ABC boss cannot ignore cultural problems at the national broadcaster

The ABC is having a horror run and now is not the time for management to pretend otherwise.

Our ABC is in need of life support, writes Chris Kenny.

The national broadcaster, our ABC, has arguably endured the worst few years of its existence, with massive reputational damage caused by stories that were complained about, withdrawn, apologised for, or subject to civil action.

What does it do?

It hides behind cartoon characters, in the form of Bananas in Pyjamas, Peppa Pig or, more recently, Bluey.

“Bluey has quickly become a global phenomenon,” writes managing director David Anderson in Now More Than Ever: Australia’s ABC. “Increasingly however, we cannot take it for granted that great Australian stories will automatically be available to us.”

ABC managing director David Anderson.

Anderson’s monograph, part of a series of books published “in the national interest” by Monash University Press, is a repetition of well-rehearsed defences of the ABC. Rather than a considered treatise, it reads like a public relations team rehash of speeches and press releases – so as an ode to creativity and independent thinking it is a bit of an own goal.

Instead of vigorous self-examination and redefining of the ABC’s role in a multimedia world, we get tedious self-congratulation and denial. Perhaps Bluey ate the managing director’s homework.

Anderson is an ABC lifer, starting in the ABC’s Adelaide mailroom in 1989 (about the same time I left the same building). Given how different I have found the world outside the cloisters of the national broadcaster, it worries me that such a crucial cultural institution is run by someone who has spent his entire working life inside that bubble.

In the best traditions of this staff-run collective, Anderson’s intended audience seems to be the 4000 or more ABC employees and their rusted-on supporters. This is symptomatic of the organisation, playing to its own crowd rather than the broader population that it is charged to do under the ABC Act.

Anderson shares personal program favourites and a voluminous list of output and successes. But he denies and dodges the two most important debates about the ABC: its ideological bias; and its role in a world replete with media choices.

This lifelong administrator proudly trumpets the ABC as an “independent source of truth”.

Yet while boasting about Four Corners’ investigations and Norman Swan’s pandemic coverage, he studiously avoids damning examples of mangled reality and untruths.

There is no mention of Four Corners’ three-part series on Donald Trump and Russia – modestly dubbed the “Story of the Century” – that turned out to be an erroneous indulgence in politically-motivated conspiracy theories.

Nor is there a reference to the ABC’s pursuit of Cardinal George Pell, found by the High Court to be innocent.

Swan’s alarmist predictions, proven to be wildly wrong, are not mentioned. There is not a single reflection on how all the ABC’s reporters failed to foresee the possibility of Trump’s win in 2016 or Scott Morrison’s in 2019.

ABC talking head Norman Swan.

Large media organisations will always make mistakes, but there must be corrections, apologies and accountability, rather than denial. Especially when they are taxpayer-funded.

Anderson proclaims a “dedication to journalistic objectivity” that is “non-negotiable” and declares the ABC’s role is “not to take a policy position”. Yet he fails to countenance the possibility of a corporate view on issues such as climate change, border security or the republic. His examination of diversity misses the most important point; listing “gender, age, language, disabilities, sexual orientation, religious beliefs and more” but not addressing the need for ideological diversity.

Consumed by identity politics, the ABC ignores the primacy of the contest of ideas. Anderson seems not to understand that if the ABC fails to serve all Australians, it will eventually lose public support. If its supporters are increasingly confined to the inner-city green left, then no matter how noisy they are, a conservative government eventually will have the courage to disappoint them.

The other existential challenge is to define the ABC’s role in a world with so many media choices that if we were starting from scratch now, we would never see the need for a national broadcaster.

David Anderson’s Now More Than Ever: Australia’s ABC.

Anderson notes the public broadcaster was started 90 years ago at a time of “media scarcity”.

That original network of radio stations helped to bind the nation together. But when we have numerous national radio and television networks, and national newspapers, all available digitally along with a vast array of local and international sources, the role of the ABC is unclear.

Anderson argues that the unreliability of social and commercial media makes trusted news ever more important – hence now more than ever. This overlooks how the strong social media presence and engagement by ABC journalists and programs sees the national broadcaster following Twitter’s lead down a sewer of abuse, ignorance, and the triumph of emotion over reason.

The debate Anderson pretends away is whether the ABC should be allowed to expand into every new crevice of multimedia activity, competing with and crowding out commercial players, or whether it should be corralled to quality broadcasting on a prescribed range of platforms.

Anderson urges his troops to resist “at all costs” attempts to “interfere with or undermine the independence” of the ABC, seeming to claim victim status for a billion-dollars-a-year media behemoth. Instead of being defensive and ignoring its failings, the ABC should concentrate on making itself indispensable.

Chris Kenny is an avid consumer of ABC offerings, among them Radio National’s evening quiz, and Peppa Pig.