Two investigative reporters go from collaborators to competitors
For five years they reported and defended one of the great stories of modern Australian journalism. Their celebrated collaboration didn’t survive victory.
In the past fortnight, Chris Masters and Nick McKenzie published, within 10 days of each other, rival books about their investigation into former SAS corporal Ben Roberts-Smith, whose unsuccessful lawsuit against both journalists was dubbed the “defamation trial of the century”.
Nick McKenzie (left) and Chris Masters arriving at the Federal Court in Sydney on June 1. Jane Dempster
In the low-margin book industry, the two books are fighting over a relatively small pool of readers willing to go deep into a story already extensively covered by the media.
A casual observer may find it hard to judge the difference between them. McKenzie’s Crossing the Line, The Inside Story of Murders, Lies and a Fallen Hero, is the “definitive account” by a “14 times Walkley Award-winning investigative journalist”, according to its cover. Masters’ Flawed Hero, Truth, Lies and War Crimes, bills itself as the “definitive story” by “Australia’s most respected investigative journalist”.
Flawed Hero is written in the first person, and is as much about journalism as war. (Masters names every reporter who defended Roberts-Smith.) Written like an action novel, Crossing the Line swaps between the first and third person. Flawed Hero has photos. Crossing the Line doesn’t.
The two writers have known each other since 2002, when Masters was a long-time ABC reporter and McKenzie a trainee journalist.
The pair soon fell out over what McKenzie regarded as a breach of trust. McKenzie implies in Crossing the Line that Masters shared information on a story they were covering, but later suggests the incident
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