Michelle Guthrie’s legacy won’t be seen or appreciated by audiences

Under Michelle Guthrie, ABC News forfeited its past claims of credibility. Her successor must now focus on journalism.

ABC chairman Justin Milne with former managing director Michelle Guthrie. Photo: John Feder

COMMENT

Michelle Guthrie’s surprise sacking has changed the focus on the key questions being asked as she approached the half way mark of her five-year term: What has she achieved and what is still to be done?

I have been polling contacts inside and outside the ABC and the messages are mixed. She has made some commendable structural changes internally, but has yet to address many issues irritating audiences and competitors.

Insiders who saw Ms Guthrie on a regular basis tend to define her by what she is not. They say she is not loud; she is not flashy and she’s not demonstrative. In fact, they say she’s a bit shy and she nurses a fear that other media are out to get her, which hinders a full appreciation of the far-reaching reforms she made in her two-and-a-half years at the helm.

“She smashed the bureaucracy,” says one senior manager. “She went through the place with a dose of salts. Around 200 middle managers have gone. There used to be 14 divisions; now there are four. The structure is flatter. The days when you had a manager managing two people are over.”

This will become Ms Guthrie’s legacy. But it is not one that is evident to audiences.

Not that there is anything wrong with that — reform of the monolithic bureaucracy and fiefdoms that bedevilled the ABC for generations has been high on critics’ lists for decades. Ms Guthrie bit the bullet and did it, redirecting funds saved to a $50 million Great Ideas Grant scheme that should, in time, generate new and innovative content that audiences will notice.

Former ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie attends a Sydney Institute dinner with ABC chairman Justin Milne. Photo: James Croucher

As well as attacking featherbedding and removing dead wood, Ms Guthrie reorganised internal structures, abandoning old “silos” resulting in the merging; for instance, of radio and television reporting teams. She also expanded regional news coverage and lifted the Australian content broadcast across the ABC from 76 per cent to 81 per cent.

Any change brings resistance and there has been some within the ranks. The GIG scheme has already hit some funding hurdles but insiders say in most cases younger staffers have embraced the new, streamlined structures.

There is no argument that back office reform was essential, and Ms Guthrie must be given credit for her achievements, but the areas where further action is needed are up front and, from an audience perspective, in your face.

The news division is a shambles. The flagship ABC nightly news on TV is sloppy, unfocused, lacking in credibility and infused with regular grammatical atrocities. There was a time when the news majored in national politics, international events and state politics but the steady hands that packaged a sober and reliable summary of the day’s events have gone.

The commercial news imperative “if it bleeds it leads” has taken over and nightly bulletins now often lead on car crashes, suburban shootouts or live crosses to so-called “breaking news” which has no significance to anyone other than the participants.

In a past era of reliability, it would have been unthinkable for the ABC to lead its bulletin with the likes of Andrew Probyn’s hysterical, unsourced and conspiratorial reports about media mogul influence in the downfall of former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. The alleged emails between News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch (owner of The Australian) and Seven West’s Kerry Stokes (who denied they were ever sent or received) were mocked up on screen — an unforgivable blunder by the national broadcaster.

The ABC news has forfeited its past claims of credibility. It is SBS that now provides the sober, reliable and credible news that audiences deserve.

The 24/7 television news service established by Ms Guthrie’s predecessor Mark Scott is a flop. It does not provide rolling news in the style of the ABC’s news radio service; rather, it is home to multiple repeats of main channel programs and its editors display a reluctance to go live into important events as they break. Its commentary and analysis programs frequently demonstrate the ABC’s unquestionable bias to the Left.

ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie speaks at a Melbourne Press Club luncheon. Photo: Aaron Francis

The current affairs output is more reliable, but its programs can also be a bit hit and miss. In the past couple of years Four Corners has prompted two royal commissions — one into youth detention in the Northern Territory announced by Malcolm Turnbull after its report was aired; the other announced last week by Scott Morrison before the excoriating report on aged care went to air. On the other hand, the quickie report cobbled together immediately after the Turnbull coup told us nothing new. Compared to past Four Corners offerings about Prime Ministerial upheavals, it was a flop.

Ms Guthrie’s successor must now focus on this area. It was not high on Ms Guthrie’s agenda. I was told: “She was hands off in this area. She made it clear she was not a journalist but she said she would back her teams to produce better journalism.”

There is also no doubt that, when it comes to digital services, Ms Guthrie had an expansionist policy. Some critics argue that the ABC should not be in the digital space, but that is a hopeless case. If you are in media today, you must be in digital otherwise you’re dead. In the not too far distant future, digital distribution will sideline the old broadcasting technologies on which the ABC was built.

Relevant questions, though, are how far into the digital world the ABC should go and how much disruption of commercial players is acceptable. The Guthrie approach seemed to be that if an interesting niche emerged from the commercial sector, the ABC should replicate it, thus chilling the prospects of the private start-up. We have seen this in the new ABC Life site which in my view cannot be described as anything other than a spoiler for other commercial sites in the same field.

This is not what the ABC was established to do.