One of the more interesting developments in modern journalism is that reporters increasingly seem to know the answer before they begin asking the questions.
That might sound unfair. After all, journalism has always involved judgement. Reporters decide what is newsworthy, which facts deserve prominence and which voices deserve attention. Yet increasingly there is a sense that many modern stories are built around a narrative first and an investigation second. The conclusion is established, the heroes and villains identified, and the reporting process becomes one of gathering supporting material.
Australian journalism has already travelled this road before. Over the past decade we have watched repeated debates about whether journalists are investigators, advocates or activists. We have seen fierce arguments around reporting on climate policy, agriculture, sexual assault allegations, Indigenous affairs, energy and a host of other contentious issues where the line between reporting and campaigning has become increasingly blurred. The common thread is rarely whether a particular cause is right or wrong. Rather, it is whether the journalist approaches the issue seeking to test a hypothesis or confirm one.
Reading Ros Thomas’s recent Weekend Australian feature on paraquat and Parkinson’s disease,* I was reminded of those debates. The article is well written, emotionally powerful and clearly the product of considerable effort. It contains heartbreaking stories from farmers living with Parkinson’s disease, references international studies, overseas litigation, regulatory reviews and medical experts. On the surface it looks exactly like the sort of long-form investigative journalism newspapers should be producing more of.
* Ros Thomas, “This toxic weedkiller is linked to Parkinson’s and banned in 74 countries. Why are we still using it?”, The Australian, 29 May 2026.
The problem is that by the time you reach the end, you are left with the feeling that the destination was already known before the journey began. The victims have been identified. The regulator is portrayed as compromised. The farming industry is cast as resistant to change. The chemical company occupies its traditional role as corporate villain. What is far less obvious is whether competing explanations, competing evidence and competing interests were examined with the same enthusiasm as material supporting the central narrative.
My own involvement in the story was minor, but revealing.
A fortnight ago, while sitting at the back of an NFF meeting in Canberra during seeding and attempting to work through several hundred emails, I received a text message from the journalist. The story, I was informed, was heading to print. The subject matter was not some local issue affecting a handful of growers. It was paraquat, Parkinson’s disease, international litigation, Australian chemical regulation and the future of one of the most widely used herbicides in modern broadacre agriculture.
My immediate reaction was not to defend paraquat. It was to suggest she might be talking to the wrong person.
If I were writing a story on one of the biggest agricultural policy debates in the developed world, my first instinct would be to consult the organisations whose day job is understanding the issue. Grain Producers Australia would seem an obvious starting point. CropLife Australia another. The National Farmers’ Federation might offer a useful perspective, while weed scientists, resistance specialists and agronomists could explain the practical implications of removing a major farming tool from the system.
After all, I am the CEO of one small state farming organisation of three staff. We represent grain and livestock farmers in Western Australia. We are not the national peak body for grain production, chemical regulation, weed science or herbicide resistance. Had this been a story about capital gains tax and family farming, readers would rightly expect comment from the NFF. Had it been a story about aviation safety, nobody would think it complete without hearing from CASA or national aviation organisations. Yet in a story examining one of the most important herbicides used in modern grain production, the voices that occupy most of the article are not the people responsible for managing the agronomic, economic and environmental consequences of any future ban.
That does not automatically make the article wrong. It does, however, make it incomplete. And incompleteness is often where narrative-driven journalism begins to emerge.
The article relies heavily on the testimony of farmers suffering from Parkinson’s disease. Their stories are genuine. Their suffering is real. Their search for answers is entirely understandable. Anyone who has watched a friend or family member battle Parkinson’s would struggle not to feel sympathy. Likewise, I have genuine sympathy for Dr David Blacker. He is clearly an intelligent and accomplished neurologist who has experienced a devastating illness firsthand. His desire to understand why Parkinson’s disease is increasing is entirely reasonable.
My own interaction with Dr Blacker last year was perhaps the most interesting part of the entire saga because it bears little resemblance to the adversarial narrative that eventually emerged in the media. Dr Blacker approached WAFarmers seeking a discussion about paraquat, Parkinson’s disease and possible alternatives. His correspondence was thoughtful, detailed and respectful. He was clearly motivated by personal experience and by a sincere desire to understand whether Australian agriculture could transition away from products he believed may contribute to the condition.
While we disagreed on a number of points, particularly around the weight of evidence and the practical implications of removing paraquat from modern farming systems, the exchange itself was constructive. I explained that farmers view paraquat through a very different lens than many medical professionals. For growers, the question is not whether a chemical has hazards – all chemicals do – but whether the risks can be managed and whether viable alternatives exist. Dr Blacker, to his credit, acknowledged the enormous challenge of feeding a growing global population and recognised that there were no easy answers.
In fact, the correspondence ended on a thoughtful note. Nobody changed their position dramatically, but neither side dismissed the other. It reinforced my view that these debates are usually far more nuanced than the public discussion suggests. Over the following months Dr Blacker moved from inquiry to advocacy, which is entirely his right. Citizens in a democracy are entitled to campaign for causes they believe in. Somewhere between those original emails and the eventual newspaper feature, however, a complex discussion about science, risk, regulation and food production was transformed into a much simpler story about victims, villains and institutional failure.
That transformation says less about Dr Blacker than it does about modern journalism.
There is nothing wrong with advocacy. Australia depends upon it. Farmers advocate. Environmental groups advocate. Doctors advocate. Industry advocates. The journalist’s role, however, is different. Advocates begin with a conclusion and seek support for it. Journalists are supposed to begin with a question and follow the evidence wherever it leads. That distinction matters because once journalism becomes invested in a particular narrative, facts that strengthen the story are amplified while facts that complicate it receive far less attention.
That is where the article begins to raise difficult questions.
Many of the examples presented appear to describe something quite different from the case being made. Several of the farmers interviewed describe handling multiple chemicals over decades, often with little or no PPE. They describe spray drift, contaminated water supplies, hand mixing chemicals, chemical exposure through clothing and practices that would horrify modern workplace safety officers. These experiences are important and deserve examination, but they also raise an obvious question that receives surprisingly little attention. Are we examining modern paraquat use or reconstructing agricultural practices from half a century ago?
That distinction matters because contemporary agriculture is not agriculture in 1975. Modern labels are different. Modern PPE is different. Modern training requirements are different. Modern application systems are different. Modern understanding of occupational exposure is different. Yet throughout the article historical exposure, modern exposure, epidemiological studies, personal testimony and legal action are woven together into a single narrative thread. The result is emotionally compelling, but it leaves many of the complexities unexplored.
The most obvious missing piece is context.
The article repeatedly notes that Parkinson’s disease is increasing globally. That is true. The World Health Organisation has documented the rise. Neurologists around the world have documented the rise. Researchers continue to debate the causes. Yet if Parkinson’s disease is increasing across entire populations and across countries with vastly different agricultural systems, surely the first obligation of an investigative journalist is to explore the broader picture.
Where is the discussion of diesel emissions, solvents, heavy metals, particulate pollution, microplastics, pharmaceuticals or cumulative lifetime exposure to hundreds of synthetic compounds? Where is the discussion of ageing populations and improved diagnosis? One does not need to agree with any particular explanation. One simply needs to acknowledge that the scientific picture is considerably more complicated than the article suggests.
Perhaps the most revealing section concerns the APVMA. Readers are told in no uncertain terms that the regulator is funded by farmers, not that the government levies ag chemicals to fund the regulator. The implication is subtle but unmistakable. Industry funds the regulator, therefore industry influences the regulator, therefore the regulator’s conclusions should be viewed with suspicion.
It is an effective piece of framing, but it quickly weakens when placed in a broader context. Much of modern government operates on cost-recovery models. Mining regulators are funded by mining companies. Port regulators are funded by ports. Aviation regulators are funded by aviation. Fisheries management is funded by fisheries. Water regulation is funded by water users. If levy funding is evidence of corruption, then half the regulatory system is compromised. If not, then the repeated references to funding arrangements become less a matter of evidence and more a matter of narrative construction.
None of this means the APVMA is infallible. No regulator is. Every regulator should be challenged. Every regulator should be scrutinised. Every regulator should be forced to defend its conclusions. But scrutiny requires engaging with the science, not merely the accounting structure.
Perhaps the most remarkable omission in the entire article is the lack of any serious examination of alternatives. A reader unfamiliar with modern grain production could easily come away with the impression that removing paraquat would undoubtedly create some inconvenience for farmers, but that workable substitutes are readily available and the transition is largely a matter of industry reluctance. Yet the obvious policy questions are never properly explored. What exactly replaces paraquat in no-till farming systems that have been developed over four decades to reduce soil erosion, conserve moisture and improve soil structure? How are growers expected to manage increasingly resistant ryegrass populations across Western Australia, South Australia and the eastern states? What additional cultivation passes would be required, how much extra fuel would be consumed, what would be the impact on production costs and yields, and what environmental trade-offs would emerge through increased soil disturbance and reduced moisture retention?
These are not secondary considerations or talking points supplied by industry lobbyists. They are the central questions policymakers, regulators and farmers must confront if a major agricultural tool is removed. The distinction is important because advocacy is primarily concerned with what should happen, whereas policy must deal with what happens next. One is morally appealing. The other is often messy, complicated and full of unintended consequences. Serious journalism should be interested in both.
The real tragedy here is that Parkinson’s disease deserves better than a simplistic narrative. Farmers deserve better than a simplistic narrative. Dr Blacker deserves better than a simplistic narrative. The public deserves better than a simplistic narrative.
The Australian has built much of its reputation by questioning conventional wisdom, challenging assumptions and applying scepticism to fashionable causes. That is precisely why this article is disappointing. Not because it asks difficult questions of agriculture, but because it appears reluctant to ask equally difficult questions of its own assumptions.
The paraquat debate is important. The health of farmers is important. The integrity of chemical regulation is important. Food production is important. Every one of these issues deserves rigorous scrutiny. What they do not deserve is a style of journalism that increasingly resembles the preparation of a legal brief, where evidence supporting the preferred case is assembled diligently while contradictory evidence receives only passing attention.
The most difficult stories are not those where the journalist knows the answer. They are the stories where nobody knows the answer and the task is to genuinely explore uncertainty. After reading this article, I was left with the distinct impression that uncertainty was the one thing the story had little interest in examining.
And that should concern all of us far more than any single chemical.
Related stories: Paraquat
