Career Profile: Tony Maniaty, writer and journalist

Tony Maniaty's ManiatyMedia works with statutory authorities such as the ABC, SBS and AFTRS to improve government and media relations and strategic communications. [Photo: Courtesy, Tony Maniaty].   

Writer, lecturer and journalist Tony Maniaty has worked for the ABC, Radio Australia, Visnews (now Reuters TV), the BBC World Service and the Boston-based MonitorTV. He has covered the 1975 war in East Timor and the 1991 Gulf War, worked in Paris as SBS TV’s European correspondent, written short films, features, television dramas and documentaries and published two novels - The Children Must Dance and Smyrna, which was short-listed for the 1990 Miles Franklin Award.

His writing credits also include his boyhood memoir All Over The Shop, essays on TV war reporting and security issues, and numerous features on literary and global issues for Sydney Morning Herald, Christian Science Monitor, Liberation and Bookseller and Publisher, among others.

Maniaty has won two Australia Council Fellowships, the Marten Bequest for Literature, the National Short Story of the Year award and a literary residency at the Cité des Arts in Paris.

He has lectured at the University of Sydney, worked as Communications Director for the Australia Council for the Arts, held senior creative positions at the ABC and spoken at workshops and conferences in Europe.

On Monday 25 June, Maniaty will be speaking to Kathy Keele, the CEO of the Australia Council for the Arts, about her views on the arts and the future of the arts in Australia. To attend A Conversation with Kathy Keele, please register with Janelle Prescott (info@samag.org or 02 8250 5722 – msg only) by Thursday 21 June. Cost is $10/$5 (students) and free for 2007 SAMAG members. For more information, please visit www.samag.org.

Where does your interest in the arts come from?
Mainly Hollywood. As a kid I saw two features every Saturday afternoon at the local cinema in Brisbane, then returned on Saturday night with my parents and saw another two features. I saw over a thousand movies before my twelfth birthday.

Check out Picnic (1955) with William Holden and Kim Novak. Steamy! These narrative lessons meshed with William Shakespeare in high school and I was hooked on storytelling.

How would you describe the current state of play in the Australian arts sector?
With the proviso that there could always be more, government funding levels have improved and I think the arts generally are in good shape in Australia, much better structurally than a decade ago. That said, the incomes of artists remain diabolically low in what by any standards is a boom economy - that issue needs serious attention.

Although state and federal governments love to talk about creative industries and creative precincts, the reality is that expanded infrastructure is only a small part of what’s required. If you build it, they - the artists and the audiences - won’t automatically come.

The drawcard is always talent, and talent by its very nature demands rewards. There’s no point in offering big bucks at the top of the tree if the potential stars are jumping off the branches on the way up.

Addressing the needs of small to medium arts outfits is a healthy start. This nexus between opportunity and excellence needs far more attention. The reality is that Australia’s arts suffer because quite a lot of seriously talented people have abandoned living on peanuts and gone into far better-paid occupations.

Some say that’s their choice, but it’s still an appalling indictment of our society that some of our greatest creative artists earn one-fiftieth or even one-hundredth of what many CEOs in business earn.

What do you foresee for the arts in Australia?
Australians by their nature and background embrace the new, and I think Australia has the potential to be a world leader in new media arts, which aren’t dependent on our geography or huge populations to reach global audiences.

We’re in the midst of an enormous revolution based on new technologies that even those taking part in can see only the beginnings of, and the arts should be driven by that potential as much as medicine, business or science are. You only have to see the success of game developers in Brisbane to realise where this could lead.

On the downside, I still sense a niggling disrespect for the creative process in Australia, a feeling that the arts are an indulgence rather than a blunt necessity of life. I wonder if that attitude is too deeply buried in our national psyche to ever change.

What kinds of arts activities/performances do you yourself enjoy?
Whatever hat I’m wearing - journalist, author, critic, consultant, media lecturer - I’m essentially a storyteller, so what I’m always looking for is the narrative: stories that explain why we as humans act the way we do, what drives us to do the unexpected, stories that explore our endless unpredictability. My best moments in the theatre or cinema or in writing are these sorts of revelations, and the best revelations nearly always come out of good storytelling. A strong plot is better than real estate.

What are you reading at the moment?
Another Day of Life by Ryszard Kapuscinski, a brilliant analysis of the dying days of Portuguese rule in Angola, set in 1975. There are so many parallels to my own experience covering the war in East Timor in 1975, and the Polish-born Kapuscinski (who died earlier this year) may well have been the best “narrative war reporter” of his time.

I use that term with a degree of skepticism since I’m not sure even now, twenty years after the book was first published, whether Kapuscinski was a novelist pretending to be a reporter or a reporter using a novelist’s tricks. He was certainly a better writer than Hemingway.

Are you writing anything at the moment?
I’m working on The Savage Eye, a non-fiction book tracing the evolution of television war reporting from Vietnam to Iraq. I’m exploring the issues that drive reporters to war, that frame what they report on TV, and how the results influence not only audiences but also policy makers. So far I’ve interviewed about forty TV war correspondents, producers and news managers around the world.

What was the most memorable moment of your career?
The very beginning. As an 18-year-old kid from Brisbane, coming from an Anglo-Greek background with less-than-stellar prospects, I couldn’t quite believe that the ABC wanted to employ me as a cadet journalist. They were halcyon days - all I had by way of qualifications was a high school certificate, and not a very good one at that. I loved the news business from day one, and fortunately, it seemed to like me.

What career plans do you have for the future?
Like many people working in the arts and media, I’ve never held to a rigid career plan - when opportunities arise, I’ll weigh them up quickly and say yes or no. The resulting trajectory is erratic but leaves you wide open to more experiences and opportunities. It seems to have worked.

I move easily and comfortably between the worlds of news, international relations, film, writing, arts strategy. Earlier this year I ran a three-week course on risk reporting at the Danish School of Journalism; last week I worked on the treatment for a documentary on global warming and carbon credits trading. It’s always a mixed bag.

What advice would you give to an aspiring writer/journalist?
The four qualities you can’t do without in this business are intense curiosity about the human condition, a facility and dexterity with the language, a love of narrative structures, and a sense of humour. You need to be driven by a curiosity to know, in Billy Wilder’s wonderfully neat phrase, “what makes people do the things they do”; to write well it’s wise to follow Flaubert’s rule that “style is the lifeblood of thought”; and without an ability to laugh - at yourself and others - you’ll almost certainly have difficulty in seeing more than one point of view.

How is your conversation with Kathy Keele going to assist/benefit arts workers and managers?
My major interest is in finding the essence of what she’s about as a leader. Having worked in the management bear pit of the ABC, I don’t regard running the day-to-day operations of the Australia Council as mission impossible for a solid corporate manager. But running the arts, leading the arts in Australia, is an entirely different proposition.

It’s that side of the job that I want to hear about: where does Kathy Keele want to take the arts, what’s her five-year-plan, how does she see Australia’s creative abilities meshing with those of the wider world, how does she intend to handle the complex balancing act between creating more opportunities and promoting excellence?