The Coalition’s culture wars against the ABC may ease now that Tony Abbott has been replaced by Malcolm Turnbull, says the reporter and presenter Sarah Ferguson.
“Already the language has changed, and language is so important because it shapes the relationship and shows where it’s likely to go,” Ferguson, the maker of ABC’s hit political thriller The Killing Season, said.
In an interview with Guardian Australia after delivering the AN Smith lecture in journalism in Melbourne on Wednesday evening, Ferguson had strong words for the way corporate Australia and governments tried to block journalists pursuing important stories. But she didn’t let journalists off lightly either.
Ferguson said journalists were too ready to accept restrictions on reporting in return for access and drips of information, and they were not transparent enough when reporting the motivation behind political leaks.
Abbott had a point when he referred to the “febrile media” in his final press conference, she said.
“He does have a point about sources and the way journalists are used in those leadership campaigns … I think there is a question for all of us about receiving information that is clearly part of a campaign, and the degree to which we share that motivation with the reading public.”
Ferguson also took aim at the way journalists read out text messages from contacts on their mobiles live on television during the Julia Gillard coup against Kevin Rudd in 2010.
“The unseemly display of private contacts by the broadcast media got slightly out of hand,” she said. “That was a bit crook: the effect of eight different people doing it at the same time was unseemly.”
Ferguson said that while the professionalism of Laurie Oakes, Nine’s political editor, should not be questioned when he stands up at the press club and reveals an inside story, the “broader use of sources” was problematic.
“The whole issue of trust is so crucial right now that holding and establishing our trust is so important,” she said.
In a wide-ranging speech, Ferguson, who is editing her major series on domestic violence which goes to air in November, talked about how worrying it was that journalists were increasingly prevented from accessing information by spin doctors employed by corporations and governments.
She contrasted the way a domestic violence victim opened up her life to the ABC crew while the government bureaucrats demanded contracts and lawyers before they would speak.
“Media departments on the other hand proposed filming agreements that would give them veto over the material and contractual obligations not to show anything that would ‘undermine public confidence’ in their organisation,” she said. “It was clear that other media organisations had signed similar agreements in the past.”
Ferguson said Abbott believed the media should behave in a certain way, even ordering his ministers not to appear on Q&A amid accusations of ABC bias and “ABC of infamy” headlines in the News Corp tabloids.
“It was the latest in a series of assaults on the ABC by the Liberal leader who had accused ABC journalists of being unpatriotic, of taking everyone’s side but Australia’s, of lacking basic affection for the home team,” she said.
“What the ABC’s critics fail to understand is that it is not the ABC’s job to project the country according to their tastes.
“Nor is it the ABC’s role to boost or spruik for Australia, in peace or in conflict.
“No one at the ABC looks for thanks from the government but is it unreasonable to expect the government to have some understanding of the major institution it funds whose existence the public so overwhelmingly supports?
“Then communications minister Malcolm Turnbull stayed largely above the fray, quietly working to manage the Q&A crisis and clearly stating that real innovation in digital media is within the ABC’s charter.”
The Four Corners reporter contrasted Abbott’s attitude towards the ABC with Turnbull’s, saying Turnbull understood the ABC’s need to be innovative and not remain stuck in the 1950s when it offered only TV and radio services.
Ferguson, who was born in the UK and who has just returned from a visit, said the debate about the BBC’s future as a comprehensive broadcaster resonated in Australia, too.
“As the British government looks to narrow the scope of the BBC’s role to limit the degree to which it competes with commercial broadcasters, it’s worth recalling the echoes of outrage here,” she said.
“Last November News Limited boss Julian Clarke called on the government to stop the ABC ‘using taxpayer funds to compete against self-supported media companies in the digital space’.”
Ferguson is a supporter of public broadcasting being a broad-based service, including drama and light entertainment as well as news: “General programming is a shared experience.
“Don’t call us elitist and then ask us to only make the programs the commercials won’t make. And I don’t see the difference anyway. I see the ABC as being right in the middle of the mainstream.
“If the world’s first and most powerful public broadcaster is in danger of having its wings clipped, what about it’s poorer cousin down under? We all know how often political trends, particularly in British politics, wash up on these distant shores some time later.”
On the 7.30 program in 2014, Ferguson famously asked the then-treasurer, Joe Hockey, straight after he delivered his first budget: “It’s a budget with a new tax, with levies, with co-payments. Is it liberating for a politician to decide election promises don’t matter?”
The interview was criticised by an external reviewer of ABC content earlier this year. Newspaper journalist Colleen Ryan said Ferguson’s opening question to Hockey was “emotive” and would lead to the average viewer thinking the treasurer “was not treated with sufficient respect by the interviewer”.
Ferguson says now: “It seemed like a legitimate question and it seems as if the narrative has borne out its relevance.”
