Your ABC and a big case of bias

Lee Burton and June Factor (on this page on Wednesday) have enunciated a fascinating new theory of media analysis -- big is beautiful or, at least, unbiased.

They say my allegations of a common ABC culture (outlined on this page on 30 September) can't be true because the ABC is a large organisation.  They can't be serious, surely?  Of course an organisation of several thousand people will not have exactly the same opinion, but a culture of bias is entirely possible.

One of the more powerful pieces of evidence of ABC bias 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.

And the suggestion that size protects the ABC from bias makes the concerns about media concentration seem somewhat inconsistent.

It was also a wonderful irony that Bettina Arndt's excellent piece on the narrowness of debate on social policy -- across many media organisation and universites -- was run on the same day.  Arndt has been largely banned from the ABC over the past five years or so because people in the ABC do not like what she has to say.

Burton and Factor themselves allude to another piece of evidence of ABC bias -- the common nature (they say "hackneyed") of allegations of ABC bias.  It is indeed a fact that the ABC is perennially accused of left-wing bias.  I wonder why?

Nor is the internal debate within the ABC that Burton and Factor cite evidence of a lack of bias.  Western Marxist parties and organisations are notorious for bitter internal struggles and debates:  this does not make them broad intellectual churches.  A key problem with the ABC is not that it lacks internal debates, but the range of opinions represented inside the ABC is so narrow.  As former 3LO broadcaster Doug Aiton pointed out in these pages (26 February 1997).

Burton and Factor point to the ABC being under a legislative charter to "present a diversity of views".  Yet, as former ABC acting managing director Keith Macriell has pointed out in Review, the ABC charter does not require the ABC to fairly reflect national opinion, which is the issue.  "A diversity of views" can still reflect a narrow spectrum.

In private conversation, ABC staff and supporters will admit the ABC is left-wing, but say that is OK, because it "balances" the commercial media.

This is nonsense at two levels.  First, left of centre opinions have no difficulty getting into major newspapers and media.  Second, the ABC is not full of raging right-wingers who, out of a sense of public-spiritedness, doggedly make sure left of centre views get a fair run.  On the contrary, the poor accountability which is so sadly common in the public sector allows them to indulge in satisfaction of their own prejudices at taxpayer expense.

Taxpayers' money should not be used to disproportionately support some opinions over others in national debate.  That is the issue.

If the ABC cannot be reformed so that it is genuinely open to the range of national opinion, then it should be privatised to take its chances in the market place like everyone else.