Part seven: another way to attack News Ltd

AMONG all the nonsense written and broadcast about Schapelle Corby's case nothing goes near Monday night's Media Watch program on ABC TV.

For two weeks presenter, Liz Jackson, had hammered shock-jocks and TV producers, especially the Nine Network, "for some of the worst TV and radio coverage we've had to endure" (23 May) in their partisan coverage of the Corby case.

She cited Sydney radio 2GB's Malcolm T Elliott as an example of the media using Schapelle Corby's case as a "licence for their xenophobia" (23 May). And she singled out pro-Corby 2GB broadcasters, Alan Jones and Philip Clark for coverage where "ignorance has held no-one back" (30 May).

She also attacked The Australian's News Limited stablemate, The Daily Telegraph in Sydney. Curiously, she did not mention Fairfax commentator Miranda Devine, who believes Corby's "careful styling and stunning good looks" demonstrate a "transcendant grace that makes her guilt implausible" (Sun Herald, 29 May). Or Devine's Fairfax colleague Richard Ackland, who thought photos of Corby on her way to Bali at odds with how a drug runner would appear. "The open, happy, joyous look on the face of the departing Corby seems utterly at odds with someone embarking on a mission of smuggling a life-threatening quantity of marijuana into Indonesia", Ackland wrote, (Sydney Morning Herald, 3 June).

Jackson also attacked The Australian for providing a balanced coverage of Corby's case. First she criticised this newspaper for reporting Corby's father has a drug conviction. (The Australian, 21 May).But while Corby's sister told Channel Nine no family member had been involved in the drug trade,in fact her half-brother also has a drug conviction, and is in prison (The Australian, 21 May, 24 May).

And on Monday night (6 May) Jackson had another go. She quoted The Australian's Paul Kelly, and other commentators in News Limited papers, who criticised partisan coverage of the Corby trial. But instead of praise for Kelly and his colleagues, who agreed with Media Watch's criticism of inflamatory media comment, Jackson denounced them for not singling out News Limited papers.

Yet she did not attack them for not naming Devine, Ackland or the mass of broadcasters and TV journalists who were initially Media Watch's main targets. Nor did she mention the way The Australian has consistently argued against abusing Indonesia over the Corby case.

On Monday night Jackson reverted to Media Watch's traditional tactic - when there is nothing to say, snarl at the Murdoch papers. Perhaps we should not be surprised. Liz Jackson is an ABC insider. She replaced ABC and Fairfax veteran David Marr, a man who never misses an opportunity to attack News Limited.

When Marr left the program, ABC TV boss Sandra Levy could have hired a replacement from the political centre. She muffed it and the result is more of the same from Liz Jackson. Media Watch has lost all credibility as an independent commentator. It is time for Ms Levy to turn the program off for good.

Monday night's Media Watch also demonstrated ABC insiders attitude to competition, they don't like it. The cable TV company that broadcasts the Sky TV channel, part owned by News Limited, publisher of The Australian, might bid for a $18 million government contract to broadcast Australian news and programs to 39 countries in Asia.

The ABC now holds the contract and according to Jackson "the assumption had been that subject to a performance review, the contract would be simply renewed for another five years". But why? The ABC's Asia service mixes news and current affairs with life style shows and soap operas. Why broadcasts of Home and Away and Here's Humphrey, both of which are buy-ins from commercial networks, uniquely qualify the ABC to provide Australian television into Asia is not obvious.

Certainly Sky News has a much better recent record of covering big breaking stories, such as the announcement of the last election or the death of Pope John Paul II, than ABC TV.

But quality content does not appear to matter much to Media Watch when income for the ABC is involved.

Jackson rhetorically asked why the government should give tax payer dollars to private media proprietors to expand into Asia.

What she seems to have missed is that precisely because the money comes from the taxpayers is why the government must give it to which ever tenderer demonstrates that it can do the best job.

The ABC Asia Pacific service exists to promote the interests of all Australians not to kick cash into the Corporation's budget.

Part Six: Liz Jackson meets the Corbys

This week (30 May) Liz Jackson's Media Watch switched onto the Schapelle Corby trial. It stuck the boot into much of the media for conducting its own "trial of the Indonesians' justice system".

Radio and television stations with an "in" to the Corby camp had whipped up anti-Indonesian sentiment on the premise that Corby was innocent. Those from rival outlets talked about being black banned by the Corby camp, leading some - like John Laws - to be more sceptical and negative.

Then Jackson slotted in a dig at The Australian. "And he (Laws) was not the only one. As the verdict countdown began, The Weekend Australian ran this front page story."

A headline from page one of The Weekend Australian of 21-22 May was shown on screen: "Meet the Corby's: A Dad with a drug record, a brother in jail, and a former bankrupt who wants 50 per cent of the action".

Jackson continued: "Why was this a front page story? Corby's father was fined 30 years ago, for possessing marijuana, her half brother is doing time for break and enter. None of this was remotely relevant to Corby's case. It was just a punch below the belt to sell a lot of papers".

Now, The Australian doesn't really care about Jackson's opinions on this. She doesn't point to any errors in The Weekend Australian's coverage. And we happily plead guilty of trying to sell newspapers.

But Media Watch viewers deserve a more sophisticed interpretation of The Weekend Australian's coverage of the Corby trial than they got from the program.

Clearly, the Corby trial and her eventual guilty verdict has gripped the imagination of the Australian public. As the Media Watch program touched on, much of this has been fuelled by an apparently deliberate strategy by Corby's supposed financial backer, businessman Ron Bakir, to media-manage public sympathy for Corby, in part by striking deals with selected media outlets.

The deeper issue, not fully grasped by Media Watch, is whether this has been in Corby's own legal interest and whether it has inflamed anti-Indonesian sentiment in Australia. The legitimate story is just how has this happened.

This is the sub-text of the "Meet the Corby's" front page article in The Weekend Australian and written by journalists Jennifer Sexton, Greg Roberts and Cath Hart. Like her predecessor, David Marr, Jackson is a trained lawyer who sees the issue in legal terms. Hence Jackson's complaint that the article was not "remotely relevant" to Corby's case.

But in journalistic terms, it is completely valid to explore the backgrounds of the family and the supposed financial backer at the centre of a story of intense public interest. To repeat, this is a legitimate journalistic approach - and normal fare for quality US newspapers with high-profile trials - and serves to separate fact from the wild gossip that Jackson complains has been swirling around the Corby's.

The "Meet the Corby's" article followed an interview with Corby's sister, Mercedes, on the Nine network's Sunday program.

Question: "Is there anybody in your family, a stepfather, a distant relative ? Is there anybody who's ever been convicted or involved in the drugs trade?"

Mercedes Corby: "No. Not that I know of. Nah. There wouldn't be."

The "Meet the Corby's" article in The Weekend Australian revealed that, whether Mercedes knew it or not, this is not true. The sisters' father, Michael Corby, was caught with a small amount of cannabis at a similar age to 27-year-old Schapelle. And, like Schapelle, Michael Corby claimed the marijuana "wasn't mine".

The article further revealed that Schapelle's half-brother, Clinton Rose, was currently serving a sentence in a Queensland jaul for break and enter, stealing and fraud and had been visited by both Corby sisters during a previous stint in jail. (In the week after this article, The Australian revealed that Rose had twice been convicted on marijuana possession charges).

The "Meet the Corby's" article then went into some detail into Ron Bakir, reporting that tensions had emerged in the Corby family over his bid to get 50 per cent of proceeeds from likely book and film deals arising from Schapelle's ordeal. It further reported that Bakir was a discharged bankrupt who had left creditors to his Crazy Ron's mobile phone business being owed $2.26 million. Creditors included a charity for troubled teenage boys.

Media Watch was right to claim that these facts were not relevant to the issue of whether Schapelle Corby was legally guilty of attempting to smuggle 4.1kg of marijuana into Bali. But Jackson was wrong to suggest that the facts do not provide material for a legitimate story and valid journalism.

Moreover, The Weekend Australian did not claim or infer that "Meet the Corby's" was about the legal issue of guilt or innocence. That issue was fully covered separately in the same issue of The Weekend Australian. For some reason, Jackson didn't point Media Watch viewers to Sian Powell's "The Case Against Our Schapelle", the cover story on that weekend's Inquirer section.

If she had, Jackson could have pointed to the prescient conclusion by Powell, The Australian's Jakarta correspondent: "Indonesia is notoriously corrupt, routinely languishing at the bottom of international corruption indexes. The judicial system, too, undoubtably has rotten elements, especially in connection with large civil cases. But no charges of corruption have been levelled against the three judges in Corby's case, who have listened gravely and courteously to all the witnesses and allowed the defence to submit last-minute documents. On the known evidence, it's almost certain they will find Corby guilty when they hand down their verdict next Friday, and on past history it's likely they will sentence her to a lengthy jail term. Indonesia has tougher drugs penalties than Australia, up to and including death. Perhaps it's the sentencing disparity that has galvanised so many Australians rather than the question of whether she has been justly tried. (Chief judge) Sirait has dubbed her trial 'ordinary'; yet it's one that has provoked an extraordinary reaction in Australia, a reaction that is likely to roll on for some time."

But pointing to this article - perhaps the best published summary of the case - would have diluted Liz Jackson's attempt to paint The Australian as just a participant in "destructive media games" over Schapelle Corby.

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.