Janet Albrechtsen was a board member of ABC. In the following article she opens up on the ABC.
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Arrogant ABC’s left bias lets down taxpayers, and Q&A is proof
Janet Albrechtsen
Last week, Australian taxpayers were badly let down by the national broadcaster.
Let down by the producers of the ABC’s flagship panel show and by highly paid
Q&A host Tony Jones. Let down by managing director Mark Scott, who refuses to accept that with independence comes responsibility, and by ABC chairman Jim Spigelman, whom we never hear from.
And let down by a board of directors that is failing to meet its statutory obligations to ensure the ABC delivers news and information that is accurate and impartial and represents the diversity of the Australian community.
As a former ABC board member, I have some sympathy with the plight of individual board members. Perhaps, like other former board members such as me, they go to board meetings every month determined to ensure that the taxpayer-funded media organisation delivers on its legal obligations. Perhaps, as I was, they are met each month with a refusal by others, including a managing director, to hold the ABC to account. Perhaps, as I also did, they have tried but failed.
But there comes a point when it’s not enough to make pleas behind closed boardroom doors about the ABC abiding by statutory obligations to be balanced and impartial. There comes a point when the very deliberate actions of ABC producers, its so-called on-air talent and its managing director may bring the broadcaster into such disrepute that the reputational damage is wrought not just on the ABC’s brand but on the directors.
That point came last week when the producers of
Q&A made the most egregious decision to include Zaky Mallah in the show’s audience. The program searched for a contemptible gotcha moment instead of exercising due care around the safety of the audience and the brand of the ABC. That’s why I would have resigned, were I still on the board. Other former ABC board members expressed the same view to me last week.
It’s not just that
Q&A deliberately chose to include in its audience a convicted criminal, a terrorist sympathiser and a man who has tweeted that two prominent journalists should be publicly raped on national television.
It’s not just that it endangered the lives of the
Q&A audience by allowing into the studio a man who amassed 100 rounds of ammunition and a gun while making death threats against the men and women who serve in our security and intelligence services.
It’s not just that for days the managing director failed to confront this issue or that the ABC chairman has still not uttered a word about it publicly. (In the real world, when crises hit a corporation, the boss leads. Not at the ABC, where it was handballed to head of television Richard Finlayson, who offered his “error of judgment” statement on Tuesday.)
The real issue is the unflinching and unfailing arrogance that infects each of these decisions. It’s an arrogance from those at the ABC who won’t be told what to do, not even by a statute that sets down reasonable obligations as a quid pro quo for taxpayers funding the ABC to the tune of more than $1 billion a year.
Arguments that the ABC is just as entitled as other media outlets to be biased or lack balance couldn’t be more wrong. The ABC gets taxpayer money in return for meeting its statutory obligations. If the broadcaster can’t meet the latter, maybe it should stop receiving the former.
On
Insiders,
Malcolm Turnbull described
Q&A’s decision to include Mallah as “an undergraduate attempt at journalism”. He rightly said that decision undermined and made a mockery of what is a legitimate and important area of debate — the difficult tension between national security and individual liberty.
etc etc.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/new...-and-qa-is-proof/story-e6frg6n6-1227420620474
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The article is quite long
conclusion...
It’s most curious that we have not heard from a single ABC employee who thinks the Mallah affair reflected poorly on the ABC, without adding cheesy caveats, free speech red herrings or engaging in Cassidy-style hysterics about editorial independence. That too tells you a great deal about the ABC.
More crude arrogance was on show when Scott, like Cassidy, tried to make this a debate about the taxpayer-funded broadcaster’s independence. He mentioned independence 10 times, juxtaposing the ABC with state broadcasters in North Korea, Russia, China and Vietnam.
It was drivel. No one has challenged the ABC’s independence. But independence goes hand in hand with responsibility.
Taxpayers expect nothing more, nothing less.
While the Abbott government has called an inquiry into last week’s episode of
Q&A, what matters far more is Scott’s internal inquiry into this “error of judgment”. A sop to
Q&A will signal the depth and strength of arrogance within the most senior levels of ABC management, a supine chairman and an ineffective board. If there are not serious consequences for this, then when will there be?
Janet Albrechtsen is a member of the ABC/SBS appointments panel.
top two comments....
"Their ABC is untouchable and they know it and continue to give the one finger salute to conservative Australian taxpayers that are forced to fund them.
A taxpayer funded media conglomerate is an anachronism in this technological age where access to the electronic media is cheaply and readily accessible.
Repeal the ABC Act and make them a subscription service and those who want to watch their ABC can pay directly for it."
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"So, in effect, a gang of uni students who haven't grown up are given $1.1Bn a year to promote politicians like Rudd, Gillard and Sarah Hanson Young who think money grows on trees and the more of it spent on welfare the better."
My comment is, I endorse the second comment!! This is what got indoctrinated into them through the University system!!
cheers
