The Age, 5th December 1998, Peter Wilmoth
MAXINE McKEW was flattered by the warm response that accompanied her decision to leave Lateline. ``It's been an absolutely over-the-top week,'' she said. ``I am genuinely a bit floored by the fuss. My peers and viewers said, `How can you do this?' as though I have cut off a couple of limbs. All I've done is change jobs.''
A roller-coaster week was topped off on Wednesday when she won a coveted Walkey Award for broadcast presenting. She will take a few weeks holiday with her husband Bob Hogg - including a stay at Hogg's daughter's farm in Gippsland - to freshen up for her new role at The Bulletin, where she will write profiles.
But instead of drifting into holiday mode and drawing a line under her 23 years at the ABC, McKew walks out the door hurling some well-aimed hand grenades. And if you're a young journalist in the electronic media who likes the sound of your own voice more than that of your interviewee, you'd better duck.
``If I can deconstruct any of it,'' she says of the reaction to her departure, ``people are making a fuss because they see in me a half-way decent journalist who happens to think that the answers are more important than the questions.
``If that makes me something of a rarity in television then that is a little bit of a sad commentary on the state of Australian television.''
The spectre of the film Broadcast News and the television series Frontline have always hovered over the electronic media, terrifying reminders of the traps TV journalists can fall into. The advice she has for young journalists would be to check their egos at the door.
``The mistake a lot of young journalists and not-so-young journalists make is that they end up thinking they are as important as the people they are interviewing. Their interjections are what they think their viewers are out there waiting for.
``Their vanity suggests viewers are waiting for their wonderful interjections. If you are going to go to the bother of interviewing someone, listen to the answers.
``Everything is designed to encourage TV journalists in this belief. You are exposed in the way print journalists are not. You are anything but anonymous. The thing is for TV presenters to develop an appropriate and objective persona, which is what I've tried to do.
``I hear lots of journalists asking questions, but not waiting for the answer, they are so keen to get their question out and so they are missing stuff and no one's (in management) telling them along the line.
``So much of their stuff sounds like noise. People are thinking, `I am not being informed, I am not being stretched by this.'''
It is an extraordinarily candid assessment, especially given McKew has made it clear she wants a ``roving brief'' at the broadcaster next year, similar to the role previously performed by Jennifer Byrne.
But McKew is someone ABC managers would do well to listen to. The weight of her words is commensurate with the esteem in which she is held by the public and ABC staff. She and Kerry O'Brien can whisper in Gore Hill and it will echo loudly across town at ABC headquarters in Ultimo. She said managers at the ABC and elsewhere were failing because they were ``not insisting enough on the basics, that is making sure journalists on the way up are doing their homework before you even pick up a microphone, not letting journalists still on their trainer wheels anywhere near a minister if all they want is to be cheeky and querulous'.
McKew said the question of bias raised after the interview by Verity James on the ABC in Perth during the federal election campaign - during which she asked the Prime Minister, John Howard, if a cap of heroin would be cheaper under a GST - was on the wrong track. ``People talk about bias. I think that was crook judgment. It was a case of a producer allowing an obviously under-researched presenter to go on badgering a prime minister to the point where I was embarrassed to listen, as a lot of people were.''
McKew said that as the new century loomed, it was time to evaluate how the media covered news. The Hanson phenomenon had raised some questions about fairness and objectivity.
``For the most part, the mainstream press roundly condemned Hansonism, but one million Australians voted for her. The broader question is, `Are we so out of touch with mainstream thinking that we have to ask serious questions about ourselves? Are we elevating issues that are beyond the concerns of the mainstream audience?'''
SHE cited the Clinton/Lewinsky affair as an example. ``The obsession of the Washington press gallery with Clinton's lies and his behavior was, `Yes, we know he lied, we didn't like how he behaved but the economy is rocking along and he's not doing a bad job.' The press had a different priority to the public.''
McKew is aware that she is in a glass house, and that she is not above reproach. She came in for some stinging criticism after her heated interview with Pauline Hanson in May last year, which ranged from ``aggressive'' to Hanson's political adviser David Oldfield's view that McKew was ``very biased'' and ``basically lost the plot''.
``I've now re-thought that,'' McKew says of the interview. ``I was a hero to my colleagues after that interview. It was splashed all over the paper - `Maxine McKew takes on Hanson where politicians won't'.
``But it was quite the opposite (reaction) in the community. We had an immense reaction, it was an avalanche of mail. Even people who would normally never have a bar of Hanson's politics condemned me for the way I tackled her.
``The reaction was, `Here's smarty pants Maxine McKew taking on poor Pauline' and whatever you think of her politics she has a right to be heard. In Queensland, people said to me, `You people in the media don't get it: the more you criticise her, the more we rally to her.'
``It was a sneering, slightly patronising view that many felt I adopted was not the way to address the concerns of a million Australians.''
She said Tracy Curro's interview with Hanson on Sixty Minutes in which Curro asked her if she were xenophobic - eliciting the famous reply, `Please explain' - was also elitist.
``Half of Australia wouldn't know what xenophobic means,'' she said. ``They were being cute and clever. So she doesn't know what xenophobic means. So what? They are supposed to be much more in touch with their audience.''
McKew left the ABC for two main reasons: the future of Lateline remained unresolved, and she needed a new challenge. She also cited lack of management feedback for the low morale at the broadcaster. ``We are not good at rewarding success and not good at dealing with people who've failed,'' she said.
Was a lack of money the problem? ``No, just a pat on the back (is what's wanted). The money's not bad, but there's a ceiling. People recognise it's public TV. At the Walkleys, (ABC) people would have picked up awards and that would have been the first acknowledgement. They would not have heard from their bosses. Feedback is absolutely vital.''
McKew said the continuing doubt about Lateline's future was a ``key factor'' in her decision to leave. ``It is enormously difficult to operate in an environment where you don't know whether you'll be back next year,'' she said. ``(But) had there been no uncertainty about the program, I was of a mind to make a change. I was looking for a fresh challenge.''
In a week of media departures, it was McKew's from Lateline that caused the biggest head-scratching. The movement of Ray Martin, Martin/Molloy, Brian Naylor, even Ellen Fanning was not too much of a shock. But Maxine McKew?
The question was how could such a fine performer, perhaps one of the top two journalists at the corporation, leave such a plum job with its small, but perfectly formed, audience for a magazine that for years has struggled for readers?
BUT McKew is confident she can make her mark at the Publishing and Broadcast-owned The Bulletin. ``Max (Walsh) has an enormous challenge bringing it back to its former glory,'' she said. ``He is putting enormous emphasis on all these basics. I like working with Max because he is committed to these basics, of doing your homework.''
She is optimistic - some would say quaintly so - about a new dawn for what was once a national institution. ``The magazine will be contemporary, a bit of a must-read. One of the tests I have to pass is, `Did you see so-and-so talking to Maxine McKew in The Bulletin?''
She said the last three shows she hosted on Lateline were ``a mix of satisfaction and nostalgia''. One was an interview with writer David Malouf. ``As I head into a writing career I wish I could wake up and turn into David Malouf,'' she said of her admiration for the author.
For the moment, at least, McKew will be turning away from the ABC into a new project. She is unlikely to come across the frustrations she felt at the ABC with her new boss, good friend Max Walsh, who had over lunch asked McKew to join him in relaunching the magazine.
It might even be a whinge-free zone. Asked whether the ABC had always had a level of complaining about morale, she said: ``Yes, but we are whingers. It might happen at other organisations too but we are pretty good at having a whinge.''