I started as a journalist at the Australian Broadcasting Commission (now Corporation) in 1974 as a trainee, working on the radio programs AM and PM in Sydney and then Melbourne.  In 1978 I won a Walkley Award for my investigation and reporting of the so-called Lynch Affair during the 1977 Federal election.  Philip Lynch was Federal Treasurer at the time: he had to stand aside because of the revelations about land deals he was involved with, which effectively constituted a large financial gift from property developers who were witnesses before the 1977 Victorian Royal Commission into Housing Commission corruption. 

I left the ABC in 1978 to travel in Asia and Europe, and over the next three decades did occasional casual work in ABC radio and television.

In October 1979, as a new academic teaching radio journalism at the then NSW Institute of Technology (now the University of Technology, Sydney), I started, along with some students and other volunteers, a weekly current affairs program at the public radio station 2SER-FM.  Initially pre-taped  and called Checkpoint, in February 1980 it changed to a live interview format  and became Razors Edge.  Razors Edge is still on air at 2SER-FM and offers strong independent and critical current affairs coverage.  It was and remains the training ground for many strong, successful journalists.

Meanwhile in the mid-80s I moved into independent documentary film, producing/directing Brigadistas (1986) and Philippines, my Philippines (1988).  In the early 1990s via a fellowship at the Australian Museum, I moved into what was then called multimedia, now online media, producing/directing The Australia St Archive and Tumblong, both of them collaborative ventures with the Australian Museum, and Tumblong with art institutions in Australia and the UK and the Ruskin School of Fine Art at Oxford University.

From 2000 I focused on more traditional academic scholarship and publishing.  I was Director of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism at UTS from 1998 to 2007.  From 2008 I was the inaugural Professor of Journalism at Monash University, retiring in 2017.

Current projects include a feature length documentary film Looking for Henry Lampard and a book The Politics of Silence.