Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Senior Business correspondent Peter Ryan is a firm believer in the importance of breaking down financial complexities in his reporting.
His expose of the Commonwealth Bank scandal and more than 53,000 alleged breaches of anti-money laundering and terror financing laws, won him a Walkley Award for the best coverage of a major event or issue.
But, as he proudly tells The Journo Project, he doesn’t have a business degree and doesn’t need one to keep the big financial players in Australia accountable.
“I was musing last year when we were covering the Banking Royal Commission and I was on the air with AM and in a Q&A on the program and I said after 30 years of being a journalist and having been a police rounds reporter, I felt that the Banking Royal Commission was more about being a crime story than it was being a finance story,” Peter says.
“When you look at white collar crime, which there tends to be a bit of a gulf between that and normal, regular crime by criminals…it is people being robbed, having their bank accounts played with, fees being charged when no service was provided.
“People who put money into Superannuation funds looking for a retirement nest egg and discovering that it's been eaten away by fees or advisor commissions. It is a crime story and a number of people have lost their jobs.
"No one’s going to jail as a result of the Royal Commission, but there have been some big heads that have rolled right at the top of banks.
“And so it’s important that we report these issues in a way that people will understand.”
Peter Ryan has used the same journalistic rigour for all the roles he has taken in the newsroom over decades, from leading the ABC’s US bureau in the ’90s, through to his business expertise today. He says he still applies principles that he first learnt as a junior reporter at the Daily Mirror in the glory days of Sydney’s afternoon newspapers.
He’s very concerned about the recent raids by Australian federal police on his journalistic colleagues at ABC and at News Corporation, and the implications for press freedom and democracy in Australia.
“It certainly is a worrying situation when just around the corner from where we're speaking the federal police were going through files and they had the oversight of the ABC's executive editor John Lyons who was there with them and he was live tweeting this whole event which was extraordinary,” he says.
“It’s also incredibly important that the public was able to see what was happening.
“ABC News 24 broadcast that as well and so I think that really showed journalists here what can happen if you have a situation where supposedly independent agencies such as the federal police do have these powers to raid, and to be concerned whether they were doing this more so to scare off other whistle blowers or leakers."
Beyond the pod
More important media follow-ups for The Journo Project podcast of late—the word is growing thanks to you, my Journo Project subscribing supporters! This week it was Griffith University’s Machinery of Government site using my wrap of The Journo Project so far.
It was wonderful putting together a special wrap up edition of the podcast and interviewees like Hedley Thomas, Trent Dalton, Peter Greste, Mark Willacy, and Adele Ferguson, tied in with important perspectives from media law guru Professor Mark Pearson and Griffith Review legend Julianne Schultz. You can listen to that podcast and read their perspectives.
And a couple of my recent podcast subjects are having big weeks—if you needed any proof that Streets of Your Town is ahead of the curve, here you go!
Hedley Thomas—my first episode of The Journo Project—will speak at a big Walkley Foundation event in Perth soon about Press Freedom—one of the big recurring themes of The Journo Project podcast!
Take the opportunity to share Hedley’s episode of The Journo Project here and get people talking about why media freedom matters to our democracy! (https://soyt.substack.com/p/how-hedley-thomas-made-a-world-renowned)
And for the ICYMI file: I cannot describe my excitement that one of my previous Streets of Your Town interviewees has made the big break in New York! Congratulations to Kurt Phelan—Home Hill boy and now lead in the New York Broadway production of Rent, the musical! Some of you may remember he graced the Aussie stage as Johnny in Dirty Dancing: the Musical.
He was kind enough to be featured in my podcast Streets of Your Town in one of my favourite episodes too, where he spoke so candidly about the joys and challenges of the actor’s life. Congrats Kurt and thanks for showing me your positivity in tough times, giving me faith that if you follow your passion and ride that roller coaster out, dreams can come true. So proud of you! You can hear Kurt’s interview all over again at this link: https://player.whooshkaa.com/episode?id=297017
What I’m reading
“Adut Akech is a 19-year-old modeling superstar. But after a magazine misidentified her in a photo, she says she is no longer staying quiet about racism in the industry.”
“She’s a World-Famous Model. So Why Did an Australian Magazine Get Her Photo Wrong?” — New York Times
This is such an important debate on race that Australia seems to keep having to revisit over and over. Sometimes I find it’s the overseas-based companies such as The New York Times who can pass a fresh eye over the cultural dilemmas that lead to such awful situations.
Upcoming
Next Monday’s episode of Streets of Your Town—The Journo Project, sent straight to your inbox, features amazing Papua New Guinean reporter legend Maureen Mopio-Jane. She bravely reported from the highlands of Papua New Guinea before women were given the proper credit they deserved for the stories they gathered. Maureen has covered some of that country’s most difficult stories, from Bougainville, to the horrendous levels of domestic violence that continue to haunt the nation’s families. She tells Streets of Your Town—The Journo Project how crucial radio was and continues to be in Papua New Guinea and how from a very young age she wanted to be the voice coming out of that box. Today, Maureen continues to fight for a more inclusive and diverse range of stories in the international media, particularly from the Pacific region.
Thanks to you my Journo Project Tribe—see you in a week!
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Peter Ryan on covering financial crime