Friday’s Crikey story from the ABC insider is further testimony on the closed and submissive culture that has overwhelmed our National broadcaster.
Another senior ABC insider, Kirsten Garrett, Executive Producer of Background Briefing, in an extremely defensive letter to the SMH on October 22 , wrote; “The media should spend a little more time getting the full story. These changes have taken a year of careful working through, and most of us support them. Radio National cannot remain static, and its core of specialisation is not threatened.”
A year of careful working through? Well that belled the cat. Kirsten’s revelation should give Mark Scott — and the rest of staff and us — some more pause for thought on what the Top Dog is being told! If Kirsten is to be taken at her word, how come Stephen Crittenden’s recent brave revelation was the first time that these “carefully worked through ” changes had penetrated beyond an obviously secure and secret fire-wall? And should we believe the assurances coming from Kirsten (but not her Radio bosses and Corporate PR people) that these conclaves are going to give us “an invigorated presence next year “?
Thankfully, during 37 years with the ABC my experience was one where open discussion and sharing of information and ideas was aimed at integrity and producing the best possible programmes. There was workplace democracy with encouragement for all staff, not just a few carefully chosen “safe hands”, to have input when programming decisions were being taken. If Mark Scott is as ropable over the RN imbroglio as last Friday’s ABC insider suggests, could it be because he’s allowed the top-down culture inherited from the disastrous Jonathon Shier period and an extremely contained Board, to thrive?
The crass excuses from the computerised corporate-speak lexicons utilised by RN Head Jane Connors and others on the day of Crittenden’s suspension are revealing, eg..; “Interdisciplinary, consumer-focused reporting”. In real speak this is dumbing-down — pure and simple!
Rather than aspiring to enhance the case for better ABC funding to provide specialist programmes, the capitulators are bending the knee to bland, populist sentiment handed down from a closed circle of highly paid powerful managers who don’t like the boat to be rocked. To deny the Specialist RN programme strands such as Religion and Ethics, Media and Radio Eye and Street Stories will not only be a breach of Charter obligations but a savage curtailing of informed research and open debate.
Across mainstream media we are witnessing the destruction of so much good journalism as profits for shareholders become more important than ideas. As an entity funded by taxpayers for the public good the ABC should not compete in the same environment. Our ABC can afford to be the leading patron of a much richer endeavour. Unless, its leadership has dumped values for simple ideology?
ABC management seems to be doing everything in its power to kill off Radio National. The latest nail in its coffin is the introduction of ABC News Breakfast on ABC2 , which is aimed at the audience that until now has provided a devoted following for Radio National Breakfast with Fran Kelly, As ABC2 becomes more accessible and politicians and other luminaries decide they’d prefer to be seen as well as heard, RN Breakfast will lose its attraction and ABC management can safely consign it, along with The Religion Report, the Media Report and The Sports Factor, to the scrapheap.
Radio National was faced with a Coogee Bay sandwich – an exploding online audience meant more resources were needed to feed all those digital buggers only trouble was there were no more resources – no wonder it had to cannibalise itself.
The real tragedy is that despite being called the ‘jewel in the ABC’s crown’ Mark Scott failed to see that we couldn’t do more on-line with no more dough, so the cake had to be re-cut. Now he pretends he didn’t know. Sounds like plausible deniability to me. And now Radio National management have fluffed the exercise…phulease….put me on a panadol drip please before more of us ‘go rogue’.
If in fact Kirsten Garrett (whom I have admired greatly for years as a consumate professional) is to be believed in her (personal?) SMH letter that the recent announcements are the product of a year’s serious discussion and analysis, then we have more to be worried about than I thought. Her letter was very defensive and smacked of the kind of elitism and go-away sentiment that once she would have decried. If indeed it has been planned for so long, where the hell is the quality and relevant outcome that meets the contemporary media challenges AND accords with the national broadcaster’s cultural role? All we have had so far is ham-fisted amateur hour well larded with competing leaks. Even the likes of Meg Simons has found it hard to penetrate the inner-inner-inner workings of the ABC especially the realities surrounding the office of Director of Radio, Sue Howard, so her admonitions to get the story right ring a tad hollow although much of the shallow knee-jerk reporting about the Religion Report has been annoying .
As for John Highfield’s trip down memory lane, even alluding to “workplace democracy”, there has been precious little of that in the ABC corridors of late. But this veteran’s summing up of the tensions between values and ideology are very close to the mark. I fear we are seeing all the signs of the loss of a media and cultural treasure house. Kirsten makes the too easy assumption that most critics fear change. Well this one has advocated major change editorially and stylistically at RN for some time. It is badly needed. Real and inventive change is the key. But what we seem to be observing is just more of the same old ill-conceived and poorly informed rubbish the RN management and their superiors seem to do so well.
While most attention has focussed on the dumped Religion Report, I consider the loss of a Media Report to be as if not more damaging to the national knowledge and discussion bank. An improved one might even get the RN story right!