25 years on the Dateline

“I’ve made a living out of asking ‘Why?'” explains George Negus.

“It’s what differentiates News from Current Affairs. News asks ‘how, when, where, what, who and when.’ But Current Affairs exists entirely, I think it should anyway, on asking the question ‘Why?’

“There’s plenty of sources of information these days that will tell you what’s happening but they won’t always tell you why.”

Dateline, SBS’ flagship Current Affairs programme, has been asking “Why’ for 25 years, as the country’s longest running international Current Affairs show. This week it celebrated its success with a party for crew and past presenters. Across its lifetime, Dateline has garnered Walkley Awards (including a Gold Walkley), United Nations Media Peace awards, Logie Awards, New York Film Festival awards and more.

George Negus, who became a household name on the back of 60 Minutes, has been its presenter since 2005.

As he explains to TV Tonight, he is so committed to Dateline‘s agenda that if the show didn’t exist he would most surely invent it. He attributes its success to four key factors.

“Firstly, after its early years it became purely international in its content, which I think appeals to people and it has stuck with it ever since,” he says.

“Secondly, the Video Journalism aspect of it I think differs from other programmes, because it allows us to have an intimate style of journalism.  There are things Video Journalists can do that a normal television crew couldn’t do.

“Three, I think we’re moving with the times. The programme content now really is regarding the world as its oyster, because I think its early years, with SBS funds being what they are, were a little bit limited.

“And fourthly I guess -and I have to be careful not to big-note myself- the interviews we’ve done have been pretty special. The interviews I’ve done in the five years I’ve been with Dateline far outstrip in quality and impact of any I’ve done anywhere.”

Dateline‘s solo Video Journalists embark on stories armed with little more than a camera, and no crew. Whilst it may have emerged out of budgetary constraints, Negus says Video Journalism has not only benefitted storytelling, it is seen as a legitimate form of documentary filmmaking around the world.

“It’s very strange. We’re one of the few western countries in the world where Video Journalism hasn’t been taken on board,” he says.

“At the Newsweek conferences I went to in the early ’90s people were talking Video Journalism then. So I think it was a concurrence of things, with SBS not being as budget-rich as a lot of others. It’s nothing like 60 Minutes or even Four Corners.

“In its early years it was probably sophisticated home movies stuff and I think everybody recognised that. Now nobody would ever suggest the quality of pictures, the gathering of sound, the editing is any lower than any other programme around.”

Negus also fronts a ten minute interview piece evey week.

“It distinguishes us from Foreign Correspondent, Four Corners, 60 Minutes. Ten minutes of the programme is devoted entirely to talking to international players, not just commentators.”

He has spoken to Mikhail Gorbachev, Al Gore, Desmond Tutu, Madeleine Albright, the Dalai Lama and Benazir Bhutto.

“If I go to the Middle East I interview Shimon Peres for instance. I talked to Tony Blair earlier this year. I went to Islamabad and talked to Pervez Musharraf. I talked to George Soros in Oslo. I always go somewhere not just for the sake of it but because something’s occurring there,” he says.

“I get to travel to places that I think should be travelled to. I get to talk to people I think should be talked to and I get to work with people who really know what they’re doing.”

Negus says the culmination of Video Journalists’ youth and his experience, is one of the show’s greatest assets.

“I feed off their enthusiasm and I’d like to think they pick up the odd clue from me.”

Yet despite its industry cred, and the stellar list of former presenters including Paul Murphy, Jana Wendt (pictured with SBS News & Current Affairs exec Paul Cutler), and Mark Davis the show attracts a modest audience.

Negus acknowledges the quality of the programme is not reflected by its numbers.

“When I arrived the numbers went up –that was one of the reasons for hiring me,” he says.

“And they knew I was going to do different kinds of interviews from the ones that went before so the numbers went up. But from the moment our numbers went up five years ago we started being targeted. It’s a back-handed compliment to be honest. I’ve been around television for too long to see it as anything else.

“We got seriously targeted by the ABC on Wednesday nights. And now we’re not left to our devices either. You could keep moving Dateline and people would keep attacking it in programming terms.

Even its soft numbers are enough for others to be concerned about. But he isn’t prepared to settle with modest results.

“I’m the bane of management at SBS because I keep telling them that the network as a whole, let alone Dateline, deserves far bigger numbers than it’s got. That’s far easier said than done, but that won’t stop us from trying.”

Despite being the first host of the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent, he also sees a point of difference with the two shows.

“I don’t think we see the world in quite the same way. I think it would be wrong to try and even compare Foreign Correspondent and Dateline. They no longer have an interview to break up their programme the way we do.”

Both programmes view global issues, but while the Video Journalists can sometimes enjoy greater access, their storytelling also differs from the ABC.

“I think the programme’s become more issue oriented and the VJs fit into that,” Negus explains. “They know that rather doing a story just for the sake of it, it’s usually part of the broader issue. Whether it be asylum seeking or the droughts and famines of Africa. They now see themselves as doing a story which is a microcosm of the issue. In early years they were just interesting stories for their own sake. There’s nothing wrong with that but the programme’s matured. We now see ourselves as international issue-based, not just story based.”

Under Executive Producer Peter Charley (pictured with Negus), Dateline has observed great change in global issues, some of which even become victims of news fatigue.

“Global warming, global financial crisis, our friend Obama in the White House, the emergence of China and India, the whole fact that the Middle East conflict has not been resolved which means most people have dropped off covering it and we don’t. And there’s Africa which people ignore to a large extent, which we don’t.”

And there are the good news stories too.

“There’s lots of positive stories about climate change, for instance. Lots of people who have come out of hardships and survived war. And again that’s an indication of maturity,” he says.

“Everything in the world is not bleak. A programme that generated out of that would not be doing it’s job.”

Dateline celebrates its 25th year on air 8:30pm Sunday on SBS ONE.