Razer: for its own good, the ABC needs critics

The ABC’s annual public meeting

Last week, Crikey published review of a reality program new to ABC TV. Critique of this critique was, inevitably, various: some considered it unkind; others considered it too generous and wanting in colourful curses. Notwithstanding their view of this entertainment, Crikey readers wrote, both publicly and privately, to discuss the merits of openly discussing the merits of the ABC.

To defend my taste in TV would, of course, be foolish. But, it is not at all foolish to address a question sincerely and ethically posed. In sum, those concerned for the fate of the national broadcaster asked: should you not shut it about the ABC when Communications Minister Mitch Fifield seems so routinely on that job? Why not just give that embattled corporation a break?

It is true, as Keane reports, that the ABC may be described as “embattled”. It is also true, as Keane also reports, that the broadcaster’s response to funding cuts, accusations of bias or other punitive acts is now to cop it sweet. In its effort to appease government — in this case, a Coalition government whose accusations of “left-wing bias” would survive a month of all-format programming in tribute to The Mont Pelerin Society — the ABC neglects its commitment to the people who truly fund it.

We can be certain, of course, that Michelle Guthrie’s gig is not easy. She must placate a board, the policy class and the most prominent of our local critics who will not rest until either (a) There are “more women on Q&A” or (b)  Yassmin Abdel-Magied is disqualified from the use of ABC cab-charge vouchers eternally. Any declared ambition to serve 100% of Australians is necessarily curbed — one diminished further by the managing director’s seeming distaste for those interned in pre-school or aged-care facilities.

Yes, the ABC continues to produce a handful of good programs. That it overwhelmingly produces a wad of middling content and offers analysis with all the depth of the pastel messaging that promotes is not something we should pretend to ignore out of fear that the state will curtail its funding.

If the ABC continues to cook up the nothing-burger preferred by media pundits, to offer “lady” podcasts that are nothing but deportment lessons for a female aspirational class, to uphold editorial “balance” whose poles are determined not by the people but by major party positions and promotions — wherein Leigh Sales receives a kiss from Paul McCartney — there will be nothing left to defend.

Your public critique will not harm the ABC’s investigative flagship. Last night, Four Corners promised viewers “the story of the century”, but accidentally aired a story of the cursory instead. This was not the first of a three-part inquiry into climate change, the fatally unproductive nature of a finance-dominated market or, say, the death of democracy. It was, instead, the latest, and perhaps most costly, attempt by our state broadcaster to echo powerful US claims that the Russian Federation has committed an act of war equivalent to 9/11 and/or Pearl Harbour.  

Just as this “investigation” into a historic and complex US power shift is founded on that contemporary faith in a “least worst” option, the ABC has become our “least worst” broadcast choice. It is the Hillary Clinton of content.

Yes, the show may have been entertaining, but nothing about Sarah Ferguson’s upcycled reporting was courageous or interesting. To “follow the money” held in Russia to its Clinton-era origins might be a little courageous. To wonder if key interview subject James Clapper is to be believed might be just a little interesting. Still, the former US Director of National Intelligence, currently promoting a book, tells Ferguson that he found aggressive “meddling” by Russia in the US political process “viscerally disturbing” during his appointment. That he told NBC’s Meet the Press shortly after his retirement last year there was no such intelligence about collusion surely deserves a question.

The ABC, increasingly, does not ask questions without first determining their answers. The ABC, increasingly, elects to ask these already answered questions of Trump, Putin or Xi than of Australian politicians. And at no point will accusations of “left-wing bias” from either News Corp or the Coalition cease, and at no point will those at Fairfax or in the ALP quit relishing the chance to identify not, as they are, as dimwit centrists, but as “left-wing” per the generous Mark Latham assessment.

This is the extant function of the ABC: an institution against which the powerful measure themselves. Those in pre-schools, aged-care facilities or any sort of everyday Australian life have diminished use for it. If we do not critique an organisation that has come to serve such narrow interests, we risk its demotion from “least worst” to privatised relic of a once wilfully oblivious knowledge class.