GOVERNMENT MEDIA MONITORING UNIT DATE: MAY 18 TH , 2007 TIME: 8.46AM STATION: 720 ABC PERTH MORNINGS (HUTCHISON) SUBJECT: MURRAY – SPAT BETWEEN MCGINTY AND THE WEST This transcript is produced for information purposes only. Although all care is taken, no warranty as to its accuracy or completeness is given. It is your responsibility to ensure by independent verification that all information is correct before placing any reliance on it. GEOFF HUTCHISON What do you think of the stoush between Jim McGinty and Paul Armstrong, the editor of The West ? The Attorney-General says he won’t support legislative protection for journalists and their sources until Armstrong is sacked as the paper’s editor. He says The West – this is a quote in The Australian from yesterday – is the most inaccurate and dishonest paper in the country, it’s bigoted, it lies and cheats and that Armstrong has to go. Now whether Jim McGinty likes him or not, tying this legislation to that sacking is, in itself, a pretty remarkable thing to do and it might seem a rather petulant response to bad press. Paul Armstrong says McGinty is acting like Joseph Stalin. Now that’s probably a pretty dumb thing to say too. So where are we today? The editor produces a huge front page on the subject of emergency departments at our public hospitals. The headline: McGinty under siege. But this blue between Government and newspaper is not without precedent, we’ve actually been there before. And quite recently another premier of another political persuasion wanted another editor of The West sacked. That editor was Paul Murray, he joins me now …(greetings not transcribed)… Tell me about Richard Court, Paul. PAUL MURRAY Very nice chap, he just wanted to get me sacked at one stage because he didn’t like the line that the newspaper was pursuing on the Mabo judgement out of the High Court. GEOFF HUTCHISON And how did he go about trying to get you sacked? PAUL MURRAY He made approaches to members of the board of WA Newspapers and that happened and – 2 – an attempt was made at that stage by the then managing director to get rid of me. And in the end it was only because the journalists at The West Australian confronted him in a meeting in the newsroom and let him know that they weren’t prepared to let it happen that it didn’t come about. GEOFF HUTCHISON How do you assess this situation with Mr McGinty and Paul Armstrong? PAUL MURRAY Umm, well, it’s not unusual for governments to not like what The West Australian is doing and this is a particularly fraught issue, of course, because the principal issue in the election campaign which brought this Government to power was based on health. Then Opposition leader Geoff Gallop said that Labor understood the health system and would fix it. And that’s what this is all about. This is the newspaper holding the Government accountable to do what it said it was going to do. So it’s not unusual, it’s just a little bit more vicious than usual and I think the reason for that is that this Government is absolutely obsessed with its media manipulation and it hasn’t been able to manipulate The West. GEOFF HUTCHISON Hey, umm, you were mentioned in Parliament yesterday, Paul Murray - as if you didn’t know - by the Premier. In rather less than glowing terms he said that you were a shockingly bad editor and that you started the trend which has ended up at the bottom of the pile now with Paul Armstrong. PAUL MURRAY I suppose it’s an advance on what he said about me in April, when he said that I was… I think he said that I was the disgraced editor of The West Australian . I haven’t been in the job for seven years, I was a little bemused as to why this has come about. I mean, I write three columns a week for The West , so you make yourself a target, and I understand that, if you’re critical of the Government, and it doesn’t bother me. But it just seems a little strange. I mean, Alan Carpenter has always… when I left The West and went on radio, he was a regular on the radio program, didn’t have any problems dealing with me at that stage. In the week before he became the Premier, he granted me an exclusive, confidential interview to background me on what he was going to do as the Premier. It just seems strange now that seven years down the track, after I resigned from the editorship of The West, that he finds these things to say about my time as editor, which were never raised before. GEOFF HUTCHISON I’m speaking to Paul Murray, now a columnist with The West Australian and former editor. – 3 – Were you surprised that Mr McGinty, in which ever way he did, tried to link his support for this legislation to protect journalists and their sources to the fact that he wants Paul Armstrong out of the big seat at The West ? PAUL MURRAY Yes, I suppose I’m surprised most, because I regard Jim McGinty highly as a politician, and I think the politics of this are particularly dumb. He’s punishing every journalist in Western Australia who doesn’t work for The West Australian by not giving them the shield laws because he has a problem with The West . And you can see how bad the politics of this are because, I mean, he’s actually invoked The Australian newspaper, today, the national daily, to come out in defence of The West Australian … GEOFF HUTCHISON …that’s pretty rare… PAUL MURRAY …editorial today under the heading: Journalism is under attack in Western Australia, in which they say that Mr McGinty seems intent on pushing us to the bottom of the ladder in press freedom in the world where we would rub shoulders with Cuba and North Korea. So, I mean, that’s… that’s quite an achievement to get The Australian newspaper to come out against its bitter competitor, The West . GEOFF HUTCHISON Paul, just one last question. Is a city… a state disadvantaged by having only one daily newspaper, that power and influence is too concentrated in too few opinions? PAUL MURRAY Well, look people just don’t get their information from one newspaper, Geoff, they get it from programs like yours. Television gives more people their daily information than newspapers do, that’s the reality of the world. And in most cities around the world there’s only one newspaper. It’s only in the very big cities that there are several newspapers, and in Australia, only in Sydney and Melbourne. And in both of those cases one of those two aren’t doing particularly well. So look, it’s not unusual and that just denies the fact that there are so many other avenues of information these days, so it’s a convenient way of whacking The West , but it’s just not truthful. GEOFF HUTCHISON Paul Murray, thanks for talking to me. End… dr .