Editorial independence is little more than a noble concept sitting on a shelf until it is put to the test.
Yesterday the chairman of the ABC, Australia’s most important independent media organisation, took the concept off the shelf, placed it on the floor and trampled all over it with muddy boots.
In a speech that has become very public, Maurice Newman told senior ABC staff that the media — including the ABC — had displayed “group-think” on the subject of climate change, describing it as an example “where contrary views have not been tolerated, and where those who express them have been labelled and mocked”.
Later in the day, in an interview with ABC Radio’s PM program, he elaborated his views in the personal context of being a climate sceptic:
“… Climate change is at the moment an emotional issue but it really is the fundamental issue about the need to bring voices that have authority and are relevant to the particular issue to the attention of our audiences so that they themselves can make decisions … Many of the people who have a different point of view on the climate science are respectable and credentialed scientists themselves … I am an agnostic and I have always been an agnostic and I will remain an agnostic until I’ve found compelling evidence on one side or the other that will move me. I think that what seems fairly clear to me is that the climate science is still being developed. There are a lot question marks about some of the fundamental data which has been used to build models that requires caution …”
Coming out of the mouth of the most senior person in the organisation, Newman’s comments are a direct and visceral attack on the professionalism of the ABC’s journalists. They are a direct attack on the elaborate notion of editorial independence at the ABC — which is laid out in hundreds of pages of documents and policies. And they are a grotesque distortion of the role of the chairman of an independent broadcaster.
Newman — a former stockbroker and businessman with no professional experience as a journalist or broadcaster — has not only insulted the editorial judgement of his senior staff, he has used warped logic to do it.
Given his argument that “I … will remain an agnostic until I’ve found compelling evidence on one side or the other that will move me”, imagine if instead of climate change he had used another topical subject — atheism –as his example of “media group-think”. Under the Newman doctrine, ABC journalists would now be systematically skewing their coverage of traditional religion “to bring voices that have authority and are relevant to the particular issue to the attention of our audiences so that they themselves can make decisions”. What kind of furore would that cause?
With just one speech, the ABC’s chairman has returned the national broadcaster to the days of having a politically interventionist board running a culture wars agenda — and he has done it by trashing the editorial independence of some of this country’s finest journalists.
I wonder what Mr Newman would consider to be “compelling evidence on one side or the other”.
I had the same but angrier reaction about editorial independence and the undermining of the Managing Director.
So you are all for the ABC running a partisan agenda, as they have done on a number of previous occaisions? A number of ABC journalists and programs have been found to have distorted evidence to support a preconceived position. The same can be said of programs such as ACA, TT and 60 Minutes. In each case it was wrong and should be prevented.
Or was it that you support a balanced approach on most things, just not on climate change? If so you are basically saying that editorial partisanship is fine as long as it is for issues that you support.
Unbiased coverage of the news and politics is a goal all media organisations should strive for, too often however media organisations take a position and support it in the face of evidence.
Crikey enjoys taking a bat to the Australian for it’s right-wing slant, but you rarely hear criticism of media for a left-wing slant here on Crikey, as such a slant would seem to support Crikey’s own left-leaning editorial position on many things, particularly those dealing with the environment and politics.
The Chairman of the ABC states that the ABC should provide unbiased coverage of news and current events, citing a current controversial topic however you find that to be unwarranted interference in editorial independence?
The true pity is that the speech had to be given at all, most of all in an organisation that is owned and paid for by all Australian’s.
Newman claims to be “agnostic” and is waiting for authoritative evidence. How much evidence does the man need, when every Academy of Science in the world, along with the Royal Society, our own CSIRO and every other scientific organisation, has endorsed the mass of evidence in support of human-induced warming, and rejected the “sceptics'” arguments, with all the authority that those organisations carry?
Newman has been gulled by denialist propaganda. A man who is so easily duped by bogus science is not fit to chair the ABC.
Good on you Eric.
This is a dangerous development for quality journalism at the ABC and leads to absurd outcomes, as you point out.
Lets be honest about the Australian media’s climate change awareness.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I recollect that the first outlet to properly tackle climate change was Crikey, followed by Seven’s Sunrise programme.
The ABC, meanwhile, is yet to reinstate Earthbeat, its sole environmental radio programme, which it axed just as climate change was becoming a major global issue, in 2005.
Michael, your problem appears to be that you see every issue as being one of the “left” or “right”, with an equally valid opinion on either side. Environmentalism is clearly in your view a “left” issue
However in the case of reporting on climate science, the claims of those who dispute AGW are repeatedly demolished on scientific grounds, yet they are repeated over and over again in the public arena for the sake of “balance”.
All the while people who don’t believe AGW is happening keep baying for the science and insisting that they be shown enough evidence to convince them.
It seems that in the case of climate change, reality has a left-wing bias.