The difference with the stories being told about the current Gallipoli commemorations is that there is “no new News”, and perhaps this is therefore not as dynamic as audiences have come to expect.
Journalists and ordinary citizens have therefore done, what Historian Jonathan King described on Channel 10 tonight as taking ownership for family history, with the citizen becoming the academic and forensically examining every record that exists about their own family hero/es. This includes journalists who had family who fought at Gallipoli.
The interesting point is, therefore, the balance between the ownership of history and who tells it. As Dr King said previously in an interview on ABC Radio about his book “Gallipoli Diaries”, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-07/historian-warns-of-a-century-of-misunderstanding/5796030, the Anzac Troops on the ground did not trust the propagandists who were reporting on the campaign via the Press, and reported the truth of the bloody campaign in their diaries for their families to read and hold as testamentary evidence for all time that the Press can and does get it wrong.
Where do Historians sit amongst all of this? Patiently, I’d say. This is a fleeting moment in time, this Centenary celebration. Thank heavens for the journalists who report it, and for the families who have preserved the precious records through several generations and for the Historians who will come to interpret it all for us, turning the light on this moment in time a little further down the track.