James Morrow: Sorry Aunty, real diversity means diversity of opinion, not skin colour
The ABC prefers identity politics to real diversity — just look at Radio National’s plan to make journalists keep a database of the race, sex, and sexuality of all their interview subjects, writes James Morrow.
Opinion
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Good news: The ABC is finally doing something about its longstanding problem with bias.
Bad news: They are doing so in the most biased way possible, with a new “content tracker” system that seeks to bake identity politics into pretty much everything that goes to air on the broadcaster within their Radio National arm.
Radio National journalists were, I am told, bemused by a new directive which came down recently about a new tool which would be used from this month to “track” how much diversity is being put to air — not diversity of opinion, mind you, but rather diversity of race, sex and sexual orientation.
It was described as a “content tracker”, a fact sheet as “a simple tool to record and measure diversity of talent in our content across platforms”.
“It allows you to see how you are including groups which might be under-represented in our content,” according to the document.
And just to make sure no one misinterprets this as getting more “Morrison voters who don’t drag their knuckles”, “lockdown sceptics who don’t, actually, want to kill grandma”, or “weekly churchgoers who don’t speak in tongues and handle snakes” on the air, the document points out that it really means “women, Indigenous and Torres Strait Islanders, people from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) backgrounds, LGBTQI people, and people with disabilities”.
As the fact sheet puts it, “this takes the grunt work out of having to sit down and trawl through run-downs. It makes it easier for you to get a snapshot of how you are going”.
The risk, of course, is that taxpayer funded journos and producers looking for stories and programming will no longer just be going for the best voices, but the ones who tick the most boxes, like a game of intersectional bingo.
And don’t just think that this is limited to Radio National; it’s part of a much wider organisational push.
According to the ABC’s own Diversity and Inclusion Plan 2019-22, the broadcaster is supposed to “look and sound like modern Australia, and include all Australians in what we do” because “we need to be relevant to all Australians”.
As a spokesman for the ABC explained, the tracker “is among a number of initiatives at the ABC to ensure that we look and sound like contemporary Australia, in line with the requirements of our Charter”.
Which is fair enough, particularly as all Australians are paying for it.
And considering it was only in June that ABC’s flagship Sunday program Insiders finally welcomed an Indigenous panellist, you can see why the broadcaster might want to “do better” when it comes to racial diversity.
Yet as anyone who’s spent a bit of time consuming ABC content knows, that’s not where the real diversity problem lies.
For decades the ABC has been hammered over its soft (and sometimes hard) left biases, born of its public sector culture and inner-city outlook.
“Spot the conservative” has, for those game enough to brave a Monday night airing of Q&A, become practically a drinking game (“neoliberalism …” “drink!”).
Their neurotic hipster lifestyle site, ABC Life (still operating, but allegedly on the chopping block) includes helpful advice on “What to consider before suggesting an open relationship” and “Life going back to normal doesn’t have to mean wearing a bra”.
That’s right, the edgy kids of Ultimo are so forward thinking they want to take us all back to the go-go 1970s complete with bra burnings and car keys in the fishbowl.
But no, the real problem with this latest effort towards diversity is that it is, in practice, divisive.
Remember, Radio National is part of the same ABC which last year handed out guidelines to journos warning them “not (to) speak of ‘us’ or ‘our values’ in ways that exclude minorities”.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the idea that “our values” as Australians can only be shared by straight, white Anglos sounds more like the sort of thing you’d read in the local edition of Der Sturmer.
And diversity as defined by the woke intersectional politics mob is not diversity at all.
It suggests that those who are members of defined “minority” groups must hold the same progressive politics and those who don’t are somehow inauthentic — just witness the abuse handed out to Aboriginal activist Jacinta Price.
The Institute for Public Affairs’ Evan Mulholland told me that this is the sort of thing that “enforces divisive identity politics”.
“Rather than seeing mainstream Australia as a unified nation, the ABC is deliberately segmenting and dividing our community into categories,” Mulholland said.
Exactly.
A tick-a-box effort to ensure they get on the “right” number of conservatives versus greenies or churchgoers versus atheists or petrol heads versus Lycra warriors is just as bound to fail if the overall culture doesn’t change.
Once journalists, editors, and producers start covering their rounds with an eye towards getting their diversity figures up, journalism itself suffers.
In the Orwellian world of the ABC, saying “us” is divisive and diversity means making sure there’s plenty of variation in everything except what counts — point of view.