The ABC’s news division has rejected a finding by an independent reviewer that an interview by AM presenter Michael Brissenden breached the ABC’s guidelines on impartiality.
The review, the fifth to have been commissioned by the ABC board, found that an interview with the leader of the government in the Senate, Eric Abetz, should not have been introduced with the phrase “from bad to worse”.
Former newspaper editor Steve Harris said in the review the phrase was “somewhat of a simplistic overstatement” and that in another part of the same segment Brissenden could have been more “neutral”.
“Overall, the segment risked being seen as having a tone of prosecuting a crisis narrative, i.e. ‘the smell of blood’,” Harris said.
But Brissenden’s managers in ABC News, who responded formally to the review, rejected Harris’s interpretation.
“The introduction described the Senate as ‘recalcitrant’, while the phrase ‘from bad to worse’ simply means that the situation had deteriorated, which it demonstrably had,” the ABC news division said.
“The interview by Michael Brissenden was civil and respectful in its tone and the minister was given ample opportunity to respond to questions.
“He was rightly put under some pressure, but News rejects the suggestion that the interviewer was attempting to manufacture a crisis narrative, i.e. ‘the smell of blood’ or that it was not in accordance with the ABC’s guidelines on impartiality.”
The next review, into the Q&A program, is being undertaken by broadcasters Ray Martin and Shaun Brown and will be completed in three months.
Overall, the ABC came out of the Harris review relatively unscathed. His assessment of the ABC’s coverage of the higher education reform bill in March 2015 labelled just two out of 54 segments unsatisfactory.
Harris, a former editor-in-chief and publisher of the Age and editor-in-chief of the Herald and Weekly Times Group, studied 54 segments across Radio National Breakfast, AM, PM, The World Today, Triple J HACK, ABC720 Perth, 7.30, The Drum, Q&A and News Online.
The second “unsatisfactory” segment was on ABC 720 Perth, when presenter Geoff Hutchinson interviewed the University of Western Australia vice-chancellor, Paul Johnson.
“The presenter veered off the neutral script, allowing his own views to come through, i.e. intimating a personal view that it ought to be a government and taxpayer responsibility to educate its population, and opposition to a user-pays system, and while the ideological argument was tough and there were views on both sides, his stated view was that ‘the politics of it has been really poor’,” Harris said.
“This ‘editorialising’ gave the impression the presenter had a dim view of the government and ministerial policy approach and advocacy.
“This came through direct and critical commentary, and did not satisfactorily evidence neutrality or impartiality.”
In its response to Harris the radio division said presenters were allowed to express an opinion.
“Radio presenters, broadly speaking, are not precluded from expressing a personal view, provided that is done within the parameters of the ABC’s standards and the guidelines, particularly in relation to opinion versus analysis, and that those views are not put forward at the expense of others or presented in a way which gives them undue weight,” ABC radio management said.
