Part five: The ′soft-leftie′ politics of Media Watch

FORMER Media Watch presenter David Marr is a passionate political journalist who openly admits that his main purpose is to push his own views. "I work to shape opinion," he said in a major lecture last year.

He's well within his rights to do this. But it was not alright for the ABC to allow him to use Media Watch as a taxpayer-funded soapbox to unfairly attack the credibility of those who hold different views or who compete with his own employer, Fairfax. This political and commercial bias has now become institutionalised at Media Watch and appears to extend to new presenter Liz Jackson.

Marr champions left-liberal social causes, is disgusted with "Howard's Australia" and bemoans the "pervasive racism'' of Australian society. Again, this is his right.

But some insight into how this fits easily into the Media Watch agenda was provided by a profile in the Good Weekend magazine (published by Marr's employer, Fairfax) on Janet Albrechtsen, the columnist who has become one of the program's main targets. (14 May 2005) The profile referred to an Albrechsten column in The Australian in which she complained of being rejected for the job as Media Watch presenter because of her conservative politics. The profile quotes a then ABC television executive Daryl Karp arguing that she had been asked to audition for the job because of her political views.

The Good Weekend profile put it this way: "In early 2002, ABC-TV executives were considering engaging two presenters for Media Watch - one left-wing and one right-wing. 'And Janet was especially looked at as somebody coming from the right'.

"Eventually, it was decided that one talking head was enough in a 12-minute show, and David Marr, who had already been hired, was given the gig."

So that's how the ABC came to hire a clearly left-wing presenter for Media Watch. "It was decided ..." The resulting bias extended to an extraordinary claim about the nature of journalism itself.

This was revealed in 2004, when Marr's Media Watch won the George Munster Prize for Independent Journalism. At a seminar coinciding with the award held at the University of Technology and later broadcast on ABC Radio National (26 September 2002), Marr said this: "The natural culture of journalism is kind of vaguely soft left inquiry, sceptical of authority. I mean, that's just the world out of which journalists come. If they don't come out of that world, they really can't be reporters. I mean, if you are not sceptical of authority - find another job. You know, just find another job. And that (journalism) is the kind of soft leftie kind of culture."

In a letter to the editor published in The Weekend Australian (19-20 March 2005) Marr corrected his claim: "... I sloppily suggested journalists had to come out of the world of the Left. That's emphatically - and obviously - not so. Good journalism is found right across the political spectrum. What's crucial is scepticism of authority. Good judgment and fairness help."

But Marr's other musings further reveal his views on journalism and politics. In a prolife in HQ Magazine (November/December 2003), Marr was quoted saying this: "The contest between Right and Left in Australian society is essentially between a fearful and a rational view of the society. The Murdoch columnists, Alan Jones, these people - their role is to inculcate fear. Of course, as with just about everything, it's an American tradition, and what it's about is the strengthening of government. Get a society fearful enough then they will give government power and will allow government to have more and use more authority."

And in his Overland lecture last year, Marr said: "No one fears that the Left is going to break up the estates and nationalise the means of production. But the contest of Left v Right remains potent because it's still about the public purse v private purse; wages v dividends; regulation v profits; public spending v tax cuts. What's worse, the Left challenges the prerogatives of money and the prerogatives of a government intent on turning Australia into a moneymaking machine. The problem with lefty journalists - particularly at the ABC - is that they don't give money its due. They keep raising issues such as equity, lawfulness, candour, dignity - issues that don't have much to do with money or can stand in the way of moneymaking."

Again, Marr is entitled to these views. But they are clearly outside the mainstream, perhaps even beyond the left of the Labor Party. They hold that journalism naturally is found in a "soft-leftie culture". Left-wing journalists are more "sceptical of authority". The Left is "rational", but the Right promotes a "fearful" society. "Murdoch columnists" are part of this fear-mongering. "Leftie" journalists - "particularly at the ABC" - have some sort of monopoly on issues of "equity, lawfulness, candour, dignity".

But of course, as Marr conceded in correcting himself, the journalistic trait of being sceptical of authority has nothing to with political bias, be it "soft-leftie" or anything else. Marr himself has acknowledged that The Australian broke the "boatchildren overboard" story in 2001, which led to a Senate inquiry into "A Certain Maritime Incident", which in turn formed the basis of his co-authoured book "Dark Victory". The Australian's scepticism of the federal Government's claim that boatpeople threw their children overboard was not connected to any political view, just the basic instincts of journalism to uncover the truth.

Then there is Marr's half-hearted attempts in his Overland lecture quoted above to demonise the "Right" on economic policy. Creating wealth is somehow in conflict with good values. Labour remains in fundamental conflict with capital, despite the increase in share ownership, investment property ownership and occupational superannuation - and despite the economic liberalisation of the past two decades, opposed by the left, which has delivered such widespread material prosperity in Australia. Marr describes this prosperity as "good fortune" as if it owes nothing to the economic reforms of the past two decades. Only a minority of Australians think like this any more.

This sort of world view has transferred into the Media Watch agenda.

Race and culture

# On the 9 September 2002 Media Watch program, Marr claimed that The Australian's Janet Albrechtsen had "lifted" and "twisted" the work of a British journalist and European academics in a column on racially-motivated gang rapes. The column followed the conviction of two young Muslim brothers for the gang rape of an "Australian girl" in which the victim was told she was getting it "Leb style".

There clearly was a racial or cultural element in the gang rapes in the south-western suburbs of Sydney. Albrechtsen's column linked this phenomenon to the recent history of such race-tinged rapes committed by Muslim youth in continental Europe.

Marr's Media Watch clearly objected to the linking of Muslim race, religion or culture to gang rape. But rather than contest the substance of the complex issue, the program smeared Albrechtsen, elevating her arguable errors into the journalistic "capital offence" of plagiarism and misrepresentation of academic work. It failed to even canvas whether her arguable errors were honestly made and gave no credit for the obvious amount of research she had undertaken.

Marr mockingly invented a new word - to "albrecht", to "lift and twist somebody else's words to support your own arguments". He demanded that she be sacked from The Australian.

# Under new presenter Liz Jackson, Media Watch employed the same smear tactics in its latest attack on Albrechtsen, who by now is also an ABC board member. Albrechtsen's column of 4 May 2005 argued that the media was underplaying the good news from Iraq. This line of argument is objectionable to the "soft-leftie" world view of Media Watch, which previously has vigorously defended the ABC's AM radio program against charges of bias in its coverage of the Iraq war.

Instead of contesting the substance of Albrechtsen's argument, Jackson's Media Watch broadcast of 9 May 2005 tried to discredit one of her cited sources, a regular round-up of good news from Iraq posted on the website of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. Albrechtsen's column had wrongly attributed the round-up to The Wall Street Journal's main website, the author of the round-up was a Brisbane "blogger" employed by a Liberal Senator whose work was neither paid for, nor edited by, The Wall Street Journal. Albrechsten had "misrepresented" the nature and source of the round-up and wrongly given it journalistic "credibility".

In fact, Albrechtsen's column made a minor error in referring to the wrong Wall Street Journal website. Media Watch later was forced to admit that the "blogger" was in fact paid by The Wall Street Journal for his round-up, which the newspaper also edited. Media Watch has yet to clearly state on air that the round-up was published by the web site of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. And it has not informed viewers that the "blogger" has been published in the past month by the print version of The New York Times !

# In its 18 April 2005 program, Liz Jackson's Media Watch attacked The Australian for its report of the death of an Aboriginal man central to one of the most high profile "stolen generation" compensation claims. Media Watch complained that The Australian had breached "basic guidelines for reporting indigenous deaths" by reporting his full name and publishing his photograph. She accused The Australian of "arrogance".

The Australian accepts that there is a genuine issue of sensitivity involved in reporting the deaths of some Aboriginal people, as there often are with the deaths of non-Aboriginal people. However, the customs surrounding the reporting of indigenous deaths vary and are often vague depending on the circumstance. As journalists, the editors of The Australian also have a duty to fully inform the newspaper's readers of important events. The newspaper's coverage of the death of former Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen included some savage commentary of his years in power, which may have caused offence to his immediate family.

This is a complex issue, worthy of serious debate. Instead, Media Watch instinctively resorted to its "soft-leftie" view of the world.

The business of journalism

# As outlined elsewhere in the Media Watch Files, Marr's Media watch wrongly claimed that The Australian had blurred the line between advertising and editorial by placing a picture story on Grand Prix racing driver Michael Schumacher on page one of the newspaper then sold a page one advertisement to match it. This ludicrous claim, later corrected on air, promotes the idea that News Corp publications easily lower their journalistic standards to make money.

# As also outlined, Marr's Media Watch also made sweeping and false claims that The Australian's readers were always "short-changed" in the newspaper's coverage of the problems of its parent company, News Corp. This is part of the "soft-leftie" and Fairfax agenda against the "Murdoch press".

Sydney Morning Herald columnist and Sydney Institute executive director Gerard Henderson brought Marr's "soft-leftie" comments to public prominence. Henderson is rightly critical of the Media Watch format, describing it as: "a series of journalists, invariably from the ABC/Fairfax stable, who appear to possess similar views, hand down ex-cathedra prounouncements on their colleagues - to which there is no on-screen right-of-reply. From Stuart Littlemore, to Paul Barry, to Richard Ackland, to David Marr and now to Liz Jackson - there is a certain similarity of world-view here. In other words, all fit within David Marr's soft-leftie/sceptical of authority category." (The Sydney Papers, Summer 2005)

This is the essential case against Media Watch - that it really is a taxpayer-funded political soapbox rather than its own billing as "Australia's leading forum for media analysis and comment".