We stand with Stan? Give us a break. Aunty should stand for quality journalism

Staff at the ABC's Ultimo studios walk out in protest over the departure of Q+A host Stan Grant.

Through the years Stan Grant has distinguished himself as a prominent presenter at leading media outlets, including the ABC. However, in recent times, and especially since Queen Elizabeth’s death, and as the debate over the Indigenous voice to parliament has intensified, Grant has morphed into a celebrity activist.

As the ABC’s coronation coverage demonstrated to thousands of angry viewers, Grant has become an activist campaigning against our nation’s British heritage. At the same time, he is also a high-profile ABC staff presenter of prime-time programs such as Q+A. Why has ABC management allowed him to be both presenter and activist?

The problem lies in understanding that the line between news and opinion has been increasingly hard to discern at the ABC. At the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster – unlike commercial media outlets – full-time staff ABC journalists have a duty under the ABC charter to be fair-minded and balanced journalists who strive for impartiality.

That applies especially to presenters of once high-profile programs such as Q+A.

ABC presenter Stan Grant is standing down from duties following the backlash over the Coronation coverage.

Who better to explain the rot than two former ABC insiders? Stuart Littlemore was the founding host of Media Watch and David Salter his executive editor. On Monday they wrote in Nine newspapers: “The ABC has catastrophically undermined its authority and independence by permitting journalists to post personal commentary on the corporation’s digital outlets, and to parade their egos on social media. Thus, we get defamatory stupidities on Twitter that cause huge reputational (and financial) damage to the ABC. Thus, we get the Stan Grant debacle.”

Not so long ago, it was mandatory for senior ABC journalists to keep their opinions to themselves. Andrew Olle, Mark Colvin, Maxine McKew, Tony Jones, even Kerry O’Brien – none would undermine their journalistic authority by campaigning for political causes. These ABC doyens may have had left-of-centre views but at least they tried to be objective when they presented leading ABC programs. Virginia Trioli even proved her “objectivity” by boasting she no longer voted at elections. Never mind that personal opinions don’t start and stop at the ballot box.

Staff at the ABC's Ultimo studios walking about in protest over the departure of Q+A host Stan Grant. Picture: Twitter.

The principle of impartiality still applies abroad. Other prominent public broadcasters, such as the BBC in Britain and PBS and NPR in the US, would never allow one of their high-profile, prime-time presenters to vent their anger on their outlets. For instance, Fiona Bruce and David Dimbleby – present and past presenters of the BBC’s Question Time (on which the ABC’s Q+A is modelled) – have never aired their opinions on any political issues at the Beeb. It’s just unseemly.

But things, with rare exceptions, are done differently at our Aunty. Staff use Twitter to emote, campaign and criticise (mainly conservative) politicians, without consequence.

Recall Laura Tingle referring to the “ideological bastardry” of the Morrison government, or Louise Milligan’s defamatory tweets about former Liberal MP Andrew Laming. In what universe, outside the taxpayer-funded ABC, would an employer stump up $200,000 to cover defamation settlement and legal fees for an employee’s personal tweet?

At least during his soliloquy on Monday’s Q+A Grant acknowledged he was “part of the problem”. The issue, to be clear, is not that his opinions are outside the bounds of acceptable commentary. He reflects a growing mood among academics and schoolteachers that Australia’s British heritage is to be regarded with shame. It’s just that it has become virtually impossible on the ABC to suggest that colonialism had any beneficial effects at all (that, for example, it was central to the creation of a great nation such as Australia).

Patricia Karvelas

Moreover, the ABC sees nothing wrong with a prominent presenter becoming a partisan player in highly contentious public debates. Regrettably, so far the ABC is using the Grant affair to blame News Corp for highlighting the public broadcaster’s editorial fiascos and increasing on-air activism, instead of recognising ABC management’s failure to enforce the division between news and opinion. It is deliberately conflating foul online trolls that we all endure with legitimate criticism of a taxpayer-funded body.

Worse, some staff are doubling down: on Tuesday morning, RN Breakfast’s Patricia Karvelas aired something of a therapy session with head of Indigenous news Suzanne Dredge at the ABC – an evidence-free, emotion-laden 11 minutes showcasing the ABC’s self-indulgence. Professional boundaries appear to be fewer and further between.

ABC management blames social media for the insults as if this is a new phenomenon. Why not get off Twitter and focus instead on producing high-quality journalism rather than tweets, selfies and memes? Littlemore and Salter say: “We attribute this decline in journalistic standards to two main factors: lack of training, and low-level editorial oversight.”

ABC managing director David Anderson at Senate estimates.

ABC director of news, analysis and investigations Justin Stevens.

That’s true. But there are also three levels of management above ABC journalists and editors: managing director David Anderson, chairwoman Ita Buttrose and five other board members. One of us (Albrechtsen) was on the ABC board (2005-10) and encouraged management then to separate opinion from news. Since then, the ABC has become worse.

Upper echelons at the ABC have given up entirely on reining in opinionated presenters. If you want to work at the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster, the rule should be so simple: you’re a presenter/reporter or commentator; you can’t be both.

But the double standards are striking. One of us (Switzer) is not even a high-profile (ABC staff) presenter of a prime-time program. But if his Radio National program or the ABC website, for instance, were used to prosecute the No side in the voice debate, RN management would (rightly) subject him to intense scrutiny.

Yet more high-profile presenters get away with being both presenters and activists because their views accord with the in-house ABC groupthink on everything from net-zero emissions to a constitutionally entrenched Indigenous voice.

Louise Milligan at Treasury Gardens in Melbourne during the pandemic.

If racist insults have been hurled at Grant, that is despicable. But where is the ABC’s outrage when other prominent (conservative) Aboriginal figures such as Jacinta Price, Warren Mundine and Anthony Dillon are subjected to racist insults? What about the sorts of vile comments that Piers Morgan, Jordan Peterson and prominent Australian conservatives attract from left-wing ranters on social media?

Our prediction is that Grant will be back on ABC platforms very soon, and ABC management is likely to reject, ignore and feign offence in response to measured criticism, even from ABC insiders who knew Aunty when she was in her prime.

No one can talk about the ABC being in its prime any more. In fact, the ABC activists will likely double down, become more militant as they continue to champion themselves as crusaders of identity politics. In short, these taxpayer-funded activists will make a bad situation worse.