Robert Manne throws truth overboard

ROBERT Manne's 40,000-word essay on The Australian misses the point. He fails to understand strong journalism.

Robert Manne

THE key to understanding the 40,000-word attack by Robert Manne on The Australian is to grasp the framework he adopts to analyse journalism and politics.

There are four themes in Manne's essay that deserve to be highlighted. First, he claims The Australian has damaged the country and undermined journalism by publishing material and conducting debates that he feels should be repressed.

Second, his focus is largely on editorials. With the exception of his attack on foreign editor Greg Sheridan, Manne makes no serious critique of the stance of any of The Australian's senior political analysts. He believes the paper has damaged our democracy but cannot identify the "guilty" journalists who have perpetrated this crime.

Third, Manne assumes the paper's coverage of numerous issues is invalid, notably stories critical of the Rudd government, yet he fails to mount an intellectual case showing how and why such stories were unjustified.

Finally, despite an interview of nearly two hours with editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell and me, where replies were offered point by point, Manne fails to publish such responses, a strange position for an academic preaching fairness.

This article analyses Manne's essay for its perspective on journalism and then politics.

Taking the former, the startling feature is Manne's fixation on repressing stories and debates he doesn't like. He is a moralistic political censor. This begins in his first case study -- his attack on The Australian for staging a debate on Keith Windschuttle's book, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History.

Manne concedes published opinions were "roughly equal". Yet he condemns the paper for making the book a "national event" and treating it as "highly significant". Manne's emotionalism on this subject is apparent. He loathes Windschuttle for striking at what Manne sees as the "almost uncontested common wisdom" that Australia was founded on a genocide and for reviving the "old racial attitudes". He asserts that whatever of worth the paper did in indigenous affairs was "sullied" by coverage of Windschuttle.

For Manne, the paper's crime was to stage this debate. He believes certain views have reached "uncontested" status and must not be contested. Books and views that contest Manne's beliefs are to be met with silence and censorship. It is good that Manne's technique of handling opponents is put on the public record.

His own argument betrays the folly of such pomposity. Manne is attached to the idea of Australia being founded on genocide. This view, however, is contested on intellectual grounds, despite its academic proponents, and there is no justification whatsoever for Manne's effort to remove it from debate. That is blatant intellectual censorship.

Manne says his originating motive for the essay was concern at the paper's coverage of climate change. He argues that because there is a consensus among scientists on the core issue then debate "between unqualified people" (virtually everybody) on the fundamentals is "pointless, even absurd".

He says we have no option but to rely upon experts. The opinions of "those without true knowledge and understanding are worthless" and such wisdom is found exclusively in those published in "peer-reviewed journals".

Manne says that on climate change our democracy must rely upon citizens placing "their trust in those with expertise". Again, the idea is that certain beliefs cannot be debated or contested. For Manne, Mitchell's unforgiveable sin was to violate this view. Manne's charge is that under Mitchell the paper campaigned against the "values of the Enlightenment, Science and Reason". (This from a critic who claims the paper's style is "overbearing".)

He says while the newspaper "never formally abandoned" the scientific consensus its editorials welcomed "anti-climate science challenges" and it published "totally unqualified lay people" who denied the science was settled.

Once again, the paper's offence was its refusal to shut down debate. Period. Manne insists his view embodies Enlightenment rationality. During our interview to stress the gravity of his position on climate change he actually compared the issue with the Holocaust.

I told Manne that one reason for the public's backlash making carbon pricing so unpopular was the precise attitude he took. While pretending to be rational his rejection of debate was really faith-based dogmatism and the Australian public didn't like being told what to think by patronising experts.

I also told Manne the best pro-science approach was the insurance principle: because there was a climate change risk everyone could see the prudent path was to take out mitigating policy insurance as distinct from being intimidated by Manne's hectoring dogmatism.

You can agree or disagree that The Australian questioned the science too much. But Manne's view of the relationship between science and democracy is extreme. And his framework raises many questions. Who decides who are the experts? What sort of prospect does this debate denial mean for public policy?

Manne also accuses The Australian of "protracted character assassination" of Aboriginal lawyer and activist Larissa Behrendt. Frankly, he should have left this alone. The issue arose from The Australian's story after Behrendt tweeted of indigenous woman Bess Price that watching a show "where a guy had sex with a horse" was "less offensive than Bess Price". It is hard to conjure a more lethal slur.

Was this a story? Much of the media downplayed both the story and follow-up. Again, The Australian is in the gun.

Imagine, however, what all media outlets would have done had this been a message by one famous sportsman or woman abusing another, or from a celebrity or politician or white feminist? The story would have ignited. Everywhere. It would have been a stampede.

Consider the context. Behrendt was taking legal action against columnist Andrew Bolt, claiming offence at his remarks. Price was a political opponent. Price backed the Northern Territory intervention and was loathed for it among many prominent Aborigines.

The remarks testified to political, cultural and ideological tensions over indigenous attitudes and over the NT intervention. Behrendt was a person with standing and influence, a role model. She was being appointed to a government post in higher education.

What is Manne's view? He says it was only a "sour joke". The tweet was done "forgetting" it would go public. No offence was intended. The apology should have settled the issue. He attacks the integrity of journalist Patricia Karvelas, who wrote the stories. He is appalled at the paper's follow-up stories when there was an eruption of rage among many prominent indigenous leaders, notably women.

Should the paper have refused to publish Marcia Langton's furious assault on Behrendt? Was it not newsworthy that other indigenous leaders attacked her government appointment?

Questioned for this article, Karvelas said Behrendt was central to the debate about indigenous policy and the intervention: "She had a degree of power in the system and policy framework. How could her public comments, therefore, avoid scrutiny?"

Does the evidence suggest this was a non-newsworthy bad joke? No, it doesn't. Does the context suggest this was a piercing and ongoing insight into the depth of political and values tensions in Aboriginal society? Yes, it does.

Manne cannot accept the legitimacy of the story because of his support for Behrendt. His moralistic disapproval of the paper's coverage overlooks the convincing case for ongoing publication. The question, of course, is how many other stories he would downplay or censor because they offend his standards.

Central to his essay is Manne's political framework. He accuses The Australian of being "a very important catalyst" in Kevin Rudd's destruction. He is desperate to nail the paper with some responsibility for Rudd's demise. He spins a long saga about the personal relationship between Mitchell and Rudd that would better fit a tabloid romance rag but at the end he is left with schoolboy scribblings, namely, the paper had become a "key player", that it had "tasted blood" and had "helped crystallise opposition" to Rudd in caucus.

Yet there is little evidence the pro-Gillard push of June 2010 was inspired by The Australian. What happened is that the caucus lost confidence in Rudd. The Australian did not campaign to remove Rudd. Its political editor, Dennis Shanahan, did not argue that Rudd had to go. The Australian's criticism of the Rudd government over 2009 and 2010 was stronger than other papers but the question Manne never poses is whether that coverage was justified. This is the question that counts.

The paper led criticism of Rudd on many fronts -- it exposed blunders in the stimulus package from home insulation to BER funds, lamented labour market re-regulation, criticised Rudd's switches on boats, attacked his paralysis and retreat on climate change and ran hard on the mining tax flaws.

Political coverage is always imperfect. But there is much evidence to buttress the view that The Australian read this period better than other media outlets and better identified the genuine flaws in Rudd's style and policies. Manne implies stories were driven by personality and ideology as if this motivated individual journalists.

The truth, however, is the Rudd government was unravelling. Julia Gillard herself said Rudd had lost his way. The paper wrote, reported and analysed one of the most remarkable collapses in our history: the destruction of a first-term PM.

Manne cannot confront the core truth: Rudd undermined himself. It was his own work. Manne is so sure the Murdoch hand must be involved that he misrepresents the contemporary history. He is an unreliable witness. His essay is filled with such examples. But consider just one of the most spectacular, the mining tax.

Manne accuses the paper of trying to kill the mining tax. He avoids any fair account of what happened: the Rudd government ambushed the industry, failed to negotiate with the states over royalties, flouted the Hawke-Keating technique of consultation to cut a deal, waged a class-based campaign, misread the impact of the tax and misjudged the reaction of both the opposition and the industry.

Labor broke every rule in the tax reform book. This was reflected in the paper's daily political coverage though Manne cannot accept such political realities.

Manne overall seems confused about the essential problem with The Australian. He has two contradictory positions -- that Rupert Murdoch is omnipresent, manipulating his global empire, creating difficulties for Australian democracy yet, on the other hand, his problem is Chris Mitchell's power as editor-in-chief exercised in too aggressive and too personal a manner.

On the Iraq war, for instance, Murdoch is depicted as global tyrant demanding all his papers back the war. On climate change, however, Manne attacks Mitchell for not following Murdoch's position of "giving the planet the benefit of the doubt" nor acting on Murdoch's view about its "catastrophic" threat.

Does Mitchell have editorial independence or does he not? In reality, Manne is confused. While he has written 40,000 words he doesn't know how The Australian works.

At one point he notes that Mitchell persuaded Murdoch to change his mind and endorse Rudd at the 2007 election. At another point while damning the paper's position on the Iraq war he notes the pluralism on the oped page with articles for and against the war. How does this square with the tyrant's dictates?

There is another possibility beyond the realm of Manne's mind -- that The Australian has struck an effective balance of strong editorial independence within a global corporation headed by a strong chief executive committed to newspapers.