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Beating The Drum on On Line Opinion

By Graham Young - posted Monday, 25 July 2016


The principles underlying On Line Opinion were that we would be non-partisan, publishing a wide range of views. And that we would seek out specialists, who weren't necessarily professional writers, to present their views. This was partly a response to the first rise of Pauline Hanson and a perception that mainstream media was not only unjustifiably narrowing political debate to what was politically correct, but that people with real knowledge and expertise were being marginalised in favour of professional writers whose skill was in turning a pretty and glib phrase, rather than a deep and exhaustive knowledge of any subject area.

The end result of this was that substantial numbers of Australians felt their views were being ignored so were prepared to invest in Hanson to make a point, leading to further marginalisation of their views.

A further invidious effect of The Drum was to magnify these defects. While it did employ some dissidents, such as the IPA's Chris Berg, most of the opinion it published was predictable left-wing stodge produced by ABC favourites. (Declaration of interest: I was commissioned once to write a piece for The Drum).

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The Drum also had a budget to pay contributors, so it meant it was harder at the margin for a not-for-profit like ourselves to recruit.

The Drum is not the only ABC operation to make life difficult for us. We've been doing online surveys for 15 years, and in fact suggested a working relationship to the ABC at one stage. They've now imported Vote Compass from Canada, presumably at some cost to the taxpayer.

Vote Compass regularly gets over a million responses, which dwarfs our 1,500 or so, but its model of how people make political decisions is flawed and biased, and the results, despite the sample, less insightful.

The ABC needs to refocus. I'm not sure that closing The Drum means much, but hopefully it is the first sign of a change.

Not only does the ABC need to become more inclusive of a wide-range of views, but it needs to seek out experts, rather than recycling journalistic opinion as expertise.

I would certainly not begrudge it a budgetary allocation from the Commonwealth if it were to re-establish state based television current affairs programs, and deepen its network of foreign correspondents (particularly in our near neighbourhood).

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A good first step would be to examine the areas of genuine market failure when it comes to news and current affairs on the net, and try to prioritise those, while withdrawing from all other areas.

Above all the ABC needs to be guided by genuine need, rather than journalist and management egos trying to produce a media empire for its own sake.

That way publications like On Line Opinion, and those of News Corp and Fairfax et al are more likely to prosper and make an innovative and valuable contribution to Australian democracy.

Maintaining a healthy media ecosystem is an implicit part of the Commission's charter which is being progressively ignored.

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About the Author

Graham Young is chief editor and the publisher of On Line Opinion. He is executive director of the Australian Institute for Progress, an Australian think tank based in Brisbane, and the publisher of On Line Opinion.

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