ABC shows pinged for ALP bias

Internal review finds two of the ABC’s flagship political ­discussion programs favoured Labor over the Coalition during the 2019 election.

Host Julia Baird on ABC’s The Drum.

An internal review has found two of the ABC’s flagship political ­discussion programs favoured Labor over the Coalition during the 2019 federal election campaign, with one at times showing a “marked enthusiasm’’ for a Labor victory.

The audit of 158 separate items and nine hours of live discussion singled out nightly current affairs program The Drum and political talk show Insiders as being ­significantly more positive ­towards Labor than the Coalition.

While the review, by former BBC adviser Kerry Blackburn, found overall the public broadcaster’s content met the impartiality standard, it recommended The Drum reconsider the composition of its panel to “achieve a ­better balance of voices from across the spectrum of ideas and politics”.

In particular, it found one ­episode of The Drum “was more than seven times as likely to ­contribute to a favourable impression of Labor and the Left than to a favourable contribution of the Coalition and the Right”.

Another episode, on May 6, showed “not just a positive impression of policies identified with Labor’s platform but also at times a marked enthusiasm for a Labor victory”.

The Blackburn Review, which was tabled in parliament on Thursday evening at the insistence of Coalition senators, also noted one episode of Insiders was “twice as likely to contribute to a favourable impression of Labor than to a favourable contribution of the Coalition”.

“It was significantly more negative for the Coalition than for Labor,” Ms Blackburn found.

Another episode of Insiders was “3½ times as likely” to favour Labor than the Coalition”.

But the review also found that this disparity could be “substantially explained by considering the prevailing consensus, the opinion polls and election events”.

Labor held an election-­winning lead in major opinion polls for much of the period before the May 18 poll.

“The distinction in outcome between Insiders and The Drum is that a proportion of the positive valence for Labor on the 6 May edition of The Drum for example, was found to have been the result of support for Labor policies, and also in some cases for the idea of a Labor government,” the review reads.

“While the conclusion is that Insiders met the impartiality ­standard, the ABC is encouraged to reflect on how it might improve the reflection of a diversity of ­perspectives during an election period.”

Other ABC radio and television programs, including interviews on Radio National, Insiders and 7.30 were found to be “fair and open minded”.

“The content overall reflected a breadth and depth of storytelling, analysis and straightforward information likely to satisfy even the most committed political junkies,” the review reads.

Ms Blackburn noted “the asymmetric character of this ­election stretched the interpretation of what might constitute ‘due’ impartiality to its limits”.

“With the exception of the Prime Minister and his Treasury team, the Coalition frontbench was essentially absent from the campaign and so was the ­government’s agenda for the next parliament,” Ms Blackburn wrote in the review.

“At first analysis, the review identified potential problems of imbalance across some significant segments of ABC content … to borrow from Barnaby Joyce, it was Labor, Labor, Labor.

“But that was hardly surprising given the slimness of the government’s policy package and spending promises.”

In a statement, the ABC said the review was “not a comprehensive analysis and was intended to give ABC editorial managers starting points for discussion”.

“The review did not identify any impartiality issue with the conduct of presenters on The Drum or identify any issues of bias in their interviews,” the statement reads. “In the intervening 18 months … The Drum has continued to grow in political and geographic diversity and there have been changes to the pool of political journalists and expert commentators used on Insiders.”