Last night’s Media Watch provoked a flurry of criticism on social media as the program aired a special episode on the coverage of Donald Trump. In particular, many expressed disappointment the program hadn’t touched on the ABC’s coverage of the South Australian blackout, which some ABC commentators, particularly political editor Chris Uhlmann, were quick to (in this instance, incorrectly) link to the state’s high reliance on renewable energy, to heavy criticism from renewable energy experts and advocates.
Asked why the program focused on Trump over anything close to home this morning, Media Watch’s executive producer Tim Latham told Crikey he’d wanted the Trump special to air between the two US presidential debates. The questions about how to cover Trump, he added, posed fundamental questions for all political reporting, including that in Australia. Latham said the show might focus on the South Australian blackout next week, but it would have been strange to tack on a quick mention at the end of last night’s show.
Was Media Watch in any way gagged or discouraged from covering the issue, a view widely shared on social media? “Of course not,” Latham said when Crikey asked. “Never have I been under pressure. The ABC gives us complete freedom. We’re clearly independent. We annoy a lot of people in the ABC.” In fact, he says, Media Watch has criticised the ABC’s reporting this year more often than it has criticised The Australian‘s.
The ABC’s reporting of the SA power blackout has been the subject of at least one complaint, by academic and New Matilda national affairs correspondent Ben Eltham, lodged with the ABC Audience and Consumer Affairs committee. An article by Uhlmann on the ABC this morning says that while the Australian Energy Market Operator denies last week’s blackout had anything to do with the state’s energy mix, the outage has “fuelled a furious debate about energy security”.
Media Watch had 838,000 national viewers last night (572,000 in the metros). — Myriam Robin
Media Watch was excellent, it will be interesting to see a follow-up just prior to the presidential election to monitor how much the US media coverage shifted.
As for Uhlmann writing ‘…the outage has “fuelled a furious debate about energy security”.’ That’s an ignorant debate he best has with himself rather than waste energy experts’ time.
Ask instead if it had anything to do with the world’s reliance on burning fossil fuels.
You make a good point, but even the Media Watch commentary on the coverage given to Trump was disappointing in that they failed to deal with the deliberate media blackout in the US (echoed in Australia by the way) of the Bernie Sanders campaign which was attracting enormous crowds to rallies and garnering increasing levels of support. Our media did virtually no independent analysis of its own, swallowing the “reportage” of the inside-the-Washington bubble pundits of the US mainstream media.
Including our very own fat, bald, bibulous & much loved grundle – who only ever mentioned the Bern is passing.
the outage has “fuelled a furious debate about energy security”.
Yeah, that’s just crap. It wasn’t a debate at all. A few ignorant people tried to make a connection between renewables and the blackout, and were promptly slapped down by people who actually knew what they were talking about. There really wasn’t any ‘grey’ to be debated. Uhlmann, Turnbull, Joyce et al were wrong.
Sadly, you need to use the present tense.
The Minister for **Innovation** is spouting nonsense about coal and keeping Arrium online, even though he is contradicted by the grid owner, grid operator and AGL (Australia’s biggest generator).
No, the Minister for Innovation is not looking to *innovate* to transition us to clean energy, but running the dumb fall back position of scare campaigns, untrue statements and party political accusations. In order to protect the incumbents of course and to run down clean energy of course.
Uhlmann is trying to keep it going, and the ABC is still generally pushing it in their standard “follow-Murdoch” way. And of course the hordes of Murdoch swill are still flogging it.
And Malcolm Roberts is praising Malcolm Turnbull for “coming around” to his point of view!
How do you turn the light on for Uhlmann?
Why? He clearly prefers being in the dark. On the dark side.