Frontline: Interrogating power and disrupting the discourse about Onslow and the gas hubs

• Main Authors: Kayt Davies, Karma Barndon
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Pacific Media Centre 2016-07-01
• Series: Pacific Journalism Review
• Subjects: Australia; collaborations; community media; exegesis; investigative journalism. journalism as; research
• Online Access: https://ojs.aut.ac.nz/pacific-journalism-review/article/view/18

When government statements talk about a secret deal with a multinational consortium that will see more than A$250 million spent on a town with a population of around 1000 people, questions need to be asked. Basic maths equates the spend to around A$250,000 a person and yet many people in the town are unhappy about the whole deal. Tracking Onslow was a collaboration between a university and a local government that used journalism as a methodology to document and interrogate the interaction between Chevron, the state and local governments and the Onslow community over a three-year period. This article focuses on the production of the lead feature of the final edition. It presents the published article and a reflexive exegesis that uses Foucault’s ideas about power and knowledge to frame and evaluate the journalistic endeavour.