I don't believe that a journalist is just a bystander. When a reporter is sent to a cover a story they become part of that story. As a reporter, I've rarely felt like a bystander over the years.
I think the reason people don't want to do hard core reporting - like police rounds - is because it makes them feel uncomfortable - they are no longer bystanders.
Not everyone is capable of doing a death knock.
Interviewing devastated young parents in the cold night outside the smoldering husk of their home in which their baby had died - I didn't feel like a bystander.
It's a little different covering lifestyle, IT, TV and entertainment - when they don't really care if you tell the story well, just as long as their name is in the paper because they're so special that they're bothering to talk to you. It's called PR.
Balibo is about a death knock.
A journalist named Roger East, played by Anthony Lapaglia, investigates the disappearance of five Australian TV journalists who'd gone to cover the Indonesian invasion of Portuguese East Timor in 1975.
Anthony Lapaglia (who's from Adelaide) is nominated for an Outstanding Actor Emmy for the American TV drama Without a Trace:
http://www.hitfix.com/galleries/2009-7-15-emmy-nomination-preview-2009-outsta...
Journalists who go to war definitely are not bystanders. They see themselves mostly as soldiers of truth, shining a light into the darkness of propaganda and misinformation.
There's two moments in the film where I heard echoes of the Australian film classic Galipolli: the end, and the moment where the actor playing East Timorese leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jose Ramos-Horta tells the Australian journalist Roger East that the Indonesian helicopter hunting them down knows where they are because of information provided by the Australian Government.
( Ramos-Horta link: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1996/ramos-horta-cv.html )
I suddenly had visions of the English generals having tea in safety while the Aussie troops were breathing their last before going over the top ... it's one of those clinical but seething ... "bastards have blood on their hands" moments.
Balibo is written by playwright David Williamson (who wrote Galipolli) and Balibo director-producer Robert Connolly - and they don't mince words - they even get a light-hearted Republican dig in at the constitutional monarchy which is lovely.
But I came away from the film thinking that East Timor's story (it's now a independent democratic nation) would have been very different had the Indonesians not murdered five white journalists in Balibo.
The Indonesians ran a line which had the United States and Australia on side - they said East Timor's freedom fighters (Fretilin) were Communists.
(Fretilin link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Front_for_an_Independent_East_Timor )
They didn't send troops into East Timor - they already had Vietnam - but they apparently gave the Indonesians helicopters and support.
But whether Australia and the United States actually sanctioned the murder of innocent East Timorese civilians (women, children, the elderly and six Australian journalists) is a contentious proposition - which this movie does tend to suggest.
Like Lapaglia's character says Australians (therefore Australian editors) weren't really interested if Indonesians massacred a village of "brown" people - the Indonesians relied on that sentiment.
Figures quoted at the end of the film say 180,000 East Timorese people were murdered - as compared to six Australians but even this movie about their fight for freedom would not have been made had those five not paid the ultimate price.
On a lighter note though, I don't think anyone will lament the passing of that diehard Aussie fashion statement they sport in the film: Stubbies. Thank goodness for long boardshorts.