Bias on the ABC

Talk to Victorian Young Liberals,
1 March 1999

I have been asked to talk about bias on the ABC.  This request flows from an analysis media monitoring we carried out during the recent Federal election.  I will organise my reparks around four questions:

• what we did;
• why we did it;
• what we found;  and
• what is to be done about it.

WHAT WE DID:  CONTENT ANALYSIS

What our media monitoring did was to apply the techniques of content analysis to the prime time TV News of the four main free-to-air stations in Melbourne during the five weeks of the Federal Election Campaign.

Content analysis is a research and academic technique that goes back at least to the 1920s.  Its use as a tool of media analysis has been particularly developed by the Fraser Institute of Vancouver, Canada over the last 10 years.  Kate Morrison, from the Fraser Institute, brought these techniques with her when she came to work with us in September.

For our study of election coverage, each comment on the prime time TV News referring to Coalition or ALP policies was identified and coded according to ten variables:  statement ID, week ID, video ID, date, programme, counter ID, source, political party, policy issue and evaluation (positive, negative, neutral).

Coding was done by two researchers, who had to agree on all coding variables including statement identification, which Party was being discussed and the evaluation.  Evaluations were based on appraisals, the stated impact of the policy and issues of credibility.  Journalist's comments were considered to be neutral unless an explicit appraisal was provided.  Context was taken into account while the negation of a negative appraisal was considered to be positive for the purposes of the study.

Election '98 reports were also coded according to the headlines, political parties and story themes.

Cases of disagreement between the two researchers were dealt with by discussed with an arbitrator -- in the case of the Election study, that was yours truly.

The information gathered by this process was then disseminated by weekly news release, placed on our website and, after the election, released in our Backgrounder, copies of which I have with me.

WHY WE DID IT

Why did we do it?  How receptive the general media is to ideas is of direct concern to us.

This applies particularly to the so-called "quality media", which tends to give more space to discussions of public policy issues.

In Melbourne, that primarily means The Age and the ABC.

One can immediately see we have a problem.

We have no great difficulty with the "popular" press.  We have regular columns in the Herald-Sun and the Courier-Mail.  The West Australian is certainly receptive to our offerings.  On the other hand, the Telegraph-Mirror tends to be very Sydney-centric, the Advertiser even more ruthlessly parochial while the Hobart Mercury follows the Telegraph-Mirror.

With the other "quality" press, the Australian Financial Review, the Canberra Times, the business section of the Australian are all receptive to our offerings and so, to a lesser extent, is the Sydney Morning Herald.

Getting into The Age is, however, a real problem.

But none of these media outlets have the reach of the ABC.  AM, for example, has about one million listeners and tends to set the news agenda for the day.  We get some coverage on the ABC -- a regular spot on Terry Laidlar's show.  But the general tenor of commentary and coverage on the ABC is not friendly to our point of view.

The only path to improve this problem is by moving the decades-old debate about media bias away from anecdotal evidence and broad accusation to hard data.

This is what content analysis offered.  A chance to move the debate along by providing hard evidence, rather than casual assertion.

WHAT WE FOUND

Our first report, covering Week Two of the election campaign -- and released at the beginning of the third week of the campaign -- found that the ABC was the most pro-ALP of the four networks.  We could not possibly have wished for better timing.  Both Prime Minister Howard and Minister Alston had raised questions about ABC bias in preceding months and the ABC had just managed a series of spectacular "own goals", including the question about the GST and the price of heroin that John Howard took understandable offence at, the "Howard's End" rock concert promotion and complaints about the Kernot-Moyles debate on the 7.30 Report.

(By-the-way, having viewed a videotape of the last item, I actually think the ABC was hard done by on that one:  Kernot is simply a better media performer than Moylan.)

That a "respected independent think tank" found the ABC TV News coverage was biased was, however, in that particular context, dynamite and got a great deal of coverage.  The ABC went into panic mode.  There was talk of strike action, a staff walk-out and shrill voices of the usual suspects were raised in its defence.

And its news coverage changed.

Our analysis of Week Three -- released at the beginning of the fourth week -- found the ABC's TV News coverage was, in fact, favourable to the Coalition -- one of only two Coalition-positive "station-weeks" during the entire campaign.  (Out of the 20 "station-weeks" of the four networks over the five weeks, we found two favoured the Coalition, four were balanced and 14 favoured the ALP.)

The other line of defence was attack:  to attempt to show we were neither independent nor respected.  We were smeared as a "Liberal Party front" and an attack was made on the basis of our funding sources.  The ABC furiously backgrounded journalists about how the methodology was allegedly flawed and demanding journalists consider our funding.  A story about us receiving money from the Cormack Foundation appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald and was then picked up and used on Media Watch.  (Which organisation, I wonder, had the resources to go through and comb the election disclosure returns for such information?  The Cormack Foundation money is a tiny part of our revenue, had nothing to do with our Media Monitoring Unit and, given the Cormack Foundation exists to promote free enterprise, something we are notoriously in favour of, they would be remiss in not giving us some funds.)

We clearly had an effect.  The ABC was the only station whose coverage from day 15 onwards was more favourable to the Coalition than it had been in the first 14 days -- Nine's coverage did not change, Seven and Ten's coverage became significantly more favourable to the ALP.

In fact, Channel Ten's coverage was the most favourable to ALP of any networks, though the ABC had the most pro-ALP "headlines" on its stories.

There is a lot more detail available in the Backgrounder about our findings.

One of the interesting features of our analysis uses the Morgan polling data on who watches the various TV News.  We found that the coverage of the commercial stations was broadly explicable in terms of their audience.  Nine had the most balanced coverage -- it had the largest and most diverse audience.  Seven and Ten had a more lower-income viewing profile.  The ABC's viewing audience has a significantly higher average income than the other station's.  Ten News is the only news whose audience had a significant preponderance of ALP supporters over Coalition supporters -- it was the most pro-ALP in its coverage.  Seven's news coverage was the most highly negative -- and the most preferred station of One Nation supporters.  ABC News viewers had the highest proportion of Democrat and Green supporters.

Prior to being put under the scrutiny of serious quantitative analysis, ABC News was strongly pro-ALP, yet Coalition supporters are almost as common among ABC viewers as ALP supporters.

FURTHER EVIDENCE

The Media Monitoring Unit is currently engaged in a study of the ABC prime time TV News coverage of the Patrick-MUA dispute in April-May last year.  We are covering the same period covered by Professor Bell in his report on the ABC's coverage, a report commissioned by the ABC in response to complaints of bias.

We have not completed the study, but some of the preliminary figures are suggestive.  Looking at soundbites, just in terms of time allocated we have found the following:

Soundbites by Participants (1) ABC TV News, Sydney:  April 8 to May 6, 1998
Supporting...	Number	Share	Seconds	Minutes	Seconds	Share	Average
MUA	127	47%	1171	19	31	48%	9.2
Patrick/Govt	102	38%	861	14	21	36%	8.4
Neutral	43	16%	386	6	26	16%	9.0
MUA advantage	25%		36%				9%
Total	272	100%	2418	40	18	100%	8.9

I am sure we will be able to release another interesting study.

WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

Our media monitoring is in the process of documenting what many have realised for a long time -- the ABC is biased.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is a large and powerful organisation.  It has revenues of over $700m -- almost 80 per cent of which is provided by taxpayers.  Its staff number almost 4,200.  It disposes of considerable patronage -- in access to the airwaves, in employment, in potential book sales.  It has the largest media reach in Australia -- with almost 100 per cent national coverage in both television and its series of radio networks (Radio National, metropolitan and rural services, JJJ FM, ABC FM, the Parliamentary Channel).  This reach is so large that, even given its relatively low TV ratings, it has one of the largest "media voices" in Australia -- perhaps the largest.

Outside scrutiny of such a powerful organisation is surely unexceptional -- a normal part of life in a free and democratic society.  The ABC itself is certainly very keen to promote outside scrutiny of other bodies, both in its news and current affairs activities and in programs such as Media Watch -- which very much includes the commercial media in its ambit.

When comes to outside scrutiny of the ABC, however, that is, apparently, a different matter.  The position of the ABC on this matter appears quite clear -- none is required, thank you.  Indeed, any attempt to promote outside scrutiny is, allegedly, an attack on the independence of the ABC.  The only acceptable line is -- "trust us".  Yet, one can just hear the sneers from ABC journalists if such a line was pushed by, for example, business or doctors.

"Trust us" is simply not good enough.  Any organisation which disposes of $600m of taxpayers' funds each year should be subject to outside scrutiny in both its internal processes and the quality of its output.

Indeed, the ABC is the epitome of regressive cross-subsidy in public policy.  Social conservatives are taxed to support social "progressivism", monarchists are taxed to support the republican cause, supporters of market reforms are taxed to support intervention, low income people are taxed to provide services for high income viewers, the private sector middle class is taxed to push the interests of the public sector middle class, supporters of economic development are taxed to support its frustration, and so on.

In other words, we don't have a national broadcaster, we have a sectional broadcaster with national reach.  The ABC operates as the ideas-propagation arm for, the values, interests and perspectives of the public sector middle class:  which is to say, of those who make up the worker's collective that is the ABC, a worker's collective whose members recruit in their own image.

So, what is to be done?  (Apart, of course, continuing with outside scrutiny.)

The first thing is there has to be a thorough purge of the ABC's management.  The sudden shift in coverage during the election shows that editorial control can enforce balance if need be.  It should be a normal part of practice.

For such a purge, one needs a tough-minded ABC Board.  The attacks on ABC Chairman Donald McDonald and on Michael Kroger are clearly an attempt to "nobble" the Board.  More such appointments should be made.  Christopher Pearson, from the Adelaide Review, would be an excellent choice to replace Mr Bannon.

We also have to see through the cant about the "independence" of the ABC.  The ABC is owned by the citizens of this country.  Their agent is the Parliament and elected Government.  If that agent cannot enforce proper management, then the ABC's legal owners have no way of enforcing proper management of their asset.  If enforcing proper management is incompatible with the "independence" of the ABC, then that is an argument for privatising the ABC.

I note in passing that the persistent failure of governments to act as effective agents for the legal owners of the public capital invested in government business enterprises is one of the strongest arguments for privatisation.

In short, we have to face the fact that, while there might be arguments for having a national broadcaster, we don't have one at the moment.  As I have said, we have a sectional broadcaster, a propaganda arm for the public sector middle class, with national reach.

A better Board;  a management purge;  a commitment to be genuinely national in the range of views reflected in its broadcasting and commentary;  properly-funded outside scrutiny:  these are the things that need to be done with, and to, the ABC.

Thank you.

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ENDNOTES

1. Times updated to provide final figures.