Australian Journalism: Training the Politicians. Niki Savva was one of the most senior correspondents in the Canberra Press Gallery, rising through the ranks of political journalism at The Australian, and goning on to head the Canberra bureaus of both the Melbourne Herald Sun and The Age. She then became Costello’s press secretary for six years before transferring to John Howard’s Cabinet office. From her 2010 book:

As a journalist I lied often, usually about my sources, but about other things, too. Journalists can and do get away with lying; politicians and staff can’t. Nor should they. …

When it comes to scheming and lying, plain old hypocrisy, and dishonesty, journalists – apart from a few honourable exceptions – win hands down. If you can call it winning. …

I learned to slice and dice anyone who deliberately fed out misleading information, or who spoke to others and not me. …

She admits to the training method by which journalists get politicians to bend to their will, and presumably to their ideology — the journalist simply starves the politicians of the oxygen of publicity:

If a backbencher refused to leak information to her about party meetings, she never mentioned that MP’s name in a story again – “unless they had done something wrong, of course”.