The attacks this week by the government on the ABC are not surprising, but it's a pity they are so stupid.
On Wednesday this week Tony Abbott went on Sydney radio station 2GB for one of his semi-regular tummy-rub sessions with Ray Hadley. Mostly these conversations involve Abbott telling Hadley how right he is. During last year's election Abbott even ended one such interview saying, "Look, Ray, thank you for that tribute…"
On Wednesday however they got onto the subject of the ABC, when Hadley suggested its coverage of the navy's dealings with asylum seekers meant the organisation needed to be "reigned in." And the main problem he felt was the ABC could get away with incorrect reporting because unlike with commercial broadcaster you couldn't even complain to ACMA. According to Hadley, while he was "an honest, decent person... these blokes and these women [ABC journalists] get away with this on a daily basis and no one holds them accountable."
Now a prime minster with a spine might have pulled up Hadley at this point, but Mr Abbott didn't get where he is by demonstrating strength of vertebrae to radio talk-show hosts. So instead he agreed with him, and went further suggesting "a lot of people feel at the moment that the ABC instinctively takes everyone’s side but Australia’s."
He went on to state that "you shouldn’t leap to be critical of your own country and you certainly ought to be prepared to give the Australian Navy and its hardworking personnel the benefit of the doubt."
Why they should is unclear. The old saying that the first casualty of war is truth isn't said because the armed forces and governments are always open and honest.
But aside from the pap about the navy, the problem is of course that the ABC (and SBS) are not as Hadley suggested "left to their own devices and self-regulation". As Crikey's Bernard Keane pointed out, both national broadcasters are subject to section 150-153 of the Broadcasting Service Act 1992.
The prime minister however was ignorant of this, agreeing with Hadley that it was "an issue of double standards."
But as anyone who has worked within the ABC or SBS knows, aside from their charters and Acts, the organisations also have the added bonus of having to appear before Senate estimates three times a year.
And senators hold everything to account.
I first came across the ABC estimates hearing while working for the Department of Communications, IT and the Arts under the Howard government. I was quite stunned to discover that no matter is considered too small.
Take, for example, how in 2006 Senator Fierravanti-Wells welcomed the beginning of the program the First Tuesday Book Club:
I want to take you to the new program called First Tuesday Book Club. I understand that the first First Tuesday Book Club had an auspicious start and that one of the presenters made a jibe along the lines of 'not like John and Jeanette invading Iraq'. It was bad enough that this comment was made on an arts program, but why drag Mrs Howard into it? Will you investigate that? Is this the sort of program that is now going to be covered by the editorial policies?
Nothing is a throwaway line when it is said on an ABC or SBS program.
Journalists for the ABC and SBS have to worry about whether they should describe an attack as a terrorist attack, an act of terror, or just an attack, or whether an organisation should be called a terrorist organisation and if so is it always to be referred as such, or only when it commits acts of terror, or a terrorist attack or... you get the idea.
As expected the government lacking the ability to actually proscribe what the ABC reports, has turned its sights onto its funding. Yesterday (apparently coincidentally) the Minister for Communications Malcolm Turnbull yesterday announced an "efficiency study" into the ABC and SBS.
Such a study should be welcomed by both organisations. During the election Tony Abbott promised unequivocally, "No cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS." Thus any inefficiencies should see resources being better allocated throughout the organisations. And that would be a good thing.
But given what was attempted to be done to school funding last year, and given pensions now does not seem to include disability pensions, it is right that many are suspicious of the real reasons behind the study. Even more so when you have Kevin Andrews saying of the ABC that "what goes around comes around."
It seems now there is permeating through parts of the Liberal Party an obsessive need to crush any opposition. This attitude was nicely presented by Liberal pollster Mark Textor (who by now really should have friends and family ban him from social media) writing on Facebook, “The ABCs blow job to the Guardian looks to have cost them an arm. Their canberra bureau journalists's purile behavior will next cost them a leg."
The attitude that it its critics deserve to be punished purely because they are critics is what happens when you have a party run by those who for so long have worried about pleasing Ray Hadley types that they now actually think like Ray Hadley types. And as Hadley's views on ABC governance shows, that means a fair truck load of ignorance.
But in this instance the overall stupidly is even more heightened. Hadley and Mr Abbott began their complaints about the ABC's double standards only after they had spent the first three and half minutes of their conversation talking about alleged union corruption in the CMFEU. And which news organisations broke that story? Fairfax and the ABC. Hadley even opened the interview referencing "the 730 Report last night."
Oddly both of them failed to recall this while they broke out the big pity party about how the ABC took "everyone’s side but our own".
I guess doing so wouldn't have helped their own side's argument.
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