Michelle Guthrie was staggeringly unqualified for ABC role

I almost feel sorry for Michelle Guthrie. She walked into one of the most difficult and complex jobs in Australia staggeringly unqualified for the role. On top of that she came at one of the more difficult times in the ABC’s recent history, under fierce attack from a hostile government and struggling to cope with massive changes to the way Australians experience media content.

Michelle Guthrie: Sacked from the ABC.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The outgoing managing director was neither a skilled political operative like her predecessor Mark Scott, nor a program maker or journalist. She couldn’t defend the most important output of the corporation, its journalism, because she just didn’t get it.

There are strong parallels with the appointment by the Howard government of Jonathan Shier. Arguably an even more left-field choice than Guthrie, Shier lasted less than two years. What they shared was an implicit brief to disrupt the ABC, dismantle internal fiefdoms and, importantly, bring the news and current affairs division under control.

Make no mistake, federal governments, regardless of political complexion, don’t care about Peppa Pig. They care about political coverage by the ABC’s journalists and broadcasters.

Persistent and strident complaints about the ABC’s political coverage have clearly had an impact on the ABC’s news division. Quite apart from job losses that have resulted in some state newsrooms struggling to get TV news bulletins to air, the place seems to have a scarcity of editorial maturity and leadership.

The decision to return the contents of the "lost filing cabinet" to the Commonwealth, contents that were assessed as a treasure trove of important stories, left many ABC journalists completely bewildered.

Then there is the defence of Andrew Probyn’s story on the alleged Murdoch/Stokes conspiracy to unseat the former Prime Minister. Would a seasoned director of news choose to run that story, even if the primary source was the former PM himself, without some other corroborating evidence?

The 7pm news bulletins, still produced in each state, while not the ratings powerhouse they once were, remain incredibly important and very much the flagship of the corporation’s free-to-air television output. These days the bulletins seem thin and under-resourced, editorial values hard to guess and state content arbitrary. Most of the important decisions about what leads in the bulletins around the country are made in Sydney.

The cuts to radio news have perhaps been the most savage of all. Bulletins have been radically shortened in recent years and staff resources cut back to what I would have regarded as a skeleton crew less than a decade ago.

The metropolitan radio stations those bulletins appear on also seems to be playing fast and loose with their loyal remaining audiences ostensibly to try and reverse the long-term trend in declining audiences.

What was once known as the jewel in the crown of ABC radio, Melbourne’s metropolitan station has shed more than half of its audience in the key breakfast slot this year taking it back to levels last seen in 1989. The move from Red Symons, a long-term audience favourite, to the untried Sami Shah and Jacinta Parsons broke every rule in the radio management book.

One of Michelle Guthrie’s edicts that was taken seriously was the shift to a less white, male and middle-class ABC to a staff roster more representative of modern Australia. This is a worthy goal but clearly this hasn’t been balanced with a more strategic view of incremental change and respect for the loyal core audience who have stuck by Aunty. They are deserting in droves and may well not come back.

Guthrie’s major positive legacy will be dramatically changing the structure of the ABC from its traditional output silos of radio and TV to content divisions. This was long overdue and will bear fruit if carefully managed from here. Many digital teams have been created producing content for digital platforms first. I wonder how many of them are using mandated ABC editorial processes and values to choose and produce content – or are they just using Google analytics instead? That would be a dangerous path for the national broadcaster to take.

So what qualities will the new ABC managing director need to succeed? In my view it would be disastrous to go for a steady hand option as the Howard government did with Russell Balding in 2001. The situation is too volatile and the pace of digital change too great to do nothing for five years.

Should the board hire a skilled political operative able to survive what is likely to be the last term of the present federal government and perhaps prosper under the next Labor administration? Given the complexion of the current board that also seems an unlikely option.

ABC managing directors have to walk that fine line between building relationships in Canberra, delivering what the public wants and keeping the staff onside. Of those three options the most unreliable and the quickest to change is reliance on political promises which can change as quickly as a leadership spill.

What I hope they do is re-assert the most important thing the ABC does: its journalism. The ABC needs a managing director who understands it, protects it and where necessary, as editor-in-chief, guides it.

Marco Bass was head of ABC news and current affairs in Victoria from 2000 to 2011.