ABC Needs a Culture Change

Jonathan Shier is the best person for Aunty's top job

The defence by ABC TV journalist-producer John Millard (Opinion, Thursday) of the ABC's current culture and staff prerogatives expresses what is wrong with the ABC.

An ABC completely independent of government is an ABC independent of any real owner.  The lack of any effective owner means that -- as is common in the public sector -- the organisation becomes largely captured by the interests of its staff.

The obvious massive vested interest governments have in media coverage simply exacerbates this, since any attempt to enforce accountability on the ABC can be, and is, immediately derided as partisan interference.

This staff capture does not mean that the ABC is therefore a happy organisation to work in.  On the contrary, there is a rich literature on how organisations lacking a real owner-interest as a focus have inherent tendencies to become collections of feuding fiefdoms fighting over resources.

The ABC is also an organisation dominated by progressive viewpoints.  A major aspect of the personal return for progressive politics is publicising particular opinions and receiving recognition for their superior moral insight and worth.  In the absence of an effective owner, there is a premium placed on nurturing the moral vanity of the dominant worker group, and excoriating their critics.

First, moral vanity.  Millard is at some pains to make it clear that the new ABC managing director-to-be Jonathan Shier's background in (horrors!) commercial broadcasting is a significant disadvantage.  As he informs us, the public associates the ABC -- unlike, of course, the commercial broadcasters -- with editorial integrity.  It would have been so much better, Millard tell us, to have had someone with a background in public broadcasting.  The utterly transparent adoption of a posture of moral superiority is almost endearing in its total lack of self-consciousness.

It is also an indicator of everything that is wrong with the internal culture of the ABC -- a sense of moral superiority that has huge difficulties in treating other perspectives and viewpoints fairly.  As he makes clear in the rest of his article, Millard regards any connection with private enterprise as having an inherent tendency to pollute the ABC's moral purity.

Second, staff capture.  Millard informs us that "inside the ABC, staff have expressed concern, as has this journalist, that our Aunty is quietly repositioning herself".  Pardon:  whose Aunty?  In case we had any doubt that it really is the staff's ABC, Millard immediately proceeds to complain bitterly about ABC management actually telling people what to do.  The concept that managers might actually manage is clearly offensive to him.

But one would expect that in a staff-captured organisation.

Of course, this is put in terms of editorial-compromising budget cuts and of enterprise deals that directly or indirectly compromise the ABC charter responsibility of editorial independence and distinctively Australian program content.  And this from the organisation for whom 8 out of 10 of whose top-rating shows are British, and 60 out of 100 top-rating shows are produced overseas.  (What many people actually like about the ABC is its role as a BBC relay station.)  But self-interest can always find appropriate rationalisations.

The major question facing policy makers is how to make use of the digital spectrum.  If the decision to allocate the spectrum to the current incumbents and mandating high definition TV for the commercial broadcasters stands, then public broadcasters will have an advantage in being able to engage in multi-channelling and datacasting.

If the Howard Government -- via the ABC Board it has now largely appointed -- wanted to do a hatchet job on the ABC, the new MD would have been someone with a track record in what is euphemistically known as organisational restructuring.  That MD-elect Jonathan Shier is both an outsider and has a background in broadcasting and, more particularly, broadcasting technology makes him an excellent appointment.  The last thing the ABC needs is an ideologue to the taste of ABC staff such as Millard.

Shier must, however, resist attempts -- such as that of John Millard -- to pre-shrink him to conform to the current ABC culture:  changing that culture has to be one of his key tasks.