Leigh Sales on ABC-haters, trust in media, and stealing Ita’s car park

News avoidance and declining trust in mainstream media around the world are urgent issues for Australian outlets, ABC journalist Leigh Sales said Friday night.

In the annual Andrew Olle Media Lecture, the former 7.30 host told the room of around 400 media executives and journalists at Sydney’s Doltone House that the public is losing interest in stories media organisations are telling.

Leigh Sales at the ABC Studio ahead of her Andrew Olle lecture.Credit: Louise Kennerley

Leigh Sales on why audiences are avoiding news

“All media organisations, from the ABC to News Corp, are being affected by news avoidance and declining audience trust,” the three-time Walkley Award winner said. “The media overall is close to the bottom of the trust index. The ABC is currently the 18th most trusted brand in Australia, while News Corp is the fourth most distrusted. Back in 2019, the ABC was fifth most trusted.”

Citing the Digital Media Australia report last year, she noted that about two-thirds of people say they actively avoid the news because “it’s untrustworthy or biased; it harms my mental well-being; it wears me out; there’s too much politics; and it leads to arguments I don’t have time for.”

“Let’s have the guts to look that in the face ... are we doing something that’s causing audiences to avoid the news and to trust us less? If we’re too scared to scrutinise that, and to examine the issues we choose to emphasise and how we go about reporting stories and to perhaps have some awkward conversations about that, then we compromise our integrity,” the former current affairs host, now presenter of Australian Story said.

Why she previously declined to give the Olle lecture

Sales said despite the honour, she had declined a previous request to deliver the annual lecture, given in memory of former ABC journalist Andrew Olle, who died of a brain tumour in 1995, at the age of 47.

“The main reason is it’s just so tiresome that when you do something like this these days, instead of thinking, ‘What sincere views should I share, and how will people respond?’, what you have to consider is, ‘How will what I say be taken out of context and weaponised by ABC-haters and Twitter nutters? How will I manage a spread of misinformation unrelated to what I actually said, and will my employer have the guts to stand by me? Do they really want me to say what I actually think?’ That’s what it is to step into the arena in 2023.”

Documentary maker Louis Theroux.

Sales said she changed her mind after listening to British broadcaster, Louis Theroux’s 2023 MacTaggart Lecture about the BBC’s “fear of its critics, of putting interest groups offside and of causing offence.”

There is an urge to lie low, to play it safe, to avoid the difficult subjects, Theroux said.

“But in avoiding these pinch points and unresolved areas of culture where our anxieties and our painful dilemmas lie, we aren’t just failing to do our jobs, we are missing our greatest opportunities. The risk of not taking risks is something worse. Not just failure, but a kind of loss of integrity. I particularly agree with Louis Theroux on that last point. Saying no to delivering this lecture, or standing here and delivering something that offends nobody, would be the safer, easier path. And that’s why, on reflection, I choose the other way,” Sales said.

The importance of integrity and independence in a “hyper-polarised” era

Sales, who moved from Brisbane to the ABC’s Sydney newsroom a year after Olle’s death in 1995, said, “You can sum up his journalism with two words: integrity and independence... My own honest opinion as to why many people are losing interest in the news? Because that kind of journalism is not as common as it once was, and as a result, people rightly don’t always trust us any more.”

Former ABC journalist Andrew Olle who died in 1995 of a brain tumour.Credit: Fairfax Media

Media companies should consider the pursuit of independent journalism essential to their credibility, especially in this “hyper-polarised era,” she said.

“Too many journalists, at all media organisations, are abandoning values espoused by people like Andrew Olle...Some reporters prefer to be activists and crusaders rather than fact-finders or straight reporters. They enjoy their heroic status among the tribes of social media or their subscribers.”

“All of this thinking leads to journalism with an agenda, and that kind of reporting is a surefire way to win strong support from an audience. But does it win broad respect? Does it lead to lasting public trust? I would argue not.

I believe that becoming a journalist means you relinquish the right to be an activist, even on important issues you really care about,” she said.

Why journalists should ask questions, not back causes

Sales said the hardest time in her career to be impartial was during Australia’s same-sex marriage debate because of “how much I love my LGBTQI friends and how important that issue was to them”.

In recent times too, she said few issues in Australia had been as polarising as COVID-19 policy.

“When I was in Melbourne during a snap lockdown in February 2021 and saw a handy opportunity to go to a press conference by the Victorian Premier Dan Andrews, who had declined multiple requests for a 7.30 interview, a number of friends and colleagues said to me, ‘Are you sure?’ knowing it would prompt days of abuse and threats on social media.

Victorian Premier Dan Andrews gives a press conference in 2021. Credit: Chris Hopkins

“Since when is it brave or outrageous for a journalist to ask questions of an elected leader to test if their decisions stack up against available evidence? The public should be able to trust us to do this every time: not just on COVID, but on any issue.”

And why Sales will never park in ABC chair Ita Buttrose’s car space again

Sales told an anecdote about how, under pressure to get to the ABC studio in time for an important interview in 2020, she once parked in ABC chair Ita Buttrose’s spot because the staff carpark was full. Only to return to find a note under her windscreen wiper which, in beautiful cursive script, read:

Please DON’T (in capital letters and double underlined) park in my car spot again.

“And there was that famous Ita signature and date. In the top left-hand corner was stapled a business card that read Ita Buttrose AC OBE,” Sales said.

The framed letter from ABC chair Ita Buttrose to Leigh Sales asking her not to park in her car space, now sits above Sales’ desk.

While the security guard was tasked to search the news organisation to find the carpark culprit, with fears the offender would be in serious trouble, Sales confessed, was forgiven and now has a copy of the note framed above her desk.

“I’ve been sitting on that anecdote for three years, waiting for the perfect moment to tell it publicly, because I knew it was a great story. Journos are often accused of bias and actually, I agree. Real journalists all do share a bias … towards the cracking story.

“You don’t care which side of politics or which social media zealots you’ll offend,” she said.

“That bias towards a great story is the same whether we file for TikTok or Four Corners, work at Nine News or Mamamia, whether we have three minutes of audio, or 70,000 words.”