forestry and agricultural land clearing practices, private land reservation and incentive programs, water conservation, and the development of environmental solutions with industry, community groups and land owners. He sits on the State Threatened Species Scientific Advisory Committee, and acts as a guest lecturer at the University of Tasmania and in industry planning and training schemes. Niall currently provides strategic advice to the Tasmanian Land Conservancy, and is a consultant for the University of Tasmania and various other organisations. He and his colleagues are donating their time, money and resources to build the BookEnd Trust www.bookendtrust.com, a new scholarship program designed to promote good environmental management and to inspire future students with the opportunities this work provides.