Loose lips no longer sink ships at the new ABC

WHEN the Australian Broadcasting Corporation launched its political analysis program Insiders in 2001 the public broadcaster's own staff were forbidden from being panelists.

John Howard's coalition government was closely monitoring the ABC, which it viewed as enemy territory, and network programmers mindful of not agitating outspoken communications minister Richard Alston approved the show on condition only external commentators representing a spectrum of different views were used.

The reasoning was that if ABC reporters were given air time, the government could cite views expressed on Insiders as evidence of bias.

How times have changed. That ABC is barely recognisable now. Today's ABC boasts a burgeoning commentariat, many of whom are salaried staff.

Last week Fairfax's colourful sketch writer Annabel Crabb, known as much for her playful skewering of pollies as her analysis of the Canberra machine, decamped to the ABC to be chief online political writer.

The 7.30 Report chief political reporter Chris Uhlmann was recently quoted at length in The Weekend Australian describing Kevin Rudd's leadership style in very unflattering terms.

The late-week host of Lateline, Leigh Sales, emits Tweets at all hours on topics ranging from how long it takes for jelly to set, to updates from Malcolm Turnbull's press conference last week. Her opinions also appear on News Limited's The Punch website, as do those of PM presenter Mark Colvin. Colvin is also a keen Tweeter, though he mostly points to the commentary of others.

Today the ABC's opinion website, The Drum, goes live giving a platform to some of the network's most senior reporters and hosts to riff on their observations of the world around us.

"It's a topical reactive space for analysis and commentary from ABC folk," says editor Jonathan Green, a former journalist with The Age, who until Friday presided over anti-establishment site Crikey.

The Drum is a pet project of the ABC's entrepreneurial managing director, Mark Scott, himself a Tweeter, who has said the ABC's expansion online is imperative if the public broadcaster is to remain relevant. Scott hand-picked Crabb for The Drum.

The move away from straight reporting at the ABC has happened gradually. At Insiders, for example, radio presenters Virginia Trioli and Fran Kelly were eventually invited to participate, initially due to the program's need for female participants.

Ex-ABC news political correspondent Jim Middleton has been a panelist but those with the highest-profile political roles, Kerry O'Brien and Tony Jones, have not. Nor has this pair found the need to blog or to join the Twitterati, it seems.

Veteran ABC observers warn that the nation's esteemed public broadcaster is entering dangerous territory with its enthusiastic embrace of social media and by encouraging its staff to be publicly opinionated.

One senior Canberra journalist says the ABC has adopted a much more relaxed attitude to the opinions it presents since the Rudd government was elected.

This veteran says there is a mood of apparent freedom now among ABC staff and management but it is not actual freedom.

By taking advantage of the current political climate the ABC may easily find itself in the cold should the political mood change, this journalist says.

Mark Scott dismisses the notion that the ABC's burgeoning commentariat is a by-product of his enterprising personal style, though it is impossible to imagine it being instituted under previous managing director Russell Balding, for example.

"In an era when there is so much information out there people are looking at sources of information they can trust and people who can weigh it up for them," Scott says.

"There's a difference between an opinionated commentator, particularly one who takes an ideological view, and one who is providing analysis.

"The focus of ABC reporters, broadcasters and journalists is analysis but that's not to say we won't be soliciting a range of views," Scott says.

He fondly recalls the time when the ABC's political correspondent Paul Lyneham did regular crosses from Canberra with ABC 702 presenter Andrew Olle in Sydney which were often fun and ribbed federal politicians in the manner Crabb does now.

But that too was during the reign of an ALP government.

"It's all to do with responding to the needs of the audience. If you're going to be a competitive media organisation in the digital era, this is what you have to do," Scott says.

Though arguably it is not the ABC's role to be "competitive". The public broadcaster's charter in fact requires the ABC "to take into account the services being provided by the commercial and community sectors". This implies it should not seek to duplicate them.

The ABC's charter is the legislated document that enshrines the broadcaster's independence, underpins staff morale despite generally low wages, promotes the high standards by which the ABC prides itself and, critically, the esteem in which it is held by the public.

Many established media organisations and some other new media companies are sources of excellent online news and analysis. Ahead of The Drum going live the ABC tweaked its editorial guidelines to include a new category of user-generated content but no additional provisions have been made in the editorial guidelines for commentary by staff. Jonathan Green officially begins at the ABC today but he has already devoted a lot of time to the subject of where The Drum will fit within the ABC.

"Obviously there's a bit of a shift (but) it's not crossing the bridge into opinion because that's not the function of ABC journalists," he says.

"We've got to be really conscious that the people writing for this space are also working on straightforward reports. It's certainly not a bid for the ABC to say `this is our position'," Green says.

One senior ABC reporter is scathing about the ABC sanctioning, even encouraging, social media use by its staff.

"They are being conned -- no one is getting paid any more. Almost by stealth they are entrenching additional work for no extra pay," this journalist says.

The ABC's new editorial guidelines for staff using social media have been praised online for being clear but also deemed looser than the guidelines of equivalent media organisations.The guidelines stipulate that staff must not mix the professional and the personal in ways likely to bring the ABC into disrepute; staff must not let social media use undermine their effectiveness at work.

The first defamation case brought against an employee from a major media organisation for a tweet issued in their own time will be instructive.