Robert Manne allows ideology to cloud his judgments

ROBERT Manne's Quarterly Essay on The Australian newspaper was a disappointment because he himself descended into what he alleges the paper does when it reports.

I bought a copy of "Bad News" believing that, while it would inevitably contain conclusions I disagreed with, it would be a well-thought-out critique. The back cover blurb was enticing: "Part deep analysis and part vivid portrait of what happens when a newspaper goes rogue."

As any insider knows, their organisation is always open to criticism. But Manne went too far. He didn't understand the dividing lines that exist between editorial and news.

The essay reads like a classic outsider who has never come to terms with what happens inside the organisation he is purporting to expose.

Like Manne, I come from an academic background. My PhD was in political science. I understand what constitutes good scholarship. While Quarterly Essay isn't a peer-reviewed journal, it is a quality publication.

Likewise when Manne writes, while he focuses his attention on polemic argument rather than traditional academic discourse, I am not critical of that. I welcome the role of the public intellectual.

Too many academics don't venture outside of the academy to write for a wider audience. Manne does and he is to be commended for doing so.

But the role of the public intellectual carries responsibilities. Ask yourself this: if good scholarship starts with an open mind, did Manne have one when he researched his essay? Was he open to conclusions that might not fit his hypothesis? If not, that is exactly what he accuses The Australian of doing when it reports.

In covering policies such as the National Broadband Network and the Building the Education Revolution, Manne claims: "In these campaigns [The Australian's] assigned journalists appear to begin with their editorially determined conclusion and then to seek out evidence to support it."

Not true. In editorial conference, journalists bowl up stories having workshopped them with the chiefs of staff beforehand, not the other way around. It's an expensive form of journalism but fortunately, unlike some other newspapers, The Australian is well resourced. By contrast, I wonder if Manne was open to the title Good News instead of "Bad News" for his manuscript when he started researching?

On the very next page of the essay Manne claims [The Australian's editor-in-chief] Chris Mitchell "uses those he most trusts to fight his battles with his many enemies". Maybe I am not trusted, having never been told what to write by Mitchell or anyone else. As part of the small circle that attends editorial conferences, I have never seen Mitchell tell others what to write, other than leader writers who shape the editorials for which he is directly responsible. I asked to write this piece, not the other way around.

Before arriving at The Australian I was as cynical as the next academic about what might go on behind closed doors.

My first-hand observational study, however, has yielded much less cynicism.

The Australian is a campaigning newspaper, which is reflected in its editorials. Manne doesn't like this; Mitchell doesn't resile from it. Each is entitled to their opinion. Readers are free to agree or disagree with editorials, as I regularly do. The strength of The Australian is in its news pages: breaking stories and investigative reporting underpinned by good resourcing.

Of course editors help craft stories at the end point of when they are being laid out on the page. Sometimes that's because the writing by the journalist needs work, at other times it's because the best part of the story hasn't been placed at the top of the piece, as is good journalistic practice. That's the job of editors.

Manne's conspiracy that at The Australian the tail wags the dog -- editorial policy shaping news gathering -- is overstated.

Manne anonymously interviewed many journalists at the paper, but of course we cannot know who they are, what they told him or how accurately he interpreted criticisms they might have expressed.

We do know that Manne "didn't find any of the things that [Mitchell] said sufficiently sharp or interesting enough to quote directly" in the essay -- as he told me on Sky News last week -- despite spending two hours with Mitchell and having the interview transcribed.

Throughout the essay Manne selectively heaps criticism on contributors and journalists, accusing them of being "characteristically condescending", "pompous" and "most bilious". He described Imre Salusinszky -- a former associate professor of English literature no less -- as "The Australian's resident right-wing intellectual smart-aleck" because he penned an editorial saying that being a left-wing intellectual means never having to say you're sorry.

Manne became a resident left-wing intellectual smart-aleck -- albeit an unoriginal one -- when he borrowed Salusinszky's turn of phrase in the essay: "Apparently it is not being a left-wing intellectual but an editor-in-chief of The Australian that means never having to say you're sorry."

Undoubtedly Manne's strongest criticism is reserved for Mitchell. He claims the antidote to The Australian's problems is for Mitchell to be fired and Rupert Murdoch to sell the paper.

Apart from the question of who would buy it (it's well known that The Australian's viability is underpinned by the economies of scale created by being part of a wider newspaper conglomerate) Manne's call for Mitchell to be sacked appears to be based on the pair's ideological differences, which leads Manne to misunderstand how Mitchell operates.

A revealing example of this comes on page 57 of the essay. He quotes a comment Mitchell made when interviewed for a feature in The Monthly, about his long association with Kevin Rudd: "there have been times when I've used him and there've been times when he's used me".

Manne understands why Rudd the "ambitious politician" would want to use Mitchell, but he can't see what use Mitchell might have for Rudd, other than so that Mitchell could "become a player in Australian politics", a "political kingmaker" or influence Rudd to "move the Labor Party rightwards".

Intriguing conspiracies, but the real answer is a bland journalistic reality: to help gather news stories and leaks for the paper. Contacts are king when covering politics.

A 1995 movie titled The Last Supper is a black comedy about a group of postgraduate university students who despise extreme right-wing thought. Determining that the world would be a better place without such people, they invite radicals to dinner one by one and, if they can't convince them to change their thinking, poison them. With time -- if not immediately -- the students become what they despise. They increasingly invite people who simply hold different views to their own, even if they aren't radicals. They give their subjects less and less time to be convinced of the error of their ways before killing them. Intolerance engulfs their approach.

Manne has written some wonderful pieces through the years. But when writing "Bad News" he became what he so despises.

Peter van Onselen is a Winthrop professor at the University of Western Australia, where he is also the foundation chair of journalism.