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HomeRead, Watch, Listen
Opinion

Bragg’s ABC inquiry a partisan political move with a predetermined outcome

Michael Gawenda
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Published: 26 November 2021

Last updated: 4 March 2024

MICHAEL GAWENDA: Allowing politicians to decide what is good journalism and which complaints to uphold is a big step towards a state-controlled public broadcaster

IN HIS WEEKLY column in The Australian, the paper’s former long-time Editor-in-Chief Chris Mitchell wrote that he is “a big consumer” of ABC news and current affairs programs and then goes on to list the programs and news bulletins he listens to and watches every day. Big consumer is an understatement. The list is very long indeed, revealing a level of engagement with the ABC that even the most fervent supporters of the national broadcaster could not match.

Does Mitchell have the same level of engagement with the rest of the mainstream media? He does not say but I would bet that he does not. There are not enough hours in the day for that, not even for a news junky like Mitchell. So he has chosen the ABC as his main source for news and current affairs.

Why is that? At a guess, I’d say it is because the commercial media –across every platform- has become more niche, catering more and more to a particular audience in terms of demographics, political leanings and education. The commercial media has decided that this is the only way to survive in the digital age.

At the same time, the ABC has remained locked in by its charter to serve a broad audience at a time when the divisions between left and right, between old and young, between the tertiary educated and school leavers, between those who live in the inner city and those who live in the outer suburbs and regional Australia are becoming conflict ridden chasms.

It is a difficult if not impossible challenge for the ABC. It is always going to fall short, to be open to criticism on the choice of issues given prominent coverage, for where it deploys its resources, for its lack of coverage - as its retiring news boss Gaven Morris admitted – of, for instance, the lives of those 30 per cent of Australians who voted no in the same sex marriage national survey.

Tt is interesting that a former long-time editor and ABC critic, Chris Mitchell, has not come out and enthusiastically supported Bragg’s inquiry.

All of this is about a certain sort of bias and about falling short—inevitably in an age of media fragmentation- in fulfilling its charter obligations. But these are not the issues that the proposed Senate inquiry announced by the Chair of the Environment and Communications Legislative Committee Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg would cover.

Bragg’s inquiry, which was suspended by the crossbenches this week and delayed until the next term of parliament, will be narrowly focused on the way the ABC (and SBS) handles complaints about its journalism. Full stop. No context, no examination of the changed media environment in which the ABC operates. Nothing. Just complaints.

When he announced the inquiry last week, Bragg said that he was “worried that complaints are not being seriously addressed”. In other words, he said he needs no inquiry to know that the complaints process is no good. And the proof of this is his personal experience - complaints he has made have been dismissed!

Back to Chris Mitchell for a moment. Despite the fact that Mitchell is a sometimes-trenchant critic of the ABC, he did not, in his column- unlike most of his fellow Australian columnists, come out in support of Bragg’s proposed inquiry.

Instead, he focused on the ABC charter, which he argues needs to be adjusted, and advocates structural changes that would make ABC journalism more accountable by the appointing the Managing Director as Editor in Chief, directly responsible for the ABC’s news and current affairs output.

All of these issues should and can be debated. But it is interesting that a former long-time editor and ABC critic has not come out and enthusiastically supported Bragg’s inquiry.

Bragg's inquiry is less than useless. It is an unacceptable piece of political interference.

The fact is that Bragg’s inquiry does not deserve support. It is essentially a partisan political move with - if Bragg gets his way - a predetermined partisan political outcome. It is less than useless. It is, as the ABC chair Ita Buttrose – appointed by Scott Morrison personally - has argued, an unacceptable piece of political interference, usurping and attempting to undermine the independent review that the ABC board has already instigated into the national broadcaster’s complaints procedure. These are matters for the government-appointed ABC board, not for a politician with a partisan agenda.

On the subject of an agenda, there are also whispers about how this inquiry was hatched, that the pro-Israel lobby was a driving force that convinced Bragg to initiate this Senate inquiry.

It is certainly true that some of the most vociferous critics of the ABC’s complaints procedures, and of the way it has handled specific complaints, have been the Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA), the Australia Israel Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) and even the peak Jewish body, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ). All of these organisations have enthusiastically welcomed the Bragg inquiry.

In an interview with the Australian Jewish News, Bragg said “there have been concerns raised over the ABC’s foreign reporting in the Middle East”.

It is, of course, the right of these organisations to lobby for a Senate inquiry, to complain loudly about what they see as ABC bias in its reporting of the Middle East. There is nothing nefarious about any of this and it is a great shame that there are people, including senior journalists and senior news executives at the ABC, who think these groups - “these people’’ - need to be silenced. Or at best, ignored.

These are matters for the government-appointed ABC board, not for a politician with a partisan agenda.

I believe it was a grave mistake for John Lyons, the Executive Editor of ABC News and its Head of Investigative Journalism, and a candidate to fill the role vacated by  his boss Gaven Morris, to recently publish a booklet excoriating the so-call ed pro-Israel lobby and charging Australian journalists and editors with tamely giving in to the lobby’s demands.

What signal does that send the journalists who report to him? When the members of the pro-Israel lobby complain about some aspect of the ABC’s coverage of any issue, would the complaints be treated seriously and fairly given it is an internal ABC process? These are questions the ABC needs to answer.

None of this means that the Bragg inquiry is anything more than a partisan political exercise with a political agenda and a view of the ABC that these Jewish advocacy groups happen to share.

Journalists, in particular, should vigorously oppose this political interference in the operational running of the ABC. That’s the case no matter what you might think of the ABC’s journalistic failures, its biases, the lack of control exercised by senior editors over the broadcaster’s journalism and its journalists.

Allowing politicians to decide what is good journalism and which complaints should be upheld or not is a big step down the road to a state-controlled public broadcaster. There are examples of such broadcasters in Eastern Europe which are ostensibly democracies. We do not want to go there.

Photo: Senator Bragg (left), and ABC Chair Ita Buttrose

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About the author

Michael Gawenda

Michael Gawenda

Michael Gawenda is one of Australia’s best-known journalists and authors. In a career spanning more than four decades, Michael has been a political reporter, foreign correspondent in London and Washington, and was editor and editor in chief of The Age from 1997 to 2004. He has won numerous journalism awards including three Walkley awards.

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