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Reporters and the reported

By James Campbell - posted Friday, 24 August 2007


“Frankly it came as no surprise to learn that Daniel Kerr was dealing with convicted criminals”, Caroline Wilson of The Age wrote earlier this year. Well maybe not to her but it was news to the rest of us.

She continued: “Happily for the game's eroding image no one taped the sordid scene that Samantha Druce witnessed last weekend when she went to the house her former partner Ben Cousins was sharing with Daniel Chick.” What on earth was she talking about? Dirty plates in the sink? Half eaten souvlakis down the couch? Your thoughts on a postcard please.

A few months later, Wilson caused a storm in the world of football by writing about Adrian Clarkson’s behaviour after the camera’s stopped rolling on Football Confidential:

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“The forum he chose was inappropriate” she wrote, “and the language he used - in the words of his chairman last week - was appalling. I stopped counting after he had thrown in the f-word five times for good measure and that was nowhere near the end of it.”

Lost amongst all the hand wringing about the ethics of Wilson’s decision to write about a conversation which Clarkson obviously regarded as private, was the fact that just as she had failed to let her readers in on what exactly was sordid about the scenes witnessed by Samantha Druce, Wilson didn’t tell us what it was that Clarkson actually said. She knew, and so did her fellow panellists, but they chose not to tell us.

Price of course is right that private conversations are vital for reporters to know what is happening, and in small worlds like politics and sport, everyone has to get on. What the recent row shows is what happens when these relationships become more important to the reporter than their duty to their readers. Presumably Wilson was making a point to Clarkson, just as Brissenden and Co. were making a point to Costello, but in both these cases, as a reader, it felt that somehow we were secondary to the game being played between the reporters and their subjects. As readers, we deserve better.

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About the Author

James Campbell is a free lance journalist based in London. He is a former adviser to Victorian Shadow Health Minister, Helen Shardey.

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