There is in the annals of Australian media reporting of international affairs, a dominant tradition of what one might well describe as the ‘Biggies’ school of journalism. ‘Pace’ Damien Parer, Blanche D’Alpuget, John Pilger, Peter Hartings and others, the ‘Biggies’ school has provided a paradigm broken but rarely.

Detailed description of actions or their settings; unspoken assumptions of blind belief in western values; plenty of punch-ups; an obsessive concern with the dynamics of events almost as a substitute for analysis of background, policy or historical process; these are the hallmarks of this well-worked ‘Biggies’ school. It has characterized the presentation and interpretation of the world beyond Australia’s shores, by cohorts of stabled journalists over the many decades now, of Australian external relations.