A handful of episodes of The Drum and Insiders during the 2019 federal election campaign “favoured Labor” but the ABC’s coverage overall was impartial, a confidential report commissioned by the broadcaster’s board has found.
The independent reviewer analysed five episodes of The Drum and four episodes of Insiders broadcast during the election campaign and found that, in one episode of The Drum and two Insiders shows, the overall impression given by the panellists was more positive for the ALP than the Coalition.
However, the analysis of a sample of the corporation’s news coverage over one week of the 2019 election battle between the prime minister, Scott Morrison, and the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, was overwhelmingly positive and unbiased.
The reviewer “did not find a pronounced bias in the framing of the narrative in favour or against either of the main parties”. The ABC’s news coverage “consistently reflected a diversity of perspectives and covered a broad range of policy and campaign issues”.
The reviewer found one episode of The Drum “reflected too narrow a range of viewpoints”. She reported that “more conservative voices and perspectives should have been included” and “the disparity impacted the program’s impartiality”.
Written by the British journalist Kerry Blackburn, who held senior editorial roles in the UK at ITN, the BBC and Channel Five, it was the 19th editorial review commissioned by the ABC board.
“There appeared to be a substantial shortfall in positive reflection of the Coalition’s prospects, policies or performance compared to Labor,” Blackburn said of two Insiders shows. “This was not related to the expression of opinions but the weight of analysis, where the positive impression for Labor across all contributions in two episodes far outweighed that for the Coalition.”
But Blackburn found that overall, the Insiders panellists’ contributions were “evidence-based and constituted professional judgment”.
A motion by the Coalition senator James McGrath passed in the Senate on Wednesday forced the publication of the report on Thursday evening.
McGrath told the Senate the report cost the ABC $52,000 and should be released. “Why is the ABC keeping this review secret from the taxpayers, who contribute over $1bn a year to the ABC?” he said.
The release of the report comes a week after the minister for communications, Paul Fletcher, wrote to the ABC chair, Ita Buttrose, to ask if the Four Corners program that alleged inappropriate conduct by two ministers met the standards of accurate and impartial journalism.
Guardian Australia understands the ABC will vigorously defend Four Corners in its answer to Fletcher.
Delivered to the ABC last year, the election impartiality review was kept confidential because the board believed it was “deliberative material for program makers and should only be used internally”.
Buttrose and the managing director, David Anderson, wrote to the president of the Senate, Scott Ryan, to express serious reservations about the use of the powers of the upper house to force publication of the internal report.
“There is a public interest in the ABC being able to deliberate on and develop ideas for its program material in a confidential way,” Buttrose wrote to Ryan on Thursday.
“Public discussion on its internal deliberations on program material will hinder the free exchange of ideas about program material, and this is to the detriment of the public interest.”
The ABC’s editorial director, Craig McMurtrie, told ABC radio on Thursday that the board had decided to keep the report confidential because it wasn’t “comprehensive” and it scrutinised guests of the ABC, which “wasn’t fair or reasonable”.
McMurtrie said the strong pushback by Buttrose to both assaults on the ABC’s independence should give the public confidence that the ABC was robust.
“The Senate should let the board do its job,” McMurtrie said. “Now a Senate power has been used to force the release of these documents.”
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