Former ABC Chair and well known media identity Ita Buttrose has caused controversy within the ABC by having the temerity to suggest that there are some journalists within the organisation who don’t present both sides of stories they cover.
In other words, the ABC is failing its duty of impartiality as the public broadcaster.
‘I think there’s no harm in presenting both sides of an argument and I don’t understand the reluctance of some of our interviewers not to do that,’ she said.
What a controversial notion, presenting both sides of an argument!
In a perfect illustration of an ABC journalist missing the point entirely, the radio presenter Buttrose was being interviewed by was more concerned about ABC journalists being criticised by News Corp publications.
Patricia Karvelas said News Corp mastheads ‘have gone after ABC frontline reporters and presenters pretty hard, including me.’
Boohoo, so what? They went after me from time to time too – and I worked there. So did other journalists at Network 10 when I worked there.
That’s what happens when you engage in debates or take a stand on controversial issues.
Former ABC Chair Ita Buttrose (pictured) states the bleeding obvious: that the public broadcaster should present both sides of arguments
If those who hold others to account for a living don’t like themselves also being held to account for their commentary and analysis they should find another profession.
I question the appropriateness of anyone employed by the public broadcaster acting as an opinion journalist. If there is one media organisation that should avoid subjective commentary it’s the ABC.
Those employed there certainly shouldn’t see it as their job to balance the ledger of commentary by shifting left to counter what they perceive as right wing bias at News Corp. Yet it still happens all the time.
That’s because the ABC is a taxpayer funded public broadcaster. Like the BBC in the United Kingdom, it shouldn’t get into slanging matches with commercial media enterprises, which, whether they like it or not, have the right to include opinion and campaigns in their pages and on their programs.
The ABC does not have that right and should not. It must leave that task to the likes of The Guardian, Crikey or The Monthly, or indeed the many other commercial media organisations that lean left. A public broadcaster should be above all of that.
Which is why Buttrose is right to criticise sections of the ABC for not presenting both sides of arguments it weighs in on with its journalism.
ABC presenter Patricia Karvelas (pictured) needs to learn to take what she dishes out. Karvelas used an interview to whinge about News Corp criticisms of her work
Laura Tingle (pictured) hasn’t hidden her distaste for Liberal leaders Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton
The media union spat back, of course, declaring her views as irrelevant. Coming from a union with declining membership you do have to enjoy the irony.
But the real issue is whether the former Chair’s comments are accurate right across the ABC. The answer is no, at least when it comes to the great swathe of ABC journalists spread across the nation. Especially in smaller regional and rural communities.
These journalists do an amazing job of covering all manner of issues – from all sides – free of narrow cultural bias and ideological blinkers, or the perceived need to counterbalance News Corp commentary.
However, Buttrose does make a valid point when it comes to some of the ABC’s highest profile journalists, especially those covering domestic and international politics. Including the presenter she was being interviewed by, to be frank.
There is no better evidence of the left wing bias that has taken over the ABC’s political coverage than the always critical commentary about the Coalition that the political correspondent for the 7.30 television program, Laura Tingle, partakes in.
Both Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton have been victims of her subjectivity and ideological bias. Which would be fine at a commercial entity, but not at the public broadcaster.
In contrast, probably the most straight down the middle political journalist in the country – David Speers, now host of ABC Insiders – is regarded by some within the ABC as further to the right than Ghengis Khan. That’s how skewed from the centre the ABC now is.
In a sure sign many high profile journalists at the ABC take their cues from the left leaning bias of X, Speers is attacked each and every week on the platform formerly known as Twitter for being some sort of Liberal stooge. An utterly absurd proposition.
New ABC Chair Kim Williams (pictured) has implored his journalists to park their ideological bias, but it hasn’t happened
David Speers (pictured) is an unbiased journalist who leans neither left nor right. It means he doesn’t fit in with the left wing culture across much of the ABC
When Kim Williams took over as Chair of the ABC – recently appointed to the position by the Albanese government – he suggested that any journalists employed there who weren’t capable of parking their ideology to do their jobs with balance should leave.
They were strong, but hollow, words unfortunately. In the aftermath of making them examples quickly came to light which violated his demand. Indeed, Williams himself offered some partisan criticisms of Peter Dutton’s nuclear policy at a public event – although Williams represents the ABC, but is not a journalist there.
The funniest thing about what is so obvious to so many who occasionally tune in to the ABC’s political coverage – that it by and large can’t help but lean left – is lost on many within the organisation who think it needs to become more bolshy not less.
Which brings us right back to Buttrose’s statement of the obvious, that will fall on deaf ears at the ABC.
That is, at least when it comes to its coverage of politics, it doesn’t present both sides of the story with impartiality as a public broadcaster is duty bound to do.
