For fearless investigative journalism, go West

Manly’s Michael West devotes his life to keeping Australians informed of the rising power of corporations over democracy.

Trust in the holy trinity of government, big business, and mainstream media has never been lower and thanks to Michael West’s fierce dedication to evidence-based journalism, we can see precisely why our trust is collapsing – the troika of agenda pushers, tax dodgers, and back slappers are consistently up to no good. But how did this Walkley-award winning journalist develop an eye and tenacity for unearthing pivotal, public interest stories?

“I completed a degree in history and started out as a cadet journalist with the Financial Review,” Michael explains. “I then decided in my 20s I was going to get rich by 30, became a stock-broker, but that was fruitless, still poor, and I was the world’s worst stockbroker, but my time in stockbroking gave me a clear understanding of the food chain in corporate Australia.”

Learning how to read financial reports, building a wealth of knowledge about the movers and shakers in business, and the machinations of professional money management, Michael returned to journalism, writing for The Australian and Sydney Morning Herald, carving a name as one of the most respected business and finance journalists in the nation until 2016. 

“I was executed for the crime of journalism,” Michael says matter-of-factly. “There were too many complaints at the SMH, and during my eight years at Fairfax, there’d been five redundancy rounds already. Around the same time, my father passed away, which overshadowed everything.”

Michael took some time off, before returning with his own independent publishing business to pursue the stories mainstream media didn’t want to touch. “I called it Michael West Media, which might have been a silly thing to do, but it was to capitalise on the martyrdom aspects of it all, having been fired for doing my job.”

The Michael West Media business is funded by readers through voluntary donations, there’s no advertising on the site, and the core product is to provide non-partisan, evidence-based, investigative reporting focused on big business, particularly multinational tax-avoiders, financial markets and the banking and energy sectors.

“My program is to get up at 4am, check the Fin Rev, SMH/Age, Australian, see who’s leaking what to whom, what lines they’re running, what fanboy articles have been written for the gas lobby, what has the Prime Minister’s Office just dropped to their media patsy courtiers, which all then gives me ideas for stories to pursue that day. 

“We then focus on doing one quality, investigative, public interest story every day, and to report in simple, plain language, to distill the crucial information to a form everyone can understand and engage with.” 

Michael’s plain speaking has landed him in plenty of hot water, receiving up to five defamation lawsuits a year. “You’ve got to be able to take a lot of risks,” is Michael’s approach. “With the defamation claims, I ring the lawyers straight up, that always scares the crap out of them. Then of course, if it becomes clear our reporting was wrong or even unfair, we change it immediately, but often just go public straight away.”

Michael’s journalistic integrity to uncover facts ensures any defamation threats usually evaporate quickly, proving more often than not to be baseless attempts to muzzle him, something no one will ever have much luck in achieving. 

“The reality in modern society is, you get paid more to lie than to tell the truth, but there’s a huge opportunity for my team and I to tell the stories others won’t, to satiate a readership hungry to know what’s really happening, and to ensure vital public interest stories see the light of day.”