He’s been in the journalism game for more than four decades, and even with that impressive pedigree still proudly calls himself a hack.
While his face is familiar to many people around Australia for his Walkley Award winning television work, it’s his mellifluous voice for which he is most well known.
Hugh Riminton has worked around the globe in more than 40 countries as a foreign correspondent, and now embraces new technologies such as podcasting in his storytelling pursuit.
He co-presents “The Professor and The Hack” podcast with Peter Van Onselen, talking all things politics.
In this episode of The Journo Project, Hugh speaks openly about the high price often paid by journalists on the front line, in order to get the truth out.
“When you're with people who are suffering in all kinds of circumstances, you have to expose yourself to them a little bit. You can't be hard boiled about it,” he says.
“I think you definitely want to be sufficiently restrained in the degree to which you expose your body and soul to the worst of awfulness because otherwise you simply become ineffective.”
Hugh Riminton is one of those rare journos who crosses the public broadcasting and commercial broadcasting divide.
He is Network 10’s National Affairs Editor, while at the same time presenting Sunday Extra on ABC Radio National.
“Really I'm a newsman and I'm curious about what's going on,” he says.
“I don't want to manipulate, there's a temptation to manipulate commercial current affairs. You don't have to do that in news.”
Hugh is concerned that the recent Australian Federal Police raids on News Corp reporter Annika Smethurst and ABC journalist Dan Oakes have worrying ramifications not just for press freedom in Australia, but also for whistleblower protection.
"The primary purpose is to intimidate whistleblowers,” Hugh says.
“What we have to understand here is that we have a situation where people who find information out that is really damaging to our fellow citizens, if they blow the whistle on it, they get punished.
“All of these things are in the public interest to know how our government works, and that they've got a mechanism in place that will jail people for years for doing good things for the country and then harass and intimidate journalists.”
“Everyone should be aware that when people in good faith find out things that are wrong about the way things are operating, they have to be allowed to speak up for the good of the country and not face going to jail at the behest of some really unattractive bullies that we've allowed to take positions of power in this country.”
Even after 40 years in the game, Hugh says journalism for him, is still about the story at its heart.
“It's completely about storytelling,” he says.
“Finding out what's going on and then trying to be honest and about what's going on and try and do it in some kind of narrative clarity. That's the discipline of the game.
“The technology has changed immensely, but the technology will change and change again. It doesn't really matter. All of that is subordinate to the storytelling and just finding out what's going on.”
“Journalism is a fabulous job. And in the course of 40 years, I've met thousands of people of every kind, incredible nobility, decency, self-sacrifice, intellectual rigour, everyone from Stephen Hawking to Nobel prize winners to complete rogues and bastards and murderers and all these things. I've never met anyone who wasn't human and I've never met anyone who wouldn't be within the range of Shakespeare to imagine.
“And if you care about it and you want to tell stories and have a great life, I can't think of a better calling.”
Behind the scenes
It was such a joy to interview Hugh Riminton at the ABC studios at Ultimo in Sydney—not only did he give me half an hour of his precious time for our enjoyment on The Journo Project podcast, but the poor man volunteered to drag my luggage the entire way! Those of you who know my quirks know what a truly horrendous packer I am. So poor Hugh definitely proves that chivalry is not dead if he can drag my heavy luggage around!
What I’m reading
“When Dr Kelly first stumbled across a memory device that was a piece of wood with beads, shells, stones and other found objects carefully nailed onto it, she thought it was a "load of rubbish"—until she made her own.”
Improving your memory using ancient indigenous techniques - ABC News
I absolutely love this article about how to jog memory. There is hope for us all yet—hurrah! Now to find the time to apply some of these tips…
Upcoming—Mark Willacy
Next week’s episode of Streets of Your Town—The Journo Project features a journo who has won Australia’s premier journalism prize—the Walkley Award—five times for his investigative reporting. Mark Willacy has reported for the ABC from more than 30 countries, and was a former Middle East and North Asia correspondent. He’s been named Queensland journalist of the year and this year, won a Logie Award for his Four Corners story on the Thai Cave rescue. Make sure you don’t miss my interview with Mark next week, where he tells me how he still aims to make a new contact every week, and how he goes to extraordinary lengths to protect those sources.
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Hugh Riminton on the power of storytelling