Friends, Australians, countrymen, lend me your ears. Or should that be: “give me a fair share of voice”?
In all the talk of new paradigms in the reporting of politics, one thing is surely true: much more attention should be paid to the Greens. That means more vigorous and critical scrutiny, and more preparedness to devote newsprint and broadcast time to testing and questioning the leaders.
Last week Greens leader Bob Brown was griping about the ABC’s key television news programs, which, he said had failed to cover his party during the election campaign.
Brown has written to the ABC’s director of news, Kate Torney, complaining that the Greens were not interviewed at all on the key broadcast forums The 7.30 Report and Insiders, and got less than their fair share elsewhere.
“We got 14 per cent of the vote, but zero per cent of the coverage every night out of Canberra,” he says.
I asked the ABC to respond, and was given the following tables from the monitoring the ABC commissions from Media Monitors during election campaigns. They show the Greens received just under 10% “share of voice” across platforms.
First, the “share” received by each of the three political leaders.
| Radio | Television | Internet | Total | |||||
| Hrs:Min:Sec | % | Hrs:Min:Sec | % | Words | % | % | ||
| Julia Gillard | ALP | 12:59:45 | 8.9 | 11:08:06 | 20.3 | 13,382 | 15.9 | 12.4 |
| Tony Abbott | Coalition | 10:06:07 | 6.9 | 9:22:18 | 17.1 | 15,226 | 18.1 | 10.6 |
| Bob Brown | Greens | 4:22:46 | 3.0 | 2:10:59 | 4.0 | 2,564 | 3.0 | 3.2 |
Then the share given to each political party:
| Radio | Television | Internet | Total | ||||
| Hrs:Min:Sec | % | Hrs:Min:Sec | % | Words | % | % | |
| ALP | 57:32:08 | 39.4 | 26:11:15 | 47.8 | 35,458 | 42.1 | 41.8 |
| Coalition | 57:40:51 | 39.5 | 24:00:59 | 43.9 | 37,917 | 45.0 | 41.2 |
| Greens | 16:18:34 | 11.2 | 3:17:24 | 6.0 | 7,217 | 8.6 | 9.6 |
The ABC confidently asserts: “Overall, the ABC is satisfied that the share received by the Greens was appropriate.”
I think it is clear that the claim is hollow. We can’t judge whether the ABC was fair to the Greens without more information. Share of voice doesn’t cut it as a measure.
What counts during an election campaign is share of ears and seriousness of attention.
There is a world of difference between a sound grab on Tasmanian regional radio and on AM or PM, and between a quick mention on ABC24 and a testing interview as the main set piece of The 7.30 Report. Yet the figures provided by the ABC do not allow us to distinguish.
I — and Bob Brown — have asked for a further breakdown and more information, but after waiting for the best part of the week, nothing more has been forthcoming. Either the information doesn’t exist, or Auntie is unwilling — or very slow — to release it.
The ABC also says that the director of editorial policies, Paul Chadwick who chairs Auntie’s election coverage review committee, will make a public report after reporting to the ABC board in October. Should make interesting reading.
The ABC acknowledges that the coverage varied from place to place — for example, there was more coverage [of the Greens] in Tasmania and Victoria, where there were strong local issues (including the battle for the seat of Melbourne).
“It also varied from program to program — for example, there are relatively few major standalone interview slots on programs such as Insiders and The 7.30 Report, but many more opportunities for regular comment on radio programs and in daily news.”
The new paradigm will require seriousness of journalistic purpose devoted to the Greens. And may well expose old paradigm notions of balance.
Of course, if journos really do start piling in to the Greens, Bob Brown might have cause to regret calling for them to do so.
If more information is forthcoming from the ABC, I will certainly publish it.
See Bush Telegraph’s sign off on the lead Greens versus AgForce (Qld) beatup today (http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bushtelegraph/) where despite the (mild) attempt to generate conflict, John Cotter and Christine Milne emerged (to the expressed amazement of the presenter) shaking perspective – if not yet policy – hands.
Better and less spoon-fed incendiary coverage from the National Broadcaster over the last 2 months (note both “main parties” switched the blowtorch against the Greens very early on as soon as their own polling indicated that the 2PP vote was the game definer and heavily pro-Green in comparative swing terms) would have left less animosity and more fellow-feeling and mutual agreement in every citizen’s minds. Which last is precisely what Australia’s polity needs now – far more than easy-option “bring back the biff” air-filling.
I suppose there’s always hope that Mediawatch might give this a run.
This is the latest example of political parties and politicians inappropriately whining about what the media reports on and to what extent – first the Prime Minister has complained that the media didn’t support her by whipping up a storm over treasury costings, now Brown wants to know why his third horse in a two horse race isn’t granted more media coverage.
Mainstream media audiences see the election as determining who forms government, and the Greens had no hope of doing so. Therefore they didn’t get as much media coverage despite their supporters insistence that they are more relevant than they actually are. Move along, nothing to see here.
ABC’s response shows its simplistic attitude to balance — that it simply means granting an amount of air time to each “side”, without consideration of the quality or nature of the air time. It’s why much ABC reportage is devolving into the he said-she said variety.
The ABC need to rethink this model, not just for the sake of balance but its own credibility.
Aside from the predictable lean-to-Green of Radio National which is stacked with earnest conservationists and human rights champs who’ve been there for decades, the rest of the ABC is indifferent or antagonist to the Greens – in other words in lock step with Labor, viewing them as weird, irrelevant woolly hats and not part of the main game. It will be interesting to see how they adjust.