Anyone watching the media over the past week might have been tempted to think that there was a war going on between News Limited and the ABC.
News Limited has attacked ABC managing director Mark Scott for suggesting that Auntie’s content is free to the user, when in fact it is paid for by the taxpayer. But boy, is there a gap between the rhetoric of media leaders and what actually happens, because News Limited is quite happy to use that taxpayer-funded content on its own sites, for free.
And even more astonishingly, the ABC is happy for it to happen.
It’s all about News Limited’s new online-only publication The Punch. Respected ABC “brand” journalists, including Lateline presenter Leigh Sales and PM‘s Mark Colvin are writing material that appears on the ABC’s Unleashed site and on The Punch.
The ABC’s personalities are being promoted as regular Punch contributors and their copy appears with advertisements run alongside. News Limited gets this content for free. No reimbursement is made to the ABC or the individuals.
In June, Colvin and Sales were announced on the site as “our latest punchers” among others described as being “from other media outlets who are traditionally regarded as competitors of News Limited”. Since then, The Punch has made liberal use of material from the ABC Unleashed site, including most recently an article by director of television Kim Dalton.
Leigh Sales has been promoting her column on Twitter with links to the ABC Unleashed site and to the Punch. This morning Sales did not return calls asking for comment, and Mark Colvin declined to comment.
Why is it so? Surely the taxpayer has paid these people’s salaries, and indeed has supported the careers that have made them “known names”.
The editor of The Punch, David Penberthy, said that the idea for columns by Sales and Colvin came from The Punch, not from the ABC. “Mark Scott said that they would be behind it, providing the material also ran on the ABC Unleashed site,” Penberthy said.
He said the benefit to the ABC was that appearing on The Punch brought its journalists a new audience, people who were not necessarily traditional ABC viewers or listeners. Asked whether he saw an irony in News Ltd’s use of taxpayer-funded content given the current debate, Penberthy said, “I can see why people would think there was an irony … people have every right to raise their eyebrows and discuss it, but in the context of the sort of site we are the fact that there is a debate does not mean that we are going to turn around and back away from it.”
Apparently the ABC sees the deal as being part of its new media-savvy philosophy of being a more porous institution — indeed less of an institution and more of a collaborative network and a provider of content, pushing it out to audiences wherever they can be found. Many commentators (including me) think this is the way forward for media. But does it mean giving commercial operators something for nothing?
Despite its apparent contempt for taxpayer-funded media, News Limited is quite happy to take advantage.
An ABC spokeswoman said this morning:
The piece written by the ABC’s director of television Kim Dalton yesterday was published on ABC Unleashed and on The Punch — it is no different from writing an opinion piece for say The Australian or the Sydney Morning Herald or Crikey. It is an opportunity to lay down an argument to a readership around an issue that is generating a lot of debate — in this case the ABC’s new program, John Safran’s Race Relations.
Currently, Leigh Sales and Mark Colvin’s ABC “Off Air” blogs are also published on The Punch as a way to extend the readership of the blogs and share the content on the ABC’s News Online site, broadening the offering to audiences. The journalists are not paid by The Punch.
Even if one agrees (as I do) that the ABC’s role is changing, and networking is what it is all about, there is another reason why this deal is on the nose to some. Normally the launch of a new title is a cause of celebration among journalists, but in this case the pleasure was muted by the fact that The Punch does not pay its contributors. Nor, it should be said, does its rival, Fairfax’s National Times.
What happens to journalists, particularly freelance journalists, if commercial publications are able to source quality content without having to pay for it, thanks to the public “broadcaster”?
Meanwhile, I hear on the grapevine that the Punch may not be with us forever. Apparently within the News Limited organisation, very tight deadlines have been imposed on the newbie to prove itself as a commercial proposition.
Nice of Auntie to help Rupert, isn’t it?
Hi Margaret – in this article both you and David Penberthy say that the Mark Colvin and Leigh Sales blogs are published on Unleashed as well as the Punch. Actually, they’re on the Off Air blog, which isn’t part of Unleashed; it comes under the ABC News Online banner.
One broadcaster might take a wry view of all his – Stephen Crittenden of the religious broadcasting department – was suspended a few years ago for daring to write a book review for a newspaper without getting permission first. Although Critto was well known for standing up to managers (and later did it on air to his cost) the review made no mention of the ABC but was used as a way of getting at him by a particularly dumb bully whose term running ABC national networks was as much a mystery to himself as everyone else in radio. Such types continue to blight our lives.
This is basic corporate economics 101.
Socialise your costs and privatise the profits.
Well I’m starting to get this now. Penberthy is the more centrist style of News Corp smartie along with Farr and that chick in the Sunday Telegraph to offset the nasty malice of Piers and Tim Blair with Hildebrand in a sort of zoo cage of his own – locked and loaded you might say. Milne is clearly conservative but he does aspire to real journalism at times while Piers here is well an intellectual and moral &*$%# whose words are related to reality the way the Earth is in the solar system somewhere.
And I would suggest Punch and classy name bloggers from ABC both have something to offer each other. ABC get to reinforce a guy who at the least is not a racist on the flanks of the Beast. Not a small thing in a safari park like News Corp. And they get some friendly copy on John Saffran in return which is a bonus (eg today’s Sydney Telegraph press).
On the other hand both want to contest Crikey’s increasing consolidation of web cut through in the centrist stakes. Because in its demographic the ABC has as much of a corporate self interest as anyone. One might say that is the ABC’s genius – to promote balance with them as Gatekeeper. And News Corp are offended by any commercial model like crikey that they can’t cook and eat.
So there you go Crikey, it’s a backhanded compliment. Now I guess you know how other commercial business feel about ABC forays in various economic sectors with their tax boost. Life was not meant to be easy. Indeed Unleashed is a crikey rival in a golden cage too (and thereby lacking that wild pizazz).
(But I will say one thing when I covered an education rally at Sydney uni pre 2007 Howard defeat, with lots of nice embarrassing pics and was molested by security stooges and banned off the campus, one person offered this freelance blogger some sectoral moral support – Mark Colvin, bless his socks. That meant alot to me at the time. Even the student association had nothing to say, and I was publicising their rally. Scared or what? I distinctly remember that woman from the Glasshouse doing her student union work and taking a very wide berth so the goons didn’t go her. Celebrity without solidarity.
Eventually pressure from the NSW Ombudsman forced the university to lift their fascist ban on valid community media. Tsk tsk.)