All but a hermit would know of the absolute cracker of a Four Corners story on Monday night, called Code Of Silence. The intriguing thing is, I hear people insist the code of silence should have extended to Four Corners.
In other words, journalists have an obligation to stay schtum about a scandal in instances where no charges have been laid and where no findings of guilt have been made.
To air allegations outside a court of law amounts, variously, to gossip, to trial by media, to character assassination. Geraldine Doogue on Radio National's Saturday Extra teased with the issue last week. "There are other reactions, of indignation, towards Four Corners, I noticed. Why return to cases where no charges have been laid, these people say, with one person's word taken against another."
The answer is that journalism wouldn't function at all if reporting depended on the say-so of the police or the courts. Many allegations of wrongdoing, suspicious happenings or maladministration would simply go undisclosed.
Like it or not, sometimes in life the media have to be the judge and jury. All one can hope for is that the role is carried out carefully and responsibly.
The other element in the equation is that once a charge has been laid an investigative program such as Four Corners couldn't proceed to air. The prospects of media prejudice and contempt start ticking the moment a charge is brought.
Four Corners managed to achieve something rare in journalism - a change of attitudes, a rejection of complacent acceptance of rottenness.
The suffering of that group sex victim in New Zealand was so powerfully wrought that you just knew Matthew Johns and the whole apparatus of rugby league crisis management and subterfuge were finished.
Maybe it is no accident that it was Anne Connolly who was on the team that worked on the Four Corners program, the same Anne Connolly who did the research on the "cash for comment" story for Media Watch in 1999.
According to Media Watch this week, Victoria police's Chief Commissioner Simon Overland was unhappy that the identity of a suspected firebug was reported. Some of the questioning of this individual by commercial TV reptiles left a lot to be desired, and the old codger was even trapped into doing a lie detector test on A Current Affair, with "inconclusive" results.
Overland said: "The media was asked not to identify any possible suspects as this had the potential to compromise the investigation and in turn the success of any prosecution."
He didn't explain how it might compromise the investigation, all he added was that it could jeopardise the safety of the individual named.
The Media Watch presenter, Jonathan Holmes, went tongue in cheek, saying: "Well, come on, chief commissioner, let's keep a sense of proportion. What's the biggest murder investigation in Victoria's history beside the struggle to increase ACA's ratings?"
I think there is a more fundamental issue at stake. If there is a story with a public interest component its publication should not be at the command of a police officer, chief commissioner or otherwise.
On Wednesday in Melbourne there was a further bushfire-related attempt at media management. The bushfires royal commission has dreamed up an elaborate "protocol" to stop news reporters and camera crews following "lay" witnesses in the street and filming or questioning them.
From now on witnesses will be asked before giving evidence whether they wish to be filmed, photographed or interviewed as they leave the hearing.
If they agree, they can be filmed and questioned only "from a fixed position outside the court". According to Quentin Fogarty, the flack for the commission, "the commissioners are quite adamant about this". There followed definitions of who is a "lay" witness and who is a "public" witness.
Fogerty insists the "protocol" is working "perfectly". One of the lay witnesses said he was happy to be taped as he left and to be interviewed by The Age. That got up the nose of the other media and legal advice was sought about how far these commissioners could extend their authority over the streets of Melbourne.
None of which is to say that on occasions reporters do not behave swinishly. The point is that victims of such treatment may have a remedy without switching off journalism altogether.
You'll notice the legal eggshells over which Four Corners gingerly tiptoed on Monday night. I don't think the reporter Sarah Ferguson directly asked the New Zealand woman identified as "Clare" whether she consented to one, two or five sexual encounters.
If she had answered "no", then the recognised rugby league players may well have been able to bring defamation proceedings against the ABC because an imputation of sexual assault had been raised.
As in the criminal jurisdiction, such a civil case would have been heavily stacked in their favour because on a factual basis it is her word against the insistent chorus of male voices that the whole thing was consensual. One against eight.
This opinion piece was first published in The Sydney Morning Herald
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