Don't let the hate get in the way of true story
- From: The Australian
- December 20, 2012
- 39 comments
THREE years ago I found myself caught in a perfect storm after I broke a story for The Australian about the country's second largest counter terror investigation, Operation Neath.
To cut a long story short, Victoria's Office of Police Integrity launched an investigation to try to find my source for the story.This should have been the usual journalist-police charade whereby they haul me in and I refuse to discuss a confidential source as my ethics require.
But in this case there was a nasty sting in the tail. When the OPI hauled me in I learned that a minor source for the story, a Victoria Police detective called Simon Artz, had chosen to voluntarily release me to give evidence to the OPI, a position which he later reconfirmed.
This act upturned the normal journalist-source relationship, robbing me of the moral and ethical high ground which a journalist needs to justify a refusal to give evidence under oath.
The MEAA told me the only ethical option under the code was to give evidence, no matter how painful that might be.
So when the OPI subpoenaed me for questioning, I had no choice but to sign a statement, an unspeakably hard act.
This all happened under strict secrecy because OPI secrecy provisions prevent people involved in the investigation to discuss it.
Not long afterwards, a former journalist turned academic, Margaret Simons, heard that I had given evidence about a source but was not told of the existence of the Deed of Release. Several other journalists also learned, thanks partly to OPI leaks, that I had given evidence but they were not told of the Deed of Release.
These journalists smelled a rat, knowing that neither I nor any reporter would dream of giving evidence about a source unless in extraordinary circumstances.
They did not yet know what those circumstances were, so they withheld judgment and waited for the full story to emerge.
Not so Simons. She thought she had a cracker story on her hands: a senior journalist at the national newspaper breaks the most fundamental rule of journalism, selling out a confidential source after a big scoop.
It was a narrative which sat neatly with her broader antagonism towards the Murdoch media.
The fact that I was legally gagged and could not tell her my story, even on background, did not give her pause for thought.
As a writer for the online website Crikey she had her own pulpit from which to preach her barbed assumption, which she did repeatedly during 2010, knowing I was unable to defend myself. Time and time again she implied that I had broken the code of ethics which guides our profession.
Simons went even further, making claims that I had been criticised in a draft OPI report into the Neath story and that Federal Court documents showed I was concerned the report could cause me "reputational damage." This was all completely untrue.
By this stage Simons had got a head of steam about all aspects of the story. She tried to disqualify it from the Walkley Awards. She accused the paper of risking lives because some copies inadvertently came out before the police raids. And she claimed there was no public interest in readers learning about a potential terror plot on Australian soil.
Only once did I speak to her briefly on background when she called. I told her that I was legally muzzled but that there was a "major twist in the tail" and that she should not jump to conclusions.
She ignored me and continued to write her own version of history. I did not speak to her again.
In June 2010, the head of the MEAA Chris Warren told Simons directly that my actions had been entirely consistent with the code of ethics and yet she refused to believe him, implying once again in a piece written in September that year that I had breached the code.
So one can only imagine Simons's shock when she belatedly learned the truth last year about the existence of the Deed of Release.
Or when the MEAA issued a unequivocal statement saying that my actions were at all times consistent with the code of ethics.
Overnight, her typewriter fell silent. So silent that she has never sought to apologise to me or to my family. I say my family because my son wants to become a journalist and is looking at places to study in Melbourne.
I'd like for him to be mentored by those who love journalism as it should be; factual, balanced and ethical.
Sadly my alma mater, the University of Melbourne, won't be high on his list given that it is also the home for the Centre for Advanced Journalism, run by Margaret Simons.
Cameron Stewart is The Australian's Associate Editor and a former winner of the Graham Perkin Award for Australian Journalist of the Year.
