AM rides out the bias war

The ABC, in common with any organisation dependent on the human condition, is a notoriously imperfect thing. Indeed, when people choose to defend it, it's probably fair to say they're sometimes defending the basic concept of non-commercial public broadcasting, as opposed to specific ABC manifestations of it. Equally, it's also fair to suggest manycomplainants about the corporation may not always reflect very deeply before they complain.

An example might be the Queensland Liberal senator, Santo Santoro, who used the Opinion page of this journal on March 4 to profoundly regret what he saw as one of the ABC's more "extraordinary" decisions. Santoro couldn't understand why the national broadcaster chose to publicly release its submission to the Australian Broadcasting Authority in the wake of the authority's investigation of 43 anti-US bias complaints against the AM radio program. As anyone who encountered the document would be aware, the submission was strongly at variance with the authority's finding of four breaches of ABC editorial guidelines.

In truth, the only "extraordinary" thing about this matter were the complaints themselves. They emanated from the former minister for communications, Richard Alston, and almost certainly had little to do with serious or calculated anti-US bias on AM. They were Alston's retaliation against the chairman of the ABC, Donald McDonald, who'd infuriated Alston by defying him on a wide range of fronts. McDonald totally rejected a leaked January 2000 letter from Alston, for example, proposing much closer relations between the broadcaster and Alston's department. McDonald fired an Alston favourite, Jonathan Shier, as the ABC's managing director. McDonald supported the appointment of Russell Balding in Shier's stead, as opposed to Alston's choice, Trevor Kennedy. McDonald had fuelled community perceptions of niggardly federal funding of the ABC by dumping the corporation's digital television channels. He'd supported the broadcaster's then director of news and current affairs, Max Uechtritz, after Alston publicly attacked Uechtritz for calling military spokespeople "lying bastards". And there were other matters. In short, McDonald had demonstrated himself as A Disobedient Person.

You may recall the authority's draft report on its investigation, which didn't differ all that radically from its March 1 conclusions, was leaked to ABC television's Media Watch last November. MW's then presenter, David Marr, went on air to describe the document as "slovenly" and "the silliest" authority report he'd ever read. The scribe also managed to obtain the draft and on November 4 last year Media carried as many snippets as space allowed. We reported, for example, the authority had concerns about "emotional" language on AM and fears presenters might have "pre-judged" certain invasion-related perspectives.

Worried that hard-won journalistic reputations could be in danger, AM's invasion presenter -- Linda Mottram - put a personal submission before the authority's final deliberations. It included this: "If the ABA publishes this [breach] finding it will be a considerable embarrassment to it ... It will also imperil the cause of fearless journalism by appearing to put a limit on what journalists are permitted to ask. I have reported from countries whose officials put those kinds of constraints on journalists and they are countries, like Saddam Hussein's Iraq, where there is no journalism, only propaganda."

For what it's worth, the scribe has never been able to shake off oil-related suspicions about underlying US motives for invading Iraq and believes the ABC and other media could have been a great deal more sceptical. He wouldn't impugn the integrity of authority luminaries who studied Alston's complaints, nor would he suggest the authority should have called it other than how it sincerely believed things to be. Equally, those such as the legal-editorial team the ABC brought together to take carriage of the matter, Mottram, Marr and even the humble scribe must also call it as they see it. Bias can be like Mona Lisa's smile. It can exist largely in the eye of the beholder. Thus the views held by the corporation might well be regarded as a helpful complement to the authority's opinion.

Anyway, is this saga now over? Alston first referred an initial 68 war coverage grievances to Balding's office in May 2003. The corporation's Complaints Review Executive upheld two of them. Its Independent Complaints Review Panel upheld 15 more. The authority has upheld an additional four. Alston withdrew some. So, overall, has Alston - now the Australian High Commissioner in London - had some kind of victory? Well, a cup can be half empty or half full. The fact is more than half the complaints have now been rejected three times. Neither McDonald nor Balding have been disgraced to the point of resignation. Not a single life in strife-torn, bloody, civil war-threatened Iraq has been saved. AM remains a highly regarded, agenda-setting program.

The authority's report is littered, incidentally, with references to what "an ordinary, reasonable listener" might have inferred from various disputed broadcasts. It's quite possibly the case that Alston isn't such a dreadful fellow as he's sometimes made out to be. But could a war-time minister for communications sensibly be regarded as an "ordinary" listener? You can't help the suspicion the AM complaints, and their outcome, will come to attract a permanent dissidence similar to that attaching to Brian Hutton's well-publicised findings on the suicide of the British Iraq expert, David Kelly.