EDITORIAL: Public broadcaster needs to get back to basics
It’s the question that keeps Hugh Marks up at night: What do Australians want from the ABC?
When it comes to news, the answer is pretty straightforward.
They want to turn on their radios and televisions and receive accurate, unbiased, high-quality journalism, uncoloured by the journalists’ personal prejudices and opinions.
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Kim Williams gets it. The ABC chairman gave a scathing critique of the organisation’s news priorities at a Radio National staff meeting last year, a recording of which was leaked to other media.
In it, Williams bemoaned the ABC’s penchant for pushing fluffy lifestyle stories to the top its news feeds, at the expense of consequential news stories about topics such as international conflicts and state and federal politics.
ABC’s management spend their days looking for ways to spend their budget
Sixteen months on from that dressing down from the chairman and the ABC is still churning out plenty of fluff.
A scan of the ABC website on Wednesday revealed stories about how scheduling “school night adventures” (instead of saving all the fun for the weekend) may or may not be good for wellbeing, how to diagnose whether you’re an “otrovert” (neither an introvert or an extrovert), and the five easiest edible plants to grow at home (rosemary, mint, citrus, oregano and thyme).
There is nothing inherently wrong with any of these stories. As any first year journalism text book will tell you, news is about light and shade and lifestyle journalism is a valid pursuit.
But it’s unlikely to be the sort of news Australian taxpayers have in mind in return for the $1.2 billion they plough into the service each year.
You get the feeling the ABC’s management spend their days scratching around looking for ways to spend that budget, lest it be pruned back. The $2.5 million the broadcaster spent defending legal action from sacked reporter Antoinette Lattouf made barely a dent in that pile of cash.
Case in point the ABC’s new “secret project” to allow news audiences a new avenue to “follow” individual journalists.
Marks, the broadcaster’s managing director, said he had no knowledge of the proposal when asked about it during his appearance at the National Press Club on Wednesday.
But news staff at the ABC have privately expressed their irritation with “Journo Feed”, which they fear is an attempt by the organisation to position them as personalities, rather than impartial observers and reporters.
It comes as the ABC is under pressure to prove it has not succumbed to the same sickness which has infected the BBC.
BBC director-general Tim Davie was one of several high profile staff to fall on his sword after it was revealed the broadcaster’s Panorama program had edited Donald Trump’s speech on December 6, 2021 to give the false impression he had incited rioters at the US Capitol.
Reflecting on that failure by the BBC, Marks said it was a lesson to own one’s mistakes. “We have to not cower, but we can’t be defensive when we make a mistake, own it. It’s not hard,” he said.
