Senator Andrew Bartlett
Saturday, October 30, 2004
 
Yesterday I was part of a panel at a journalism conference in Melbourne. The topic was 'Public Figures and Private Lives'. The conference was organised by the Melbourne Press Club. It appeared to be attended mainly by journalists and students of journalism and media. The four other people on the panel were journalists, as was the facilitator of the discussion. I decided trying to make my comments 'off the record' might not be a good idea.

Naturally, there was some interest in the media treatment of the alcohol-related incident I was involved in at the end of last year. One of the journos on the panel was Michael Harvey from the Herald Sun, who helped write the piece that broke the story, which made the event more interesting in a mildly amusing (but well short of hilarious) sort of way.

Having copped that story giving one person's view of the incident, followed by many other people subsequently giving insights into all sorts of things about me I didn’t know myself, I've still refrained from giving my side of what happened. At the time I figured I'd apologise for causing offence and just get on with doing my job.

Whilst it is occasionally tempting to add some extra facts, I think the incident got way more attention than it merited, so despite some specific questions at the forum, I decided it 's still more appropriate to keep focused on doing my job rather than divert attention from issues I think are more important.

It was a worthwhile discussion with some good contributions, including by Christian Kerr from Crikey. I've mentioned before my views of Crikey – whilst there's still room for improvement, they've clearly become a more worthwhile information source now that they've moved away from the obsession with personal gossip and other salacious slop and focused more on the genuinely political.

I've always had a loathing of gossip masquerading as political commentary. I've mentioned before how I thought the treatment which Trish Draper got from the media was totally unjustified. Treating politics as soap opera not only distorts politics, it diverts attention away from the real issues which politicians engage in that affect people's lives directly and substantially.

Anyway, it was a balanced and valuable discussion. One comment which I should have challenged was the assertion that politicians and journalists are natural enemies – a paradigm that seemed sufficiently self-evident for me to have to think about it for 10 seconds before realising that it ain't necessarily so (by which time it was too late to comment).

Along with some intellectual stimulation and a bit of positive feedback from the audience, I got presented with a free Melbourne Press Club bag as a thank you gift. The two bottles of white wine inside will no doubt be well received by the friends I pass them on to.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Saturday, October 30, 2004
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