Extending news interviews: how John Curtin influenced Australian political journalism, 1941-1945

Extending news interviews: how John Curtin influenced Australian political journalism, 1941-1945

As a former journalist, Australian Prime Minister John Curtin developed relatively new media techniques to persuade reporters to support his war leadership and articulate his rhetoric of crisis, masking the tensions within his governance. Yet there are gaps in the historical understanding of his news management techniques in World War II and their influence on prime ministerial-media relations and political journalism of the era. This paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the relationships of influence and consensus between Curtin and the news media, based on concepts of the governmental function of news in an administered society, developed by Ericson, Baranek and Chan, as well as Foucault's model of power. With the use of rarely researched confidential communications providing fresh insights into Curtin's news relations, this paper argues that press and broadcast journalists cooperated with him to visualise national deviance, in the form of Axis foes, and accentuate his language of the enemy to elicit public support for his governance. Through a dramaturgy approach, this study shows that Curtin stage-managed and expanded the prime minister's news interviews to appear as spontaneous, open-ended and inclusive; however, he relied on theatrical gesturing, camera techniques and rehearsed rhetoric to generate favourable news coverage about his leadership of Australia's military role in the Pacific war from 1941 until his death in 1945. Although he benefited from censorship, he used his professional journalism background and the nation's first full-time prime ministerial press secretary to share information leaks selectively with journalists. The political correspondents volunteered to withhold information and cooperated to portray him as a forceful, egalitarian leader, disguising the friction among the Allies. This study of Curtin's news management techniques and interactions with reporters indicates the democratic possibilities for journalism students of using expanded communication spaces for more critical inquiry to generate greater political responsiveness and accountability to public audiences.

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