Pictures tell the story

For police reporter Jessica Adamson, the sight of a dead motorcyclist speared through the windscreen of a car two years ago was stomach-turning. That was no surprise, given her long-standing discomfort with gore. But she still had to report on the fatal Port Wakefield Rd crash for Channel 7’s evening news.

The nightmarish image has remained with her to this day, and will, she says, stay with her forever.

“I’m hopeless at ‘fatals’,” she says. “Often, at the scene, you’re too busy to worry about it. But, sometimes, it will hit me afterwards. You’ll go home at night and think: ‘God, that was bloody awful. I really didn’t need to see that’.

“I don’t know how the Major Crash investigators do their job every day, with such professionalism and good cheer. I can’t even watch RPA.”

Nonetheless, Adamson loves her job so much that she actually looks forward to fronting up for work each day. And, at work, her near total aim is to secure the best possible pictures to accompany each of her police stories.

“Pictures are the most important thing in a television news story,” says the energetic 30-year-old. “The race is always on to be the first news crew there. It can get pretty competitive at times.”

Adamson – a former Loreto College girl – took on the role of police reporter in 1999, two years after she joined Channel 7. She had just covered the Whyalla Airlines crash, at which she found herself dragging clothes and “bits of plane wreckage” out of the water.

As gruesome as the task might have been, it gave her the taste for “the big police stories”. And, since then, she has certainly covered high-profile cases, such as the murders of British tourist, Peter Falconio, and Mental Health Service director, Margaret Tobin. Adamson was also on hand on the day of the bodies-in-the-barrels discovery at Snowtown.

But to make her way in the world of police reporting, Adamson has had to work particularly hard to make contacts. “It’s difficult,” she says. “It’s a lot of phone work, a lot of ringing around. I will always ring around each day to see what’s happening in each LSA.

“For a long time people have no idea who you are. But, over time, you build up a rapport, mutual respect and trust. I’ve built up a lot of good, trusting relationships with police, and made a lot of good friends.

“It can be fun and enjoyable as well. You can have a good chat while you’re standing around at a siege. Some of the jobs we do are long and drawn-out, and you can get to know police officers pretty well through that.”

Like all police reporters, Adamson’s range of contacts includes those whose identities she – and each of them – keeps secret. She would only tell the Police Journal that her “few” connections of that type span the ranks and work in various sections of SAPOL. And, to keep officers’ identities concealed, she says, is no hardship.

Adamson concedes that police and the media have sometimes strained to enjoy good relations. Even in recent times, she and SAPOL management have disagreed about the content of one of her stories. It covered inadequate police staffing in the South Coast area.

“The feeling from the hierarchy was that it simply wasn’t true,” she says, “that police numbers down there weren’t stretched. But that was flying in the face of what I was being told by several people who actually worked down there.”

Adamson, however, stands always ready to talk to police who might be concerned about the way she has portrayed them. And she in any case believes the police-media relationship of today is ever-improving.

“They (police) are more understanding of what we need,” she says, “and we are more understanding of the boundaries.”

Adamson jokes that, after all the police action she has seen, she intends some time to go through Fort Largs and become a Major Crime detective. Her serious view of cops – whom she respects and admires – is that they perform one of society’s toughest jobs.

She sees them as highly dedicated people on the job, and as fun-lovers who enjoy a beer out of hours.

Not lost on her either, is that the aspects of life she and the police see every day have the power to shape one’s views. “It puts everything into perspective,” she insists. “You go to places every day and meet people you would never normally meet.

“You realize how life can be so different for so many people in one city; and it makes you realize, in a lot of cases, how lucky you are.”