How an ABC flagship show went under

Two things happened at the ABC which eventually led to the demise of Lateline.

ABC Lateline hosts Emma Alberici and Tony Jones.

Lateline was once the jewel in the crown of ABC television current affairs.

When former treasurer Peter Costello spoke of a Mark Latham policy idea not holding “from Lateline to lunch time” he was reflecting the influence of a program once used by politicians as a launch pad for policy debates.

On this newspaper there was always a late night text hotline between senior editors who had finished work and were watching the program at home and the night editor putting together the late editions, often following up Lateline stories.

That all stopped when two things happened. First Tony Jones stopped being the full time presenter and then under former managing director Mark Scott, always a man for process rather than a driver of news, the program started airing first on News 24 at 9.30pm.

A good technical interviewer, Jones’s successor, former London correspondent Emma Alberici, nevertheless lacked a feel for politics and initially turned the program into one more focused on foreign crosses to London and later on magazine-style stories that padded out the last 20 minutes after the political wrap from Canberra.

On the night of the Las Vegas shooting two weeks ago, pay-TV talk host Paul Murray dropped his regular format to dedicate his two hours to updates from the US as the death toll rose from two to 59. Lateline came on half an hour later at 9.30 and stuck with its original schedule, an unthinkable journalistic failing for a showpiece current affairs program.

It is a pity to see the show die an ignominious death when it now has access to two new political reporters and part-time program hosts, David Lipson, formerly a Sky News journalist, and Matt Wordsworth, former presenter of 7.30 Queensland. Both handle politics well.

Lateline was launched in 1990 largely as a vehicle to showcase the interviewing skills of Kerry O’Brien. He and then head of current affairs Peter Manning had envisaged an in-depth single interview program. Later it was taken over by the excellent Maxine McKew, who was succeeded by Jones in 1999. Jones mastered the art of leveraging his political contacts, hosted many memorable interviews with former prime ministers John Howard and Kevin Rudd and lifted the traditional Friday night political debate to new heights.

But programming always has to change. Newish managing director Michelle Guthrie is probably on a winner with her new focus on investigative news breaking under this paper’s former associate editor John Lyons. And as she says, there was no internet, pay-TV or digital free to air channels when Lateline started.

Opinion writing driven by online clicks is taking over in many print products and the print media’s commitment to genuine investigate journalism is in decline.

Proprietors should resist this. For years Hedley Thomas’s work on Clive Palmer dominated daily online traffic on this paper. And last Saturday week’s revelations about former prime minister Julia Gillard and the AWU slush fund affair were No 2 on the paper’s website all day.

But for most of the tabloids, opinion is an easier and cheaper way to engage readers.

As they vacate the tougher journalism, I fear the nation is going to have to rely ever more on the ABC, which has made some clever hirings from both News Corp and Fairfax Media in the past two years under head of news Gaven Morris.

Where once newspapers had the best investigative and political reporters, that is no longer always the case.

A speech by Guthrie to the ABC Friends last Friday week made many fair points. Like any good CEO she defended her organisation’s record and its funding. Like her predecessor Scott she cited polling about trusted news sources to fend off bias suggestions.

Yet as anyone who understands polling knows, many of the people who cite the ABC as trustworthy do so because they think it will make them seem intelligent news consumers. Very few actually watch ABC current affairs shows and most would have no real idea if they were trustworthy.

It is instructive Guthrie did not mention the push by One Nation to include “fair and balanced” in the ABC charter. In my view that change is not necessary since the charter already requires the corporation to be “accurate and impartial”. Yet there is no doubt management has been unable to change the inherent left biases of ABC journalism.

Defenders of the corporation argue, correctly, that bias is in the eye of the beholder. But so what? At least half the nation’s “beholders” are conservative and they pay for the ABC too. They should not feel ABC journalists are part of a Green-left campaign against their values.

The bias question has been reduced inside the ABC to a puerile suggestion that critics are implying it should give equal time to crackpots like anti-vaxxers. This is not nearly good enough.

The answer lies in the weakness of a series of governments unable to change the ABC’s internal culture. This goes right back to the Hawke years and includes failed attempts by Howard to influence the ABC with a series of conservative appointments to the board. None had ever been full time media professionals or journalists.

So what are Guthrie’s KPIs and those of Malcolm Turnbull’s new chair, Justin Milne? Or any on the board for that matter? No one knows.

It is not just news that lacks a clear focus. Last week Jennifer Byrne’s monthly Book Club was axed. Why? If the ABC is simply chasing commercial station ratings why have it at all? If it has a more specific purpose, let’s really be clear about what it is. I don’t believe the charter is clear on the rationale for having a $1 billion a year public broadcaster.

Scott coined the phrase “market failure broadcaster” as a smart alec barb at News Corp’s papers which at the time were giving the Rudd and Gillard governments a hard time.

Yet of course that is exactly what the ABC was meant to be: a broadcaster that provided national cultural glue across a continent and did things commercial media could not do profitably. That’s why it ran state-based orchestras, had a strong presence in arts reporting and ran state and regional news offices for television and radio.

In my view the Guthrie focus on investigations is a way to offset a failing part of the media market. The focus on digital clearly is not since digital media is expanding exponentially worldwide.

The ABC lacks a strong analytical political focus, especially after the departure of Chris Uhlmann. Leigh Sales is a good presenter but lacks political depth. A truly national broadcaster needs more arts, books and sport.

It needs more television regionalism and a straighter approach to news. Most of all it needs a clear purpose, well articulated by a chair and director. Guthrie’s speech was not it.