Leigh Hatcher Tells of a Fall With Grace
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Many would consider the term “Christian media personality” to be a contradiction, particularly in the context of political journalism and reporting. But Leigh Hatcher, a well-respected journalist and television reporter who is also a committed Christian, stretches that stereotype. Hatcher began his career 30 years ago at the age of 19, and has chosen to maintain his Christian integrity throughout the years.
But there have been other challenges along the way that have tested both has faith and his career. At the height of his prominent career, Hatcher was struck by the debilitating chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), which not only stripped him of his capacity to work, but also to participate in everyday life. Despite everything, Hatcher’s faith remained intact.
“I became a Christian in my late teens. At about 15 or 16 we had a couple of deaths in our family and it really disturbed me. During that time, the only people who were saying anything credible or meaningful about the issue of death were Christians. I think I was initially scared into the Christian faith because of a fear of death,” Hatcher recalls.
Thirty-five years later, Hatcher says his reasoning for being a Christian now extends beyond fear of death. But for a long time, Leigh felt his motivation was quite “lame.” He eventually came to the understanding that “it’s not actually that unrealistic and it’s not that wrong because at the end of the day, everyone has to come up with a viable answer to death. The answers that the Christian faith provides now are still as authentic, meaningful and credible as they were then.”
Leigh Hatcher’s career as a journalist began quite unintentionally not long after he had finished his high school final exams. He began as an office boy at radio station 2GB and gained a cadetship five months later. From there he moved to the Channel 7 newsrooms where he spent the majority of his career in various roles, including stints as a foreign correspondent, national political reporter and prime-time anchorman. He is currently working for Skynews on pay TV’s Foxtel.
A career in television is assumed to be full of glamour and excitement, and Hatcher confesses to falling in love with the excitement and energy of the newsroom. But he also admits that the temptations of the media “fast life” are very real.
“I think that there are pressures and temptations predominantly on the issue of truth when specifically [relating to] journalism. But a lot of those temptations and issues are not unusual to the human condition.”
Hatcher acknowledges that at times, the difficulty of ensuring truth has been “restrictive and has definitely determined the career path that I feel God has led me. There were jobs and places to work that I’d chosen against because I thought it would be too hard, for both me and my employer, to continually wrestle with the issue of truth.”
Regardless of any self- or otherwise-imposed restrictions on Leigh’s career, it is true to say that he’s had some unusual and life-altering experiences while working in the media.
Two experiences in particular stand out to Hatcher as being highly significant. The first was when he went to the press gallery for the first time.
“I was 19, the chief political correspondent for the Macquarie network around Australia, and knew very little about politics. I arrived on Budget Day in 1975, the day the budget was blocked in the senate by the opposition. A sort of constitutional crisis built up around that and in the end, on 11 November 1975, Gough Whitlam was sacked.
“There had never been such a story on the national political stage and I was right in the midst of that absolute whirlwind. It was just marvellous.”
The other significant event happened on the last day of the 1994 bushfires in the Blue Mountains in New South Wales.
“I came as close as I’ve ever come to losing my life in the midst of that,” says Hatcher.
“We had spent most of the day waiting for this huge fire that was coming down the valley. Eventually, at about 4.30 pm, only an hour and half before our main bulletin, a complete firestorm hit the area where we were and it was like hell on earth.
“I was with a cameraman and an assistant for Channel 7, and we lost each other because we couldn’t see more than a couple of metres. They were connected because of their camera gear, but I was on my own. It was so overwhelming I thought I was going to choke to death.
“I ran out, quite literally for my life, to an area with more clear air, then thought, I can’t leave these guys. So I ran back in screaming for them. We met up again and ran for our lives.
“That Saturday turned out to be the end of the bushfires. The next day a cool change came in. It was a huge week.”
Following this confronting experience, Hatcher took some time to reflect on his life and felt challenged to set some goals for himself.
“I’d been invited more and more to do talks at Christian churches and groups and I felt quite inadequate to do it,” he says. “I was good at doing 10-minute television scripts but not crafting 20-minute talks.
“I thought I needed to learn the Bible more and I also felt led to consider doing a year of full-time theological study. So [the bushfire experience] was quite significant in my Christian life.
“Ultimately, I did my full-time study in 1997, and in God’s great and mysterious timing, I fell ill for two years after that.”
For those two years—1998-2000—Hatcher was out of action. Although he got significantly better quite quickly, he did not recover completely.
“Gradually, I was getting myself back to work and [eventually] ended up going back to work for Channel 7 on the Olympics, which was a marvellous gift from God. From the early days of the Sydney 2000 bid in 1991, I had been the Seven Network’s chief Olympic correspondent.
“I’d lost all that in my illness, but in God’s great timing and kindness, I was able to get back and do two months full-time work with Channel 7 during the Olympics. It was not only
great professionally, but also personally.
“It was also a great opportunity to really test my health because that was super full-on. It was after that that I started working at Sky, which is where I am now.”
Reflecting on his illness, Hatcher says he “would be very happy to declare if [my illness] rocked my faith, or if I raged against God, but I never did. Sustained by what He was saying in His Word, I was confident that all was OK, even though I did not know what on earth was happening or how long it was going to go for.”
As with many CFS sufferers, the actual diagnosis process took quite some time due to the unspecified nature of the illness. For Leigh, the onset occurred quite out of the blue, without any specific trigger, and manifested itself as what felt like “a really bad dose of the flu.”
“I eventually fell into the chronic fatigue syndrome basket. It is such a wide and broad definition, and I think that is its problem,” he says.
“You can go and have a test for cancer and say ‘you have cancer.’ However, there’s no defined test [for CFS]. I think it gets its bad press because it is only a syndrome, like SIDS and SARS, except those kill people.
“Just because CFS doesn’t necessarily kill you, doesn’t mean it’s not real.”
Leigh’s struggle with CFS and his eventual overcoming of the illness is an experience shared by thousands of people, yet understood by few.
“The worst suffering is the doubt, the misunderstanding and the judgment of people who believe it’s all in the mind,” Hatcher reflects. “They think either you’ve lost the plot, you can’t cope, you don’t want to cope, you’re lazy, or worse still, that you’re a fraud.
“From what numbers of people said and how they responded to me, that was the worst suffering. It was as if I’d really chosen to be sick and had the power to cheer up, get over it and get better again. They think you have that ability and that power but the problem is you don’t and it is not a choice that you’ve made.
“I used to cry out in despair and in anger at the terrible misjudgments that I’d chosen a life of pain and suffering. And that is the universal problem for people who have this very real illness bear when they suffer CFS, even though it’s a syndrome.”
Hatcher’s book, I’m Not Crazy, I’m Just a Little Unwell,* details his experience and is released this month to coincide with CFS Awareness Week. “It is a book that says ‘this is real, its got a devastating impact and it’s not a disease where you’ve lost the plot, you can’t cope or you’re a fraud,’” he explains.
“I would hope it gives a voice to those who don’t have a voice, and I know there are many thousands out there who suffer silently, often crushed by all of these judgments. I hope it gives people who care for them, who stand beside them or who stand apart puzzled, the chance to pause for thought and say, ‘Yeah, this seems to be real, so what can we do to stand by this person more effectively?’
“It’s also a challenge to the Christian community to show a greater sense of love and steadfastness with those who suffer, whether it be with CFS or other things.”
*I’m Not Crazy, I’m Just a Little Unwell, Strand Publishing, 2005. Available in all good bookstores.
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