A Moral Truth: 150
years of investigative journalism in New Zealand edited by James Hollings
(Massey University Press; $45.00).
Investigative journalism has not
been prolific in New Zealand for reasons well summed up by the editor in his introduction.
Making a serious fuss has never been popular here in our small, closely knit communities
where everything quickly becomes personal; and journalists have historically
suffered from a ‘culture of censorship’. Still do. The withholding of the
report on management at the Ministry of Transport is a recent example.
As the late
American-Kiwi journalist, Warren Berryman, used to say, you don’t need
traditional corruption in New Zealand as long as The Old Mates Act is in place.
Will we ever know how much taxpayer money was paid to placate a National Party
staff member in Southland? Probably not. To underline that Kiwis often find
speaking truth to power embarrassing, Nicky Hager’s damning book about some
practices of John Key’s government had little if any impact on its popularity.
When
I was a young journalist, Truth under
James Dunn was the only newspaper that regularly embarked on risky
investigative journalism, partly because Dunn was the most knowledgeable and
experienced defamation lawyer of his time and often enough defended his paper
in court. It’s not well remembered that many stories that did have impact in Truth came from provincial journalists who
mailed stories to the weekly. Their identity
was kept secret and their cheques arrived in plain brown envelopes. In at least
one case a government commission of inquiry was held into a scam by local
politicians who included friends of the local newspaper’s proprietor. He was
not about to unleash his staff on the story; so one of them wrote it anonymously
for Truth.
Truth sullied
(it was thought then) its pages with reports of salacious (for that time) divorce
court hearings when proving in court that one partner had committed adultery
was about the only way to get a divorce. The joke was that because of those
stories few New Zealanders would admit to buying the paper at a time when it
was selling more than 200,000 copies a week. Certainly it was not left lying
around the house for children to read.
One of the most
remarkable and little known stories in this book is about the pursuit of
justice for Maori on Bastion Point by journalist, novelist and poet Robin Hyde forty
years before the final battle saw Maori triumphant. It emphasises what a brave
and brilliant person she was at a time when taking on the Establishment was a
lonely business.
A Moral Truth is a definitive account of
work by a number of journalists and their publications who, over the years were
tenacious enough to stay on stories and dig out the truth from under lies and
corruption. It demonstrates time and time how much true democracy depends on
vigorous journalism.
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