Shouting at ABC to raise standards won't help

With the ABC's quality continually dropping, it's imperative to find a productive way to register our opinions rather than complaining to deaf ears, writes Rosemary Sorensen.

WHO THE ABC hires as political reporters matters. And it does matter that, at a time when our public broadcaster is under the most virulent coordinated attack since Keith Murdoch kicked off the “waste of taxpayers’ money” refrain back in the 1930s, Australians fight for its existence.

The insertion into management, editorial and reporting roles of a hefty cohort of ex-Murdoch ideologues appears to have white-anted the solidity of the ABC’s quality. In criticising this decrease in reliability, however, we must not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

The trouble is, with such glaring failures, not just the bleeding obvious like the Antoinette Lattouf dismissal but also daily in the murky flapdoodle that counts as a radio or online headline, it’s easy to be outraged. Sending complaints has now been taken up by those of us who used to rely on the excellence of ABC reporting as an antidote to toxic Murdoch-driven propaganda.

Another trouble is that so many complaints mean that only those with special access (to, say, the chair of the Board), appear to be listened to. The rest, as ABC presenter Fauziah Ibrahim once memorably labelled her critics, are considered ‘lobotomised shitheads’, apparently.

The Lattouf trial: A question of bias at the ABC

Democratic freedoms, employee rights and public trust in the national broadcaster are all on trial in 'Antoinette Lattouf v Australian Broadcasting Corporation' trial.

What you get when you try to register your frustration, despair, or horror at sloppy journalism is an automated response suggesting the complaint might be noted, might be considered valid, might be referred to the ombudsman’s office “for assessment”. Don’t hold your breath.

Of course, this is overwhelming for the ABC to handle, which is why the extraordinary and immediate response to complaints about Antoinette Lattouf has poured fuel on the fire of outrage. It must be disheartening to be the staff charged with managing the volume of complaints and we do need to acknowledge that it’s one of the few places you can actually send feedback (even if it’s pretty clear there’s not much point).

The Murdoch media and right-wing politicians bang on about left-wing bias. Meanwhile, we get to hear ABC management attempting to explain why a fill-in radio host was whisked off-air because they were afraid she might shout “free Palestine” in the middle of an interview with a pop singer.

At the same time, brave keyboard warriors weigh in with derogatory comments every time Laura Tingle sets the record a wee bit straighter against the tide of bilge released hourly by propaganda machines.

While all that is going on, we hope against hope that we can still trust the ABC, on account of its reliable record and quality journalists.

Now, when ABC radio news on the hour constantly kicks off with yet another story about a “wave” of antisemitism and/or the Opposition Leader’s thought for the day, it’s difficult to be bothered defending their service. Online, it’s easier to find good stuff, mostly because of the input by RN journalists, but the incidence not just of shoddy, weak, suspect journalism is increasing.

It’s tempting, too, to find a simple reason – such as bias – for shoddy reporting. Monday morning,16 February, for example, Sabra Lane on ABC radio’s AM, introduced a story following the Albanese Government’s decision to pay Nauru to “resettle a murderer and two other violent offenders” as a way to respond to the problem of refugees released from detention by order of the High Court in 2023.

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The national broadcaster still refuses to fulfil its duty to broadcast the truth.

The story first ran on Sunday, with two ABC reporters quoting Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke talking about how the Government had found a solution to an ‘intractable’ situation, paying the detention-specialist country Nauru to accept three people who had ‘failed character tests’.

In the relentlessly churning news cycle, we didn’t immediately get a response from human rights advocates, although the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre’s deputy CEO issued a statement on Monday 17 February, warning about the “[un]lawfulness of banishing people offshore”.

Looking to refresh the story overnight with a three-minute report for Monday’s AM, one of the journalists had sound bites from Burke and, predictably, Shadow Home Affairs Minister James Paterson, but led off with a comment by former Home Affairs Secretary Mike Pezzullo.

Good call? It’s certainly a weird call, given Mr Pezzullo was sacked in 2023 after six years as secretary of the Department of Home Affairs, when an inquiry found he had breached the Australian Public Service Code of Conduct at least 14 times.

But if that’s a disgrace for a very senior public servant and if such a disgrace means you’re out of the picture at least for a few years, when it comes to public comment about matters of state, that’s not the case for Mr Pezzullo, who pops up pretty regularly to throw in his two bob’s worth.

It’s probably neither surprising, nor necessarily wrong, that an ABC journalist should grab a quick interview with a man whose experience is deep, and whose connections are vast. Why he is “former” could, perhaps, have been referenced; indeed, in this case, it should have been, because the bit that clearly got the journalist excited is the suggestion, by Mr Pezzullo, that Australia should take a leaf out of the Trump Administration’s book.

The story from the AM radio spot was picked up to appear on the ABC’s online politics blog and, probably because it got quite a bit of attention, it stayed pinned to the top of the blog page all morning. However, it appears that the Trump reference in the headline was removed as the day progressed: ‘Former home affairs secretary wants Australia to be “more aggressive”.’

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A recent interview on ABC was the subject of a formal complaint. The official response from the national broadcaster is even more problematic.

Here’s the bit that is a worry. The AM report transcript lists as “featured” Pezzullo, Burke and Paterson, and also Daniel Ghezelbash, Director of the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law.

On air, the reporter didn’t refer to Ghezelbash and neither was he heard speaking, so his contribution appears to have been summarised at the end of the report like this:

“The three non-citizens have been detained and are likely to be flown to Nauru in the coming weeks. It is expected their lawyers will mount a legal challenge against the Government to determine whether the resettlement is lawful.”

The journalist responsible for this story is a former Sky News employee, trained by example to find the outrage button in every story. And the journalist who picked it up to transfer it to the news blog, where it sat pinned to the top of the page as other stories filed in behind it, is also a former Sky News employee, so it’s fair to say they might have been employed by ABC News because they had the outrage-for-click-bait skills that are central to News Corp’s modus operandi.

I’ve no doubt there were complaints about that “be like Trump, says high-profile former public servant whose sacking for misconduct we won’t mention” story, so that, I suppose, counts as success in the current news climate to which the ABC appears to have subscribed.

The advantage the ABC should have is that it doesn’t need to top the ratings to be viable. If its journalists are driven first and foremost by the number of hits that accumulate on an online story, they’ll look for the noisy, rather than accurate, headline.

One way people who value the independence and quality of the ABC can, perhaps, slow down the rush towards sloppy click-bait journalism is to send not just complaints but positive feedback for work that is well done and appreciated. Just resigning ourselves to the decline in standards and shouting at an online complaint form is neither productive nor satisfying.