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Keith Jackson AM

Keith Jackson (media executive)

Keith Jackson (born 7 January 1945) is an Australian journalist, blogger and retired media executive known for his long relationship with Papua New Guinea where he worked as a young man and continues the association through his PNG Attitude blog. He founded two Australian radio stations (2ARM-FM Armidale and 2SER-FM Sydney), introduced educational broadcasting into the Maldives Republic, was the first head of corporate relations in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and founded public relations company Jackson Wells Morris.

Biography

Early life and education

Jackson was born in Macclesfield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macclesfield, Cheshire, England, the eldest of two sons and a daughter born to Joan (née Simpson) (1920-76) and Stanley Jackson OAM (1913–2012), school teacher, author, environmentalist and marathon cyclist. Jackson’s paternal great-grandfather, Robert (Bob) Jackson, was a celebrated manager of the Besses o’ th’ Barn brass band https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Besses_o%27_th%27_Barn_Band, of Whitefield, Greater Manchester in the United Kingdom. Stanley Jackson migrated with his family from Liverpool, England, arriving in Sydney, Australia, in November 1949. The family moved to Nowra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowra,_New_South_Wales, New South Wales, where Jackson was educated in public schools.

Since early childhood, Jackson had aspired to become a journalist and at Nowra High School https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowra_High_School (1957-61) showed promise in the field as student editor of the magazine, Shoalhaven, winning its public speaking contest in three consecutive years and as a member of its debating team. He reported on junior basketball for the Nowra News and also represented the school at football (soccer) and basketball. A bemused principal commented in a report to Jackson’s parents that he showed no similar alacrity in his studies.

Despite barely passing the NSW Leaving Certificate in 1961, Jackson was offered two scholarships to train as a primary school teacher. He accepted a place at the Australian School of Pacific Administration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_School_of_Pacific_Administration (ASOPA), which trained teachers to serve in the then Australian Territory of Papua and New Guinea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territory_of_Papua_and_New_Guinea (TPNG). Completing the course in late 1963, he was posted to TPNG as an Education Officer. After teaching for three years, during which he also wrote prolifically as a freelance journalist, he was awarded the NSW Teachers’ Certificate. He later studied economics and political science at the recently established University of Papua New Guinea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Papua_New_Guinea, graduating in 1975 with a Bachelor of Arts. Further correspondence study in 2003-05 through the University of New England https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_New_England_(Australia), NSW, earned him a Graduate Diploma in Management.

Teaching career

After arriving in TPNG in November 1963, Jackson undertook short term teaching and administrative assignments with the Department of Education in Wewak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wewak and Goroka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goroka and in early 1964 was transferred to the one-teacher Kundiawa A School in Chimbu Province https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimbu_Province. He taught students aged from six to eleven whose expatriate parents were entitled to have them educated by teachers trained to Australian requirements. In early 1966, he was appointed head teacher of the 160 student Gagl Primary T School in a tribal area 15 kilometers north of Kundiawa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kundiawa, operating on the TPNG curriculum.

Early journalism and broadcasting career

At ASOPA (1962-63), Jackson and student teacher colleagues established the literary magazine Vortex and Jackson wrote many scripts and acted in the revue, The Natives Are Restless, staged at Mosman Town Hall in 1963. Within months of Jackson arriving in TPNG, he and teaching colleague Murray V. Bladwell established the fortnightly Kundiawa News (1964-66), a stencil-based publication circulating 300 copies. The only complete set of 50 issues is held by the National Library of Australia.

During this period Jackson was invited to become a freelance correspondent for the Port Moresby branch of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Broadcasting_Corporation and was later contracted by the ABC to write educational radio scripts. These capabilities were noticed by the Department of Education which, in late 1966, transferred him to headquarters in Port Moresby as editor of the School Paper and other publications. During this period he continued to freelance for the ABC as a writer, actor and producer and also contributed to early issues of the controversial satirical magazine Black and White.

Late in 1967 Jackson was recruited by the ABC to its permanent staff of educational broadcast producers in TPNG, receiving further training at the ABC Training School at Kings Cross in Sydney. Through 1968-69 he produced some 250 radio broadcasts on current affairs, social studies and English language, mainly for primary school students. He also reported on athletics for the South Pacific Post (now the Papua New Guinea Post-Courier) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papua_New_Guinea_Post-Courier, including covering the sport at the second South Pacific Games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Games in Port Moresby in 1968.

In 1970 Jackson successfully applied for a management job in the radio service operated by the TPNG Department of Information and Extension Services. His first assignment was to Rabaul https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabaul as assistant manager and news director of Radio Rabaul. It was a turbulent time in the region, where land alienation issues had triggered a protracted and sometimes violent uprising by the Mataungan Association, a proto-independence movement. As a government radio station, Radio Rabaul was perceived by much of the population as an instrument of colonial propaganda and became a target of hostility. In the performance of newsgathering and other duties, at times Jackson came under threat. He later wrote that the political ferment taught him much about communicating in situations of civil strife.

In November 1970 Jackson was deployed to Kieta to manage Radio Bougainville. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bougainville. He said the only direction he received from Port Moresby headquarters before going to Bougainville was to “straighten out the station”. He took over from the first ever Papua New Guinean station manager, Samuel (Sam) Piniau (1940-2007), who was being groomed to become the first Chairman of the soon to be established National Broadcasting Commission. Jackson and Piniau formed a close friendship, sharing a perception of how radio broadcasting should develop in the soon to be independent country.

In Bougainville, a secession movement was active after the island had been profoundly disrupted by land acquisition for a huge copper and gold mine and the recruitment of non-local labour. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bougainville_Copper The government-owned Radio Bougainville was seen by the indigenous people as pro-mining and anti-secession and they were responding aggressively to it. Jackson moderated the station’s strident coverage to better align it with community expectations. His success was recognised in 1972 when he was offered promotion to headquarters in Port Moresby, which he rejected to remain in Bougainville.

In April 1973, Jackson accepted a six-month consultancy with UNESCO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNESCO to bring into service an educational radio broadcasting project in central Java, Indonesia, and he and his family moved to Yogyakarta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogyakarta. Reviewing his work in October 1973 Jackson wrote that his appointment was intended to provide a ‘big push’ to the project, which was now operational, but many problems remained. Throughout this period, he continued to freelance for Australian publications including Pacific Islands Monthly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Islands_Monthly, Nation and Nation Review https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_Review.

Jackson declined an offer to remain with UNESCO and returned to Papua New Guinea in November 1973 on the eve of the creation of the National Broadcasting Commission, which amalgamated ABC and government services under the chairmanship of Sam Piniau. Jackson was appointed to the stop-gap role of Head of Research. Of this period, Ian Mackay wrote, “….as a result of their work the NBC will be better informed on what is required of broadcasting in a multilingual developing country.”

As 1974 unfolded, Piniau struggled to better align the NBC to meet the serious operational challenges it faced as Papua New Guinea independence loomed. He assigned Jackson to direct a new policy and planning group, the Secretariat. Over the next two years, the unit completed the NBC’s first Five Year Plan, introduced radio advertising, secured aid from international organisations, established links with overseas broadcasting bodies, developed a strong audience research component and launched the magazine, Transmitter. The Secretariat also published papers covering issues such as broadcasting autonomy, an operating structure for broadcasting in Papua New Guinea, the relationship between the political system and broadcasting, commercial broadcasting and listener access to the airwaves.

Although under its legislation the National Broadcasting Commission was allowed to introduce advertising, planning for the commercialisation of one of the three radio networks led to a major political dispute. Initially as Chief Minister Michael Somare had approved the initiative but in April 1976, by now Prime Minister, he wrote to Piniau warning the NBC to step back from advertising. “My prime concern centres on the possible deleterious effects which commercial broadcasting may have on the social and economic environment of our country”. Referring to Jackson and P.N. (Phil) Charley, who reported to Jackson on commercial broadcasting matters, Somare added, “I strongly suspect that the over-zealousness, arrogance and disregard of authority of the officers concerned had lead (sic) us into the present difficulties.” A dismayed Jackson resigned from the NBC in July 1976 but within months, after the government moved to prohibit advertising on the NBC, it was defeated in parliament and the NBC commercialised its English-speaking network.

Meanwhile Jackson had secured a job as inaugural manager of 2ARM-FM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2ARM, in Armidale, New South Wales, the first community-based radio station in regional Australia. Jackson, the station’s only full-time employee, with assistance from an energetic community, met a deadline to get it on air by October 1976.

2ARM-FM’s need for funds led Jackson to observe that the Wireless Telegraphy Act, under which the station was licenced, prohibited advertising but was silent on sponsorship. He subsequently devised a ‘corporate support plan’, first frowned upon by regulatory authorities but later recognised as an expedient means of facilitating the expansion of small, cash poor community stations across Australia by enabling them to broadcast sponsorship announcements with a limit of seven minutes an hour.

Later journalism and broadcasting career

In May 1977, Jackson accepted a second offer from UNESCO, this time to go to the Maldives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maldives as its educational broadcasting expert. This represented a significant step up in Jackson’s broadcasting career. During his two years in the Maldives he identified how technological constraints facing broadcasting should be addressed, developed a conceptual framework to drive the project, trained scriptwriters, producers and other personnel, and initiated programs for schools, adult education and teacher education. He travelled extensively in the country by boat to better understand radio reception issues while at the same time recording the island peoples’ stories and music.

In early 1978, Jackson joined UNESCO expert Lester (L.R.) Goodman in New Delhi to administer the first joint India-Maldives training program in educational radio production under the auspices of the National Council of Educational Research and Training https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Council_of_Educational_Research_and_Training. Jackson also arranged for Maldivian broadcasters to undertake management training overseas. By early 1979, when Jackson’s contribution to the Maldives’ project ended, there had been a significant investment in skills development, broadcasting technology and educational programs. Despite initial government concern, radio forums were established to enable people in the remote atolls to participate in national conversations on a range of issues. In his final report, Jackson provided a detailed analysis of the cultural and other barriers to mass communications in the country and recommendations for its further development. Eight years later the Maldives government invited him back as a consultant to assess how broadcasting had progressed. Jackson was impressed.

Despite UNESCO offering him another posting, Jackson decided to return to Australia with his family and in March 1979 he was appointed to establish and manage 2SER-FM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2SER Sydney, an educational and community station for which the licence was held by the NSW Institute of Technology (now University of Technology, Sydney) and Macquarie University. The station commenced broadcasting on 1 October 1979, within a few months opening a second studio at Macquarie University. Jackson established an accompanying magazine, Listening Post, whose 138 issues (October 1979-February 1998) are now held by the National Library of Australia. Academic Liz Giuffre has written “the magazine soon gained a dedicated following of those who wanted to get a grassroots, but also truly independent, view of the Australian media landscape”

The six months it took to get the station and magazine operational was a period of intense activity as studios were constructed, programs developed, volunteer broadcasters trained, community and academic user groups identified, the station marketed and the magazine planned. On 1 October the deadline was met. “We all realised what a significant moment this was,” Jackson said He now had three major challenges: 2SER-FM had to remain faithful to its educational licence while building an audience; it had to provide the community with access to the airwaves; and it had to generate sufficient funding to underpin its operations. Believing it would be inconsistent with the format of the station, he eschewed sponsorship which had worked well for 2ARM-FM in Armidale, instead employing a ‘user pays scheme’ where community groups that could afford to do so, paid for access; if they could not, it was provided without cost.

The station’s acceptance of the widest spectrum of views often proved controversial, and balancing educational and access programming was a challenge, but the station flourished. Jackson “is affectionately known to his underlings as ‘the champion of pluralism’,” wrote John Handscombe in the Sydney Morning Herald. “The reference is to his formula of encouraging community access to, and participation in, public radio. It is affectionate because his formula is an intrinsic factor in the station's success, measured in a core audience of 65,000.”

In early 1983, after four years at 2SER-FM, Jackson took a lecturing position at the International Training Institute (ITI), the former ASOPA where he had studied to become a teacher 20 years earlier. At ITI he taught mass communication and related subjects to managers from developing countries in the Pacific (including Papua New Guinea), the Caribbean, Asia and Africa. In 1984 he was appointed Deputy Principal and later the same year Acting Principal. While at ITI he produced a range of publications including its first Annual Report and promoted its training credentials and encouraged greater interaction with other institutions.

Meanwhile, during the early 1980s, the ABC was being extensively restructured and as part of this process was establishing a new Corporate Relations Department. In late 1984 it publicly advertised the Controller’s job and Jackson was appointed, taking up the post in January 1985. In this role, he was responsible for the ABC’s relationships with government, media and community and also for internal communications. His activities during the three years he was with the ABC are extensively recorded in the second volume of Professor Ken Inglis’s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Inglis history of the ABC.

Jackson worked assiduously to improve the ABC’s relationships with the Australian parliament. Managing director Geoffrey Whitehead remarked: “A turn-around in Canberra attitudes from about October 1985….was largely due to the efforts of the controller of corporate relations, Keith Jackson, in explaining our strategies and tactics.” And the biographer of ABC Chairman Ken Myer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Myer noted that, “Ken’s conduct improved when he was accompanied by the new controller of corporate relations, Keith Jackson, as coach and minder.” When Whitehead was dramatically replaced by David Hill as managing director in October 1986, historian Ken Inglis wrote that “Jackson [was] valued no less by Hill than by Whitehead as communicator with staff, board members and people in Canberra.”

In his role straddling government, media and community relations, Jackson inevitably ran into turbulence. In his memoir, ABC staff-elected director and trade union official Tom Molomby reflected sourly on Jackson. And UK-based Australian firebrand journalist John Pilger, in his book A Secret Country, accused Jackson of censoring him during a visit he made to Sydney, a claim Jackson denied, saying, “The only thing he got right was my name”. In his history of the ABC, Inglis revealed that Jackson had played a key and ‘astonishing’ role in the removal of Whitehead as Managing Director, referring to Jackson as “Cassius, the initiator”.

In December 1987, ABC Managing Director David Hill faced a weighty cut to the ABC budget by the federal government and decided to mount a public campaign to resist the cut and obtain more reliable funding for the corporation.

It was a risky and even foolhardy move for a government instrumentality to attack its paymaster but Hill, described as “a pugnacious and quasi-political operator” who “never hesitated to take it right up to his mates in the Labor government” was determined to proceed, the ABC Board agreed and Jackson was given the job of managing the operation, which he called the ‘8 Cents a Day Campaign’ (based on how much the ABC cost every Australian). “The ABC’s ability to persuade the government that it deserved a better deal would be up to its millions of listeners,” he later wrote.. “If we initiated a funding fight to which the community response was ‘ho-hum’, our goose would be well and truly plucked and roasted to a bitter crisp. But if community reaction was widespread, immediate and forcefully supportive, the ABC would prevail.”

The campaign, launched in early February 1988, gained huge support from around Australia. In Whose ABC? Inglis recorded that “those words [Eight Cents a Day], thought up by Keith Jackson … became a rallying cry for nationwide agitation”. By mid-year the government had formally agreed to the ABC’s demands to stabilise its budget and be provided with triennial funding. For Jackson, though, the campaign was a final flourish of a broadcasting career of more than 20 years as he was head-hunted by the public relations arm of Mojo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojo_(advertising), at the time Australia’s largest advertising agency.

Over subsequent years Jackson retained some links with broadcasting and was called upon to lead short-term media management training assignments for UNESCO in Indonesia, Philippines and Fiji, which also led to the publication of his and P.N. Charley’s book, Manage By the Moment. In a voluntary capacity, he also assisted the people of Bougainville establish their first radio station, New Dawn FM, after the 1989-2000 civil war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bougainville_conflict

Public relations career

In August 1988, Jackson was recruited from the ABC by public relations firm Mojo Corporate (later Issues Australia) where he soon became Principal Consultant. Over the next two years he worked on projects for major clients BHP Steel, the State Rail Authority, Westpac Bank, British Telecom, New South Wales Premier's Department and Queensland Rail.

In February 1991, after a disagreement with his employer, Jackson established his own company, Jackson Communications (later Jackson Wells Morris, JWM). He subsequently teamed up with former Liberal Party political adviser John Wells and in 2000 with Graeme Morris, who had been chief of staff to Prime Minister John Howard. With a broad political balance, the company emerged as one of Australia’s prominent and well-connected public relations and issues management firms and Jackson as “its plain-speaking media guru” with “a solid reputation as a tough manager and creative thinker”.

Since his time in the ABC, Jackson had been studying how organisations might better deal with difficult corporate issues that could develop into full-blown crises. The issues management model he developed was used as the basis of JWM’s consulting and also translated into a successful training product for corporate executives. Recognising his prowess, in the mid-1990s Jackson was appointed as the first Australian executive member of the Washington DC-based Issue Management Council in the United States.

Believing ethical issues were eroding the reputation of Australian public relations, Jackson took a vigorous public stand arguing that the industry body, the Public Relations Institute of Australia, needed “a stronger code of ethics [and] independent assessment of compliance”. Failing to achieve change, Jackson resigned his firm’s membership and developed JWM’s own code including the unusual directive that “where social and client interests conflict, and if the conflict is ethically relevant, JWM will seek to change the client’s position.”

JWM grew steadily and opened branch offices in the major Australian cities of Canberra, Brisbane and Melbourne and appointed associates in Perth, Adelaide and Hobart. It also established overseas affiliates in London, New York, Djakarta and Hong Kong. Employees were sent to further their international experience by being sent on company scholarships to these cities. In the mid-1990s the company was appointed as the Australian member of the international public relations group, Pinnacle Worldwide, which gave it further reach into North America, Europe and Asia. By 2003 JWM was reporting revenues of $2.96 million, up 27 percent from the year before. At its peak in 2005 it was a $3.5 million company employing 23 people who were providing services for about 80 clients.

The company’s quarterly publication, The Well, published 34 issues between 1992 and 2006 covering public relations practice, political analysis, client news and company projects. The only near complete set (missing issue 28) is lodged with the National Library of Australia. Two subsequent outlier issues published in 2004 (issue 33) and 2006 (issue 34) are available online.

In the early years of the new century, Jackson had become increasingly ill and was diagnosed with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_fatigue_syndrome (ME/CFS), a chronic condition for which there is no known cure or treatment. He relinquished his management of the company to Wells and was never again able to resume an active role. The company languished and, in 2012 when Wells established his own consultancy taking important clients with him, Jackson liquidated the ailing firm. In its 20 years of operation Jackson Wells Morris had consulted to more than 500 clients including major global and Australian companies and between 1995 and 2005 had been an industry pace setter.

Political activity

Jackson first joined Australian Labor Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Labor_Party in 1971 while still in Papua New Guinea, being sponsored by then Queensland state secretary T.J. (Tom) Burns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Burns_(Australian_politician). Jackson did not become an active member until 1979, when he returned to Australia and joined the Narrabeen-Pittwater Branch in Sydney. From 1980-82 he was a State Conference delegate, from 1982-83 Mackellar Federal Electorate Council president and later a member of the NSW ALP foreign relations platform committee. In 1982 he was pre-selected to stand for the safe Liberal seat of Mackellar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_of_Mackellar. In the subsequent federal election of March 1983 he secured a swing to Labor of 4.8 percent but lost to incumbent, then Health Minister Jim Carlton. In 2014, Jackson resigned from the Labor Party stating that its policies on the Iraq-Syria war and asylum seekers were immoral.

While in retirement in Noosa, Jackson was strategist and communicator for the successful election campaigns of his wife Ingrid Jackson to Noosa Shire Council (2016), Sandra (Sandy) Bolton MP to the Queensland State legislature (2017) and Councillor Karen Finzel to Noosa Shire Council (2020).

PNG Attitude

Jackson launched the blog PNG Attitude, (originally ASOPA People) in February 2006 to enable Australians and Papua New Guineans to engage in public discussion on political, social, economic and literary matters. The blog is archived by the National Library of Australia. Jackson said he established the blog because “we’re like a family that’s drifted apart; we need to do something about that on both sides.” Dubbed ground-breaking and influential, PNG Attitude spun off the Crocodile Prize literary awards, triggering a revival in Papua New Guinean literature described by prominent Australian author Drusilla Modjeska https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drusilla_Modjeska as “a new generation of writers flushed out, encouraged and made visible”. The blog also led to the establishment of not-for-profit enterprises Pukpuk Publications (which published over fifty titles of mainly Papua New Guinean writing), the McKinnon-Paga Hill Fellowships, enabling Papua New Guinean writers to visit Australia, and the My Walk to Equality project, publisher of the first collection of writing by Papua New Guinean women.. PNG Attitude continues as an important information source on PNG affairs. Its story and that of the Crocodile Prize is documented in Philip Fitzpatrick’s book, Fighting for a Voice.

Personal life

Awards and honours

Jackson received the Papua New Guinea Independence Medal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papua_New_Guinea_Independence_Medal in 1976 "for outstanding service" and in 2004 was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Australia#Levels_of_membership (AM) "for services to management and training in media, communications, non-commercial broadcasting and public relations".

In 2010 he accepted an invitation to become an Adjunct Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Queenslandhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Queensland, retiring in 2014. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fellow_of_the_Royal_Society_of_Arts (since 1995), a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Management, Education and Training https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Institute_of_Management_Education_and_Training (since 1983) and a Member of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media,_Entertainment_and_Arts_Alliance (formerly Australian Journalists Association)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Journalists_Association (joined 1972).

Jackson was Treasurer of the Public (now Community) Broadcasting Association of Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Broadcasting_Association_of_Australia (1980-84) and inaugural President of the Public (now Community) Broadcasting Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Broadcasting_Foundation (1983-85). He was also President of the Papua New Guinea Association of Australia (2008-09), inaugural President of the Rabaul and Montevideo Maru Society (2009-11), the first Australian executive member of the Issue Management Council (USA) in the early 1990s and a member of the Australian National Commission for UNESCO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_National_Commission_for_UNESCO (1983-85).

Marriage and children

Jackson married Susan Mary Flatt (b 1947) in April 1967 (divorced January 1985). There are two children, Simon (b 1967), information technologist and composer, and Sally (b 1970), an executive with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Jackson married academic and management consultant Ingrid Henriette Hallein (née Lowig) (b 1952) in May 1985. They have two sons, Benjamin Robert Francis Jackson (b 1987), communications specialist, and Ingrid’s son from a previous marriage, Evan Robert Hallein (b 1977), marine zoologist. Jackson now lives in retirement with his wife in the Queensland resort town of Noosa.