ABC guidelines - one more skirmish in the culture wars

The policies sets out four main types of content the ABC produces: news and current affairs, factual and topical, opinion and performance - each with different requirements. And meeting these minimum requirements will be mandatory for all staff involved in the production of content.

We can imagine the frost in the air as the Chaser gang realised they were up for social control and ideological evaluation. Was the ABC to go on a national hunt for Right wing comedians?

It is noticeable that the documents explicitly mention satire. Staff have been reassured that “satire has a legitimate place in ABC content”, although “staff involved in satirical content need to consider the potential for satire to cause harm to groups or individuals and should refer upwards”.

I think the inclusion of drama opens up a new space, but we will wait and see what the judgments imply. The requirement is anodyne - “honesty, fairness, independence and respect” - but the independent sector will be fascinated to know what additional pressures are placed on script discussions.

I recently worked on an SBS program which neatly illustrates the broadcaster’s dilemma with the independent documentary community. The project follows three people who are terminally ill and advocates of euthanasia. It is made on public money. If I was an opponent of euthanasia, I would be pretty pissed off. It would be useful if the ABC could find some way to manage this situation in its new editorial guidelines.

Its solution is to invent something called “opinion” as a category of program, alongside news and performance. Here’s Scott’s description:

The new category of Opinion will be content presented from a partisan point of view about a matter of public contention. This content will be signposted as opinion and the impartiality test will be - over a period of time - has the ABC presented a plurality of views?

I don’t have a problem with the “plurality of views” test, which is inherent anyway in the existing guidelines. But the use of the “opinion” category is a bit peculiar.

I can imagine why the word came up. No less than four people on the ABC board were or are op-ed writers for the Murdoch press, and use their columns to run highly partisan rants. Brunton, Albrechtson and Windschuttle are prominent Right wing intellectuals, known for a hostile attitude to the ABC.

But I think it is a poisonous term, particularly as it is used by Right wing advocates in the press. The term doesn’t have any standards. That is “just your opinion”. You just vent what you think. Opinion is an alternative to facts, and indeed to argument. We are close to the idea of the Internet rant.

The board members clearly deliver a certain kind of material under that rubric of “opinion”. If they were writing an essay, or a proper argument, or reporting a conference, they would behave very differently. It would take longer, for a start, and they would find references, and assemble evidence, and change their minds in the presence of confounding facts.

It seems that “opinion” should refer to An Inconvenient Truth, but then the film is the complete opposite of “just an opinion” - it is a mass of facts. The objections to Michael Moore are not to his opinions, but to his facts. Documentary doesn’t deal in “opinion”, but the lived experience of real people.