More details of Coalition anger at the ABC today:
The anger, which could yet see the ABC budget trimmed, prompted Prime Minister Tony Abbott to issue a rare public rebuke of ABC management, whom he said had exercised ”very very poor judgment,” for partnering with the British-owned media company Guardian Australia to publish spying allegations regarding the Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Three former frontbenchers including the current Speaker, Bronwyn Bishop, spoke up in the meeting attacking the public broadcaster’s management for partnering with the private company, for running the spy story at all, and for other perceived sins including its expansion into four digital television channels.
…Senator Bernardi also…said there was a compelling case to consider breaking the ABC into two entities with the traditional television and radio operations protected to ensure services in the bush and regional Australia, while the online news service could be disposed of.
In response, Mr Turnbull told the meeting that he believed the ABC did a pretty good job of observing its charter, but was open to criticism for what he called outdated work practices.
…He denied that the national broadcaster was contributing to the ruin of newspapers arguing the publishing industry suffered from a lack of advertising revenue, not from a lack of readers.
Here is Prime Minister Abbott’s attack:
This is pretty thin stuff and does not serve the PM’s interests. He is keeping this story alive now, not the ABC.
My own view on this remains similar to Turnbull. The ABC is chock full of Lefties but in its news current affairs, at least, I don’t see obvious or persistent bias (though I’ll happily concede that individual cases will show up for both sides). Moreover, the ABC and everyone else would have run the Guardian Snowden leak regardless of who broke the story. The line about advertising the Guardian is absurd. The Snowden material was an editorial not commercial decision. The PM is doing more for the Guardian today than the ABC ever did.
That is not to say that the ABC is in lock-step with the Government of the day. My criticism remains that there’s not enough hard-nosed material on business and economics and too much social issue naval-gazing, which is a neat fit with its culture of entitlement. You can see this in its board make up, which is dominated by patrons of the arts, and in the programming of Radio National in particular. That might be seen as a bias towards chardonnay socialism, which has a neater fit with the values of modern Labor than the Libs, and may account for some of the perception of bias.
I don’t know the political allegiances of the Board but if it is tilted then infusing some fresh libertarian blood when appointments come up would be good for it. One thing is absolutely certain. You’ll find waste at the ABC.
The argument that the ABC shouldn’t operate in new media doesn’t make sense to me, either. If its a broadcaster it should be using the new channels of broadcast. So long as such doesn’t compromise its non-commercial status.
Shooting the messenger is an old favouriate of politicians and won’t help the government. Governing with greater clarity is what the team Abbott needs, not greater information control.
