Peter Gregory
Lecturer, Journalism
View contact details in Monash Staff Directory
Biography
Peter Gregory was given a traditional introduction to court reporting in the early 1980s. Thrown into the job when a colleague left the Brisbane Telegraph, an afternoon daily newspaper, he began covering the Queensland legal system with little experience or training.
More than 25 years later, he has joined Monash University as one of Australia’s most experienced legal rounds journalists. He has worked as a court reporter in three states, and covered many of Victoria’s major criminal cases after joining The Age newspaper in 1988.
They include the Walsh Street and Silk/Miller police murder trials, the manslaughter trial resulting from the death of former test cricketer David Hookes. In addition, Gregory reported on civil cases, ranging from the royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody and native title claims, to defamation, terror and freedom of speech applications, personal injuries claims and top-level sporting disputes.
He has worked on the legal and police rounds, and as a young journalist was an industrial, sport and general reporter. He also ran a Gold Coast bureau for the Telegraph.
With fellow Age reporters Ian Munro and John Silvester, Gregory was a Walkley Award finalist in 2003. He has won numerous awards given by the Victoria Law Foundation for legal reporting. He was the inaugural winner of the foundation’s court reporting prize, named after esteemed Melbourne journalist Columb Brennan, and received the accolade again in 2004. He was highly commended in 2002 and 2008. Other awards were presented for the best print story, deadline reporting to honour Gregory’s contribution of legal stories to The Age’s website, and for promoting understanding of courts and the law.
He has spoken at national and state legal conferences, and has lectured at a number of universities in Victoria and Queensland. A graduate from the University of Queensland in 1980, Gregory returned to study in 1998, and completed a Master of Journalism externally at the same institution in 2002. Gregory has begun work on a PhD, which will examine suppression orders in Victoria and South Australia.
He is a member of a Red Cross international human rights law committee, the web-based mentoring body New Australia Media, and another state committee dealing with media and communications. He has served for a number of years on the Media and Entertainment Alliance ethics committee for journalists, and previously was part of a courts/media liaison committee at the Victorian Supreme Court.
During his journalistic career, Gregory was regarded as a mentor for young reporters. He co-ordinated their training as court reporters while working at The News, in Adelaide, from 1985 to 1988. He was also an informal tutor, with other senior journalists, at the Victorian Supreme Court press room for almost 20 years.
He is the author of Court Reporting in Australia, a text book aimed at giving students and young journalists a guide to the craft.
