ABC guidelines - one more skirmish in the culture wars

But it puts its views directly next to the evidence, and adds more detail online. It judges, but we always know why, and it already asks its victims to defend themselves. Usually they just apologise and try to shift responsibility.

This is a sour note, on a show the ABC should defend as the public expression of the values it defends - and the only significant public commentary on the wash of lies, half truths, distortions, smears and bullying that passes for so much of our journalism.

Scott also made an interesting concession about a Four Corners episode:

Where there actually is bias in an individual story, it is often easy to detect. But at times, there are matters of tone - how a story is framed, issues to do with language and inflection that can convey a message beyond words.

It was the criteria used by ACMA - the Australian Communications and Media Authority - to bring a finding of against an ABC program in July. In the story, the right people were spoken to, all views were expressed, but ACMA found “the cumulative impact of the instances of subjective and emotive language over the course of the program was the principal reason that the program was not impartial”. I can understand how they reached that finding.

Scott could have added a few more facts about the program and the label of bias he used. In fact, the lack of these enveloping facts could be said to constitute the kind of deceptive reporting that both the old and new guidelines object to.

The program is the Lords of the Forest episode, about which the forestry industry brought 62 complaints to ACMA. Every single objection about balance, errors of fact, choice of interviewee, use of evidence, was refuted. ACMA made just two adverse findings. That the ABC review its notion of “timely” in relation to complaints, and that:

In the program, (which was 45 minutes in duration), the reporter uses emotive language such as “aggressive forest policy”, “voracious appetite for timber”, “indiscriminate blades of the woodchipper”, “turning forest giants into woodchips”…

… In this case, ACMA considers that in many instances, the program’s tone and choice of language was emotive and carried negative connotations against the forest industry.

The ABC argued that the language was either colourful but accurate, or reflected the pictures, or conveyed “the sensation of being on location”. Still, ACMA said the ABC “did not make every reasonable effort to ensure that the program was impartial”.

Bit tough really, when the ABC is trying to be punchy and lively and score some decent ratings.

Remember what Paul Keating said?

“…the new whispered word balance, which decoded means - let’s hear more from us.”

Looking for citations of Media Watch, I found an editorial in Quadrant which embodies so much of the paranoid thinking which underlies the reactionary critique of Australian media. It is not just the ABC they believe is evil - try the whole kit and kaboodle.