Qantas Media Awards 2010 Guest Speaker

Qantas Media Awards 2010 Guest Speaker - Tony Maniaty

In 1975 Tony Maniaty was the last journalist to get out of East Timor alive.

Days later five of his colleagues, including New Zealand cameraman Gary Cunningham, were executed by invading Indonesian forces.

Another Australian journalist, freelancer Roger East, was also subsequently shot.

Two years ago Maniaty returned, as an advisor to Robert Connolly's film Balibo and to write his account of that journey, Shooting Balibo.

He will tell of those experiences as guest speaker at the Qantas Media Awards dinner in Auckland on June 11.

Those murders 35 years ago continue to resonate.

Only now has the Indonesian military broken ranks to admit the journalists from Australia's Channel 7 and Channel 9 were executed at Balibo to stop the world knowing of Indonesia's action in the former Portuguese territory, rather than killed when caught in crossfire as was always claimed.

After years of cover ups by the Indonesian, Australian, New Zealand, British and American governments, the truth is finally emerging.

The NSW Coroner has investigated the death of cameraman Brian Peters and the Australian Federal police last year launched a war crimes investigation into the deaths of the Balibo Five.

Maniaty, currently senior lecturer in international journalism at the University of Technology Sydney, has strong views on war reporting and the role of journalists.

"Journalists are witnesses to history and history tells some very cruel tales," he says.

"The reality is that war is dark and dirty work, messy and grotesque, unpredictable, emotionally challenging.

"As von Moltke, chief of the Prussian army more than 100 years ago, famously noted: 'no plan of battle lasts the first contact with the enemy'.

"Modern warfare is chaos theory in action, which makes war reporting today harder than ever."

He says despite the dangers we need journalists in war zones, at the frontline and we need strong laws to protect them.

"We also need the legal systems and the political will to apply those laws forcefully - and bring to justice those who betray their intent.

"Without journalists the battlefield would be an even uglier place - without restraint, without mercy, without even the basics of human dignity.

"They bring news of war and risk their lives to do so.

"Theirs is an honorable mission, as honorable as any solider's and they need our support."

ENDS

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