ABC viewers look in vain for balance as ‘blue wave’ narrative gets a free run

The ABC of balanced editing was conspicuously absent during coverage of last week’s US mid-term election.

The media’s coverage of last week’s American mid-term election, here and in the US, was often even more partisan than during the November 2016 presidential election.

Here our ABC let viewers down with its main 7pm news, which had been forecasting a “blue wave” for days and on election night on Wednesday tried not to let the facts — a standard swing against an incumbent president in the congress — get in the way of its preferred narrative.

This was a pity because ABC radio, especially News Radio, did a good job all afternoon.

So too did ABC 24, where The Drum benefited from the US experience of host Julia Baird. Earlier, ABC 24 had crossed to Planet America hosts John Barron and Chas Licciardello, whose live analysis was balanced and informative.

The main ABC channel let the side down with a partisan, poorly structured 7pm television bulletin. The lead item ran until the 8min 20sec mark, much of it spent talking to successful Democrats, Dem­ocrat voters or people who just hated Trump.

US correspondent Zoe Daniel spoke to camera after her report and that of fellow US correspondent Connor Duffy, former national environment reporter. Duffy had spent the day in Virginia and his report lacked for it.

His and Daniel’s packages appeared to have been filed early and should have been moved lower in the bulletin. News executive producers should have asked for a new top from Daniel: it took until the 7min 20sec mark for a live cross to her.

After mentioning possible impeachment proceedings from the house, the Russia probe and possible Trump financial impropriety, Daniel finally acknowledged the result was unlikely to affect Trump’s chances at the 2020 presidential election.

There was no mention that a mid-term loss of the house by parties in a first term presidency was common and had happened to Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, and that both had gone on to win second terms. Obama lost 63 seats in 2010 and Clinton 54 in 1994.

Neither was there any assessment of the size of the swing to blue, which at possibly 35 seats was unexceptional.

Yet these facts had been discussed at length elsewhere at the ABC hours earlier, had been mentioned at length on Fairfax and News Corp websites and were being discussed before 3pm on CNN and Fox News.

It was less a case of ABC reporting bias than poor editing. Senior insiders often say the real problem at the ABC is not reporters’ bias so much as the political inexperience of its many young producers.

Bias was certainly pronounced in the rolling coverage of the left-wing CNN and conservative Fox News. CNN struggled to admit the congressional swing to the Democrats was far from a wave, and it barely dealt with Republican Senate and governors’ successes. Fox News played down the importance of the swing in congress, focusing more on Republican Senate and gubernatorial successes.

This paper’s foreign editor, Greg Sheridan, appeared late afternoon on Sky News with the network’s political editor, David Speers. Both brought much-needed balance to assessing the importance of the Democrats’ house win.

“The grand narrative of the Trump haters — that the President is a unique aberration in modern American life and will be snuffed out by a remorseful electorate at the first opportunity — just doesn’t square with reality,” Sheridan wrote in this paper.

Indeed, congressional adventurism after previous mid-term corrections shows such wins can be a mixed blessing. Republican overreach against Clinton after the 1994 mid-terms turned into a culture war voters hated and eventually motivated Clinton voters more than Republicans.

Stephen Loosley, former Labor senator and visiting fellow at the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, suggested here that Democrat aspirations to impeach Trump would prove a dead end. I agree and I believe the sacking of US attorney-general Jeff Sessions the day after the elections and the entire Russia probe will prove a fizzer, snaring only a few short-term campaign workers looking to feather their own financial nests.

For viewers who wanted more than ABC 7.30’s 6min 14sec of analysis, Janine Perrett, standing in for former Labor senator Graham Richardson on Richo on Sky News at 8pm, provided a thoughtful segment with this paper’s occasional media writer and long-time newspaper editor Mark Day and US Studies Centre chief executive Simon Jackman.

The Democrats’ success will affect the presidency and probably for the better. Trump will need to negotiate and be less bellicose.

Yet there is no doubt the election has increased Trump’s power over both Republican voters and his party. His intervention over mig­ration was crucial in many contests. And as Jackman pointed out, there were Republican losses in the gubernatorial races, particularly in the mid-western states where we saw the return of the “blue belt” with Democrat governors taking the Republican stronghold of Kansas as well as Wisconsin, Illinois and Michigan.

Yet fierce campaigning by Barack and Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey failed to make a dent in Georgia while, despite a repeat of Hillary Clinton’s sunbelt push in 2016, Texas and Florida remained Republican.

Trump campaigned harder than most presidents do in the mid-terms and he largely succeeded in getting loyal Trump supporters over the line.

While progressive media made much of the strong Democrat congressional vote by women and the success of female, gay, Muslim and Indian candidates, not much thought was given to the future leadership of the Democrats. Possible Trump challenger and Obama vice-president Joe Biden is 75, Nancy Pelosi 78 and Dianne Feinstein 85.

There is little sign of a new generation of leaders for the party of the young.

Finally, many in the media underrated the importance of Trump’s Senate success.

As Gerald Seib wrote in The Wall Street Journal, “For Mr Trump … keeping control of the Senate means there is no danger the tax cuts and deregulatory measures of the first two years … will be rolled back.

“Crucially, the Republican campaign to redraw the federal courts with a steady stream of conservative judges can and will continue. Moreover, the Senate … will be more friendly … than the version of the past two years. The GOP senators who were most vexsome … to the President are gone.”