"Good journalism is to present all sides of a story"
Adam Creighton is an Australian foreign correspondent based in Washington, D.C. He is an award-winning journalist with a particular interest in tax and financial policy. He was a Journalist in Residence at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business in 2019. He's written for The Economist and The Wall Street Journal from London and Washington DC and authored book chapters on superannuation for Oxford University Press. He started his career at the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority. He holds a Bachelor of Economics with First Class Honours from the University of New South Wales and a Master of Philosophy in Economics from Balliol College, Oxford, where he was a Commonwealth Scholar.
How does it feel to be an Australian foreign correspondent in the U.S.?
It feels terrific, a great honor. Being Australian in the U.S. is always fun – given how welcoming Americans are and to Australians in particular. But being able to interpret what's going on for Australians back home is a rare and exciting opportunity. It's daunting, however, being a tiny fish in the massive ocean of U.S. journalists, publishers, and broadcasters.
What changes have you experienced in your day-to-day reporting work since becoming a foreign correspondent?
Because of the time difference with Australia (14 hours ahead), I often work till much later in the evening. But on the other hand, mornings have become an oasis of calm.
I used to cover economics, which is a broad field, but covering America is even broader, of course. Sifting through the news and prioritizing stories is a much more significant part of the job. Economics and business reporters can plan ahead more easily because of regular data and reporting schedules.
Meeting and talking to people is a much more significant part of my job now, especially in the first few months as you scramble to make contacts with people who might be able to help with stories and ideas.
Adam Creighton
Before entering journalism, you began your career at the Reserve Bank of Australia. Now you are one the most experts on tax and financial policy. What are three things Americans don't know about tax and economic policy in Australia?
Americans probably don't know that you can't claim your state taxes as a deduction against your federal income tax, as you can in the U.S. Our top income tax rate is 47 percent, which kicks in at around US$135,000 of income.
And home loans work differently in Australia, too: they are "recourse," which means Australians can't just "throw away the keys" if they don't want to pay the loan back. Borrowers are 100 percent liable for their home loans, even if the value of the home collapses. Most home loans in the U.S. are "non-recourse."
Americans would probably also be shocked at how well Australian public servants get paid. A junior to a mid-level bureaucrat in a state government department can easily earn over $130,000 a year. And more senior bureaucrats and political staff earn more than $300,000 a year.
How do you define a good story?
Naturally, a good story gets a lot of attention, a lot of readers and changes the public debate somehow. Ideally, it helps rectify a wrong. In the context of being a U.S. correspondent, picking up on something that might be seen as relatively minor in the U.S. but which has major ramifications for Australia is a good story.
In your current role as a foreign correspondent based in the U.S., what have you found to be the most challenging aspect of your job?
As a foreign correspondent, it's much more difficult to obtain direct access to U.S. political and business leaders. And since I arrived in April, I've been working from my kitchen table in my apartment instead of going into a bureau. You get ideas and contacts from talking to other journalists, so that's been a challenge.
Indeed, the most significant change has been going from having a set of contacts and relatively easy access to relevant people to having few of either. And I find I have to repeat myself a lot on the phone as mumbling in an Australian accent isn't readily understood.
What do we not know about the Australian media, and what are the significant differences and similarities, if any, they have with the U.S. media?
Obviously, with around one-thirteenth, the population size of the Australian media is much smaller. That's the main difference. Australia also has a dominant publicly funded broadcaster and publisher, the ABC, which the U.S. doesn't have. That inevitably skews the media toward a more "progressive" bent, as it does in the U.K., for instance.
Sadly, the media is similarly polarised, with journalists – often wrongly – pigeon-holed into a "left" or "right" camp. Social media is equally shrill in Australia, and journalists are unfairly attacked with a ferocity and relentlessness their predecessors never faced.
In an age when false information and unreliable online news are emerging daily, what is good journalism?
Good news journalism is presenting what's happened without leaving out one side of the argument. The proliferation of false information makes full-time journalists' jobs even more critical.
What advice can you give to colleagues who work as foreign correspondents in America?
Living in D.C., it's easy to get trapped into writing about internal Washington DC politics that don't matter to people in your home country. They are probably more interested in U.S. economic and social trends. Otherwise, sign up for all the email summaries from the major departments and the White House – although if you read them all, you'll never get any work done!
