V. J. Carroll and the essence of journalism The oldest rule of journalism – and the most forgotten – is to tell the customers what is really going on - Stanley Cecil (Sol) Chandler. Monday 22 April 2013: to Macquarie University with Max Suich to observe the installation of Vic (The Sorcerer) Carroll, as Doctor of Letters (honoris causa). In his address to graduates, Dr Carroll said: “That CV the vice chancellor just read to you in no way prepared me for how to respond to the letter I received from him last November telling me that the University Council had decided to confer on me a Doctor of Letters honoris causa in recognition of my contributions to journalism. “I have been ever conscious of what journalism has done for me in providing me with a living wage for an important phase of my life and particularly for driving my continuing education for the last 60 years. But what I had done for journalism? “That was a foreign country I had not risked exploring. Fortunately, help was at hand. I had been reading a review of a new book containing letters written around 1903 by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke [1875-1926]. “Rilke had gone to Paris to soak up the culture and write about the sculptor [Auguste] Rodin [1840-1917]. Rilke was shocked. Rodin didn’t wait around for inspiration. Rodin worked all the time. And he worked on the special thing that he saw in everything. Rilke got the message. Der Ding, the Thing, to be observed in everything, was paramount.” Michael Egan, Chancellor of Macquarie University, and Honorary Doctor Victor Carroll. (Credit: Effy Alexakis.) Dr Carroll’s remarks prompted some thoughts on journalism via his career and bits of mine. I asked him: What is the essence of journalism? He said: “The essence? der Ding? In journalism I think it's basically curiosity. It's what's lacking in big institutions like ASIC [Australian Securities and Investment Commission –supposed to regulate companies ], APRA [Australian Prudential Regulation Authority – supposed to regulate banks, insurance etc.], the law etc. It's why journalists are basically outsiders.” The Times noted a product of curiosity in 1852. “The duty of the journalist,” the organ thundered, “is the same as that of the historian – to seek out the truth above all things, and to present to his readers … the truth as near as he can attain it … The press lives by disclosure.” History I and II at Queensland University in the 1950s helped me in the 1970s at a weekly started by Vic. He started as a stockbroker at a Brisbane firm, Corser, Henderson and Hale in 1950. The Korean War helped the share market, but Treasurer Artie Fadden ended the boomlet in 1952. Vic thought he wasn’t earning his keep. T. S. Eliot mused on the effect of chance in our lives in a passage from Four Quartets beginning “Footfalls echo in the memory”. In Vic’s case, the chance seems to have been a phone call from Colin Bednall, an executive at Queensland Press, in 1952. Seeking an infusion of outside blood for The Courier-Mail, Bednall rang Vic and offered him a job. He accepted on condition that he was in the general news section. * * * At a basic level, journalism is quite simple; no training is required. You telephone a string of people and say: “What’s happening?” But then it gets tricky; pre-publication censorship imposed from outside or inside, can make it hard to tell the truth. As George Orwell said, the most powerful lie is the omission. Corrupt libel law is anti-truth, unfair and unjust; it can paralyse reporters and get money for liars and criminals. Editors who do not relentlessly campaign for change betray customers and shareholders. Internal pre-publication censorship can take a number of forms: No opinions. Facts by themselves are often meaningless. Reporters may not be allowed explain what they mean. “Objective” journalism has made much US journalism useless. No context. Justice Russell Fox said an understanding of facts depends heavily on context. Reporters may not be allowed to put facts into their context. Balance. Fairness means truth. “On the other hand” reports can leave customers unsure of the truth. Prisoner of the source. Reporters who rely on particular sources for information – detectives or lawyers, for example –may neglect to report the sources’ misdeeds. This is akin to “regulatory capture”, where a regulator acts in the interests of an industry it is supposed to be regulating rather than in the public interest. The proprietor’s view. Proprietors make their views known in various ways. Rupert Murdoch (b. 1931) now uses Twitter; prudent reporters do not have to guess what line they should take. * * * The Courier-Mail was part of a Melbourne-based group partly owned by John Wren (1871- 1953), a prominent Catholic, organised criminal and entrepreneur of boxing and wrestling. The group was run by Sir Keith Murdoch (1885-1952), father of Rupert Murdoch. The group did not allow opinion or context, but did support retailers, the Catholic Church and the politics of paranoia: Communists, all 3000 of them, would take over Australia unless people voted for an habitual liar and war criminal, Bob Menzies. Carroll recalls: “I did a year's condensed cadetship; wrote leaders telling people how to vote; and when the finance editor had a nervous breakdown filled in.” After nine months ‘leave without pay to see Europe in 1953-54, he returned as finance editor. He said: “The finance page was a one-man job - getting the news, writing, subbing and seeing the page through the composing room. I expressed no opinions in my stories. Once, at a 6 pm meeting with the news editor, I said the main story was a drop in profits for Finney Isles. “’Christ’, he said, ‘We can't lead with that. What else is in their report?" “Well’, I said, ‘their assets increased. They're still expanding.’ “’That's the lead,’ he said. “DJs took over Finneys soon afterwards. I learnt a lot.” Carroll let himself be talked into joining management, but found it a “dry gully”. He says: “I waited for the chance to get out, and early in 1960 came to Sydney as finance editor of The Sun-Herald and a contributor to the Australian Financial Review.” Warwick Fairfax (1901-87), chairman of Fairfax from 1930, imposed the same pre- publication censorship as Keith Murdoch. The flagboat, The Sydney Morning Herald, boasted that “facts” were in the news columns and that the organ’s [or Warwick’s] opinions were in the leaders. Bob Askin, who said “We’re in the tart shop now, boys” when he became Premier of NSW in 1965, procured a knighthood for Warwick in 1967. (Sir Warwick assured me in 1983 he did not then know Askin was corrupt when he accepted. That would have made him almost unique in Sydney.) In 1964, Carroll was appointed editor of the Fin, and became known as The Sorcerer from the number of able apprentices he recruited. He contrived to break the censorship, and so became the most important journalist of his generation. He spoke of being called up to the 14th floor to “get the cuts” from Warwick. * * * After a period as a schoolteacher, I got a job on a bush newspaper, The Toowoomba Chronicle, in 1964, and moved to Rupert Murdoch’s Melbourne Truth in January 1966. Something of what happened to Carroll me in the next 20 years is at pp. 8-35 of Amazing Scenes: Adventures of a Reptile of the Press on this website [http://netk.net.au/WhittonAmazing.asp]. This is a short version: Sol Chandler (1911-69), Fleet Street genius, increased Truth’ circulation from 220,000 to 400,000 from July 1966 to May 1967. Murdoch got rid of him in January 1968 after he ran a piece showing that the Prime Minister, John Gorton, was a thief. Eight months later, Murdoch used the profits of Truth and an Adelaide paper as collateral in negotiations to buy the News of the World. He rang Gorton and got permission to get money out of Australia. In 1971, Carroll invented The National Times and became editor-in-chief of the Fin and the NT, and I was sent to Sydney to a short-lived Murdoch organ, The Sunday Australian. In 1972, Noela and I collected material in Adelaide confirming that in 1959 Max Stuart, an aboriginal, had been wrongly convicted of murdering a small girl, but the editor, Bruce Rothwell, told me he had instructions from “higher up” not to print anything about the case. Noela wrote a piece in The [Dirty] Digger which led to Stuart’s release. [http://netk.net.au/StuartHome.asp] I sent Carroll a letter in 1973 saying he wouldn’t remember me, but in 1948 we were in opposing teams in a minor Rugby match at Queensland University; perhaps it was time for a Silver Anniversary drink. He gave me a job at The National Times. Max Suich was the editor. Frank Williams wrote in his history of journalism, Dangerous Estate (1957): “The journalist is traditionally an entertainer; he must entertain or find another trade ... one of the most profound of all journalistic truths [is] that whosoever would influence the public must first learn to entertain it.” Or, as Suich put it: “If you have to cut, leave in the jokes.” Suich had me look into a 1954 event not adequately covered at the time, the Petrov affair. The essays required for History I and II suddenly became useful; a narrative giving the context can reveal a pattern and the truth.