Leaf 41 An introduction to the world of
the media tart, local ABC Radio 1991
Until
the early 1990s, only two University of Tasmanian academics seemed to feature
regularly in local media: Michael Stokes, a constitutional law expert, and
Richard Herr, a political scientist. Both had taught me in the 1970s. Richard
had supervised my Political Science Honours and Masters theses and had enticed
me into tutoring in political science in 1988 as a means of ‘blowing the
cobwebs from my mind’ after a period of time working in the Australian public
service. Within academic circles, there was a fairly heavy air of disdain for
this activity and both men were regarded as “having tickets on themselves” – a
politer label than the latter use of the term media tart.
The
issue of Tasmanian secession from the Australian Commonwealth had been raised
in the Tasmanian media and somehow both Michael and Richard were unavailable
for comment. An intrepid ABC radio journalist managed to trace down a tutor in
constitutional law and postgraduate political science student - me. My dilemma was
that the issue of secession was far from any of my areas of speciality. Indeed,
it was hard to find anyone with any degree of expertise in this area in
Australia. I promised the journalist I would do some research overnight and
would be prepared to try to add a little more objective information to what had
been a fairly uninformed debate to that stage. I didn’t realise it must have
been a quiet news week because normally a request to do some overnight research
would have been the kiss of death. The media will lose interest in most topics
– especially secession – before any work day is ended.
The gradual building of a media profile had
begun. Over the next couple of years, I
made a couple of further forays into radio, print and two brief spots on local
TV. From 1993, my media activity expanded
in terms of quantity, variety of topics and medium. I now average 20+
appearances, in both local and national media, a year. The total, since that
first and hesitant interview, is almost 500 media comments ranging from brief
15 second TV grabs, to 30 minute morning talk back sessions, in-depth
interviews, talk back radio, special filming sessions for SBS Documentaries and opinion articles in national newspapers.
My
first media foray taught me a couple of quick lessons. Despite briefing the
interviewer, on the key points I wanted to focus on, the first few questions
were only indirectly relevant to the topic. I fell into the murky waters of
trying to tackle the question asked while attempting to move the conversation
back to the more germane points. I quickly learnt the trick of answering the
questions I wanted to rather than being solely guided by the interview
questions. Lesson 2 was that listeners
found long answers difficult to follow unless you had a clear structure. I was only vaguely aware of the concept of
‘sound bites’ but within a couple of years I had mastered packaging my
responses, especially for non-live media (recorded radio and TV interviews or
journalists seeking a quote or two to fill out a story). The biggest danger in
the recorded interview is the chance, almost likelihood, of misquotation or
selective editing that will make your carefully limited and qualified response
seem abrupt, pointed and heavy handed. The well chosen sentence and carefully
outlined qualifiers sound completely different when only the last half of a
sentence or carefully crafted quote is used in the TV footage and juxtaposed
with another different comment from someone else. Sometimes it pays to be first
off the rank in terms of comment because you set the tone of questions asked of
those interviewed after you. On occasion, it pays to be last and receive a
brief summary from the journalist of the ‘sound bites’ already given and then
pitch yours to best fit or respond to the direction of the commentary.
In my
first few media encounters, it annoyed me that the interview I did a day’s
research for, or the 10 minute conversation with a journalist, filled with
great points, or that an hour spent filming ended up as a 5 second grab or a
half sentence quote. Later, I learnt to trust most journalists and understand
how they crafted their stories. If I
presented them with clear material, insights and ideas they would often
construct their stories using those ideas but use better visuals (than a pudgy
balding wild eyed academic) or manage to get a government minister scrambling
to respond to the questions I raised earlier with the journalist.
Many
academics, afraid of being misquoted, avoid the media and/or view those like me
who engage with the media as simply media tarts seeking every opportunity to
jump in front of a camera or radio microphone. One night in a Sydney restaurant,
two fellow legal academics were savaging Professor George Williams, in his
absence, because he had listed his media interviews on his cv/publications
listings. The savaging came to a halt when I pointed out that I did the same.
Media engagements were not undertaken lightly, they were high risk and exposed
your expertise to full scrutiny. I have refused more requests than I’ve accepted
to comment or be interviewed. The key questions I ask myself when a media
comment is sought are – what is my level of expertise, is someone is better
placed to comment, what can I add to the debate or existing commentary and will
my involvement make a positive or informed contribution?
Leaf 42 “Forty degrees below zero -
blessed are the micro thermals and Gore-tex coats” London, Ontario January 2003
The
temperature in Ontario, Canada in January 2003 never rose above 0 degrees for
the month I was teaching at the University of Western Ontario Law School. The
micro thermals, I had purchased at a Katmandu clothing shop in Hobart in the
middle of a hot summer, offered only a minimal layer of protection against wind
chill temperatures of -15 to -30 degrees. My first purchase on day one in
Canada, after slipping and sliding across several massive car parks and 4 lanes
of slush, ice and exposure to Canadian drivers, was a $320 Gore-tex coat. Over
the next 30 days, that thin coat was a lifesaver and one I still wear 10 years
later. My January in Ontario also taught me that “Too cold to snow” was very
true.
I was
in Ontario for a month teaching an intensive course on Comparative Freedom of
Information (the first such course offering in the world) to 25 students,
mostly Canadian but including students from Hong Kong and France. In early
December 2002, I had emailed all the students advising them of the course
outline, reading list and assessment tasks including a small group work
component worth 20% of the final mark. I soon discovered that special species
of Canadian graduate law student - “next
stop Bay Street.” Bay Street, Toronto is
the centre of the commercial law district. The Bay Street students had a serious
mission in life: to out compete, out
score and out apply all others to gain the holy grail of a job with a Bay
Street firm. Shared marks for group work
was both anathema and a complete threat to the very core of these students.
In the
emails I could feel the angst and tension I had caused one student in
particular. Let’s call her Miss Bay Street. She wanted to know what was I going
to do about this inequity as there was no way she would allow her hard fought
marks to be lowered by the lesser capabilities of others in her year
group. My solution arose from a
conversation about the use of reflective journals in education teaching I
recalled having with Maureen Innes, a fellow Salamanca stallholder and casual
lecturer in the Education Faculty. I offered my University of Western Ontario
law students 5% to write a 1 page reflection on their experiences of group work
and stated if it seemed from any student’s account that they had been
disadvantaged in the group process I would adjust their marks.
Miss
Bay Street, in her single page, reflected upon how dysfunctional and difficult
to manage her group had been. On the other hand, the rest of her 5 member group
reflected on how they had to wait until Miss Bay Street was absent so the group
could function co-operatively and achieve their peak performance. I called it a
draw and left the marks for that group work undisturbed. Yet this purely
instrumental and limited initiative left an unexpected and incredibly rewarding
legacy. A number of other students wrote more than a page about the group work,
and then went on to reflect deeply about the course, the readings, their
experiences and even the extent, and basis, of the differences in teaching
style between their crazy Aussie Professor and the local staff.
Student
reflective journals became a key part of my teaching over the next decade. In
many ways, this insight into the thinking, perceptions and motivations of
students allowed me to find a way to fully develop my approach to teaching. It
turned haphazard impressions, wishful thinking, assumptions and guesswork into
much more informed intelligence about what motivated my students and what
caused them to disengage.
Over
many centuries, the nature, purpose, intent of, and approaches to legal
education, and university education in general, has remained in continual
contention. Therefore, I was not surprised when a colleague complained, with
only a slight degree of exaggeration, that the greatest difficulty faced when marking
an exam was finding a mark between 30-50% to give most students. In this model
of legal education, the lecturer is a gatekeeper for the profession and his/her
job is not to assist students to pass but to assess whether they had passed and
to what degree. The job is to simply be an assessor of quality and the better
the quality of students (proven in difficult exams and marked hard) the better the
academics are as lecturers.
My
approach, derived in part from my background but also from the history of
successful sporting teams, is built around providing the support and assistance
to students who want to improve their capacity and skills. This approach centres more on the student and
relies very much on the level, type and degree of student engagement. The
former approach centres on the lecturer and requires attention to their
comprehension, determination and delivery of the material on which the student is
tested. The lecturer is a gatekeeper, constantly vigilant to bar the way to
barbarians, the unwashed or those lacking credentials. My approach to the gatekeeping role was to
turn away those who were in the wrong place but to steer others to where they
wanted or needed to go even if they couldn’t identify their destinations. Exceptional
students can cope with both regimes but the former inflicts a heavy toll on
many students and often on the lecturers. The marking process rather than being
an opportunity to celebrate student achievement and understanding more often
than not becomes an intense process of lamenting student incapacity to get the
basics of a particular subject. And this
lament is often more strident and angrier year after year.
Leaf 43 “A call to arms” the Staff Club,
University of Tasmania, Wednesday 19th October 1994
My
lunch, at the University Staff Club, was interrupted by a phone call. John
White, the then Shadow Attorney General was on the line. The Groom Liberal
Government had, that morning, introduced an FOI Amendment Bill (that they had
previously denied they were working on) into the Tasmanian Parliament. Could I immediately come to Parliament House to
brief the ALP opposition? The Liberal
Government had mistimed their introduction of the Bill and had left Michael
Aird, an opposition MP, holding the floor at the luncheon break, thereby allowing
him the opportunity to fully respond to the amendments after lunch.
In the
Opposition rooms at Parliament House, I was confronted with a scenario we often
described to our students of what thinking like a lawyer requires. The
amendment bill was over 30 pages in length and changed 29 out of the 55
sections of the Freedom of Information Act and significantly altered the
structure, purpose and operation of the Act. I had about 30 minutes to read,
analyse and then present to the Opposition members key points they could make
about the amendment. As always the academic, media tart and activist within me
conflicted. Many of the key amendments hinged on slight changes that had a profound
impact, but would be difficult to get across either in a media sound bite or by
an opposition member on the floor of the House. In the end, I produced a brief
presentation with a few key examples and talking points that would gain
traction in the press and would survive any government attacks on the
credibility or relevance of the points.
The
Government was caught flatfooted, first, by my involvement and presence at
Parliament House, and second, by the precise nature of the Opposition response.
After the briefing, I spent the afternoon being on hand to do interviews and
background briefings for all the TV stations, papers and radio. Unfortunately the Government had picked a day
where I had no teaching commitments.
Surprisingly, the Government had no campaign in place to justify or
promote the changes and found itself on the defensive for several days. Furthermore,
the early influence of the internet and the benefit of my embryonic networking
came into play. I was quickly able to call on the input and expertise of
several academic colleagues and activists, from interstate and overseas, to
support and improve my original critique of the changes. In the mid- 1990s,
this rapid networking and influx of commentary from outside Tasmania was
unheard of – whereas in 2013, it is the norm. A further surprise was that the
Parliamentary Greens made no effort to call on my expertise in resisting the
changes.
Many academics would have refused to become so
directly involved in a political process holding to the view that their role
extended only to providing objective analysis of proposed changes when formally
requested. Or worse the reluctant academic commentator uses the old “on the one
hand this is a negative but on the other this change may be a positive” device.
I had been influenced by the writings of
Sir Geoffrey Palmer, a former Kiwi Prime Minister and administrative law
academic, who argued that public law academics need to play an active role in
the debate. Moreover, previous experience in various jurisdictions demonstrated
the necessity to intervene when administrative reforms like Freedom of
Information were under threat of being undermined by political processes or the
bureaucracy. Sitting back and allowing the government to alter the very
dynamics of the game with their proposed retrograde changes was not an option.
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