50 Years of Four Corners: Your Stories, Our History

When Four Corners first aired in 1961, Australia had never seen anything like it. Television current affairs was nonexistent in our country until producer Bob Raymond and journalist Michael Charleton conceived a show that would sock it to the authorities, ask tough questions and cut through the rhetoric to the heart and truth of Australia’s public life. It was bad news for the pollies and crooks but a significant cause for celebration for the Australian public, signalling the birth of quality investigative TV journalism on home soil. In Bob Raymond’s words, Four Corners was to be a show “of arresting interest and excellent provocation”, a legacy that it continues to live up to half a century on.

 

With Four Corners turning 50 this year, the ABC is hosting an exhibition chronicling the highlights of five decades of the programme. There’s a lot to choose from, from Peter Reid’s exposé on the dumping of toxic waste off the coast of NSW in the 70s to Chris Masters uncovering the role of the French Government in the sinking of a Greenpeace protest ship. More recently, Sarah Ferguson outed a culture of sexual misconduct in Rugby League and the public was shocked by a frightening investigation into the cruelty and abuse rife amongst Australia’s live cattle trade to Indonesia. As well as documenting these important events, the segments themselves made and changed history.

 

From an original six-man team to a staff of 35 today, the show remains a tight operation. It’s driven by its talented researchers, skilled in probing the depths of the issues at the core of every show. Executive producer Sue Spencer told Time Out that each 45-minute story can take up to eight weeks to make. This means “continually thinking over the horizon” to predict the stories that will matter months down the track.

 

Many of the grittiest moments of Four Corners are the result of multi-skilled journalists like Ferguson and Matt Carney who plunge solo into war-torn countries and other dangerous terrain to spend weeks at a time investigating, producing and shooting their stories. “With those sorts of stories there is a real advantage in essentially living in someone’s community or with a family," Spencer says. "After a while people are completely unaware of the camera and you get a much rawer reality.”

 

For its 50th year, the show has seen the return of Kerry O’Brien after a decades-long hiatus. O’Brien first came to Four Corners in the 70s, returned in the mid 80s and now, some 37 years since his first stint as a reporter on the show, returns as presenter. “It’s a wonderful bookend to my early career,” O’Brien says. “I feel there’s a nice symmetry there for me.” O’Brien sees the longevity of Four Corners as a result of “being true to its roots” and the courage to tackle the hard issues. “We are about pushing the edges, shining the light in the corners where the light wasn’t being shone, asking informed, probing questions. And we are never afraid to meet some tough challenges.”

 

The 50th anniversary episode of Four Corners screens Mon 22 Aug on ABC1.