Eric Abetz, one of the Senate’s great dinosaurs, was letting out his close-to-extinction howl. Bias in the ABC, unfair reporting on same-sex marriage (he wants more of the traditional stuff) and too many pro-Palestinian reports from Middle East correspondent Sophie McNeill.
Except Abetz, in one sense, is not extinct. He’s just been awarded top spot on the Liberal Senate ticket for the next election. So he has a parliamentary future that stretches ahead for up to six years, assuming there’s no double dissolution.
Yet it’s a future without a spot in cabinet or the frontbench, which gives him plenty of time to hone questions to be lobbed at pinko public officials at Senate estimates or other committees.
It doesn’t come much more predictable than a package of prejudices wrapped together in one great spitball – ABC bias, the dangers posed to society by same-sex marriage, and the need to give Israel the best PR gloss possible.
Naturally, it was outgoing ABC managing director Mark Scott handling the questions and doing considerably better than Mal Brough when he had to answer questions on 60 Minutes.
By the end of Abetz’s allocated time, Sophie McNeill’s reports were the least of it.
In a final burst, the senator wanted to know whether the ABC had broadcast any stories about a resolution of the US House of Representatives foreign affairs committee, which called on the Palestinian Authority to “discourage anti-Israeli and antisemitic incitement in Palestinian civil society”.
Also, had the ABC broadcast the Polish election results, and how often? This was the election won by what looks like local Abetz party, otherwise known as the nationalist, anti-immigration, eurosceptic Law and Justice party. We’re all dying to know more about the booth-by-booth breakdowns of that triumph.
Public officials dealing with the inane point-scoring at Senate estimates must find the process wearing enough. At least with Senator Abetz you know well in advance where he’s coming from. This level of predictability allowed Mark Scott to be well prepared.
He had McNeill’s qualifications and credentials at his finger tips, he knew the details of her stories that were the subject of attack, and he made the elementary point that to make an informed judgment on balance you should look at the range of a journalist’s work, not just spotlight individual reports.
In contention was McNeill’s report of the death of a young Palestinian girl. Abetz said the girl was described as a “friendly gifted student” who had “allegedly” tried to stab members of the Israeli defence force, so they shot her dead.
Why, the senator wanted to know, is the ABC describing the attacker as “friendly, gifted” etc, as though they are givens, while her attempt to stab the military personnel was only described as an “allegation”.
Why do we say ‘alleged’ attacker when the Israeli defence forces say that is what she is? Why don’t we take that at face value?
The senator, who seems unfamiliar with basic reporting requirements, should know that the word “alleged” is used in relation to a criminal offence, if the offence is one that has not been proven. Nor should a reporter be expected to take anything “at face value”, specially not from a military or government source. As a local Hobart solicitor, you’d think the senator might have worked that out for himself.
Abetz was also concerned about a lack of ABC’s balance in reporting issues surrounding marriage equality. It seemed to be a notion that clock time should be equally allocated to both sides – those who support the traditional definition of marriage and those who want it changed.
Clock time is never an ideal way to achieve balance, for the simple reason that an ineffective advocate or spokesperson with 90% of the time is less effective than an articulate advocate with 10% of the time. You can see the exchange between Scott and Abetz here.
The disturbing aspect of this is the hectoring attempt at political micro-management of the way the national broadcaster does its work.
Nor is it confined to public broadcasters, for we saw the same thing involving Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Peta Credlin’s attempts to remove Niki Savva from the Australian’s lineup of columnists over her criticism of the former PM’s chief-of-staff.
Middle East correspondents say they have a particularly torrid time coping with complaints from the Israeli lobby back home. Scott told the Senate committee that he thought Abetz was receiving “daily or weekly” commentary on McNeill’s reports from “some observers”.
There’s a sorry bit of history to all this. The ABC board brought in former Melbourne newspaper editor Steve Harris to review the ABC’s coverage of Christopher Pyne’s education funding reforms.
Harris made a finding that in interviewing Abetz about the Abbott government’s education policy, ABC reporter Michael Brissenden “risked being seen as having a tone of prosecuting a crisis narrative, ie ‘the smell of blood’”.
ABC Perth morning radio host Geoff Hutchinson also “veered off the neutral script” when he suggested that education should be a government responsibility. In August the ABC’s news division rejected Harris’s findings.
“Balance” in journalism and reporting is an imperfect beast. We could say the same about politicians. What weight should be given to the views of a politician from Tasmania who gets a first preference vote of about 26% of a very small electorate of 360,000 people? Paul Keating’s memorable remark comes to mind – that the Senate is composed of “unrepresentative swill”.
