There’s a good reason you never hear the phrase “As patient as a journalist.” Newsrooms thrive on new information – why would an editor settle for up-to-the-minute when she can be up to the second?

Normal people check their phones every hour or so. Hardcore info junkies, maybe every few minutes. Journalists? They wear their phones inside their sunglasses so they never have to look up from the screen. This is why phone interviews almost never end with a leisurely round of “No, you hang up first.” *

Journos are taught to construct their stories using the “inverted pyramid” method, with the most important facts – the who, what, where, and when – in the first paragraph, and the finer details in the next, so each subsequent sentence decreases in importance. Kind of like putting all the ugly kids in the back row of the school photo.

TV news is especially dependent on the constant search for new information. When crossing live to a correspondent, the anchor will invariably demand “the latest” – or worse, “the very latest” – from the scene. And no amount of makeup can disguise the terror on a young cadet’s face when he’s forced to report that he has nothing to report, because he knows that satellite time costs money, plus he’s probably going to have to pay for his own petrol back from Bendigo.

TV networks treat election night broadcasts as a race, triumphantly declaring “We’re the first to call it,” often with little regard for who they’re actually calling it for. (Fox News memorably named George W. Bush the winner of the 2000 US election four days before the polls even opened.)

Reporters, researchers and producers are like newborn pandas: utterly dependent on a constant stream of information milk from the hairy teat of world events. And now we have something called “24 hour news,” which requires that something, somewhere, must always be happening LIVE, even though Twitter has scientifically proven that for the vast majority of the time, nothing is happening anywhere.

So you can imagine the scene that greeted Independent MPs Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott when, a full seventeen days after Australia’s polls closed, they finally faced Canberra’s press gallery with their long-promised announcement. A room full of news junkies who’d been forced to go cold turkey, with no new information whatsoever, for more than two weeks. They were tired to the bones. They were starved, literally, for information (metaphorically). They were anxious, they were sweaty, they were jittery, and they just wanted to borrow fifty cents for the bus home.

And then Rob Oakeshott started quoting Highlander.

In what must have seemed to the teeth-grinding journos like the longest and least sexy striptease of all time, both Tony and Rob made eloquent, reasonable, passionate speeches. Excellent speeches, really. Light and shade, some neat turns of phrase, appeals to our own better nature. But the problem for the press was, they did something that journalists never do: They deliberately withheld the most important information.

The malnourished jackals of the press pack were forced to sit quietly and wait while these two decent, intelligent, democratically-minded blokes talked at length about their delicious, meaty decision, refusing to give the salivating savages so much as a taste. Those independents knew what they were doing too. Unlike Bob “Mad As A” Katter, who’d gone off early in the fashion of a homemade firecracker, these guys dangled that tantalisingly fresh flesh in front of the howling horde with the practised ease of Steve Irwin wielding a chicken on a stick.

It’s a simple question of priorities. Rob Oakeshott MP and Tony Windsor MP wanted to impress on Australians – especially their own constituents – that this momentous, history-making decision had been made with appropriate weight, consideration and humility. And they did, with eloquence, passion and good humour. Meanwhile, every journalist in the country just wanted them to skip to the damn soundbite already.

True, they could have opened with, “Ladies and gentlemen of the press, we’re both siding with Labor, and we’ll take your questions just as soon as we’ve both spoken.” But they knew full well they’d be left speaking to a room full of journalist-shaped smoke clouds, as the callous press stampeded off to file their reports.

In the end, we all got what we wanted. Rob and Tony addressed the nation while the nation actually listened. And the media got their soundbite. Plus a hell of a great story about how long they had to wait for it.

*And ladies, if you’ve ever dated a newsman, you know they’re always ‘rushing to beat a deadline.’

 

The opinions expressed in the 7pm Side Project blog do not necessarily reflect those of the 7PM Project or the Ten Network.