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30 years of Dateline’s focus on the world

Dateline celebrates 30 years on air and recalls how budget cuts led to pioneering the video-journalist on Australian TV.

Aaron Lewis US 2013

Budget cuts are usually bad news for most television shows, but many years ago Dateline inadvertently turned a negative into a positive.

By cutting its crews to single reporters with cameras it arguably established the video-journalist in Australian television which, in turn, has opened the door to all sorts of stories that have defined the show.

Tonight the SBS show looks back on its 30 years as Australia’s longest-running foreign affairs show.

Executive Producer Peter Charley said, “The fact that we pioneered video-journalism is a key component of the programme. We were really the first people to start putting single reporters out into the field to break away from larger television packs, with 3-4 people. We became more agile and nimble in the field, and we found it was a very effective of capturing the sorts of stories that other people couldn’t get.

“It led us to all sorts of places and people.

“You can get under the skin or stories, so to speak, with new technology and small cameras.

“There were certainly budgetary drivers behind it. We were operating in the early days with the usual crews of cameramen and sound recordists, and sometimes a producer going into the fields. The sorts of things that commercial networks still do today. But we found that by downsizing and sending the reporter out with their own cameras we were able to spread the dollar further. We can cover more of the world and go to more places and benefits emerged in the types of stories we’re able to attack.

“There are stories that require intimacy, so that helped define the programme. Video journalism and the subjects helped redefine the landscape of the types of stories we were looking at.”

Amongst their 4000 assorted stories, Charley recalls a story the inside story of families fleeing North Korea.

“(There were) North Korean refugees who had crossed over the river separating it with China,” he said.

“People were hiding in the forests of north-western China. We got in amongst that community of refugees in hiding and got an extraordinary story. But we never could have done that with big television cameras and boom microphones.”

The story went on to win an award at Johns Hopkins University with Charley presented with an award by Paul Wolfowitz.

“As he handed me the award he said ‘I’m taking it to the White House because I believe the President needs to see this story,'” he recalls.

“I thought ‘Wow that’s good.’”

Tonight’s episode will also remember the world exclusive investigation, ‘Lifting the Hood’, which provided explosive revelations and interviews on the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq.

“We’re getting the story ‘behind the story’ about how we actually do them and what was involved, as well as some follow up on the people,” he said.

“It’s actually quite an interesting exercise to go back to producers and reporters to hear what was involved. There’s often some very complicated negotiations with difficult maneuverings and travel to get to some of the stories that we’ve done.”

Dateline stories are usually 20 minutes each in length and take 4-6 weeks to be completed.

“Usually we can turn stories around quicker than that. We had someone in Africa looking at the Ebola Virus recently and we managed to get that on air a couple of days after she returned to London,” said Charley.

“We engage our video journalists on an annual contract with a promise of a certain number of stories to do. So they have certainty of 7-10 stories each year.

“A team of producers in Sydney help the reporters to oversee and write the stories. So it’s a joint effort.

“We also have a team of ‘fixers’ we work with in various parts of the world. We usually go back to the same fixers, who are part of the team really. We rely heavily on fixers particularly in parts of the world where we don’t speak the language at all.”

Some of the most successful stories have managed to change government policy but some Dateline stories have also come at a price.

“It’s been made clear to us that some of our reporters are never welcome again in certain countries. We’ve been arrested by the KGB, kidnapped, detained on assignment, shot at, held at gunpoint.

“There are all sorts of war stories associated with the programme. A lot of scary ones. Fortunately we’ve never lost anyone and touch wood we never will.

“We’ve been going for three decades and there’s a very long, proud history there.”

Dateline airs 9:30pm tonight on SBS ONE.

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