ABC business coverage ‘poor’: Maurice Newman

A former chairman of the ABC and the ASX, Maurice Newman, has branded the ABC’s business coverage “poor”.

Maurice Newman said ABC business commentary “tended to be from the left”. Picture: Adam Yip

A former chairman of the ABC and the Australian Stock Exchange, Maurice Newman, has branded the ABC’s business coverage “poor” and a source of frustration during his tenure.

“I always thought we did not do a good job,” Mr Newman said, after the public broadcaster confirmed its eighth editorial review will look at its business coverage.

“Business was under-represented and the people covering it were not qualified to do so, and the one good person was (The Business host) Ticky Fullerton but she was on at 11.30 at night,” Mr Newman said. “It was relegated and never considered of significance.”

The timing of the review, to be conducted by media consultant and former journalist, Kerry Blackburn, gives some indication of the ABC’s expertise in the area. The review is seeking submissions from business leaders and industry groups before February 22 — during the final week of this financial reporting season and as groups continue lobbying and preparing for the May federal budget.

While the ABC has lifted its business coverage with the expansion of Fullerton’s The Business running three times a day on the network and for 10 minutes after PM on Local Radio, the tone of ABC business analysis is likely to come under scrutiny.

Mr Newman said ABC business commentary “tended to be from the left”.

“It’s important that even if they do devote more resources, they do so with people who are balanced and not affected with an anti-business bias,” he said. “They need somebody who comes from a different background, somebody who has a track record of being in markets, understands markets and being pro-markets. And that person is going to be lonely.”

While two business leaders labelled ABC business news coverage straight and adequate, the business analysis on The Drum website by former Fairfax journalist Ian Verrender is likely to face the most scrutiny, one business leader noted.

A number of Verrender’s opinion pieces could be viewed as anti-business, including: his regular damning of business lobby groups (including their idea of tax reform being “to pay no tax, or at least as little as possible, and let someone else pick up the tab”); the free trade agreement being “about entrenching the interests of major corporations at the expense of ordinary citizens …(and) entrenching power and governance among the wealthy”; and describing banks encouraging home loans for property “as a business model of rare beauty that some call a Ponzi scheme”.

The editorial review comes after three previous reviews have, to varying degrees, questioned the ABC’s overall business coverage. Most pointedly, journalist Colleen Ryan, in her editorial review of the ABC’s coverage of the 2014 federal budget, said she had “some reservations on the structure of the coverage of the economic and financial impact of the budget”.

Steve Harris’s review of coverage of the Higher Education Research and Reform Bill also found there was “an overemphasis on the politics of the legislative package’s passage compared with the socio-economic and community impact” while the most recent review by Ray Martin and Shaun Brown of the panel program Q&A noted the business community’s reluctance to appear on the program.