Whose ABC?

Illustration: Eric Lobbecke

WHEN ABC managing director Mark Scott was quoted in a recent article in the British progressive newspaper The Guardian describing the ABC as a "market failure broadcaster" he raised a few eyebrows back in the Antipodes.

Scott declined to be interviewed for this article but, through a spokesman, denies using that term and says his attitude is that the ABC can provide specialist as well as mainstream programming, taking into account what is available in the commercial arena, as envisaged under the ABC charter.

His denial is a bit of a blow to The Guardian and betrays the sensitivity of the "market failure" term, which is sometimes viewed a descriptor for a providing a political and cultural counterpoint to the commercial media. In the article Scott encouraged this view by alluding to an adversarial relationship with News Limited (publishers of The Weekend Australian): "attempts by the Murdochs to circumscribe us are nothing new". In the wake of these comments, and the continuing and always worthwhile debate about the role of taxpayer-funded media, Inquirer has spoken with ABC insiders including present and former board members, about accountability and responsiveness within the corporation.

Let us assume, just for argument's sake, that the critics of the ABC are right; that its publicly funded journalists and program-makers, with their commitment to public broadcasting, inner-city sensibilities and disdain for commercial media, reinforce a progressive political culture that inevitably skews their story selection and treatment to the Left and provides content that can often be out of touch with the mainstream.

The question that would immediately arise is how the situation could be rectified.

The ABC is certainly the most influential cultural institution in the nation, increasing its complexity and reach almost by the day. The corporation consists of six national and international radio stations, five television stations, online services, publishing and retailing, with annual public funding topping $1 billion, and more than 5000 staff in more than 70 locations in Australia and overseas. Yet as it has expanded there has been no commensurate increase in accountability or responsiveness to the public who fund it. With chairman Maurice Newman's term expiring in September, this is an issue the new chairman may need to examine.

The charter makes it clear the ABC has to "provide a balance between broadcasting programs of wide appeal and specialised broadcasting programs". In many ways this is the key challenge and it is open to broad interpretation.

Certainly the ABC provides the specialised programming but there is robust debate about wide appeal, whether the corporation keeps in touch with mainstream values or caters primarily for an inner-city, progressive elite. Comparisons with the BBC are useful because it is similarly independent but has a built-in accountability model because it is funded directly by licence fees. Each household pays a fee (nowpound stg. 145.50, or $225) in an annual transaction that means all citizens have expectations of the BBC and helps ensure a symbiotic connection between the corporation and the mainstream.

In Australia, a large segment of the population does not watch, listen or care much for the ABC, although their tax dollars support it.

When the ABC has been confronted with claims of a progressive monoculture it has pointed in its defence to a one-hour program on Radio National that, instructively, is called Counterpoint.

In their first show, in 2004, hosts Michael Duffy and Paul Comrie-Thomson dared to ask whether, by feeding off the taxes of all and pitching primarily to a progressive few, the ABC was a form of middle-class welfare. Duffy, provocatively asked: "Should our desire to watch Britain's naked and biting chefs without commercial breaks be subsidised? Or is this unfair on all the workers who have to put up with ad breaks on Channel 9? Is it time to talk about privatising the ABC?"

Under Scott the ABC has more vehicles and more funding than ever, so questions about who it serves and how this is controlled become very salient. Efforts by The Weekend Australian to access audience research from the ABC under Freedom of Information applications have been blocked, so we can't say for sure which particular sections of the community derive most benefit from the corporation.

Given its legislated right to independence, the ABC is immune to direct control by government, so the main custodian of its charter is the government-appointed board. Speaking anonymously, present and former ABC board members have shared similar frustrations. Under legislation the board has a clearly defined role to "maintain the independence and integrity" of the ABC and ensure its news and information programs are "accurate and impartial". So issues of political or cultural jaundice are core business for the board.

After businessman Russell Balding's stewardship, the board chose former newspaper journalist and editor Scott because it wanted a managing director who would focus on content issues as editor-in-chief. Some directors had misgivings about the extent of his hands-on journalistic experience and the fact it occurred at Fairfax, another media group with a progressive political posture, but Inquirer understands there was broad consensus that a focus on the content side of the operations was timely.

Past and present board members, while complimentary about the energy and imagination Scott has brought to the job, express private disappointment at the lack of headway on editorial improvement. They insist that any attempt to change the culture of the corporation would require him to confront staff, perhaps making an example of some, and that Scott is unwilling to jeopardise his popularity within the ABC.

"The shadow of Jonathan Shier hangs over him," one former board member says, referring to the managing director who attempted to shake up the organisation, triggered a revolt by staff and supporters, and resigned 18 months into his five-year appointment.

Board impatience with Scott's handling of quality control reached a peak over former 7.30 Report political reporter Michael Brissenden, and his notorious story in the lead-up to the 2007 election when he revealed alleged conversations with then-treasurer Peter Costello that had remained off the record for two years. Despite a series of investigations within the ABC and board level discussions, Brissenden escaped censure and was eventually promoted to the Washington bureau.

In 2009 the board also discussed ongoing concerns about alleged political bias from former Whitlam staff member Kerry O'Brien on The 7.30 Report. Board members involved in those discussions with Scott quickly became resigned to the fact no changes would occur before the federal election.

Paradoxically, with O'Brien now moved on to Four Corners, those same board members give Scott credit for championing the rise of 7.30's Chris Uhlmann, who is widely respected as a forensic interviewer of all comers.

These are merely emblematic examples of how board members have felt neutered in their attempts to live up to their obligations and ensure the highest standards and impartiality.

It is an admission that in reality, while they can push and prod, they ultimately rely on the MD to drive any cultural change.

One former board member who has been prepared to go public is anthropologist Ron Brunton, who served from 2003 to 2008. He wrote soon after leaving of how he had come to the view that the "board is largely irrelevant" and cited examples of how information was kept from the directors and how, under Balding, directors had been prevented even from receiving briefings from staff.

When it comes to individual cases of alleged bias or poor standards, Brunton is dismissive of the ABC's extensive internal complaints mechanisms, arguing that if complaints are upheld the resultant counselling sessions would be used to lever out troublemakers or come "with a wink and a nod to favoured staff". Program reviews are sometimes conducted by senior editors and executive producers but Brunton likens these to police investigating police: "I have not seen any evidence that serious consideration is given to issues of balance or bias."

More than two years after leaving the ABC, Brunton is disillusioned with its progress.

He is not opposed to the concept of market failure broadcasting if it is a genuine effort to fill neglected elements of the market.

"But if Mark Scott believes the ABC needs to compensate for market failures then that is no justification for The Drum website because there is no shortage of online opinion in the market," Brunton says.

Scott did introduce the position of director of editorial policies, as an attempt to address content quality issues. This position operates separately from the complaints process, but critics suggest it is simply another element of bureaucracy. "There is always a flawless commitment to fairness and balance on paper," Brunton says. "But unless someone is enforcing the standards and developing the right culture the policy is useless."

Insiders talk about recruitment policies fuelling a political culture, particular in the Sydney and Melbourne city headquarters, at Ultimo and Southbank, where about half of all ABC staff members are based. There is a relatively low staff turnover so many employees have spent most of their working lives in the ABC, in the main cities. One former board member says recruiting people from a greater variety of backgrounds should be a high priority.

A very different ABC culture exists in the regions, but it has little influence outside of those regions. The ABC is still a heavily centralised beast, with all its operations outside the Sydney-Melbourne-Canberra axis referred to disparagingly as the BAPH states (Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Hobart). Each capital has a state director, but because the operations are divided into national silos of television, radio, news and the like, board members believe state directors find it difficult to have any real impact. All big decisions are made in Ultimo. Staff outside NSW jokingly refer to their employer as the SBS: Sydney Broadcasting Service.

There are no easy answers to this Sydney-centric reality except to be aware of it. But as one board member says, even assembling an audience for Q&A falls captive to this because an audience of 17 per cent inner-city Greens, 33 per cent inner-city Labor and 43 per cent inner-city Liberal is a long way from the representative sample producers trumpet, especially considering elections tend to be decided in the mortgage belt marginals and the regions.

A mature ABC would grapple with these realities rather than be overly defensive about them. "So many of the ABC employees are inner-city dwellers, I am certain many of them honestly believe they are airing the full range of opinion," Brunton says. "You find in the ABC's regional outfits, which do a great job, the employees are much more in touch with their local communities and a wide range of views."

There are many who work at the ABC who accept there is a culture of providing a progressive counterbalance, yet they proudly defend their own professionalism and adherence to guidelines to avoid bias and remain true to their craft and their audiences. There are ABC supporters who argue such a culture is a necessity, to provide a pushback to what they perceive as the conservative political culture of the commercial media. (One Labor cabinet minister has been known to joke with confidants that he didn't mind ABC bias while it supported Labor but he hates it now because it favours the Greens.) And there are others inside and outside the corporation who maintain this is rubbish, the ABC is impartial, and would point to last week's stoush between Bob Brown and Chris Uhlmann as exhibit No 1.

To focus too much on alleged political bias is to view the debate too narrowly. The key is the extent to which the ABC engages with the broad sweep of Australian society and its views and values, rather than a select, if sizeable, audience. Should workers in the suburbs be paying for programs such as Deborah Cameron's in Sydney, or Jon Faine's in Melbourne, that routinely denigrate suburban values and criticise politicians for appealing to them? One way the corporation reaches out is through its Advisory Council, but a cursory check of its recommendations shows apart from asking for greater regional reporting in Western Australia, its recent contributions have been a long list of commendations, including to O'Brien for his interviews in the lead-up to last year's election. Then there are the Friends of the ABC groups, which tend to act as advocates for greater resources and as public defenders of the ABC against criticism or reform, almost as an extension of the staff lobbying power, as they did during the Shier period.

Unless there is a move to revisit the charter and make its demands about wide appeal more explicit, the ABC remains in the hands of its staff and its managing director. Scott has expanded platforms at the ABC through online and mobile innovation, and the 24-hour TV news channel. But these innovations have been undercut by a lack of responsiveness on news programs and episodes of poor editorial judgment on the online opinion forum The Drum. Scott has won extra funding, been loyal to his staff and has won great internal popularity for his efforts. If ever a managing director were well-placed to tackle cultural change, it would be him.

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WHAT HOPE DOES AUNTY HAVE IN EXERTING CONTROL OVER CONTENT?
                
ON Monday morning's influential ABC Radio National breakfast program, presenter Fran Kelly introduced, in reverential tones, a series of taped comments by self-confessed provider of material support to terrorists, David Hicks. Introduced as a "Guantanamo detainee", Hicks made his usual, unsubstantiated claims about beatings and torture at the hands of the Americans and suggested his confession was meaningless because he signed it in a suicidal state.

His appearance, the previous day at the Sydney Writers Festival, had already been covered in uncritical terms by ABC TV news. Kelly plugged Hicks's book and a link to his full comments on an ABC website. Now we learn the ABC is to make a documentary about the life and times of this man, detained in Afghanistan as an "enemy combatant" but constantly paraded by the ABC as a plausible critic of John Howard and George W. Bush.

It is difficult to find a better example of where the ABC is captured by a progressive, anti-American view of the world that is completely at odds with reality and the views of mainstream Australians. Despite concerns about initial access to justice, most Australians surely would consider that the person most to blame for Hicks's tribulations is Hicks himself. By his own admission in letters, interviews and his confession, he chose to live, train and serve with terrorist groups.

So who at the ABC makes the editorial decisions to continually focus, uncritically, on Hicks? What hope would ABC managing director Mark Scott have challenging those decisions? Why is the reverential attitude to Hicks common across many ABC platforms? The truth is the real power lies with the ABC journalists and producers.

The ABC charter demands independence which clearly means independence from political or commercial interference. But even if a board demands higher standards and senior management takes up the fight, program producers will claim editorial independence.

Interference in an issue like the selection and treatment of the Hicks story will not be meekly accepted. All media organisations struggle with that tension between journalistic independence and the organisation's editorial and quality controls.

But at the ABC it is not difficult to understand that it is particularly difficult for management to exert control, even if they have the will.

The journalists' and public sector unions will leap at any invitations to become involved. This is what many observers mean when they say the ABC is actually a staff-run collective.

The ABC organisational chart, which shows a series of program producers answering to heads of news, current affairs, radio programming or the like, can best be viewed as a collective of staff collectives. The easiest way for a manager to consolidate his or her position in the organisation is to be seen to stand up for the staff below them, entrenching the will of the collective.

So a critical question for Scott is to what degree he seeks to drive and influence the ABC culture, and to what degree he represents the decisions of the many program producers below him.
Chris Kenny