Chris Masters (writer)
Encyclopedia
Christopher "Chris" Wayne Masters PSM
(born 4 December 1948 in Grafton, New South Wales
) is a multi-Walkley Award
winning and Logie Award
winning Australian journalist
and author
.
, New South Wales
. He is the fourth son of Charles Masters and the journalist and author Olga Masters
and the brother of rugby league
coach and journalist Roy Masters, film maker Quentin Masters, radio broadcaster Ian Masters and media producers Sue Masters and Deb Masters.
Masters was educated at Macquarie Boys High School, Parramatta
, completing his Leaving Certificate in 1965. He joined the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
the following year.
He commenced working on ABC television's flagship public affairs program Four Corners in 1983 and has since become the program's longest serving reporter. His first program was the landmark "Big League", a 1983 investigation of judicial corruption, which helped bring about the Street Royal Commission.
He is a Gold Walkley Award winner, for his 1985 Four Corners report "French Connections" about the infamous sinking of the Rainbow Warrior
. Another famous Four Corners report by Masters, "The Moonlight State" from 1987, led to the Fitzgerald Inquiry
into corruption in Queensland
.
and in 2006, RMIT awarded Masters an honorary doctorate
in Communications.
Masters was awarded the Public Service Medal
on 14 June 1999 and the Centenary Medal
on 1 January 2001 for "service to Australian society in journalism".
He serves on the national board of directors of the children's cancer charity RedKite
Jonestown won the 2007 Queensland Premier's Literary Awards
Literary Work Advancing Public Debate - the Harry Williams Award. It also won the 2007 Walkley Award for the best non-fiction book.
for an episode of Four Corners, and then went on to write a biography titled Jonestown: The Power and the Myth of Alan Jones
, his third book to date. On 29 June 2006, ABC Enterprises decided to cancel publication of Masters' manuscript; ABC Enterprises director Robyn Watts stated that publication was being withdrawn because it would "almost certainly result in commercial loss, which would be irresponsible". This was widely believed to be a veiled reference to the fact that Jones' lawyers had threatened an expensive defamation lawsuit if the book reached publication. ABC program Media Watch reported that the decision to cancel publication had been made not by ABC Enterprises but by the ABC Board. Many ABC personalities have criticized the Board's decision, and indeed wrote a petition against it, with signatories including Richard Glover
and Phillip Adams
.
Mike Carlton
, a Sydney radio broadcaster and rival to Jones, suggested on 2UE
during his show of 5 July 2006 that the book might detail homosexual encounters on Jones' part and Jones' lawyers had told the ABC that Masters' materials were "replete with false and inappropriate sexual innuendo". Certainly, in Jonestown Masters advances the theory that Jones' attempt to deny his sexuality is a defining feature of his personality, and provides an explanation for many aspects of his behaviour - including, for example, his interest in mentoring young male athletes. His explanation of much about Jones by reference to his sexuality left Masters open{http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/a-queer-crusade-to-smear-a-rival/story-e6frezz0-1111112404005} to charges of homophobia, which friendly commentators (in an ironic effort to defend Jones' reputation) have exploited.
The ABC's refusal to publish the book did not delay it for long; Masters had little difficulty in finding publishers willing to take it on, and Allen & Unwin
released it in October 2006. Lengthy excerpts were also published in The Sydney Morning Herald
.
Public Service Medal (Australia)
The Public Service Medal is a civil decoration awarded to Australian public servants for outstanding service. The PSM was introduced in 1991 and replaced the Imperial awards discontinued in 1975, supplementing the Order of Australia introduced that same year...
(born 4 December 1948 in Grafton, New South Wales
Grafton, New South Wales
The city of Grafton is the commercial hub of the Clarence River Valley. Established in 1851, Grafton features many historic buildings and tree-lined streets. Located approximately 630 kilometres north of Sydney and 340 km south of Brisbane, Grafton and the Clarence Valley can be reached...
) is a multi-Walkley Award
Walkley Awards
The annual Walkley Awards, under the administration of the Walkley Foundation for Journalism, are presented in Australia to recognise and reward excellence in journalism. Finalists are chosen by an independent board of eminent journalists and photographers. The awards cover all media including...
winning and Logie Award
Logie Award
The TV Week Logie Awards are the Australian television industry awards, which have been presented annually since 1959. Renamed by Graham Kennedy in 1960 after he won the first 'Star Of The Year' award, the name 'Logie' awards honours John Logie Baird, a Scotsman who invented the television as a...
winning Australian journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
and author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
.
Life
Chris Masters was born in GraftonGrafton, New South Wales
The city of Grafton is the commercial hub of the Clarence River Valley. Established in 1851, Grafton features many historic buildings and tree-lined streets. Located approximately 630 kilometres north of Sydney and 340 km south of Brisbane, Grafton and the Clarence Valley can be reached...
, New South Wales
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
. He is the fourth son of Charles Masters and the journalist and author Olga Masters
Olga Masters
Olga Masters née Lawler was an Australian journalist, novelist and short story writer.-Life:Olga Masters was born in Pambula, New South Wales, the second of eight children. Her early life was characterised by the poverty of the depression era, her family moving around the South Coast region in...
and the brother of rugby league
Rugby league
Rugby league football, usually called rugby league, is a full contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular grass field. One of the two codes of rugby football, it originated in England in 1895 by a split from Rugby Football Union over paying players...
coach and journalist Roy Masters, film maker Quentin Masters, radio broadcaster Ian Masters and media producers Sue Masters and Deb Masters.
Masters was educated at Macquarie Boys High School, Parramatta
Parramatta, New South Wales
Parramatta is a suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. It is located in Greater Western Sydney west of the Sydney central business district on the banks of the Parramatta River. Parramatta is the administrative seat of the Local Government Area of the City of Parramatta...
, completing his Leaving Certificate in 1965. He joined the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
the following year.
He commenced working on ABC television's flagship public affairs program Four Corners in 1983 and has since become the program's longest serving reporter. His first program was the landmark "Big League", a 1983 investigation of judicial corruption, which helped bring about the Street Royal Commission.
He is a Gold Walkley Award winner, for his 1985 Four Corners report "French Connections" about the infamous sinking of the Rainbow Warrior
Rainbow Warrior (1978)
The Rainbow Warrior was a former UK Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food trawler later purchased by the environmental organisation Greenpeace...
. Another famous Four Corners report by Masters, "The Moonlight State" from 1987, led to the Fitzgerald Inquiry
Fitzgerald Inquiry
The Fitzgerald Inquiry into Queensland Police corruption was a judicial inquiry presided over by Tony Fitzgerald QC. The inquiry resulted in the deposition of a premier, two by-elections, the jailing of three former ministers and a police commissioner who was jailed and lost his...
into corruption in Queensland
Queensland
Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...
.
Degrees and honours
In 2004, he was appointed Adjunct Professor in Journalism with the School of Applied Communication at RMIT UniversityRMIT University
RMIT University is an Australian public university located in Melbourne, Victoria. It has two branches, referred to as RMIT University in Australia and RMIT International University in Vietnam....
and in 2006, RMIT awarded Masters an honorary doctorate
Honorary degree
An honorary degree or a degree honoris causa is an academic degree for which a university has waived the usual requirements, such as matriculation, residence, study, and the passing of examinations...
in Communications.
Masters was awarded the Public Service Medal
Public Service Medal (Australia)
The Public Service Medal is a civil decoration awarded to Australian public servants for outstanding service. The PSM was introduced in 1991 and replaced the Imperial awards discontinued in 1975, supplementing the Order of Australia introduced that same year...
on 14 June 1999 and the Centenary Medal
Centenary Medal
The Centenary Medal is an award created by the Australian Government in 2001. It was established to commemorate the Centenary of Federation of Australia and to honour people who have made a contribution to Australian society or government...
on 1 January 2001 for "service to Australian society in journalism".
He serves on the national board of directors of the children's cancer charity RedKite
Jonestown won the 2007 Queensland Premier's Literary Awards
Queensland Premier's Literary Awards
The Queensland Premier's Literary Awards were inaugurated in 1999 and have grown to become a leading literary awards program within Australia, with $225,000 in prizemoney over 14 categories. One of Australia's richest prizes, top categories offer up to $25,000 for 1st prize.-Fiction Book...
Literary Work Advancing Public Debate - the Harry Williams Award. It also won the 2007 Walkley Award for the best non-fiction book.
Writing
Masters has written three books to date. His first Inside Story, published in 1992, told of the stories behind some of his Four Corners programs. His second, Not for Publication, published in 2002, again dealt with his television work.Jonestown
In 2002, Masters profiled radio personality Alan JonesAlan Jones (radio broadcaster)
Alan Belford Jones AO is an Australian radio broadcaster, former rugby union and rugby league coach and administrator.Jones hosts Sydney's most popular breakfast radio program, on radio station 2GB...
for an episode of Four Corners, and then went on to write a biography titled Jonestown: The Power and the Myth of Alan Jones
Jonestown: The Power and the Myth of Alan Jones
Jonestown: The Power and The Myth of Alan Jones is a controversial 2006 biography of radio personality Alan Jones by Chris Masters. The biography deals in part with Jones's sexuality; Masters asserts that Jones is homosexual, something that Jones does not self-identify with...
, his third book to date. On 29 June 2006, ABC Enterprises decided to cancel publication of Masters' manuscript; ABC Enterprises director Robyn Watts stated that publication was being withdrawn because it would "almost certainly result in commercial loss, which would be irresponsible". This was widely believed to be a veiled reference to the fact that Jones' lawyers had threatened an expensive defamation lawsuit if the book reached publication. ABC program Media Watch reported that the decision to cancel publication had been made not by ABC Enterprises but by the ABC Board. Many ABC personalities have criticized the Board's decision, and indeed wrote a petition against it, with signatories including Richard Glover
Richard Glover (radio presenter)
Richard Glover is an Australian talk radio presenter, journalist and author.Glover graduated from the University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Arts degree with first class honours. He lives with the playwright Debra Oswald and they have two sons...
and Phillip Adams
Phillip Adams
Phillip Andrew Hedley Adams, AO is an Australian broadcaster, film producer, writer, social commentator, satirist and left-wing pundit. He currently hosts a radio program, Late Night Live, four nights a week on the ABC, and he also writes a weekly column for the News Limited-owned newspaper, The...
.
Mike Carlton
Mike Carlton
Mike Carlton is an Australian media commentator and broadcaster. He formerly co-hosted the daily breakfast program on Sydney radio station 2UE with Peter FitzSimons and later Sandy Aloisi. He is a columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald, having been sacked from the position on 29 August 2008, for...
, a Sydney radio broadcaster and rival to Jones, suggested on 2UE
2UE
2UE is a commercial radio station in Sydney, Australia owned by Fairfax Media. It is Sydney's and Australia's oldest commercial radio station, first broadcasting on 26 January 1925 on 1025 kHz AM before moving to 950 kHz in 1935 when virtually all Australian radio stations were assigned new...
during his show of 5 July 2006 that the book might detail homosexual encounters on Jones' part and Jones' lawyers had told the ABC that Masters' materials were "replete with false and inappropriate sexual innuendo". Certainly, in Jonestown Masters advances the theory that Jones' attempt to deny his sexuality is a defining feature of his personality, and provides an explanation for many aspects of his behaviour - including, for example, his interest in mentoring young male athletes. His explanation of much about Jones by reference to his sexuality left Masters open{http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/a-queer-crusade-to-smear-a-rival/story-e6frezz0-1111112404005} to charges of homophobia, which friendly commentators (in an ironic effort to defend Jones' reputation) have exploited.
The ABC's refusal to publish the book did not delay it for long; Masters had little difficulty in finding publishers willing to take it on, and Allen & Unwin
Allen & Unwin
Allen & Unwin, formerly a major British publishing house, is now an independent book publisher and distributor based in Australia. The Australian directors have been the sole owners of the Allen & Unwin name since effecting a management buy out at the time the UK parent company, Unwin Hyman, was...
released it in October 2006. Lengthy excerpts were also published in The Sydney Morning Herald
The Sydney Morning Herald
The Sydney Morning Herald is a daily broadsheet newspaper published by Fairfax Media in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1831 as the Sydney Herald, the SMH is the oldest continuously published newspaper in Australia. The newspaper is published six days a week. The newspaper's Sunday counterpart, The...
.