Profile

Deborah Kirkman interviews John Morgan, a long-serving member of the Council.

John Arnold Timothy Morgan is an editor member of the Australian Press Council.

In this edited version of an interview with Deborah Kirkman, he gave his views on the Press Council, journalism and China.

DK: Did you have any pre-conceived ideas about the Council prior to joining?

JM: I was aware of the ideas and the motivations behind the forces which brought the Council together, so I wasn't greatly surprised by anything on the Council. I knew a deal about it to start with. I thought it was important to give complainants to newspapers a chance to express their views. Also, and let's be honest about it, everybody knew that if we didn't do it, somebody would do it to us. I can't think of anything worse than a government-sponsored, government-controlled, government-financed Press Council.

DK: You had hopes for the Press Council when it was established. Did you think that hope had been met?

JM: Yes, to a large degree. I think that it has done a good job. In fact, a very good job.

DK: Has your attitude changed?

JM: What surprised me in the Press Council was the quality of the public members that we have achieved over the years. I am surprised at how quickly - and I say this without prejudice - how quickly they become "educated" into the peculiarities and ways of the press.

DK: Do you think that might be a dual function of the screening process, and also the fact that they wouldn't be applying to be a public member of the Press Council unless they were actually interested in the print media?

JM: Certainly, the second of your points that they have an interest. I was pleasantly, and am continually pleasantly surprised (it sounds condescending, but it isn't meant to be) by the public members. Mind you, there are problems. For instance, in dealing with words and English a small minority of public members get stuck with pedantic ideas about the language and how it should be used. Actually, not only public members, but some of the industry and editorial members. There is a difficulty that people are inclined to think that dictionaries tell us what words mean. They don't really. We tell dictionaries what words mean. Dictionaries are always out of time, they are always out of kilter with the real meaning.

There is sometimes a schism between the dictionary definition and what people actually mean when they use the word. For instance, "vista". People use the word vista for something like a panorama, a view that they have. If you go to the dictionary, vista means quite a narrow view. And sometimes I get annoyed with people continually talking about a car or a truck "careening" down the road. That's not the meaning of the word. Captain Cook careened his vessel ...

DK: It should be careering.

JM: Yes, career is the word.

DK: Should Press Council adjudications use words as used in common language - not the dictionary definition?

JM: Yes. We need to communicate. Language is about meaning. If it's not about meaning, it's about nothing.

DK: Have you strongly disagreed with any Press Council adjudications in the past?

JM: It amazed me right from the start how very, very rarely I disagreed with an adjudication. I can't think of one adjudication that I was really very upset about, going one way rather than another. I often feel, however, that our adjudications read as if they are written by a committee. Unfortunately, that's the way they are. Language is not merely words, it's music. Very often we lose the music as we get involved in arguing about the words.

DK: What's the alternative to the way we do it now?

JM: There is none. I quite accept that. There is a tendency, as every journalist knows, for sub-editors to change, alter, muck around, bugger up, fiddle with every piece of copy that ever comes in their way ...

DK: Because that's their job.

JM: That's not their job. It has always been my contention that you can judge a good sub-editor by what he leaves alone, just as well as by what he fiddles and changes.

Stand Out Adjudications

DK: Do any adjudications stand out which you have strongly agreed with?

JM: I particularly think we were right in defending the right of The Sydney Morning Herald to publish statements from its writers who believe that Robin Askin was a crook, and said he was a crook. I believe that was right and proper.

DK: This is the licence given to bylined columnists?

JM: Well to the paper itself too. If the paper wants to editorially adopt the attitude that he was a crook, ok. That's alright by me. This all comes down to the strange laws of defamation and contempt that we operate under. The laws of defamation are idiotic in this country. Arcane and archaic. I can think of one particular case in which the Herald & Weekly Times and The SMH were involved - the leaking of a building in Canberra. It leaked both metaphorically (information) and it leaked water. And that was the point of the story. We were sued for defamation by the architect - nobody even mentioned the architect. By some quirk of the strange laws of this country, we were not allowed to lead evidence that it leaked. The result was that we were ordered to pay something like $400,000 to this architect, who, as far as I know, hadn't suffered one cent of damage. Later, the sum was considerably reduced.

DK: So, truth is not a defence.

JM: Well, truth should be a defence.

Freedom of the Press

DK: As a member of the Freedom of the Press Committee, what role do you think it plays?

JM: Well, I think it is an important role. That is why it is essential for us to have a Chairman who has a good legal mind, and the value of good legal opinion amongst the members too. I believe we should press on with our seeking of a full Constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech, which is absolutely essential to a free society.

DK: Now, to John Morgan the man. Why did you go into journalism?

JM: Because my English teacher said I had a "butterfly mind", and I would be best in journalism. After the airforce, I came out and went into journalism.

DK: Did you have a cadetship?

JM: This is the English system: they put you into the job, and you sink or swim.

DK: What was the first newspaper you worked for? JM: A paper called the Huddersfield Examiner. I started there, sank or swam. In fact I swam. Then I went to the Manchester Evening News, which was a sweat shop. I never worked so hard in all my life. Solid, hard, damned work. All damned day long.

DK: Without a break?

JM: With a twenty minute break for lunch, during which I, along with other people, was sick - vomiting in the tension of the business.

DK: How long did you last there?

JM: Well, when I joined the paper I was the youngest sub-editor on the table. When I left two and a half years later, I was the oldest. So you can imagine what the turnover was. But it was an extraordinarily good training ground. But, again, you either sank or swam. I saw people come and go in the same day. They'd last the morning, then leave. I have never worked so hard. When I came to Australia in '54 I thought I was in heaven in comparison, absolute heaven.

Journalists

DK: Today's journalists seem to be very sombre. It seems a bit of a shame.

JM: Yes. I regret that. I'm afraid I'm from the old school, I'm ashamed to say, of hard drinking, hard working, but hard funning too. I had a hell of a lot of fun. I managed for several years to disguise the fact that I can't spell, until I reached the point where I didn't care whether people knew I couldn't spell or not. I couldn't speak English until I was 6 or 7. My original language was Welsh. Perhaps my inability to spell has something to do with that. I insist that there are advantages in not being able to spell very well. For almost anything I want to say I can find another way of saying it with words that I can spell.

DK: Do you still speak Welsh?

JM: Very little. I can curse a little in Welsh.

DK: Your son is also a journalist ...

JM: Yes, and my daughter was also a journalist. She "betrayed" me by becoming a lawyer. And worse, she married a lawyer.

DK: Would you like your grandchildren to be journalists as well? JM: If that's what they fancy, yes. But I would prefer them to do something really "worthwhile" ...

DK: John, it took all my time not to use that word. Do you think journalism is a career, or do you think it is a job, or do you think it is a calling? For you, what was journalism?

JM: I suppose it's all of those things. For different people it is different things. I suppose for me it was a calling. I always enjoyed it so much I never really got around to thinking why. I didn't expect to change the world. I didn't regard it as just a job. I suppose I regarded it as something of a career, although I never really envisaged myself as slowly crawling up the corporate ladder, but I did. I wasn't aware of any desperate need to, except that I always thought that I would be freer, and more able to express myself, as I climbed up. However, I found it the other way around.

Features

DK: Did you want to slide down again, or was it too late?

JM: I really enjoyed my time as Features Editor. I just about broke the record. I was 14 years Features Editor.

DK: What was so special about that particular job?

JM: Freedom. The features section of a newspaper lives on ideas, more than any other part of the paper.

DK: So this is where your butterfly mind comes in?

JM: I suppose so. Zapping from one thing to the other. Zapping rather than drifting. Somebody said to me once that the only exercise I ever got was jumping to conclusions. I think that was right. On the other hand, that's part of the business of newspapers. Newspapers have changed in the forty odd years I have been involved with them. And I think much for the better. The major change has been the open realisation that opinion is part of the newspaper. Selection is a matter of opinion. Opinion has always been a factor in news presentation. The old formula of who, where, what, when ...

DK: And "why"?

JM: "Why" was added later. It is "why" that has become an important factor in the last forty years, the why of it, rather than the bare facts. Why, clearly, involves opinion.

DK: I remember when I was a child, to see a byline was a big deal. Today I believe the prestige of the byline has been belittled by its overuse.

JM: It depends whether it's yours, or somebody else's.

China

DK: That's true. Into China now, Beijing. How did you get involved with the journalism school?

JM: In 1976, I "led" a delegation of editors from Australia to China, at the invitation of the People's Daily. China wanted to show the world that things had changed somewhat. I kept up my associations with China and when I retired in 1988, they invited me to come over and teach at the China School of Journalism, which is run by Xinhua, their newsagency. So I went and taught there for almost a year. I was there at the time of the Tiananmen incident, as they call it. Some of my students were involved in marching down there under the banner "Absolute power corrupts absolutely". I don't know where they got that from.

DK: Not you? Are you going to admit to that?

JM: No, not me. My kids were down there and I used to go down, cycling there, taking them bottles of lolly water, or whatever the hell you call it.

DK: So, you were supporting their stand?

JM: No, I won't say that I was supporting their stand. I was merely trying to give them something to drink. One hoped that everything would work out, but, unfortunately, the worst happened. Exactly what happened, I don't think anybody really knows. The strange thing was that we in Beijing knew less about what was going on than the people at home watching CNN and all the rest of it.

DK: What does this have to say about Chinese communications; the press, television. What does this have to say about government control over the media?

JM: There is no doubt about that. The Government did have and has kept control of the media as a whole. But, it was strange. There was a blossoming in the middle of the Tiananmen affair when suddenly the China Daily and the TV and radio stations started to tell it the way it was. It lasted only a couple of days, but it was quite remarkable, the blossoming that occurred.

DK: Why do you think that happened?

JM: I think the media leaders of these groups thought that the movement was going to win. They felt a breath of fresh air perhaps would blow through China, and they would be able to do the job that we would normally expect the media to do. It lasted only a couple of days. Then the crackdown came. It was a traumatic period. I found it intensely disappointing because I was then of the opinion that China was moving in the right direction, and Tiananmen set it back, God knows for how long. And I have a strange feeling that the students really didn't help themselves very much at all.

DK: What did they do wrong?

JM: They wouldn't bend. They didn't have any idea of how to negotiate properly with the government.

DK: They would have had no experience, no precedent for negotiation.

JM: No, of course not. But, on the other hand, nor did the government. The government had no idea how to deal with dissent. Dissent was not allowed, so dealing with dissent was absolutely impossible.

DK: There are differences between Australia and China on freedom of the press issues. How did you get around that difficulty?

JM: I tried to tell them the way it was in the West. I didn't say that this was necessarily the way that they should go. I remember one girl. I asked her what she thought democracy meant, and she replied, "Marrying anybody that you want to." That was her idea of democracy. You see, these kids are the future Xinhua correspondents around the world. Either that, or they are going to be the people in Xinhua who are describing China to the rest of the world. If they are going to do that, they need to know about the rest of the world. I always thought it was worthwhile keeping an Australian presence in the school.

DK: How do you go about that?

JM: Recruiting people here to go there, for a year or six months. For my own part, I have spent three and a half of the past ten years in China.

DK: I was wondering if you were hindered in any way on what you could say?

JM: No, I've never felt hindered in any way about what I could say. I always said what I thought. Mind you, I didn't go out of my way to be hyper-critical.

DK: Not contentious at all?

JM: I was prepared to be contentious, but I wasn't prepared to be hyper-critical. I tried to understand the Chinese position. I also tried to explain the economics of the West.

Anecdotage

DK: Now to an anecdote which I obtained from a long-standing employee of HWT. It reads: Responding to an editor's request to dismiss a non-performing senior reporter, you replied, "Of course we can't sack him - he'd never get a job anywhere else!" Would you reply the same today?

JM: Yes. I am a sentimental bastard. Mind you, I said "Of course we can't sack him ...". That didn't mean we couldn't move him around, push him sideways, something like that.

DK: Have employment opportunities shrunk with computerisation and the closure of papers?

JM: I always feel somewhat guilty when I talk to young people going into journalism. I wonder how they are going to get jobs. There are far too many being turned out. I think we should weed them out earlier.

DK: One of your loves is flying. I am told that you made aviation history when you obtained your restricted pilot's licence as the first (and perhaps the only) pilot to have his licence endorsed with the legend "Must carry at least two pairs of identical spectacles at all times". Do you have a comment on that?

JM: This is wrong. I don't have a restricted pilot's licence. I have a pilot's licence. And, "must carry at least two pairs of identical spectacles ...", that's quite right, but every pilot who wears glasses has to. He wears one, and carries a spare. I am an aviation nut. I've spent my entire airline life waiting for the hostie to come through the door, and say "Is there a pilot aboard?"

DK: Well, there's still time John.

JM: And a final thing. Robert Pullan in his book Guilty Secrets describes me as an "abrasive, passionate editor". He quotes from a speech I gave in 1981:

The Press may disclose sensitive information on diplomatic matters; it may, at worst, reveal in the public glare the sort of secrets we all prefer to keep private. It may embarrass politicians. It may cause the aborting of trials. It may blacken the name of villain and, regrettably, innocent bystander. It may do all these things, but its freedom to do so and pay the penalty is still the surest safeguard of the freedom of us all.

I stand by that.

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