Research will tell Ita her ABC urgently needs diversity of political opinion

ABC chair Ita Buttrose.

Research is a good tool for editors, but several commentators disapproved when newish ABC chairwoman Ita Buttrose discussed the corporation’s latest project, Australia Talks, on Radio National Mornings with Hamish Macdonald last Tuesday.

Macdonald seemed surprised to hear of research about the ABC and its audience, which only shows that like many journalists he does not understand the media business. Buttrose said she had used research in her days running what once was the nation’s No 1-selling magazine, the Australian Women’s Weekly.

Australia Talks is not so much a research project as a survey people can take to compare their results with those of a baseline national survey of 50,000 people undertaken in July. In fact it would be amazing if the $1bn-a-year ABC had not conducted genuine market research for decades.

The real question in any media research project should be: what are we looking to fix or to find? Buttrose’s major takeout from her own completion of the Australia Talks survey seems to have been that the ABC does not adequately represent the ethnic diversity of the nation.

“You could say that much of the media is white and we’re not all white. Do we have enough Asian representation? Do we have enough Middle Eastern representation? “ she asked Macdonald.

Long-time ABC critics such as Sydney Institute director Gerard Henderson, this newspaper’s Chris Kenny or Herald Sun columnist and SkyNews host Andrew Bolt reckon it’s not so much a lack of ethnic diversity that’s the problem as a lack of political diversity. And they are correct.

Sure, employ a diverse range of journalists and cover a diverse range of issues. But why no diversity of opinion?

Kenny, who hosts SkyNews’ Kenny on Media on Monday nights, made the point cleverly last month by inviting three media guests very much of the left — former ABC host and staff-elected director Quentin Dempster, former Sydney Morning Herald editor Amanda Wilson and former long-term national secretary of the Media Arts and Entertainment Alliance, Chris Warren.

It was a lively debate. Kenny challenged his guests and they him. It was nothing like what Henderson often criticises the ABC for: a left-wing host in furious agreement on every issue with three left-wing guests. Regular ABC viewers know that is often the format for showpiece Sunday morning program Insiders, which once hosted Bolt on a regular basis and still occasionally gives Henderson a gig. But political diversity has become rarer on the Insiders couch.

This is the research project Buttrose and her board really do need to commission. A series of metropolitan, regional and rural qualitative panels would be all that is required.

My bet is such research would find many Australians would like to see some of the ABC’s sacred cows contested on its own shows.

Think climate change, renewable power advocacy, opposition to coal and gas extraction, asylum-seeker advocacy and the performance of US President Donald Trump for starters. The May 18 federal election should have suggested to ABC management that the percentage of the voting population at odds with the ABC on such issues is much greater than the percentage of non-European Australians not represented among its staff.

Many of the ABC’s political hosts still defend policies even former Labor leader Bill Shorten admitted last week had cost the party electoral support. Nationally, the party managed only a third of the vote. Diversity means including the views of the other 67 per cent, not just those of the 10 per cent who voted Greens.

The ABC, the Nine Entertainment newspapers and the Guardian have been in furious agreement since the start of the election campaign that Labor was subjected to a biased media campaign by News Corp papers. Yet these papers objected to the very policies Labor’s then leader now admits were wrong.

This is no small issue. The Reserve Bank has cut rates three times in five months and the markets are talking about quantitative easing as rates approach zero and growth slows. Shouldn’t the ABC’s senior political and economic staff be admitting Labor’s enormous tax increases would have throttled the economy at a dangerous time? And shouldn’t management wonder at the disconnect between those staff, voters and public policy makers?

This column on June 24 criticised Media Watch for constantly riding shotgun on climate change reporting. The news hook was Buttrose’s June 10 RN interview with Fran Kelly, when Ita said she thought the corporation did have a bias issue.

Well, nothing has improved if the show since August is a guide: on August 5 Paul Barry attacked Bolt for his coverage of Greta Thunberg; on September 2 he criticised this paper for its reporting of scientist Peter Ridd and the reef; on September 16 he looked at the Amazon fires hoax; on September 23 the lead was Extinction Rebellion protests, conservative critics of them, especially Alan Jones, and the decision of The Conversation website to ban comments from climate sceptics; on September 30 he attacked PM Scott Morrison’s climate speech in New York.

That’s five from 10. But now look at its other subjects: On August 12 it was gun control; on August 19 this paper’s reporting of transgender issues; on September 9 a look at how vegans are discriminated against in the media; on September 23 a piece criticising SkyNews host Paul Murray for his interview with Trump and on October 7 another anti-Trump lead. On August 26 and September 16 the program took more lengthy pot shots at Alan Jones.

Anyone see a pattern here? Now Paul Barry will deny this adds up to an agenda. But I reckon a little market research would suggest viewers might reasonably think so much political correctness in 10 programs of 15 minutes might be a pointer to prevailing views at our ABC about what makes news.

And Ita told ABC Breakfast co-host Michael Rowland that same Tuesday “she agreed 100 per cent that political correctness had gone too far”. Well, mainly at her ABC, because it’s not just Insiders and Media Watch. ABC Radio current affairs flagships AM and PM are dominated by climate change hysteria, one-sided coverage of US politics and uncritical reporting of refugee advocates’ claims about asylum-seekers.

Most metropolitan newspapers have had large budgets for market research since the 1980s. The more the media has fragmented in the age of the internet, the more important it is for editors to understand their markets. The age of what News Corp Australia’s former CEO, Kim Williams, described as the editors’ “tummy compass” ended many years ago.

The ABC’s conservative critics should call out the organisation’s tendency to use Twitter as its measure of performance and demand it seek research about the lack of opinion diversity on its programs. The Minister for Communications, Paul Fletcher, should tell the board this is what taxpayers expect.

Trying to improve understanding of its market, I like managing director David Anderson’s plan to get more journalists and programs to travel to the regions. Yet Rowland on News Breakfast on Thursday underscored the critics’ point about its inner-city latte culture. Telling viewers he would broadcast from Wollongong next morning he said he’d see “how good the coffee in Wollongong is” on Friday at 5.45am. Man of the people.