Media bias: It's as easy as ABC

With the national broadcaster under the control of journalists, the lunatics are running the asylum

There is an idea abroad amongst journalists that the intrusion of proprietors, and concern for the bottom line and for audience reach, are all features which sully and diminish the journalist's craft.  That if journalists were just left alone, they would pursue the journalist's craft in a pure and unsullied form, to the great benefit of free speech, open debate and democracy.

The obsessive focus on the doings of proprietors -- discussion of media policy in the media seems to be almost entirely driven by analysis of gains and benefits to particular proprietors -- the sneering at any current affairs program which is actually popular and worries about editorial policy being affected by those with responsibility for profitability, all indicate this belief.

Well, we can be very grateful to the ABC.  The ABC provides us with a wonderful example of what happens when journalists do take over the asylum.  And the record of the ABC shows quite clearly that journalists freed from effective constraints of accountability are not fearless prosecutors of free speech and open debate.

Let me start with a vignette from personal experience.  I have no problem with same-sex marriage or adoption, believe that narcotics should be legalised because adults own their own bodies.  This should clearly class me as a standard-bearer for the counter-culture.

But the ABC is cleverer than that:  they can see right through me.  I am, in fact, an ultra-conservative.  Or at least, that is what they told Australia.

The second last occasion on which I appeared on ABC Radio News I was introduced as a "ultra-conservative" spokesperson for labour market reform which advocates the replacement of our 94-year-old arbitration system.  I am reformist certainly, radical maybe.  Yet, in ABC-speak, I am "ultra-conservative".

Now, when was the last time any of us heard an ABC announcer to refer to the "radical" Greenpeace, the "left-wing" Australia Institute or the "ultra-left" or "ultra-radical" anything?  Only those deemed to be on the right of centre are automatically given ideological labels by ABC presenters.  I doubt that anyone in the ABC will see any problem in this.

Which is precisely the point -- that ABC staff live in very a narrow intellectual universe for which taxpayers pay $630m a year.

I am advancing three propositions:

• First, that the ABC does represent journalism taking over the asylum -- that the ABC is a staff-captured organisation.
• Second, that the product of the ABC is biased as a result of this staff capture.
• Third, that this has an invidious effect on public debate.

What do I mean by "the ABC"?  It is true that rural services of the ABC are somewhat distinguishable in outlook from the rest of the ABC, and that there are some ABC journalists and presenters who do not replicate the general pattern.

Nevertheless, one of the ABC's distinguishing features is how the biases one notices in political commentary is replicated in foreign coverage, environmental issues, religious broadcasts, coverage of art and cultural events, even in drama series.  There is clearly a common outlook amongst ABC journalists, presenters, producers, researchers, writers:  a common ABC culture.

What I mean by staff capture is that the ABC lacks a real owner, and the result is that it is, in practice, unaccountable to the general public.  Furthermore, this lack of accountability makes the interests of ABC staff the dominant interest in determining its behaviour.

Who owns the ABC?  The ABC says we do, it is "your ABC".

Legally, this is incorrect.  The Commonwealth Government owns the ABC.  It is, in some sense, our agent, but it is the legal owner.

What power over the ABC does our indirect ownership give us?  Effectively, none.  Our personal wealth is not invested in the ABC, we have no power to elect or sack the Board or management of the ABC.  In fact, we have none of the prerogatives of real ownership.

So, how about the Commonwealth Government?  In theory, it has all the prerogatives of ownership.  In practice, any Commonwealth Government which started to seriously exercise the prerogatives of ownership would be subject to deafening shrieks about attacks on the "independence" of the ABC.  And, there is indeed a real point here.

Governments are players in the media:  they have obvious and massive vested interests.  We want media organisations to be independent of the Government.

But, if the ABC is independent of the Government, it is independent of its legal owner.  So the role of owner of the ABC is rendered effectively an empty one.  And if nature abhors a vacuum, power arrangements in human societies do even more.  Whose interests move into the vacuum left by the lack of an effective owner?  The staff's, of course.

There is a claim that this is nonsense because ABC staff are all publicly spirited types who would not abuse their position.  This is simple, self-serving arrogance.  The staff are human, and will act in human ways.  If they are not accountable, they will act in their own interests.  The ABC of all institutions is not in a good position to argue for accountability for everyone else except itself.

But the contemptible hypocrisy of public broadcasting -- where its denizens can comment on others but treat as completely illegitimate critical outside scrutiny of themselves -- is one of the more regrettable features of contemporary public life.

That the product of the ABC does tend to be biased there is little doubt.  I have assembled evidence with my studies of coverage of the 1998 Federal Election and the 1998 waterfront dispute.

Perhaps the most powerful evidence is from Queensland University Professor John Henningham's survey of journalists, where journalists rated 7.30 Report, ABC News, Four Corners and SBS News (in that order) as the most pro-ALP media outlets.

Personally, I am less concerned with party-political bias -- though that is a genuine issue in a taxpayer-funded broadcaster -- than bias in coverage of issues and public debate:  partly, no doubt, because that is the game I am in;  partly because that then feeds into the behaviour of political parties but, far more importantly, because of its potential to disenfranchise whole sections of society and to harm people who are not otherwise in a good position to stick up for themselves.

A biased media is a media which rates other things more highly than truth.  That is good neither for democracy, nor for the cause of the less powerful in our society.

But why would staff capture lead to a particular type of bias?  One can see that people in a staff-captured organisation would recruit in their own likeness, but why should there be a particular likeness?  The simplest answer for why a particular outlook is dominant is because they get something out of it.  What they get out of it is shared social status and a signalling to each other of their moral "worthiness".

It is a huge advantage being able to sell moral vanity to journalists.  And journalists are eager buyers, particularly in the Fairfax press, The Australian, The Canberra Times, the Canberra press gallery and the ABC.  It offers to participants membership of a moral elite, one requiring no effort apart from agreeing to certain attitudes.  Failure to join, however, offers the prospect of exclusion, abuse and reduced opportunities.

This opinion-hegemony has the advantage of a much greater ability to target moral vanity appeals to journalists.  On a whole range of topics -- the republic, indigenous affairs, the environment, migration, multiculturalism, labour market issues -- there is a clear narrowing of debate.

The opinion-hegemony has another advantage:  it rests on, and appeals to, the powerful influence of very primitive anti-liberal, anti-economic ideas.  The ABC is crucial in this for various reasons.

First, it is disproportionately important in the amount of news, current affairs and documentary broadcasting it produces -- AM effectively sets the news agenda for the day.

Second, as a staff-captured organisation, it is far more dominated by the moral vanity games of journalists than any other media organisation, even the Fairfax press.

Such an approach is both inherently intellectually sterile, since it is hostile to genuine inquiry, and destructive of democracy.  Both democracy and truth-discovery require flourishing debate and clash of opinion.

The ABC, far from counteracting the worst aspects of contemporary journalism, intensifies many of them precisely because it is a staff-captured organisation.  Which is to say, its journalists are more unconstrained, and less accountable, than any other journalists.  Naturally, this lack of accountability magnifies faults.

I am not arguing against bias in media.  A media without people with points of view would be boring.  What I am arguing against is a biased media -- against an "opinion-cartel" amongst journalists affecting their output.

Freedom of the press and the media is based on a deal, an implicit social contract:  freedom for journalists greater than those given to other professions in return for open debate and application of critical scrutiny to all ideas and interests.  If proving to their peers that they have the "right" attitudes becomes more important than a concern for truth and critical scrutiny, then journalists are betraying their side of the bargain.

It is because the ABC, at considerable expense to the public purse, is leading the charge in that betrayal that it should be privatised, broken up or massively reformed.