Politics with Michelle Grattan
News:Politics
Geoff Kitney fell into a career in journalism, and rose from reporting the local footy in Western Australia to covering many of federal politics's biggest stories and serving as a foreign correspondent based in Berlin and London.
Arriving at parliament house in 1975, Kitney reported on the dramatic Dismissal. Later, the relative decorum of the Canberra press gallery contrasted with the danger and adventure of war reporting.
During the Kosovo war, he was sent to Belgrade, travelling there in a bus with a crowd of Serbians.
"It was very, very strange bus trip because we'd passed houses with MiG fighters parked in the driveways ... [Slobodan Milošević] was trying to stop NATO destroying his airforce. So he put the MiG fighters next to people's houses so that they wouldn't hit them, which meant that he couldn't use them, but at least he still had them."
In Kitney's new book, Beyond the Newsroom, based around his decades of reporting and analysis, he also has some sharp observations about what's happened to the media.
"Advertising started shifting to social media. Newspaper budgets got tighter and tighter. Staff started being cut. We've now had years of redundancies."
"We had specialist reporters covering all sorts of issues, digging down, getting out into the bureaucracy ... finding what's really going on. Now ...there aren't enough people to do that."
"And the pressure, for Twitter for example, is to be noticed. And it seems to me that people think the best way to get noticed, and probably this is true, is to have strong opinions that people react to. And so opinion becomes more important than actual information."
Word from The Hill: Was the Afghanistan War worth it?
Anthony Albanese says Afghans in Australia should be given permanent residency
Josh Frydenberg on uncertain economic times
Word from the Hill: A reprimand for Christensen and Morrison on climate
Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers on promoting vaccine uptake and a 'modest spending program'
a four-stage plan and a $300 payment to get vaccinated
Bob Brown on his latest environmental battle, and a critique of Labor
Word from The Hill: three states in lockdown
Barnaby Joyce on net zero 2050, a coal-fired power station – and how resources is (sort of) in cabinet
Word from the Hill: Julia Banks and international travel caps
Jacinta Price's parliamentary agenda
Word from The Hill: the return to lockdown
Sussan Ley and Terri Butler on the Great Barrier Reef being 'in danger'
Word from The Hill: Australia's new Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, climate policy and UNESCO
Acting PM Michael McCormack on net zero 2050 and prospects for a new coal-fired power station
Word from The Hill: the Biloela Tamil family, G7 and the upcoming parliamentary fortnight
Rex Patrick on Freedom of Information and Australia's submarines
Word from The Hill
Mark Butler on the vaccine rollout and democracy in the Labor Party
Katy Gallagher on the battle to hold the government to account
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