'Never let the truth get in the way of a good story' said media magnet, William Randolph Hearst, but true narratives can offer some of the best storylines and are often stranger than fiction. At this month’s Walkley Media Conference, our panel discussed the power of true stories to propel the juiciest of narratives to the quirkiest of ends. Below is a summary of their comments.
Panellists: David Marr (author & journalist for The Sydney Morning Herald), Sam Strong (award-winning theatre director), David Leser (prominent Australian journalist & profiler), Anna Broinowski (multi award-winning filmmaker) and chaired by Paul Barry (author & journalist, now hosting Media Watch).
“There is just no way I could have made the character of Rose Porteous up,” said David Leser when asked about the subjects he has profiled. Anna Broinowski had a similar response, “Norma [Khouri] ticked all the boxes: insane, obsessed, something to hide. There’s no better example of stranger than fiction,” she said.
David Marr referred to the Australian Wheat Board (AWB) scandal, which became public in late 2005, as his favourite stranger-than-fiction news story. “Defrauding the UN of 300 million dollars, who could make that up?” Marr believes that faction, the combining of fact and fiction, works on the stage or screen but never on the page. “A drop of fiction in fact is like a drop of water in hot chocolate,” he said, “the whole thing is ruined.” Sam Strong agreed with Marr, speaking about the use of “massaged verbatim” in the theatre. “It’s literal translation that’s been cleaned up, restructured and supplemented,” he explained.
Chair, Paul Barry, spoke about the sleepless nights he spent worrying about the level of fairness he had given his subjects. “I’d have nightmares about meeting Kerry Packer and finding out he’s the nicest person I’ve ever met,” said Barry, who wrote The Rise and Rise of Kerry Packer.
The doubt experienced by Barry was picked up on by David Marr, who spoke of the crisis of confidence he also sometimes experiences before publishing. “What if I’ve got it completely wrong, what if it’s a delusion which I managed to find facts to sustain?” Marr made the observation that “when someone says ‘that sounds right’, what they really mean is ‘that makes sense’.” In this respect, it seems the role of narrative plays a huge part in how believable a story appears, be it truth or fiction.
David Leser admitted there were times when he felt he had been “too harsh” in his writing. Having said that, Leser does not think it is possible to be objective, describing the notion as “preposterous”. In Leser’s opinion, “being fair is far more important than trying to be 'objective'. Truth is a many layered thing,” he said. This was countered by Paul Barry with the comment that "truth is what you can defend in court.”
In concluding, Anna Broinowski returned to the question of the relationship between truth and fiction. “Fiction is obliged to stick to certain rules,” she said, "it requires the audience to suspend their belief in order to join the narrative, but if you write ‘this is true’ there is a real power in that.” David Marr agreed, saying that the power of a true story should not be squandered. “Find the true story in the material,” he said, “do not simply impose a story-shape plucked off the shelf and distort the facts.”
Ultimately, the consensus from the panel seemed to be that we shouldn't to let fiction get in the way of a good truth.
