Journalists

Balibo – the film

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What to say about a film that is so close to the heart of Australia? Balibo is one of those films that leaves you sitting in the cinema for a while after it is over. This is not so much because it is stunning cinema but because of its emotional power.

East Timor (by Mats Halldin from Wikipedia, used under Creative Commons, CC-BY 3.0)

East Timor (by Mats Halldin from Wikipedia, used under Creative Commons, CC-BY 3.0)

For those who don’t know, the film tells the story of the disappearance in October 1975 of the Balibo Five and of the journalist, Roger East, who went looking for them soon after. The Balibo Five were five young Australian-based journalists who went to Balibo in Portuguese Timor (or East Timor/Timor-Leste)  to report on the worsening relations between that country and Indonesia which controlled the western part of the island.

The film chronicles two turbulent months from October to December 1975, and cleverly intertwines the story of the Balibo Five with that of Roger East’s search for them. The Balibo Five are shown to be young, idealistic, adventurous and, I have to say from the standpoint of today, a little naive. Roger East, who was lured to East Timor by Jose Ramos Horta to head up its fledgling news agency, was, on the other hand, an older man. He is conveyed as being, initially, a little unwilling to become involved in East Timor’s troubles but keen to find the young journalists. In the end, however, having discovered what had happened to the five, East remains in East Timor after all other western journalists leave. And that, as they say, is history.

The film, fittingly for its subject matter, has a documentary feel to it. It uses labels to situate us in the appropriate time and place. The story of the five journalists is presented using hand-held cameras and grainy archive-look images, which are intercut with actual archival footage and newspaper images of the time (repeating the technique used in that now classic Australian film Newsfront). And, framing all this, is (the recreation of) a present-day interview with a Timorese woman who met all six journalists when she was a young girl and they stayed at the hotel run by her parents.

The film is all the more powerful for what it doesn’t say – it doesn’t, for example, prosyletise on the inaction of the Australian government, nor does it rail against the Indonesian government. Rather, it tells its story through the horror of the events and the emotions of the people involved…conveyed convincingly by the cast involved.

Some call it a thriller. For me, though, it is too real and close to home to label it with such a “feature film” tag.  All I can say is that while it may not be the “best” film I’ve seen this year, and while the story may not be fully clear to international audiences, its emotional truth is real, and that is what I will remember when the details have faded.

Florence James and journalism, 1940

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Florence James, with Dymphna Cusack, wrote one of Australia’s most successful novels set in World War 2, Come In Spinner. She was also a literary agent and journalist – and wrote regularly for The ABC Weekly which I referred to in a post a few days ago. In the 23 March 1940 issue was her article titled “Writing for profit doesn’t always pay”. Like Zelda Reed, from my first post on the topic, she refers to women’s ambition to be journalists, but she takes quite a different tack. She commences with:

It seems that there is only one thing standing in the way of half my friends becoming journalists, and that is Cruel Fate.

She then lists how Cruel Fate has quashed her friends’ ambitions. There’s

  • Jean who “has always had journalism in her bones” but for whom the social round and her work in a beauty parlour have stopped her “get[ting] down to it”;
  • Margaret who writes tediously long letters but believes that she could write a book as against “those little articles of yours” that “can’t take much time to dash off” but doesn’t recognise the time taken in “writing and rewriting, cutting and altering and writing all over again”;
  • Anne who once read testimonials from people who had learnt journalism in two months from a correspondence college and thus wondered how James “could spend a whole day at so simple a job which was so clearly only a pastime for the more gifted”; and
  • the friend who beat her in English at school and who, if she didn’t have her 9-5 job as private secretary to an important businessman, could easily “lead the charming carefree, money-for-jam life of a freelance journalist”.
Writing (from Churl @ Flickr, under Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative License 2.0)

Writing (from Churl @ Flickr, under Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative License 2.0)

None of these friends, she says, will believe that as a freelance journalist she cannot write what she likes, when she likes. They don’t see the times a journalist must miss out on a special event like the ballet or a friend’s wedding because a job suddenly comes in from the editor who is her bread-and-butter. They don’t know the pain of having “your beautiful story … cut down to a quarter of its original size because a cable has just come describing the contents of Lady Muck Tuck’s 39 wardrobe trunks that she is bringing to Australia”. They don’t realise that no matter how good your essays were at school or how much your friends love your letters or how many poems or plays you have in your head, “you have got to write down your inspiration in a form which someone will think is good enough for them to buy”.

There’s the rub [she says]. Believe it or not few journalists are born, and most of them are made by the sweat of their brows. The only way to learn to write is to write and write and write, not at your own sweet will as Margaret writes her letters, not between cooking and serving dinner, not at the call of elusive inspiration, but regularly and faithfully, working towards a standard of publication day in and day out as regularly as you would have to practise the piano if you wanted to be a concert performer.

I like this. It makes me feel it’s okay to keep writing here. Not that I intend to be a journalist but I would like to improve my style. By writing here and by reading other blogs, surely I’ll get better. Better enough that people will want to buy – not with money, but with hits on my page!

Advice to would-be women journalists, 1930s style

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While I was researching something completely different today, I came across a wonderful – you’ll see why soon – article titled “Not much fun in being a woman journalist – or is there?” in the second issue of The ABC Weekly published on 9 December 1939 by the Australian Broadcasting Commission. The article was written by Zelda Reed, an American who was working her way around the world as a journalist. The editor says that Miss Reed has directed the article “to ambitious Australian girls who think, perhaps, that JOURNALISM IS SUCH FUN” (their stress).

Miss Reed starts by describing how “the talkies [that is, movies] have discovered that there is glamour in the newspaper business” and goes on to give a rundown of the typical plot involving “cheeky young females” who “peck perkily at their portables and indulge in gay repartee with that winsome character, the Editor”. HOWEVER, Miss Reed warns, young women dreaming of such a career should first “well study the seamy side of the journalist’s lot”.

She says would-be reporters should be aware of:

a curious paradox in the minds of practically all editors. These men are liberals by temperament and feminists by conviction. They will do everything to help women break down the prejudice against their sex – everything, that is, except hire them as general news reporters.

Dorothy Dix (released to Public Domain, at Wikipedia)

Dorothy Dix (released to Public Domain, at Wikipedia)

She says that the real paying jobs are not the adventurous ones – and cites Dorothy Dix as one who makes very good money without ever having to move from her desk. This leads her into the traditional areas in which women do well – because “nobody else wants them. The women’s page editors, the society editors…” and so on. You know the drill.

Then she dashes any hopes of romance! She says that

Gallantry is not a strong point among the men who work on newspapers. Except when salaries are involved, these are the men who believe in equality of the sexes and act on it!

Hmmm…what does that mean? They believe in equality but don’t want to marry it? Well, she goes on to say that newspaper men have “none of the elementary requirements for a good husband”. In other words, “men reporters … go in for irresponsibility as an art” and “lack material ambition, and are proud of it”!

So, the positives? Well, there’s never being bored in a newspaper office because “entertaining companions, with a rich store of anecdotes, will always drop their work to share a coffee with you”. And a female reporter “will have her scrapbooks filled with forgotten scoops [and] a reputation as a ‘top journalist for a woman’. But that is a Bohemian reward which perhaps one woman in a million finds satisfactory”. Well…

Her conclusion is that

the rest [the other 999,999 women in a million, that is] would do well to run like rabbits whenever the urge to work on a newspaper creeps over them – they’ll pay a price that is exorbitant for the doubtful privilege of being the uninvited guest at a social function, or meeting a few front-page characters face to face.

Miss Reed, it seems, doesn’t think much of the career that is taking her around the world! I’m sure there’s truth in what she says – and I’m sure things have changed since then. All I can say is that I’ll stick to blogging. May not be as adventurous but I can have the fun of writing what I like while steering clear of all those non-materialistic irresponsible male writers!

State of the investigative journo film

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I really want to see the new Australian film, Last Ride, and the film of J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace, but as State of Play is coming to the end of its run and we hadn’t yet seen it, that’s what we went to see today. Apparently, the film is an adaptation of a well-reviewed 6-hour British miniseries which aired in 2003. I didn’t see that and so don’t know what was cut out to create a 2-hour movie. We found it a perfectly entertaining political thriller but felt it really tells the same old story. Somewhat daggy newspaper journalist (played convincingly by Russell Crowe) investigates a story in which he has a relationship with a major subject. He has a young, ambitious rookie offsider. There are some love triangles (though admittedly our journalist does not bed the rookie). And, just when he and the rookie are resting on their laurels and you think the investigation is complete, he suddenly remembers something someone said that makes him rethink their resolution, resulting in, of course, a dramatic denouement (one that’s not necessarily expected but neither is it surprising).

I liked Crowe – I usually do like him in his films. The other members of the cast (Rachel McAdams, Ben Affleck, Helen Mirren, Jeff Daniels, Robin Wright Penn) were good too. All in all it’s a well-made and entertaining film, with the usual thriller twists and turns, but there was nothing that lifted it out of the ordinary. Margaret and David, of At the Movies fame, rated it 4 and 4 1/2 (out of 5) respectively. There’s clearly something wrong with me. I’d give it 3 1/2!