Australia has a news media problem: our regulation structures, designed for a 20th-century world of information scarcity, have become weaponised in the right’s culture wars against climate action.
One of its weapons of choice has been to use the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to keep the country’s most influential news source — the ABC — in line. And the authority’s recent “nonsensical” decision regarding Four Corners’ 2021 program “Fox and the Big Lie” has confirmed what’s been clear for some time: ACMA is not fit for its purpose of making decisions about news content.
The ABCs of media regulation
Since 2018, ACMA has conducted 18 separate inquiries into complaints about the ABC’s news and information programs on television and radio. Almost all allege editorial bias — or, in the words of the broadcaster’s code of practice, a breach of the obligation of “impartiality and diversity of perspectives”.
The four cases where ACMA determined editorial bias involve some aspect of the climate wars. In each, the criticism is all about the vibe: a 2021 news package on the impact of logging on Victoria’s water supply; Four Corners’ 2019 “Cash Splash” report on the then federal government’s water infrastructure scheme; a 2018 Catalyst episode on feeding Australia sustainably; a 2017 report from gallery reporter Andrew Probyn describing Tony Abbott as “the most destructive politician of his generation”.
It’s not that the ABC got its facts wrong. Instead, the ACMA quibbles over interpretation disputing the ABC’s professional judgment: how it applied its facts, whom it talked to (or didn’t talk to). You know, the journalism.
In each situation, including in response to ACMA’s “Fox and the Big Lie” decision, the ABC stood by its reporting teams — and its Four Corners and Catalyst reports remain online.
Rebuilding the ACMA
While the new government has recently extended the term of ACMA chair Nerida O’Loughlin for a further two years, it has the opportunity to remake the authority this year, with the five-year terms of four members expiring between April and August. Those four include three full-time members, one being ACMA CEO and deputy chair Creina Chapman — a Howard-era staffer and former executive and strategic adviser to both News Corp and Nine.
But maybe the ACMA complaints process for journalism is just not fixable. We’ve had 80-odd years of attempting to build tools to address journalism standards, from codes of ethics in the 1940s, to industry bodies like the Press Council in the 1970s, to a culture of media self-criticism (think Media Watch) emerging in the 1980s.
Australia’s big media companies have met each attempt with hostility, friendly co-option, or a bit of both. So shocked were they by the temerity of their post-war journalists in asserting ethical obligations that Sir Frank Packer fought a three-year legal challenge to block the code. It would not be until 1975 that any publisher (such as, surprisingly, Rupert Murdoch) grudgingly agreed to accept it.
It’s the same now. A private dinner between a media owner and the press regulator? That’s how you capture the industry’s self-regulation. Fox Corp complaining to ACMA over Four Corners? That’s the pushback against media scrutiny.
A new landscape
Across today’s media, what’s really changed is context. Once, journalism was limited, either by costs of capital (in the case of print) or by availability of spectrum (like broadcast). Scarcity demanded regulation (preferably self-regulation) of news media practice to ensure communities got the news they needed from the few available sources.
Now we face a world of information glut — some of it true, some of it false, much of it profoundly contestable. It’s the job of journalism to sort out what’s what and explain the difference, without government authorities like ACMA looking over the newsroom’s collective shoulder, editing pencil in hand.
Around the world, we’re already seeing how government agencies are using “fake news” laws not to regulate but to control and restrict. The ACMA experience shows, too, how regulation can be gamified for political ends. Time for the Australian government to leave ACMA to the technical stuff it’s good at and leave the news judgment to the newsrooms.
After ACMA’s Fox and the big lie decision, I went back and watched both parts again.
I just don’t think the ACMA people watched it. It was very clear that the Fox presenter and Sarah stumbled across each other because the presenter was leaving (I think) work and they ran into each other because the 4 Corners team was filming there at the same time.
More remarkably, I don’t think the ACMA people have ever seen any video footage or photos of the insurrection. I consulted multiple dictionaries for definitions of “mob” and as far as I can tell, “mob” is a very generous way to describe what happened.
I’m with the disband ACMA and start again. It has demonstrated itself to be unfit for purpose for some time. The people who made that particular 4 Corners decision are utterly incompetent and that they felt sufficiently emboldened to challenge “mob” under those circumstances shows just how unaccountable they consider themselves to be.
Murdoch knows that if you tell a lie enough times people will believe it. That happens without sneaking into ACMA’s territory. I for one am sick of hearing about ABC bias.
However I would much prefer to have ACMA fact checking stories rather than leaving it to news rooms like Sky, Nine or the Australian.
Fact-checking any Murdoch content would be singularly problematical………………
……how does one go about checking something that proudly claims to be “Fact-Free”?
It is way past time to classify NewsCorp and Sky as entertainers, not genuine news purveyors. While Auntie (and SBS) are often criticised as ‘leftie elites’ (with some truth, too often), they remain the only mostly credible sources of actual information in this country, at least in electronic form. ACMA and immoral politicians’ are being used by the ratbag Right to hamstring the ABC. Time to get real and hamstring the purveyors of ‘alternative truth’ instead!
ABC and SBS are leftie elites? Anyone claiming that obviously has little to no idea where the centre is.
A year ago, in rural Victoria, I had the dubious pleasure of watching Sky’s Paul Murray (with guest Angus Taylor) berate the Labor Government for their intention to ban all mining in Australia. Yes, you read that correctly. “I’ve got a word for you,” bellowed Murray. “Lithium! West Australia has the world’s biggest supply, and Labor won’t let anyone dig it up.” Taylor nodded along obediently as Murray outlined how the election of Federal Labor would ruin the country, even though Taylor – like Murray himself – knew that it was all hyperbole and bullsh*t.
The point is that Murray couldn’t be excused as a mentally challenged guest who’d got a case of rightwing motormouth psychosis. It was Murray’s own show! If ACMA applied the same rules to Sky After Dark that they apply to the ABC, then SAD wouldn’t be let on the air.
I wonder if anyone lodges SAD complaints with ACMA?
If the ABC and SBS lean left, in doing so they provide balance to the mainstream media as a whole. NewsCorp and Sky are “righty elites”, whatever that means, just as often.
Not the point. What they produce is supposed to be balanced and neither Left nor Right.
The ABC receives plenty of whinging from the left and the right, often on the same interview, episode or program. It never ceases to give me a giggle.
Wrong. That would mean saying nothing. They should be Left and Right (as judged by the potential political spectrum, not as judged by creep-suing-Crikey or an LNP politician) and balanced overall – which they do a much better job of than any other MSM. Still probably overall centre Right – when have you heard them criticise capitalism or the insane rush to start a war with China?
Wrong. That would mean reporting actual facts and leaving their personal views out of any report. The Media in reality dress up stories as “Analysis” when they, in fact, are Opinion. It’s not just the ABC, it’s all of them. I want facts, not some hacks opinion dressed up as “news” or “analysis”. Crikey is just as guilty of this too.
Agree that there is too much opinion and not enough evidence. And not just the journalist’s opinion, but others’ opinions, as in ‘he said’, ‘she said’.
A recent example on ABC radio PM about unions calls for a bargaining fee quoted at length the opinions of unions, employers and Coalition MP’s, and just a passing reference to the system working well in western Europe. Surely we should be hearing the facts about where it works and how it works. Easier for lazy journalists to just grab opinions.
But facts can also create bias because outlets choose which facts to include and which to exclude. And practicality requires news to be in manageable chunks, which may require the balance to be measured over several sessions, not just in each and every session.
Do tell………
…how was this story presented in the LNP propaganda wing?
(AKA “He Who Must Not Be Named”)
This story was on ABC radio’s PM program. Just left the listener understanding that it was something the unions wanted and business and the Coalition didn’t want. It was ‘balanced’ in the sense it didn’t take sides between people who wanted it and people who didn’t want it, but (to take lexus’ valid point above) it was crap reporting because it didn’t present facts about where this system is operating and how it is operating – lots of opinion, bugger-all facts.
I find Guardian Australia to be a credible news source.
It was much, much better when it first started, but yes still decent now.
The best thing about The Guardian is Amy’s commentary on Question Time. Those funny little asides or inclusions of the actual truth after reporting a question or answer make QT bearable. If I listen to QT and it’s particularly bad, I pop back and read Amy’s commentary to recover my humour.
First Dog, second best. But all the Harry clickbait is appalling.
For every five pieces that are too far right (usually simply parroting the government of the day in a uneducated fashion (Speersy)), it has one piece that is too far left (sometimes a petty story on a politician that never makes up for the soft stuff they’ve pushed).
I find the ex/retired ABC journos are the best to follow these days.
Ex/retired NewsCorp journos can also become worthy sources.
Well, that’s a really good analysis of the role of ACMA in these situations. I do though think you way to kind about the particular and most recent assessment that is in question. It was IMHO, a genuinely awful piece of work.
Are members of the general public able to lodge complaints with ACMA about the bias on the Murdoch run media ?