Dr Kerry O'Brien

Journalist & Presenter, Four Corners, Australian Broadcasting Corporation

HonDUniv (QUT), HonDLitt (UQ)

Kerry O'Brien addressed graduates from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney on Wednesday 1 May 2013, 10.30am.

Our speaker today is Dr Kerry O’Brien

Kerry is one of Australia’s most distinguished and respected journalists with six Walkley Awards for excellence in journalism including the Gold Walkley, and the Walkley for Outstanding Leadership. He has been a journalist for 46 years, starting as a cadet journalist with Channel Nine in Brisbane.

Kerry was Editor, Presenter and Interviewer for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s 7.30 Report for fifteen years. Prior to this, he was the Presenter and Interviewer for the Lateline program.

In this role, Kerry interviewed many world leaders including Barack Obama, Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, as well as many influential figures in the arts, science and business. He has also been a Foreign and Political Correspondent.

Kerry is currently Presenter and Interviewer for the ABC’s flagship investigative program, Four Corners. He also anchors ABC Television’s election night telecasts. He has been awarded Doctor of the University in 2009 from the Queensland University of Technology and in 2011, Doctor of Letters from the University of Queensland.

It gives me great pleasure to invite Dr Kerry O’Brien to deliver the occasional address.

Speech

Pro Chancellor, Deputy Vice Chancellor, Dean, faculty members but most importantly; graduates, your families and friends.

Sitting from my vantage point, I couldn’t help but notice on this stage, where all of the participants had their individuality disguised by the uniformity of academic garb, the amount of effort that went into expressing that individuality through the shoes. Guys, you had no chance.

Firstly, my congratulations to graduates. This is a big threshold you’re standing on, and a great achievement to get to this point. These words are easy to say, but they heart felt I know. You now pick up and wear the mantle of hope, along with other graduates at other universities across Australia, as you meet the next wave of challenges this era of dynamic change will bring.

The way the technological revolution is now working in the digital age, you will undoubtedly experience more change in your life than I have in mine.

So if we contemplate mine for a moment, you might get some idea of what your generation is going to experience across the whole vista of your lives.

In my working life, I’ve personally experienced changes I could never have dreamt of when I first set foot in the then tiny newsroom of Channel 9 Brisbane back in 1965, just 6 years after black and white television was introduced there. That 48 years ago now, sadly.

Let me give you a quick sense of what I’m talking about. The film technology of the 60’s restricted television news gathering in ways young journalists today could never appreciate in this age of immediacy.

For instance, our news gathering day then stopped at 3 in the afternoon to have our film processed, pre-viewed and edited in time for the 6 o’clock bulletin of that night. So other than writing a live story, for something that had happened in those intervening times our news day ended at 3.

Compare that to the satellite technology which allowed me, in 1990, to cross to just about anywhere in the world instantaneously on a then fledging program called “Late line” to discuss the issues of the day with the great minds of the day.

From the early 70’s, when I was working in Queensland on another trail blazing ABC program called This day tonight. On one occasion, we had to persuade a PMG linesmen (PMG was what we called Telstra today) to make an unscheduled push bike ride up a mountain outside Lismore to switch on the microwave link, allowing us to transmit urgent pictures of a Brisbane night club fire bombing that had killed 15 people, in time for broadcast all across Australia that night.

Or In the 1980’s, when I stood at a satellite feed point in Bridgetown Barbados, watching the first footage of America’s Invasion of the tiny West Indian Island Country of Granada, beamed up to a satellite link and down to a main on America’s east coast, up to New York, down again to our roof top satellite dish in the middle of Los Angeles, up again to our Pacific Ocean Satellite transponder which was downloaded in Sydney, then beamed across from an Australian set satellite at Belrose, across to the 7 satellite dish at Epping and then back out to television sets in peoples’ homes across Australia, within a second. As I stood in Barbados, It was amazing to realise how quickly it was being disseminated; it still amazes me today.

Fast forward to the dawn of this century, when ABC foreign correspondents were sending live signals to Australian television sets from a satellite phone in a briefcase on the hills overlooking the Afghanistan capital of Kabul as the first coalition forces rolled into the city after the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington. Compare this to the Vietnam War era in the 60’s when Australia had to wait several days for the first television pictures of the major battles, or for pictures of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

In 1991 CNN correspondent, Peter Arnett, reported live from behind enemy lines in Baghdad during the first Iraq war: Operation Desert Storm as American smart bombs (and some of them not so smart), exploded around him seeking and failing to find the depot and invader of Kuwait, Saddam Hussein. Compared to the technology in 2003, when television cameras mounted on the front of American tanks beamed pictures live to every corner of the globe. There was an audience of billions as the Coalition Forces of that war rolled into Iraq to finally unseat Saddam and unearth his weapons of mass destruction that we were told threatened the world, but in fact, did not exist.

I remember watching those first pictures come in as others watched from their homes, their clubs, their pub, offices, or airport lounges.

As America’s most credible television show journalist at the time, Ted Koppel dressed fetchingly in full camouflage battle fatigues; helmet tucked neatly under his arm, and quoted Shakespeare live from the desert, “Cry havoc and let’s slip the dogs of war,” as the tanks drove neatly past on queue.

To viewers it must have seemed he was declaring the invasion open, a new kind of launch. To me it looked suspiciously like war as entertainment and a fiercely competitive hunt for commercial ratings, not necessarily journalisms finest hour in the tradition of reporting the news without fear or favour or undue influence.

It was for journalists an embedded and often sanitised war, except for the correspondences who risked their lives to stay in Bagdad and report live from behind enemy lines as bombs rained down indiscriminately on the city.

I remember the arrival of the mobile phone, which was not particularly mobile at the time; you needed a briefcase to carry it, rather than slip it neatly into a shirt pocket or a handbag. And of the internet in the early 90’s, not realising that it signalled the age of convergence for the three great journalist mediums of print, radio and television and quite possibly signalling the end of newspapers as we’ve known them all our lives.

So if that represents some of the change that I have seen inside the past 50 years, what awaits you in the next 50?

I have watched in awe at times as those great technological changes deliver enormous flexibility and opportunity to the practice of my craft. I have also watched daily journalism become more superficial, with its resources shrinking rather than expanding as it is captured more and more the rapidly growing force of public relations, the so called spin doctors. Many of whom are perusing an honourable trade, however, the outcome of much of their work has left a very big question mark.

I’ve watched the quality of political leadership shrink as politicians become more and more consumed with the propaganda possibilities of the communication age. They end up hopelessly enmeshed in the quicksands of a 24 hour news cycle; where media strategy and marketing appeal shape and drive policy as much as the need for the policy in the first place; if, in fact, there was a need.

The message for me in all of this is that the technological revolution is delivering some amazing opportunities for good across all the things that affect our lives.

For instance, the internet might provide to third world shanty towns, a relatively cheap tool for delivering education for children who might otherwise grow up ignorant, with no hope of a way out of their trap of abject poverty, or the possibilities high speed broadband may deliver in health service to regional towns in Australia. This is part of the message.

The other part is that, with humans being humans, we should never underestimate our capacity to misuse or abuse the technology; cyber war or criminal fraud for instance, or simply screwing up, finding yourself driven by the technology rather than driving it.

I have been lucky that, in my 48 years, I was allowed to develop a hunger for quality journalism and pursue the tantalising goal of excellence, through culture of the public broadcasting at the ABC. It has often been frustrating, satisfying, immensely fulfilling and a great deal of fun.

My ultimate message to you, the graduates of today, is that if you want a fulfilling life, no matter what course your career takes, no matter what field of endeavour you may have chosen, or will continue to choose to pursue, always look for quality in your work and your life.

No matter what barriers you might butt your head against, or hurdles you might have to jump through, marvel in the changes in technology and exciting advances of your time, not just in journalism, but academia, science, commerce, or the arts.

Never lose sight of the fact that technology is often harnessed to cut costs, shed jobs, facilitate new ways of delivering instant gratification, or to further enrich the few at the expense of the many, something we’ve seen in wall street culture of the past decade, and that humanity still relies on the simple but big ideals and principles for its survival and advancement.

As you find yourself rushing along at breakneck speed, with all these wonderful but increasingly intrusive tools at your disposal, and diminishing time to actually stop and think free of distraction, promise yourselves this: That you will always try and keep some time for reflection on who you are and who you want to be, and value your privacy. Once it lost it not easily regained, and sometimes we only realise what had when we've lost it.

I have witnessed a great deal of tragedy and human folly in my time as a journalist. Some of it at very close quarters, but I have also witnessed moments of great human achievement and met truly inspirational people, from the most humble to the most powerful or in one case, Nelson Mandela, both humble and powerful. We may not be Nelson Mandela but believe me, the scope to make a difference is in us all.

I never fail at graduations ceremonies like this one to feel a real sense of poignancy about the occasion.

For you, it is the end of one very significant journey that has taken up most of your lives, and the beginning of another. I would imagine that you face this with a mix of confidence and uncertainty, with hopes, dreams and anxieties. All of these feelings have their place.

The very best luck to you all. May you have as much fun and as much intellectual reward in your journey as I have had in mine.

Thank you.