It's simple, guys, you need to get the story right and be fair

Politicians, from government and opposition, want to get their story out. The media operate as a filter to decide what, if any, of that you will see. Social media provides some competition to the monopoly they once held, but it remains the case that the media control what goes on the news.

Think about it. The PM does a doorstop interview on a drought initiative. Yes, it probably has to get a run. But the media decides who else they interview about whatever the PM has announced. The story can't take up the whole news service so the choice of who else gets reported is limited and thus important. It's never hard to find people who want more or think the money should be spent another way. Nor is it hard to find people who will be positive. The perspective is decided by a journalist or producer. The media control, largely, what you see and hear about what both the government and opposition are doing.

They are the gatekeepers and more. It makes them extraordinarily powerful. Who hasn't seen an otherwise competent person from either side of politics belittled and humiliated nationally because, on the run, they got a figure or a name or some other detail wrong?

Months and months after Scott Morrison became Prime Minister he was still doing interviews on government issues and being asked why Malcolm Turnbull was deposed. Senior journalists would say, stupidly, that the public had a right to know and they still didn't have an answer. Read: here I am, an angel of democracy trying valiantly to get you the people, the truth, from this man who clearly doesn't want to tell you.

It's a way of trying to put into your subconscious negative attitudes to the man and his party. It was always rubbish. The public are not stupid. They know when you lose the confidence of the party room you lose the leadership. Even the most junior journalist knows it as well.

Do bureaucracies try and hide their mistakes? Yes, just as most humans do. As minister, getting information about what happened to Ms Alvarez Solon (a citizen the immigration department sent back to the Philippines some years before) was a nightmare and a disgrace to the public service. Nobody, public servants, ministers or the media happily reveals their problems or disasters.

I've seen the secretary for the Attorney General's department neither blush nor blink when asked if his department's email was secure. It was breathtakingly impressive because I was the person in opposition to whom 20- or 30-something discs loaded with emails had been sent. It was a massive security breach, and not from a whistleblower, so the federal police were brought in. He and I knew how bad it was. He answered honestly, in the present tense, because the IT loophole had been fixed. Nonetheless it demonstrated to me how good the public service can be at a poker face.

I can't remember an example of a journalist willingly admitting their own error and yet they complain that politicians are always evasive. There are often good reasons for that. Ask yourself how many times you've seen interviews where a journalist tries to ambush a politician into saying what the journalist wants to hear. It's often not about anything critical. It's about getting the poor sod to say something that will allow a story to be beaten up or run for a longer time. If some journalists think political interviews are a waste of their precious six minutes I can assure you there are plenty of politicians who would share that view, but for different reasons.

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It's not just mistakes that get covered up. Decades ago former Labor attorney-general Michael Lavarch, with a bit of prodding, ended the practice of keeping the daily rates paid to legal counsel representing the commonwealth a secret because of "commercial in confidence". Sadly, I think the practice has crept back. My own view is that if a barrister works at a cheaper rate to get government work, the fact he or she doesn't want his colleagues or other customers to know his base rate is irrelevant.

That applies to journalists as well. Back in the 1980s someone asked at an estimates hearing what ABC broadcaster Geraldine Doogue's salary was. The reply that it was "commercial in confidence" started off a Senate Committee inquiry. You'd probably get the same answer now if you asked about other ABC high-profile salaries.

Risk aversion is endemic in the public service. When I was our ambassador in Rome it was suggested a cable reporting on a public lecture I had attended have a classification limiting its release. Why? Because the speaker had said some uncomplimentary things about, probably, the Italian government. The detail is not important ... the point is it was a public presentation, there was nothing confidential about it.

Transparency is a, if not the, key to good governance. More journalists would get a lot better answers if they took a leaf out of Michelle Grattan's book. Get the story right and be fair. There's a long list of those who do, and sadly also of those who don't.