ABC's dramatic shift in election coverage

For the last 30 years or more, media bias has been an issue in Australian politics, especially during election campaigns.

The ABC has been having a particularly bad time over the last year.

The ABC's own Minister, Senator Alston, referred to its "selective coverage" and the Prime Minister have made adverse comments about the "tired, old ABC line".

The first fortnight of this election campaign was a shocker for the ABC.

First was the public apology over Triple J's promotion of a concert called "Howard's End" when Triple-J announcer Adam Spencer interviewed the lead singer of the Whitlams on getting rid of the Liberal Government.

Then came the 7.30 Report's debate between Cheryl Kernot and Judith Moylan moderated by Kerry O'Brien when the ABC's switchboard was inundated with calls claiming the coverage was biased against Moylan.

This was followed by another dramatic own-goal when ABC WA radio interviewer Verity James asked the Prime Minister whether the GST would lower the price of heroin.

In case anyone missed the radio interview, it was broadcast in living colour on the TV news.  That lead to another public apology.

While this was going on, I released the first of its regular media monitoring reports.

Using content-analysis methodology developed over the last 10 years by the Fraser Institute in Canada, I monitored coverage of the major parties policies by the prime time TV News of the ABC and the free-to-air commercial TV stations.

I watched all election reports for information and commentary on Coalition or Labor Party policies.

Each comment on Coalition or Labor platforms was identified and coded according to the source (journalist, politician, expert, general public, etc.), the party (Coalition or Labor), the policy issue (health policy, tax reform, communications, etc.) and the appraisal (neutral, favourable, unfavourable).

Each appraisal was discussed by two researchers, and in the case of a disagreement between the researchers, an arbitrator was asked to make the final decision.

Appraisals were based on explicit assessments ("such and such a policy is good for Australia") or the potential impact ("the G.S.T. will raise the price of petrol in the bush").

The first media monitoring report -- covering the second week of the campaign -- found that the ABC provided more policy coverage than any of the commercial stations and its coverage was more critical of the Coalition.

The ratio of positive-Coalition-plus-negative-ALP comments to positive-ALP-plus-negative- Coalition comments on the ABC TV News was 2.2 to 1.  That compared to 1.5 to 1 on the commercial stations.

These findings, plus the ABC's own goals, led to a feeding frenzy in the newspapers and talk-back radio.

A public broadcaster which itself becomes a major election issue has real problems.  The ABC's response to all this was a classic bureaucrat's reaction:  "there's nothing wrong, we're checking ourselves anyway, trust us".

Well, something happened in week three.  My second report discovered a dramatic shift in the ABC's coverage.

The above ratio shifted from being hostile to the Coalition to being positive to the Coalition -- to a ratio of 1 to 1.6 in favour of the Coalition.

As a result, the overall ABC coverage for the fortnight was favourable to the Coalition.  There was a comprehensive shift in the ABC's TV News coverage of policies.

It became far less focused on the Coalition (in week two, 78 per cent of the comments on the major parties' policies were on the Coalition, in week three 65 per cent were).  The ABC's coverage became far less critical.

In week two, 63 per cent of the coverage of major parties policies was negative, 22 per cent positive and 16 per cent neutral.  In week three, the figures were 45 per cent negative, 31 per cent positive and 24 per cent neutral.

Of course, this could be the ebb and flow of the campaign.  The biggest single event of the third week of the campaign was the Liberal Policy Launch -- a five minute montage of Howard on the ABC Sunday night TV News did generate a lot of the positive coverage.

The attention on the ABC masked a continuing -- indeed increasing -- tendency towards negative coverage of the Coalition on prime-time commercial TV News.  The overall balance of coverage on the commercial stations shifted from 1.5 to 1 to 1.75 to 1 in favour of the ALP.

The Seven's networks coverage was the most even-handed -- over the two weeks the balance of coverage favoured the ALP slightly 1.1 to 1.  The Seven network also provided least policy coverage of any of the networks.

Nine -- which sources close to the ABC claim is favourable to the Coalition -- was the most hostile to the Coalition of all the stations covered.

Over the two weeks, its coverage favoured the ALP 2.1 to 1 (3 to 1 in the first week, 1.9 to 1 in the second).

Ten was in the middle, with its coverage favouring the ALP 1.78 to 1 (1.6 to 1 in week two and 1.9 to 1 in week three).  Ten also provided the most policy coverage of the commercial channels.

All networks dramatically increased their coverage of policy in the third week of the campaign compared to week two (100 per cent in the case of ABC and Seven, 75 per cent for Ten and 335 per cent for Nine).

The dramatic divergence in the balance of coverage of the major parties' policies by the four networks' prime TV news is the most interesting finding of the media monitoring so far.

As for the issues, unemployment -- which regularly tops polls for public concern -- is running a poor second in policy coverage.

Overwhelmingly, TV news is treating this election as a referendum on Howard's tax plan with tax making up almost 40 per cent of coverage compared to 17 per cent for employment.

Ironically, the two issues which have dominated politics over the last two years -- industrial relations and indigenous issues -- between them have amounted to a mere 3 per cent of coverage of major parties' policies.