 Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Michael Fulilove. I'm the Executive Director of the Lowy Institute. Welcome to the media award dinner for 2018. I acknowledge that we're gathered on the land of the Gadigal people and I pay my respects to their elders past and present. Let me first recognize my board members, Jim Spiegelman, Serangus Houston, Joanna Hewitt, Penny Wensley, Glenn Stevens and Mark Ryan who first suggested that the Institute establish a media award six years ago. Let me recognize our guests of honor, Susan Glasser, Peter Baker and Sean Dorney. The sponsors of tonight's dinner, Rio Tinto and UBS without whom this award and tonight's event would not be possible. This year's judges and our six finalists, several of whom are with us this evening, judges from previous years who've come back and most importantly, the journalists, producers and editors who help explain the world to Australians. You were the whole point of this evening so thank you very much for being here. Let me apologize in advance if I wilt at all tonight. I have just arrived back last night from the UK. Very late, it was a very bumpy landing. I can report after a few days on the ground in London that Brexit is not working as well as it looks. Let me also mention David Gonski whom I forgot to mention earlier, welcome David. Ladies and gentlemen, at the Institute, we believe the world matters to Australia and therefore Australians need to be informed about the world and news reporting is an essential basis for being informed. The intelligence that you provide to the institutes analysts and to our audience is irreplaceable. We love the New York Times, we love the BBC, we love The Guardian, we welcome the fact that many of these international news organisations have opened bureaus in Australia and indeed are represented here tonight. But we also need Australian media organisations and Australian journalists on the global beat. Australian journalists see the Australian angle in a story in a way that an American or a Brit cannot. Australian journalists bring their own sensibilities to the craft of reporting, including pragmatism, a lack of deference to authority and a sense of humour as well as an understanding of Australians' interests. So, we need the Australian media to cover the world. But the unavoidable truth is that Australian coverage of the world is shrinking. Australian news bureaus are closing and foreign correspondents are being recalled. We recently saw a flurry of top-quality reporting from Papua New Guinea during the APEC summit and I think that reporting shows how mad it is that there is only one permanent foreign correspondent based in P&G, the ABC's Natalie Whiting. Although we have seen some progress recently on this front. In early October, as some of you will have seen, Channel 9 sent a reporter up to P&G to track down the honey badger and find out how he felt about the finale of The Bachelor. So, let me say muzzlet of to Fairfax and Channel 9. Ladies and gentlemen, the Institute established this award in 2013 to recognise Australian journalists who have deepened the knowledge or shaped the discussion of international policy issues in our country. The Institute can't alter the economics of the media industry, but we can recognise effort and reward excellence. And by doing so, encourage proprietors and editors to continue to invest in foreign coverage. The award is now in its sixth year and is among the richest in Australian journalism. And having served as a judge for this award and having watched and read all these brilliant stories, I can't help but feel optimistic. Ladies and gentlemen, let me explain how the evening will proceed. In a moment, our main courses will be served. And after that, the 2018 Lowy Institute Media Lecture will be delivered by New Yorker columnist and CNN analyst, Susan Glasser. After the lecture, I'll conduct a Q&A with Susan and her husband, Peter Baker of The New York Times. And then after dessert, I'll ask Sean Dourney to announce the 2018 Media Award winner. But first, let me call on one of my board members, Jim Spiegelman, to offer a welcome on behalf of the board. Ladies and gentlemen, the Honourable James Spiegelman AC was Chief Justice and Lieutenant Governor of New South Wales from 1998 to 2011. Between 1972 and 1975, he served as Senior Advisor and Principal Private Secretary to Prime Minister Whitlam. From 2012 to 2017, he served as Chair of the ABC. And since 2013, most importantly of all, he served as a member of the Board of the Lowy Institute. So ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Jim. Thank you, Michael. I bring the apologies of the Chair, Frank Lowy. And on behalf of the board, I welcome you all here. Frank, unfortunately, is overseas. I don't think he's missed one of these before, but he understands the significance of it. And if he didn't, he wouldn't be here. The creation of the Lowy Institute by him and his sons is one of the great acts of philanthropy in terms of the intellectual and political contribution that this institute has made and continues to make. Michael has indicated why this award has been established to offer recognition of achievement in the particular field with which the institute is concerned. It's an important act of recognition, not least because it brings all these people together in this context. And this sort of networking event is of continued significance. Often it brings nominees from overseas, as it did last year, when the winner had to be brought out of the front line in Middle East conflicts in order to be here to receive the prize. But he managed somehow or another. And he's here again tonight, I might say. But it's a less dramatic evening from what I gathered than it may have been last year. There's nothing more important at the moment than understanding of the Australian public of the international situation in which we find ourselves. I think most people in the room would agree that in the last few years, and particularly the last two years, the strategic position of Australia in terms of our security has deteriorated at a rate that no one could have predicted. We found ourselves in a completely new situation in terms of understanding our immediate environment, particularly. And nothing is more important than the regular reporting of that environment that journalists give to use a still serviceable cliché in writing the first draft of history. We all know that the issue is the rise of China and the extraordinary peregrinations of the first dervish president of the United States of America. And it was a journalist, I think, who predicted admittedly in an economic context what the fundamental issue is in American politics. And I refer to the great H.L. Menken, who once said, no one ever went broke underestimating the tastes of the American people. And that's something like what it's playing out in its political context. This is an important evening for journalism. And on behalf of the Board of the Lower Institute, I welcome you all here this evening. Ladies and gentlemen, now we come to the Trump-specific element of the evening. It's an exciting time, if you're interested in American politics, as I am. A month or two ago, we had all the revelations in Bob Woodward's book. And that generated a lot of headlines. And a lot of people said there are a lot of bombshell revelations in that book. I personally think we need to stop describing these kinds of stories as bombshells, though. Mr. Trump acting in a Trumpy way is no longer a bombshell. As the noted presidential scholar, Trevor Noah, said recently, the day it comes out that Mr. Trump secretly works out and reads Shakespeare and teaches kids how to code, that's when we can call it a bombshell. But there is always some statement from the White House to marvel at. Recently, some of you will have seen President Trump compared himself to Abraham Lincoln. He said, the Gettysburg Address was criticised by the fake news at the time, but it was later celebrated as the greatest speech ever made. And Mr. Trump said, I have a feeling that's going to happen with us. I don't have a feeling that's going to happen with Mr. Trump. Of course, we were all very sad that President Trump didn't attend the regional summits recently in Asia. I'm not sure if it was for the same reason he couldn't come to Asia in the 1960s, which, of course, was bone spurs. You've got to have a bit of fun, ladies and gentlemen. It's a Saturday night, even if it appears in Jared Henderson's column, that's OK. Ladies and gentlemen, tonight we will hear from two bona fide Trumpologists, starting with Susan Glasser. Each year at this dinner, we invite a significant figure to deliver a lecture on the state of the media. In past years, our speakers have included Nick Warner, intelligence chief and son of legendary Australian war correspondent Dennis Warner. We had Malcolm Turnbull, who was then communications minister, Robert Thompson, who was CEO of News Corp. Michelle Guthrie, the former managing director of the ABC. And last year, Brett Stevens of the New York Times. And this year's lecturer is a worthy addition to that roll call. Susan Glasser is one of the finest, most influential, and most entrepreneurial journalists in Washington. Early in her career, Susan worked at the Post, where she oversaw coverage of the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and spent four years as the Post's Moscow co-bureau chief. She was subsequently editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy Magazine, picking up three national magazine awards during her tenure. She moved to Politico in 2013, where she served as editor of Politico Magazine, editor of Politico throughout the 2016 election cycle, and chief international affairs columnist. She's now a staff writer at the New Yorker, for which she writes a weekly column on life in Washington in the Trump era. I have read Susan for many years and admired her writing, but in her New Yorker columns in the past year, or so I think she has become simply an essential reading for anyone interested in what's happening. I can't imagine a better person to speak to us on the challenges of reporting the news in the era of President Trump. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Susan Glasser to the lecture. Lectern. Thank you. I have to say, in listening to that introduction, it is a little bit embarrassing to have as one's resume accomplishment, having covered lots of different things, wars in the leg, to be known as a Trumpologist. But you take what you can get. And I have to say, Michael, I first want to say thank you, of course, to you, to everyone at the Lowy Institute, who's been so kind to host us here this week. As you can imagine, we were really in need of a good excuse to get out of Washington. And as you can see, we're willing to travel thousands and thousands of miles in order to escape the news cycle, if only for a moment. But I am very grateful. And especially because of the nature of this award that you're presenting this evening for International Affairs Correspondents, a subject near and dear to my heart, when I covered, in fact, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was at the very beginning of what would be the American media's own dramatic transformation and cutbacks in foreign correspondents, which I know is something that you're dealing with here as well. Every single news organization that I traveled with as an unembedded reporter with to Afghanistan and to the war in Iraq in 2003, within a couple years, aside from the post where I worked, all the rest of those news organizations no longer had even a single foreign correspondent overseas. So I'm delighted to be here and to celebrate the accomplishment of Australia's foreign correspondents, as well as grateful to the Louis Institute for offering me and all of you this platform for this evening. But my subject perhaps is not quite so elevated. And again, forgive me, but we journalists can do nothing other than react to the stories as they fall to us. So the story as it has fallen to us in Washington is really something these days. In fact, it was just the other day that President Trump was asked on the occasion of American Thanksgiving what he was thankful for. Now, your journalists, you know, this was not actually meant to be a tough question. This was a throwaway, if you will. But not for Donald Trump. He quickly responded that he was grateful for, well, wait for it himself, telling the interviewer that he was giving thanks this year for having made a tremendous difference in this country. I've made a tremendous difference in the country. And in a way, of course, it's true. I would even venture to say that we journalists have some things to thank Donald Trump for, like more readers, more viewers, and of course, a lot more clarity about our mission. So what is it like to be covering Trump's Washington these days? Well, one thing that must be said is that it's pretty exhausting. By 8 o'clock in the morning, many days, I'm pretty much ready to go back to bed. The most dread phrase in our lives is, in a series of early morning tweets. I imagine that's even more true for the presidential aides in the White House who actually have to deal with the consequences of what we now all call the president's executive time. Now, I have to admit that some of this extraordinary disruption of American politics is in fact sort of entertaining. It's not all texting with the deep state and worrying about the death of the liberal world order. What can you do when life imitates the TV series, Veep, except laugh? There was one whole scandal a while back involving First Lady Melania Trump's wearing of a jacket. Do you guys remember this one? I don't care. Do you, jacket? Ladies in the room know what I'm talking about. Melania Trump made her living as a fashion model. She didn't put that jacket on by mistake. Did she? No, she didn't. So she chose to wear this I don't care, do you jacket? When she was going to visit some of the child migrants that her husband's government had literally torn away from their parents. At first, her office denied that she had worn the jacket on purpose. It was only months later in an interview did she admit that yes, it was true. She had worn it on purpose while claiming that the intended target of the insult was not the poor children, but us evil journalists. So yes, sometimes Washington imitates Veep imitating Washington. What can we do? Laugh or cry, it's fair to say that much is surreal about covering life in Trump's Washington. And we journalists often experience it as an endless series of conversations about subjects we never thought we'd be debating. Civility is apparently controversial in American politics today. I should note on both the right and the left for different reasons. So are facts. So is the First Amendment. Now, outrage fatigue is not a critically defined medical condition. But if it were, I suspect that all of us journalists in Washington, not to mention an awful lot of regular people, would be suffering from it. Trump derangement syndrome is an actual phrase you hear a lot these days. Although befitting the polarized times in the United States, no one can actually agree upon the precise definition. Many argue that 90% of the Republican party, once a bastion of Republican bashing free traders, whose leaders called Donald Trump a kook and a liar, wholly unsuited to be president, is suffering from Trump derangement syndrome. But then again, in the crazy inverse logic of the times in which we're living, the most common usage of this phrase comes from President Trump and his allies themselves, who believe that we journalistic enemies of the people and our ideological fellow travelers in the Democratic Party are suffering from this disease, which they define as an unhealthy obsession with what the unconventional 45th president of the United States actually says and does. Still, it's fair to say this. Donald Trump is in our heads, all of our heads, pretty much all of the time. I'm told that even in Australia, coverage of President Trump outranks coverage of Australian politics and by a lot. So I'm sorry about that. I'm old enough to remember back in the day in Washington. As policy wonks, we used to pour over congressional hearing transcripts, meet secret sources to find out about that latest controversial Afghanistan policy review. Yeah, not so much anymore. Now we read the presidential Twitter feed while still in our pajamas and refer back to his seminal 1990 interview with Playboy magazine. A sacred text I should point out guiding us to his foreign policy beliefs. Now you may think I'm joking about that, but actually seriously, did you know that Trump was complaining about being ripped off so badly by our so-called allies even back then? Germany, Japan, NATO, watch out. During the 2016 campaign, when I was the editor of Politico, I did in fact coin the term Trumpology, as Michael referred to it, to cover the formally obscure study of this eccentric New York billionaire. At the time, I more or less thought it was a joke. Boy, was I wrong. Sorry about that. So we're all Trumpologists now. I thought I'd share a few insights with you this evening, glean from my last two years of intensive, if unintentional, Trumpology. Point number one actually comes from that Playboy interview, among other sources. Biography is destiny with Donald Trump. And everything you need to know about him, OK, well, maybe almost everything, you could have learned in 1990. Trump, as one of his many biographers, Gwenda Blair put it on the eve of his inauguration, is the same old Trump. Study his business lies and failures, his fantastical claims, his multiple bankruptcies, the way he became famous for saying you're fired while actually preferring to have others do the task for him. Well, I could go on. Suffice it to say that the Donald Trump who has gotten inside all of our heads is the same Donald Trump he's always been. Don't expect him to change. He won't. Donald Trump is a temperamental, insecure, narcissistic 72-year-old man. He's addicted to watching television, eating cheeseburgers, and insulting people who dare to challenge him. He's not going to suddenly up and reform himself. I remember once meeting Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor who ran against him, then became a Trump confidant. In my view, actually, Christie is one of the more reliable of the Trumpologists. He was backstage in one of the television green rooms listening to us fellow pundits theorize about Trump's latest wacky moves. He interrupted us, no, no, you don't understand. There is no Machiavellian grand plan. There is no strategy. With Trump, there never is. That said, Trump is, of course, also now the president of the United States and studying obscure episodes of The Apprentice or scouring back issues of Playboy Magazine can only get you so far when you're trying to figure out whether a nuclear deal looms with North Korea or just what to expect from the next round of trade negotiations. Although I should point out that this is clearly actually a pretty reliable God. In fact, I was recently told on Good Authority that reading the Playboy interview and watching old episodes of The Apprentice is exactly what German Chancellor Angela Merkel did to prepare for her first meeting with Trump. That's actually true, although it's also true that the meeting did not go very well. So sorry about that. At any rate, here's a few additional corollaries for Trumpologists seeking to navigate Trump's presidency. This first one, I think, is the most important of my observations for the last few years. And I really, I can't emphasize it enough that Trump presidency is not a reality show. It's reality. It is real. Yes, it's true. Trump is a showman. He's a hugster, a manipulator, at times even a communications genius. He's both the star and the director of his own drama. But the thing I've learned that is the most important and most counterintuitive in a way is that Trump expects and relies upon us not taking him seriously. And yet in the end, in doing so, I believe the joke is really on us. By treating Trump as merely the cartoonish producer of a political reality show, we risk turning a great democracy into a passive audience. For nearly two years now, many of Trump's enablers have told us essentially to never mind. The adults are in the room. It's all just a big joke. It's a joke that Trump has with his base and even them are in on it. They're not really taken in by it. Forget the tweets, pay attention to the policy. Everything's gonna be okay. Don't take him seriously. Don't take him literally. Well, my advice is, don't listen to those who are peddling such advice. You should take him seriously and literally too. Donald Trump's tweets and words have often proven to be a sure guide to his actions than heeding what his advisors tell us. Trump famously doesn't listen to them. Why should we? But no, seriously, think of the long list of very significant actions that have followed Trump's frequently dismissed words, pulling out of the Paris climate accords, blowing up the Iran nuclear deal, launching a trade war with China. Many U.S. allies wasted the better part of Trump's first year in office believing he would never follow through on the rhetoric. They were wrong. The president's tweets don't define policy. No less an authority than the U.S. Secretary of State told us at one point earlier this year. Well, a month later Rex Tillerson was fired. By tweet, no less. So if nothing else, it proved that Trump's Twitter feed dictated his policy toward the Secretary of State. These days, I often hear from those involved with America's policy toward Russia, for example, that everything is going just fine, that America actually has a tougher policy toward Putin's territorial aggression than President Obama did. Look, they argue. Look at the positioning of more U.S. and allied troops in Eastern Europe. Armed sales to Ukraine. Continued imposition of sanctions against Russia. Now look, they're not wrong. America these days may well have a tougher policy toward Russia. But Donald Trump doesn't have a tougher policy toward Russia. Those very same reassurers stutter and look away when asked about Trump's sycophantic Helsinki press conference with Vladimir Putin or about his denial of Russian meddling in our 2016 elections or when reminded that the U.S. sanctions they so proudly cite remain in place only because of a 98 to two vote in the United States Senate on a bill that Trump wanted to veto. So as a journalist, I'd say, beware of any analysis of the President of the United States which requires you to ignore the actual President of the United States. And this goes to another important point I'd like to make this evening. Trump has now been President for nearly two years. There is a reality being created to accompany Trump's words and rhetoric. He may not have built an actual wall yet. And of course, I should say as an aside, he never will. Guess what? Mexico is not gonna pay for it. It's not gonna happen. But then again, look at Trump's administration and his policy toward immigration. He's changed it in a dramatic way that is very much in keeping with his inflammatory rhetoric. And by all accounts, this is Trump himself constantly pushing his staff to do even more in this direction. No other President of the United States would have separated thousands, thousands of small children from their families, penned them up in cages, lied about it, sort of ripped up the policy after a public outcry and then went ahead and campaigned anyways on how tough he was on immigration after all. This is not a show. This is actually happening in the United States of America. This leads to my next piece of Trumpology. The paradox of this most paradoxical President. Much of what he does is shocking, but very little of it is surprising. He is oddly predictable in his unpredictability. Think about it. A fake invasion of the United States at its southern border and a military deployment of thousands of American soldiers to combat the fake invasion over the apparent objection of the military itself. Right before an election. It's shocking, no? A war of words between the President and the Chief Justice of the United States. Also shocking. Publicly dumping on his own intelligence services when they produce a conclusion that he doesn't agree with. Shocking. Demanding that the Justice Department investigate his rivals and appointing an acting Attorney General whose very presence in the job is very likely both A, unconstitutional and B, designed explicitly to shut down or otherwise hinder an investigation of the President himself. Shocking. And that's just this week. But none of it is surprising, is it? No, it's not. It's all very Trump. Which I think leads to one of the biggest dilemmas of the Trump era for us spectators and participants alike. How to preserve the sense of outrage where it is warranted, when there is so very much happening that is shocking. The confusion, the chaos, it all seems to be very much part of Trump's design. The historian Doug Brinkley recently said that President Trump is like a bull in a china shop who carries the china shop with him. George Conway, a conservative lawyer who has become an outspoken critic of President Trump's despite the fact that his wife Kellyanne Conway was Trump's campaign manager and his now his White House counselor. Yeah, I wonder about that Thanksgiving dinner, huh? Uh, George Conway recently gave an interview in which he memorably described the Trump presidency as a, forgive me Theo, a shit show in a dumpster fire. I'm not sure about the exact metaphor in this case, but you get the point. Trump is the only politician any of us has ever seen who seeks to distract us from one disaster by creating a new one. And this now seems to happen some days multiple times a day. So there's an awful lot of journalistic soul searching to be done, and that is being done on this point. If Trump is seeking to distract us, do we merely play into his hands by readily getting outraged by whatever new outrage he's tuned up for us? So many scandals, so little time. In the weeks before the midterm elections, Trump turned the issue of the migrant caravan into a front page story. He called it, quote, an assault on our country. Fox News endlessly and breathlessly talked about it as if America was soon to be overwhelmed by invading hordes. Even the New York Times and the Washington Post devoted endless stories to the caravan, both debunking Trump's patently ridiculous claims, but also analyzing the political results that the president was hoping to achieve by terrifying his voters into actually caring about a fake invasion. Then the election happened, and of course we know what followed. The coverage disappeared. The president was once obsessed with it, now he never mentioned it anymore. In this crazy scenario, who is the fool? The demagogue who made up an issue were those who sought to call him on it, but in doing so devoted endless hours to debating and discussing exactly the thing he wanted them to be talking about. Look, we all know the third and final corollary of Trumpology that follows from this example, but I still think it's worth repeating. The White House assault on truth with stories like the false caravan invasion is not an accidental byproduct of an unusual president. It is intentional. The flood of presidential lying is both a reflection of Trump's increasingly unbound presidency and a signal attribute of it. I'm quite sure that whatever else comes out of the Trump presidency, 20 years from now, he will certainly be remembered as the most untruthful person ever to have served as the president of the United States. And yes, I am aware that Richard Nixon was also the president of the United States. Look, we journalists are both wise to Trump's act and nonetheless complicit in it. We have figured out how to fact-check Donald Trump. Even on live television these days, the anchors rarely let a presidential untruth go unchallenged. But no matter how many Pinocchios, the Washington Post fact-checker awards to Trump's latest whopper, he keeps on lying and he keeps on doing it because in a way it's working for him. And you know, I shouldn't point out that this goes all the way back to the very first day of Trump's presidential campaign. Remember when Trump rode that escalator down Trump Tower and made that inflammatory speech about why he was running for president saying that immigrant hordes were threatening to overrun the United States, singling out Mexicans as rapists? The lesson learned by Trump from that experience was not that saying shocking, untrue, and arguably racist things about immigrants was politically dangerous, but that doing so helped him become president of the United States. At one of his rallies this fall, campaigning for Republicans in the midterm elections, he addressed this himself. He said, remember, I made that speech and I was badly criticized? Oh, it's so terrible what he said. He told the audience at his rally. Well, turned out I was 100% right. That's why I got elected. Okay, so what responsibility do we journalists have for this mess? I know that self-flagellation is a popular journalistic sport. I'm imagining that applies here in Australia as well, but it is my view, if not always a majority view among my colleagues, that it's not that we didn't cover Trump aggressively, it's not that we didn't do our jobs. I believe this was true even before the 2016 election. Look at the pile of tough books and articles about Donald Trump at all the disturbing facts that were already on the record before a single voter ever went to the polls. Do you really think people were hoodwinked into voting for Donald Trump and he turned out to be somebody that they didn't expect? Donald Trump wasn't elected because journalism failed or because we somehow hadn't let the American public know just what sort of a man he was. Trump was elected despite our coverage, not because of the lack of it, whatever its real and many inadequacies. As journalists, our religion practically is a belief in transparency, in the notion that sunlight is the very best disinfectant. But the Trump presidency is a daily reminder that our creed may not be all that we thought it was. In Trump, we have seen a moment in time when we have much transparency and no accountability. Every day, every single day, I see journalists asking themselves, what do we do now? And there are just no easy answers. A number of years ago, I have to say it now seems like the quaint and long-distant past, Peter and I were based in Moscow as reporters for the Washington Post during the first few years of Vladimir Putin's presidency. We had little idea at the time that he was bound to become the longest-serving Russian leader since Joseph Stalin. By the way, he actually claimed that title last year. But it was already increasingly clear that Russia's fragile emerging democracy was quickly turning out to be not much of a democracy at all. A decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, at this point in time in Moscow, I went to a conference at which political reforms were being discussed. And a well-known political reformer was there, Grigory Yevlinsky. He was on the panel with me, and he was asked about the future of Russian democracy under Vladimir Putin. He laughed and he declined to respond directly. He said, well, I'll tell you an old Soviet joke. It's one about an ambulance that goes to pick up a patient. At some point, the patient notices that the ambulance is headed right past the hospital. He sits up in the back of the ambulance and he says, hello, hello, where are we going? Where are we going? He asked the driver. To the morgue, answers the driver. The outraged patient in the back says, well, what do you mean? I'm not dead. The driver turns around and he says, well, we're not there yet. Look, at the time that Yevlinsky told that joke, the Russian patient wasn't dead yet. But we know how the story ends. The patient is dead now. Putinism has won in Russia for the foreseeable future at least. Democracy is over. The joke is no longer funny. Well, in February of 2017, just weeks into Donald Trump's tenure as President of the United States, President Trump called the press the enemies of the people. This, of course, was precisely the term that Joseph Stalin used as a death sentence to condemn millions of people to his gulags. In Russian, the phrase is vrag naroda. A flood of criticism greeted Donald Trump's use of the phrase, which is exactly why he has used the term again and again and again ever since. He wants us journalists to be the opposition party, the resistance, the enemies. Just last week, after going to court to remove a CNN journalist from his White House press room, an unrepentant Trump tweeted that the press is, in fact, quote, the true enemy of the people. Now, you could say that the American system worked, that our democracy is strong, that our checks and balances are still in place two years into the Trump presidency. You could point out that the judge, a Trump appointee no less, stopped President Trump from going through with his plan. Or you could worry, as I do. At the time, when I was laughing about the joke about the ambulance driver and democracy, it never occurred to me that when I heard it in the future, the country I would think of was not Russia, but the United States. So I know I'm in trouble for ending on a down note, but luckily, in our conversation with Michael and Peter, my husband will offer his usual dose of optimism. But for now, I wanna thank you for bearing with me. Susan, thank you for a really terrific and compelling lecture. And now let me welcome Susan's husband, Peter Baker, I should say, to the stage for a conversation with the three of us. Ladies and gentlemen, Peter Baker is the Chief White House Correspondent for the New York Times, responsible for covering President Trump, his fourth president. He covered President Obama for the Times and Bill Clinton and George W. Bush for the Washington Post. Peter has won all three major awards devoted to the White House reporting, the Gerald Ford Prize for Distinguished Coverage of the Presidency, the Aldo Beckman Memorial Award and the Merriman-Smith Memorial Award. He's the author or co-author of five books, including most recently, Impeachment and American History. I always think it's good when writing a history book to choose a topic that may have future relevance. So welcome, Peter. Thank you very much. Let me start with a question for both of you, if I may. My wife, Gillian and I, often feel that we spend far too much of our marriage talking about Donald Trump. And no doubt a lot of journalists in this room feel the same way, but you guys have taken it to a completely different level. How do you manage it? Can you leave Donald at the front door or is he like sort of Voldemort in your marriage? He who must not be named, you never mention him over the dinner table or does he creep in? How do you preserve some sort of distinction between work and home life? That's a great question. He lives up in the attic and he comes down at mealtimes. We probably should probably have some boundaries. We haven't discussed that yet. He does sort of show up at almost every conversation. I think of Teddy Roosevelt, his daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, once said about Teddy that he wants to be the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral. And I think that actually fits Donald Trump too and he's the topic of every conversation. Well, you know, since you asked, I guess I'll let you in on a family secret because it really does bother me a lot. Peter has a great White House team at the New York Times and there's a large number of them. All of the news organizations in the US have had to significantly beef up their coverage at the White House just because of the sheer volume of the news. And as you know, he starts tweeting very early every day and ends tweeting very late every night. Well, Peter has unfortunately a terrible habit that I really wish that he would stop. But I understand the press of the job, but he has set his phone so that every single time Donald Trump tweets, and I'm talking about like six o'clock in the morning, that thing buzzes. So you know what, you don't even need an alarm because this thing, I am woken up every day by Donald Trump. And you know, what do you do in this situation? You roll over and you say, what did he say? What did he say? You know, why, you thought I was joking when I said we were so delighted to come and visit you here in Australia and get out of the news cycle. I was not kidding. Peter, tell us, I was asking at dinner, I was asking Susan and she said she hasn't had that much face to face time with the president but you have and I recall you were involved in one of his very important early interviews. So what were your experiences here? What was that experience like? What was he like? What's he like as a human being? Some people say he's sort of, I don't know if more normal is the right way to describe it, but more affable and what was he like? What was the experience like of interviewing President Trump? No, that's a great question. So we went in to see him and it was July of last year and we had a long list of questions we wanted to ask. And well, first of all, he is not as confrontational with you in person as he is in a larger setting or on Twitter in particular. He is, some people find it charming in private. He was definitely friendly with us. He didn't call us the enemy of the people to our face. He didn't talk about the failing New York Times to our face. By the way, we're failing upwards, I wanna say. Damien is here. We had this fabulous operation now in Australia. If you're not already a subscriber, this is the advertisement part of the evening. If you're not already a subscriber to Damien's fabulous newsletter from Australia, please sign up immediately. Hi, Damien, directly. He's got a fantastic team here. But yeah, he's much more relaxed and charming and less confrontational. But interviewing him is different than any other interview I've ever done. When you go in to interview a president, your goal is to get him off his talking points. And I say him, but eventually it's gonna be her. You get him off his talking points because he's gonna tell you the same stuff he says to everybody all the time and that's not going to be news. Obama was particularly tough this way. He would go for 13 minutes on the first question of your 15 minute interview and you're like, try to interrupt it, don't interrupt me. He didn't like to be interrupted at all and you've got nothing out of it because he's still clearing his throat. Trump, by comparison, he's all over the map. He's gonna start talking. He doesn't mind if you interrupt him, which actually as a journalist is kind of interesting. It's hard to pin him down to a particular question. I went into this interview with three, I tried three times on the same question to try to get him to really focus on it. He tends to wander off in some other direction that seems completely unrelated to the first direction and your normal instinct is a journalist to kind of get him back to the first part but then he's over here someplace saying something interesting too. So I'm trying to get him to talk about the Trump Tower meeting but over here he's talking about firing as attorney general and I'm like okay, well that's kind of important too. So maybe we should focus on this for a little while. Go with it. So you kind of go with that, right? And I walked out of the interview and I thought to myself, every other presidential interview I've walked out of, I've asked my colleagues I've gone in with, okay, what's the lead out of that? And it's almost always a despair, right? What can we possibly call news out of this milk-to-hash-of-dogs breakfast? With Trump you walk out of there, oh my gosh, what's the lead out of that? Because he's giving you eight or 10 different things that would be massive news on any other day. So he's a news generator. I'm talking too long but real quickly the other story I would tell is this enemy's the people stick. So people ask all the time, is it stick, is it real? And I think it's both. I think he has genuine grievances about the press. He's genuinely upset at us at times. He doesn't understand why we're so mean to him. He doesn't understand that we don't love him. He doesn't understand why we don't call him. We don't publish headlines like they did when he was in New York that say best sex ever, right? That was the headline on one of his favorite newspaper articles. We don't do that, especially the New York Times. So we were at a rally once. You go to a rally of his and he's sitting there railing about the fake news press and gets the audience all ginned up and they turn around and start shouting at you and yelling at you and you're like, this is kind of unpleasant. You get back on Air Force One and he comes back to the end of the back of the plane. Hey, how's everybody going? Everybody having fun time? Is everybody good? He's like a hotelier, right? He's checking on him to make sure everybody's got a good time. Well, you're kind of tough on a server back there at that rally. Oh, that was nothing. I could have been much harder. So part of it is real and part of it is shtick and there is this kind of dichotomy with him. Let me ask you another question, Peter, about the New York Times. Susan said in her lecture that the media is wise to Trump, the Trump Act, and at the same time, complicit in it. So let me ask you about the New York Times coverage of the 2016 election campaign. Yeah, she had me in mind specifically. Yeah. Well, how do you feel about- I believe the phrase is normalizing. Yeah. How do you feel about that coverage now when you look back on it? Now, one of the criticisms that has been made is that in your effort to be even-handed, you lavished an enormous amount of attention on the Hillary E-mail story, which was a story for sure, but it may not have been the same world-historic story that compared to some of Mr. Trump's ills or, indeed, of the same sort of level of importance that you gave it. So how do you feel the Times did in 2016? Yeah, that's a great question. First of all, let's say I wasn't in the country in 2016, so I was based in Jerusalem for a brief time in 2016, so I wasn't part of that. So I wasn't part of the conversations, and I don't say that just to escape responsibility, although that's a nice thing. But I also didn't play a role, so I can't tell you what the thinking was. I would say overall that the e-mail story was an important story. She was being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. How many times we had a presidential candidate, a nominee of her party who was under investigation for a crime during a campaign? That's something we're gonna have to cover. I realize that a lot of people are still mad at us about that. We didn't create that. That was a situation she created. And it went to a larger thing than simply did she use the wrong e-mail server? It went to a larger discomfort that a lot of Americans had with Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton about their following the rules or not following the rules, not thinking the rules apply to them as case may be. I would say at the same time we wrote an extraordinary number of stories about President Trump's various records that including this history with women, including his business dealings, including fraud at the Trump University, which he ended up paying $25 million to settle right after the election. We had an extraordinary number of investigative pieces about Trump so that if you went to the ballot box on election day, as Susan said, I think this is where we actually agree. We sometimes have different points of view. But we already agree is I think you could not have walked into that ballot box not knowing something fundamental about Donald Trump. You went in there knowing what you knew and you made a decision. You made a decision that was more important to have a disruptor. And if the other things don't bother you as much that was true for many Americans. But I feel like are the things we could have done better? Yes, are there specific stories that we would like to take back? I'm sure. But broadly speaking, I think that our biggest problem in the 2016 election was not understanding what the country was and maybe not fully reflecting to our readers what was about to happen. Susan, what do you think about how the media went in the 2016 campaign? Well, I mean, look, as I said in the lecture earlier, I do think that this specific obsession people have in particular with the times coverage of the emails is a bit misplaced. I bet if you could go back and do a study of New York Times readers and their votes in 2016, it was probably the highest percentage ever in the history of New York Times readers who voted not for Donald Trump and for Hillary Clinton, not withstanding the coverage of her emails. So I think that's a little bit of a red herring. I do think that Trump benefited in many ways from the expectation that it simply wasn't possible for him to be elected. And that's where more real scrutiny, I think, is warranted and not only did he benefit from that expectation, but it clearly shaped people's actual decisions about whether to go to the ballot box or whom they would vote for in a way that had an impact. I also think that the coverage of the hacking in 2016 of Russia's intervention in the US political process and the Obama administration's handling of it is something that we probably haven't given as much retrospective attention to. And in fact, the Clinton campaign was really screaming and shouting about this. And I have to say, and I was editing Politico at the time, we didn't take it that seriously, which is not to say that we didn't understand something significant had occurred, but again, because we didn't think of it in the frame of this is actually going to affect the outcome in any way or that it's really part of the process, even though we all went to the Democratic Convention where the actual chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, was literally forced out of her position in the middle of, on the eve of the convention, as a result of this hacking. Obama, it seems to me, really mishandled this. There was information starting from the summer of 2016 that came to the US intelligence community. They came even to the US State Department and through other sources from the now famous Christopher Steele and others. This FBI investigation and BenoistOS was already launched. I think Obama really made a big mistake in how he handled it and I think we could have done a better job and I will say, although I've always defended the Times coverage in the aggregate, the New York Times story that said on the front page in October 2016 that the government essentially was not looking into anything involving Donald Trump and Russia, that wasn't right, that was a big mistake and I think it helped to influence the overall atmosphere in which this thing has occurred. But my question is really much more about going forward. I think we have all pretty much autopsied 2016 and by the way, I also, for what it's worth, you've heard an awful lot about the angry white men who drove Trump into office and who are his political base. But you know what, we didn't miss that. Donald Trump won the Republican presidential nomination by defeating 17 other candidates. The entire substance of the coverage essentially of how Trump did that was to write endless stories about the angry white male base that drove him on to this remarkable victory. I think in terms of the political journalism, what I think we missed at Politico and elsewhere was actually the story of the Democrats and the continued concerns and the disaffected base that ultimately ended up producing lower than expected turnout. And also the Clinton campaign's mismanagement of some crucial states that in the end made the difference. Only 70,000 votes determined this election, 10,000 votes determined the outcome in Michigan, 10,000 votes. I recently listened, Peter was with me to the former Democratic governor of Michigan, Jim Blanchard, give us chapter inverse on how losing that 10,000 votes was not necessary and in fact was political malpractice. So you know, I don't think we covered that. We could have done better. Let me move forward. Just in the last week or two, the president of the United States has basically given a free pass to a foreign potentate who we believe killed and dismembered a columnist for a major US newspaper. Susan, what does that do to America's reputation in the world, but even more importantly, perhaps what does it do to the daily debate between autocrats and dissidents around the world? Well, you know, I think that this Saudi case will be remembered for that in particular as probably the most painful example so far of one of the more disheartening aspects of this presidency, which is his affinity for the world's autocrats, dictators, strong men, you know, this is something that we've just simply never had in a president. We've had a long-term alliance, of course, with Saudi Arabia. There's no question that many presidents, not just Donald Trump, might have responded from a policy point of view in a similar way, but no one, no one I can think of, not a Republican, not a Democrat, would have ever used the language out loud that Donald Trump has used with regard not only to the Saudis, but to Xi Jinping, to Vladimir Putin, to Erdogan. This is something that is simply, I think, gonna be one of the longer-lasting Trump effects, if you will. It essentially undercuts the very idea of American exceptionalism or Western exceptionalism in the world. And to me, that means that it basically eliminates the rationale for our foreign policy. It's really, it's something that, you talk about the intangible power of words in this world. This is one where we, as journalists, might be rooting for these words not having the effect that I fear that they're having. Let me ask one final question to each of you, and that is this, the Trump presidency, ultimately, like everything in life, the Trump presidency will pass. But how do you think it will pass? Peter, is your book going to come back and sort of make you into an op-ed columnist in the next couple of years? How likely is impeachment for the president? Or in fact, on the contrary, do you think it's more likely, for example, that he'll win reelection and in fact serve a full eight years which probably would be transformative for your country and its place in the world? Let me start with you, Peter. Yeah, that's a great question. I think we just happened to write the impeachment book. It's a complete coincidence. It has nothing to do with anything. It's a history of impeachment in the sense of how the clause came to be in the Constitution and the three times it's been practiced in American history which is Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton. I wrote the Bill Clinton part. Does that mean that Donald Trump is going to be impeached? No, it does not. Does that mean he's not going to be impeached? We don't know. I mean, the truth is, it will depend largely on what Robert Mueller tells us if in fact he's allowed to tell us. And at the moment, the Democratic leaders do not want to go down the road of impeachment because they see that as a political loser. They're not going to get two thirds of the vote to convict in the Senate under the current circumstances. Under our system, the impeachment is the vote in the House which is basically an indictment. The Senate votes on trial. The conviction has to be two thirds of the vote. We cannot get any scenario right now we can imagine in which that many Republicans would side with removing from office absent new information. So that being the case, Democratic leaders don't want to do it. The problem for the Democratic leaders is much that their party does want to do it. The exit polls on election day this last couple weeks showed that something about 80% of Democrats are in favor of impeaching President Trump. And you've got people like Tom Steyer who's this California billionaire paying tens of millions of dollars for TV ads and petition drives saying impeach Trump, impeach Trump. He may even run for president himself. So there's this great conundrum in the Democratic Party about what to do about this. Is this a good idea or not? And it's gonna tear at the fabric of that party. Now, if Robert Mueller comes out and tells us something genuinely surprising, genuinely shocking to the system that may change the dynamics. But the thing that strikes me is a lot of things we already know would have been shocking or surprising under different circumstances or in a different presidency and have not changed that dynamic. Firing the FBI director, paying hush money to women to impossible violation of campaign finance laws. You know, not forgetting the Russia thing even if we don't discover anything new about that. Cheating on us taxes is documented by our reporters through an 18 month investigation. There are so many issues that could be raised and yet the body politic does not at this moment support the removal of that president. What would change that? I don't know. What do you think, Susan? How do you think the Trump presidency will pass? You know, it reminds me of the question that David Petraeus asked at the very beginning of the Iraq invasion. He said, tell me how this ends. Of course, it's still not over. Look, we don't know what we don't know. And I would say on some level and beware pundits analyzing an investigation whose results are not yet known. It's sort of driven me crazy, you know, ever since the beginning of the Mueller investigation. You know, we're constantly on TV and I'm as guilty of it as the next person. Analyzing an investigation where we basically have seen only the modest tip of the iceberg and even that is pretty darn shocking. I would say that, you know, public opinion which Peter cites, which is crucial in the end toward accepting at any decision around impeachment is a lagging and not a leading indicator. If you go back and read the history of Watergate and Richard Nixon, which I suggest you do, it's very fascinating and in hindsight it seems a lot clearer than it did at the moment in time. And, you know, for me, one thing that stuck out in revisiting this was that even as slam dunk of a case against Richard Nixon as we all remember it to have been 48 hours before the House Judiciary Committee voted to impeach Richard Nixon, Republican members of the committee were telling journalists, we're not sure how we're gonna vote. It's still really up in the air. In our collective memory, you had those Republican leaders going up to Capitol Hill and telling President Nixon, the jig is up, you're done for it, it's time for you to resign for the good of the country. That's not really how it happened. And so I would say Republican support for President Trump is a lagging and not a leading indicator. Does that mean they're suddenly gonna throw up their hands and abandon him all at once? I mean, in the fantasy movie version ending of this, maybe, in many ways, I think one of the big stories of the last couple of years has been quite the opposite, has been the speed and rapidity with which Trump has managed to really take over a hostile takeover of the Republican Party. So it's very, very unlikely, as Peter said, for all the reasons that he said it, but I would still say that I wouldn't totally count it out. So maybe that's the optimistic note that I failed to achieve in my address this evening. Ladies and gentlemen, we've been very fortunate in the past week to have two such fine analysts of President Trump and two such terrific reporters with us. We had a third Theo who is almost, I can tell you he's almost as knowledgeable in American politics as his parents and, in fact, could have joined us on the panel today, but it's really been a pleasure to have all three of you with us. So please join me in thanking Susan and Peter. Thank you very much. We're now gonna have dessert, ladies and gentlemen, and in about 15 or 20 minutes, we'll come back for the business end of the proceedings, the awarding of the 2018 Media Award. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, each year to decide this very prestigious and lucrative award, we assemble a distinguished judging panel. And this year's panel comprise journalist and author Cynthia Bannum, journalist and communications executive Amanda Buckley, former commissioner of the Australian Federal Police, Mick Kilty, Lowy Institute board member Mark Ryan and me. And I'd like to thank all my fellow judges and thanks to Mick and Mark for being here this evening. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the sixth year of the Media Award and we have had so far a formidable roll call of winners. In 2013, John Gano of Fairfax took out the inaugural award for his reporting from China. 2014 was Hayden Cooper of the ABC for his foreign correspondent report on Peter Gresta. In 2015, the winner was Paul Maley of the Australian who's here with us this evening for his excellent reporting on foreign fighters. In 2016, Fairfax's Jewel Topsfield won for her reporting on life in Indonesia under President Jacoey as well as the highs and lows of the bilateral relationship. And last year, the ABC's Matt Brown, who's also with us again tonight, won for his coverage of the Middle East. This year, the judges, as always, considered a very wide range of candidates from all sorts of media, from podcasts to video to radio to print and others. And the judges selected six finalists for the 2018 award. Joe Chandler for her article in the monthly P&G's resource curse. Michael Bachelard and the Fairfax team including Kate Gerrity, Felicity Lewis, Nick Miller, Lindsay Murdoch, Kirsty Needham and David Rowe for their series of articles on China's Belt and Road Initiative. Nick McKenzie for his reporting on Chinese influence in Australian politics. Cameron Stewart from the Oz for his reporting from Washington on the Trump administration. Mark Willissey for his foreign correspondent story, The Dome and Evan Williams for his SBS Dateline report, Me and Mars Killing Fields. And we've put together a short video to give you a sense of the fine work of these finalists and the impression their stories left on the judges. I think the low e-media award is important more so than ever because it's really the only major media award that's given for foreign reporting in Australia now. We understand the commercial pressures that are placed on news organisations. Many of them have had to cut back on their commitment to covering international affairs. And so I think if we can in our small way reinforce the importance of international reporting by Australians for Australia, I think then we've done a good thing, albeit a small thing, to encourage that kind of reporting into the future. Each year we only make one award and that's a real challenge. We usually consider five or six entries, make it through to the short list and we debate at length the merits of each of those five or six articles or stories or broadcasts or podcasts. And each of them, because they've made it to the short list, are obviously of the highest quality. I think one of the threshold questions we had to answer this year was, do we look at international journalism per se on an international story or do we look at journalism on an international event that might impact on Australia domestically? So that was a bit of a threshold question that we had to, I think, answer ourselves before we could judge the nominations. With the increased instability and very fast moving international landscape, we need good journalists as never before. And I think particularly at times where we have the United States president belting up the media day after day, blaming the media, we have to actually stand up to that and show that Western democracy values good media, even though it can be a nuisance at times, even though it's something government doesn't like to do, with holding that mirror up to the political process, the international process, is essential and particularly at times like this. In a world that's dominated by, say, US politics, Chinese politics, Russian politics, Brexit, and then, more importantly, in our own backyard in what's happening in Indonesia, what's happening in Papua New Guinea, what's happening in the Solomon's, what's happening in Fiji even. These are really important issues to be brought back with a level of objectiveness and trifle-ness that we might not otherwise get. I guess the core component of these stories was looking at the Chinese government interference or influence operations in respect of Australian politics, but more pointedly in respect of Senator Sam Dastyari. So what we did was expose a real-life example of the Chinese government interference or influence operation working, where Senator was, at one point, repeating the Chinese government talking points on an important foreign policy issue that is the South China Sea, and on another occasion, actually tipping off a suspected United Front or Chinese government influence operations member that his phones may be being tapped by Australian or Western intelligence agencies. Obviously, the role of the Chinese government and China in the world and in our region is vitally important. Understanding that role is vitally important for the Australian public and for our politicians. So our story was important because it showed the Chinese government's interference or influence operations, the way the Chinese government was trying to interfere with the domestic politics of Australia. It was also interesting, I guess, to see the Chinese government's response to these stories, the campaign of repeated denial and feigned ignorance, trying to undermine our reporting work, which I think ultimately failed. Covering the United States at this point in its history is absolutely fascinating. It's one of the most polarized countries at the moment, certainly much more polarized than it was 20 years ago when I was the New York correspondent. Donald Trump is such an unusual president. He's just very maverick. He's so unconventional. And I think there's probably a little bit of misunderstanding about Trump in Australia in the sense that there's a lot more shades of gray involving Trump and the administration and the way that they go about governing. And so I think it's really important to try and give Australians context for Australia at this moment in its history. It's very much caught between the rising China and the United States. And the United States has rarely had, if ever, had a president as unique as Donald Trump. And so I think it's important that Australians really understand this president, his administration, and what he is trying to do, the changes he's trying to bring about in America and overseas, internationally. And so anything that any small part I can do to contribute to a greater understanding in Australia of those issues, I think, is important. Myanmar's Killing Fields is a one-hour investigative documentary which is originally based on our unique access to hundreds of videos that have been filmed by a secret network of Muslim Rohingya citizens who filmed the run-up to the violence that was launched against their community by the Myanmar military in August 2017, all the way through the actual attacks on the villages and in subsequent attacks in months after that as well. What's really important about this is that we tried to get together a real picture of what had happened in August and September 2017 when the military swept through more than 350 Muslim Rohingya villages in Myanmar, how they launched attacks against men, women and children and then basically tried to drive 700 or did in fact drive 700,000 people from Myanmar into neighbouring Bangladesh. In terms of why this is important for international politics, we felt it was our job to do our best to try and really prove and pull together what actually happened. We felt this was important because the Myanmar military and the civilian government were denying that there had been any military campaign against civilians at all. And in fact, they kept on saying that this was simply a clearance operation targeting militant Rohingya terrorists. We're in the region. We need to better understand the Asia Pacific. We need to understand the political and social and religious dynamics that are driving some of the forces in the region today, I think. And I felt like it's our job to try and bring that to the Australian audiences. I mean, for example, the rise of Buddhist nationalism in Burma and places like Sri Lanka. I mean, it could lead to further Islamist extremism. So this piece is about ExxonMobil's PNG LNG project up in the Highlands of New Guinea. And it in many ways felt like the end of a 10-year journey for me in that the first story I ever did in Papua New Guinea, the first of several stories I did up there on one trip in 2007, was around the beginning of this project. Those stories come back and they go before people who have a vote and they have decisions, powerful ones about where they invest their money. And I would hope that if these stories resonate with them and they have some connection to the lives and the people that are really very, very close to us, that some element of that story might stick and that that might inform the way they progress in terms of their votes and their investments and their demands of politicians and bureaucrats around the way that we manage our relationships in this part of the world. I'm proud that we got a story out and I hope that it's got a fair amount of truth in it. But it's not my story. So that is really very challenging to get past so many of so much of my own baggage to be able to tell it. The dome is basically about how climate change is impacting the Pacific, in particular the Marshall Islands, and how that country's nuclear legacy is colliding head-on with that climate change, particularly rising sea levels. It's also a story about the impact on people in the Pacific and also the thousands of American servicemen who were tasked with going to the Marshall Islands to dispose of the nuclear waste left over from dozens of atomic tests. I think the thing about this story is it involves a part of the world that we really should focus on more, and that's the Pacific we're seeing these countries affected at the front line of climate change, particularly sea level rises. So from that perspective, what we're seeing in the Pacific and with this story is what we could all be facing in the decades to come. The Pacific is a place to which we are tied. It's a place to which we have a long history with. But it's also a place, I think, as media organisations, we need to show that we care about a little bit more and we need to spend a little bit more time looking at it. To get to an atoll in the far-flung western outreaches of the Marshall Islands, which is a massive place, did take a little bit of time, a little bit of effort. The hiring of charter flights, using decades-old former Nepalese planes of varying degrees of quality. Obviously, a lot of people in this part of the world don't necessarily have mobile phone coverage. So it did take two years of planning, of research, and then of execution and filming and editing and producing to get this over the line. The work we've been nominated for, and it's a large group of people, which I coordinated and helped write, was a project looking into China's Belt and Road Initiative. The Belt and Road Initiative is a trillion dollar, at least, spending plan by the Chinese government, mainly through loans to countries that don't necessarily have much of a credit rating, to build infrastructure. The infrastructure go is ports, roads, rail, it's pipelines, it's industrial parks, it's fibre optic cable. And while it was once true that all roads leads to Rome, in this case, all roads lead to Beijing. I think this work is important because there's really, there's no bigger project, historically, than China's Belt and Road Initiative, and it's a symbol and a very real kind of actualisation of China's increasing power, of its increasing assertiveness, and its increasing economic weight around the world. I think the question of handling China is very difficult for the Australian government because on the one hand, we've got our largest trading partner and the future of the region in China. On the other hand, we've got our traditional security partner, the United States, which is still very much holding onto power in this region. I think it's crucial for Australians to know about this because China is such a rising power in the world that to not know what their number one international policy and infrastructure and economic policy is about would be negligent of Australians not to know about and negligent of the Australian media not to try to explain in a way that people can really grapple with. It's a terrific cohort of finalists and I was particularly pleased to see the diversity of media and theme that was recognised in that list of finalists. We have a special guest this year to present the award, one of Australia's finest ever foreign correspondents, as well as an old friend and indeed a non-resident fellow of the Lowy Institute, Sean Dawny. In the last month or so, our politicians seem to have realised that the Pacific matters to Australia. Of course, if they had been paying attention to Sean over the past four decades, they wouldn't have forgotten that. Sean is beloved across the Pacific but nowhere more so than in PNG. He reported on crises in Port Moresby as well as in Boganville, volcanoes, as well as tsunamis. He captained PNG's National Rugby League side in 1976. He was kicked out of the country in 1984 and then he was given an MBE by the government in 1990. And of course, most importantly, he met his wife Pauline in Papua New Guinea and we're really delighted that both Pauline and Sean have come down from Brisbane for tonight's award. Sean also reported from the rest of the region, he went to Fiji in 2009 to look into the Bani Marama government and they kicked him out as well. In fact, Dan Flitten tells me that Sean once complained to the PNG foreign minister about the customs arrival form when he was landing in Moresby, which asked, have you ever been deported from PNG or any other country? And Sean said, it's not that I object to the question, it's just that they didn't give me enough space to fill it out. Sean has that special quality of the best foreign correspondence, the ability to remain clear eyed about a place for which he has enormous infection. No Australian has done more to educate and inform Australians about our near-neighborhood than Sean Dawny. Before I ask Sean to come to the podium, I'd like to play a short video that the ABC has prepared, showing some highlights of Sean's early years in Papua New Guinea. The various events of the coming week make it the most important since Papua New Guinea gained its independence nine years ago. The Prime Minister, Mr Samari, is anxious that Papua New Guinea make a good impression. For the Mount Hargan show, this, I suppose, approximates going again. Well, officially, Australia has shown that it is interested in the South Pacific. There are Australian missions in 10, 12 different capitals throughout the Pacific. And the Australian Foreign Affairs Department pours a fair amount of its attention into the area. But I don't think that's reflected in a community awareness. The Australian public, as a whole, knows very, very little about the South Pacific. How many Australians could name leaders in three countries in the South Pacific, and we're surrounded by them. A little broken glass and some spent cartridges are all that mark the scene of what Prime Minister Nomeu has described as a payback killing of great ferocity. The majority shareholders in the Boganville Mine, CRA and the Papua New Guinea government, have no presence at all left up here at Panguna. It's not CRA, but the BRA that's in control here. The rebels have shut down the mine by blasting these power pylons almost at will. For the Hargan show, this, I suppose, approximates. Approximates. In my opinion, it's not so much the fault of the public. It's the fault of us, journalists, we who decide what goes on and what doesn't go on. And if we're not interested in it, the public's never going to find out about it. Elrond Mashaarow's brother and 37 other Malinesians were arrested at the scene of the alleged shootout. Mashaarow's brother was allowed out to attend the funeral, but now he's back in detention with the others, awaiting trial. Sean Dauney in New Caledonia for ABC News. 14 years ago, Gough Whitlam and Sir John Kerr sat here watching the first ever raising of the Papua New Guinea flag. Two months later, Sir John sacked Gough Whitlam throwing Australia into political crisis. But the problems today facing Papua New Guinea's Prime Minister Namu are far graver than those that have ever faced Australia. And I think that there's almost on the part of journalists a cultural cringe that really what is important is what goes on north of the equator in the Northern Hemisphere, what goes on in Europe and North America. That's important. What goes on in our own area isn't being covered by the major world news agency, so maybe it's not important. These Mount Hargan troubles have come at a bad time for Papua New Guinea. The police forces stretch to the absolute limit with riot police making up a good proportion of the security forces on Bogenville. Here at the Quietta police station, the rioting is on the wall. Throughout Bogenville, court cases have been adjourned indefinitely because there are no police prosecutors and prisoners have been let out of the cells. For the Hargan show, this I suppose approximates sideshow alley and it draws on the traditional ability to throw spears. I think I might have a go. Sean, you haven't changed a bit in 40 years. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Sean Dawney to the podium to announce the 2018 Media Award winner. I suppose I should begin by saying... I don't know who put that together, but I wouldn't have chosen some of those. Look, there goes the walking stick. Look, I think it's fantastic that the Lowe Institute has these awards and as you've seen from the videos, the whole six entrants are just absolutely terrific and all of them would have been a worthy win. For God's sake. Would have been a worthy winner. Just before I go on, I would like to pay tribute to Susan and Peter. My interest in American politics began by reading The Making of the President by Theodore White in 1960 and I've been fascinated by American politics ever since and I think everyone here really enjoyed the contributions that you two made tonight. A couple of nights ago, I was awarded the Walkily Award for most distinguished contribution to journalism, which I was absolutely delighted to receive, but Peter Cave from the ABC, or used to be with the ABC, sent me a message saying, Sean, you know this award is given to those who are still around. Despite the time that others have spent working. I'd just like to say that I found all of these entries, all of these finalists, to be absolutely fantastic, but the winner of the 2018 Lowe Award is Evan Williams. So Evan, we would invite you to come up here and talk to us briefly, please. Sure, I'll keep it brief. Well, fantastic, thank you very much. This is a tremendous honour for me personally, but also for the team. Obviously, all these things are a team effort, particularly in television. I've got my short notes here just to make sure I don't forget anybody. First of all, thanks to Bernardine Lim from SBS Dateline, Jim Carroll, and Georgina Davies, the new EP there, who came into this project at a really critical moment when it was really the difference between whether we made it or not. And really, SBS Dateline's support and coming in on this really made it happen for us. And it really reinforces to me a message about public service broadcasting, something all of us love. This was really a collaboration between the three of the great public service broadcasters. It was PBS Frontline in America, Channel 4 in Britain, and SBS Dateline. This project took six months to make. We originally started with the footage we obtained from the Rohingyas who had filmed this, had risked their lives to get that original footage. We then took six months to verify independently and find people in the videos who are in the refugee camps, then cross-check their accounts and find other witnesses so we could actually put it on air, then verify that information and try and create a narrative of what actually happened. The more we dug into it, the more we thought this has to be as much as it could be a definitive account of what actually happened in Rakhine State. But we needed the commitment of these public service broadcasters to do it. And I don't think without public service broadcasting, quite frankly, I don't think it would have happened. So thank you very much to SBS for coming on board. It's a fantastic program, Dateline. I'm not just saying that to get more commissions. Well, but I am. I've changed jobs. Jim's still there though. He's great. And I also want to say that while this is a great personal honour, and I want to thank the judges and the Lowy Institute for this, it's a really tremendous honour for myself and the team. It's very important for me that we recognise the Rakhingers who, as I say, risk their lives to get that original footage. And it's not just important for them, many of whom are now languishing in the camps in Bangladesh, probably unable to return with their people to Myanmar for many, many years, if at all. It's a tremendous recognition for them. And I think also this award, importantly, strengthens those who are really at the frontline, those local journalists that us and the International Spirit work with and rely on across the world, who I think are really at the frontline of rising nationalism, rising intolerance, rising authoritarianism around the world. And I think what's happening, I've worked now recently in Myanmar, Philippines, Brazil, we could argue about the states, I'll leave that to better experts and myself, but I think they're all getting strength from each other. And often it's the local journalists who are working with us who are the ones who are fighting against that. And I'd just like this to be a recognition for them. Thank you very much. APPLAUSE I'm especially shaking hands. OK, surprise as well. Sean, do you need to be in this? Go on. It's a chance. Great. Thank you. Let me add my congratulations to Evan and the team as one of the judges, all of these six stories, and indeed others that we looked at were incredible, but this was really a transformative video to watch. And if you haven't had a chance to watch it, then I urge you to do so. And hopefully Aung San Suu Kyi will have to answer some tough questions about the situation in Rakhine State very soon. And thank you, Evan, for coming home from London for tonight. Special thanks again to Sean Dorney. Sean, you're right. Your ABC colleagues got you a good one with the video. You might have missed the target with the dart, but you hit the target with the comments that you made in the video about the importance of Australia understanding our near-neighborhood. And in fact, you hit the target repeatedly over 40 years. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me again in thanking Sean Dorney. Let me thank again Susan and Peter. Susan's outstanding lecture will be available soon on the Lowy Institute website. Congratulations again to all the other finalists. I won't mention you again by name, but we really appreciate your work. Let me ask everybody, if you don't mind, to thank again the sponsors of the 2018 Meteor Award, Rio and UBS, two excellent companies. And finally, thank you to my Lowy Institute colleagues who've worked extremely hard over the past six months. As you can see, there's a lot of thought and intelligent consideration that goes into the whole process. And I'd like to thank Sam Roggeveen, Jen Reinhart, Hailey Coombs, Milton Cockburn, Alistair Davis. And in particular, our event producer, Andrea Pollard, and our media and communications manager, Erin Bassett, who many of you know for their brilliant work. That's the end of the formalities. Please enjoy your dessert. I'm sorry to stick around for a drink. PJ O'Rourke once wrote, journalists aren't supposed to praise things. It's a violation of work rules, almost as serious as buying drinks with our own money or absolving the CIA of something. But from time to time, ladies and gentlemen, the rest of us are allowed to praise you and maybe buy you a drink as well. So ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for being here and good evening.