editorial
11 Nov 2008
It's Your ABC, Literally
Mark Scott wants the ABC to be Australia's "town square", where any Joe Plumber can take part in the conversation. But is that really the best role for a national broadcaster — or will it come at the expense of quality, specialist journalism?
The recent cuts announced at Radio National are the latest in a concerted push within the ABC to move away from its role as authoritative newsmaker — with the journalist as the "expert" who informs the masses — and towards audience-driven content and interactivity. As ABC Managing Director Mark Scott said in an address to the inaugural Future of Journalism conference in April this year: "We are no longer the broadcaster as oracle". Instead, Scott wants to "host a conversation".It's an odd move for a national broadcaster — and one that deserves close scrutiny.
The Future of Journalism conference, which was organised by the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance and hosted by the ABC, was a two-day event looking at the effect of the internet and other new(ish) technologies on the practice and profitability of journalism.
Fifteen years after the popularisation of the net, its effect on the media industry is only now becoming clear. And boy has it thrown proprietors, managers and journalists into a digital spin.
The conversations at the conference were two-fold: on one hand were discussions about the seemingly endless possibilities for content production that have opened up because of new technology. These were less giddy than those that were going on within the IT industry pre the dot-com bust — and more obviously informed by experience — but in some cases only just. The "new world" and "the revolution" became acceptable terms throughout the sessions, apparently invoked without irony.
On the other hand was some serious soul-searching on behalf of journalists about their role in the future of media production.
Bizarrely, in this period of great uncertainty and change, it is journalists who are being forced to re-evaluate their use to the media industry — as though the industry would exist without them. As the ground under them shifts, it's interesting and somewhat sad to watch old-school practitioners of journalism lose faith in their knowledge and experience.
We'll live to regret it if we sideline the talented veterans of our news industry — and fail to foster new journalistic talent by cutting cadetship programs as Fairfax is about to — in favour of a shiny, new, interactive toy.
As media commentator Margaret Simons pointed out at the conference, while it's true that journalists will need to learn new skills if they are to function effectively in the media industry of the future, there are qualities that are integral to the role of the journalist that are bound to survive this shift. The journalist's role of "finding things out" cannot be underestimated — or replaced by the blogosphere — she said.
In fact, a newspaper or broadcaster is worth next to nothing without the contacts and knowledge that exist within their journalistic staff. And these staff can — and do — take it all with them when they go. More and more we are seeing experienced journalists who are fed up with their conditions strike out into independent ventures (made possible by the internet) which then benefit from this knowledge.
If they want their outlets to survive the "revolution", media proprietors should be moving to shore up their journalistic capital, not laying off journalists in favour of multi-skilled, net-savvy 19-year-olds, or diluting their worth by making highly specialised journalists broaden their interests and learn how to upload video to the net. (And as much as Pool is an interesting initiative, is it really more a part of Radio National's remit than, say, the Religion Report?)
As Quentin Dempster argued in an article for newmatilda.com yesterday, "The digital revolution has been extraordinarily good for the ABC, but this success has been heavily dependant on the quality of the product that the broadcaster is known for" (my italics).
It's imperative that media outlets do not get too swept up in the power-of-interactivity hype — at the expense of the very content that is driving audiences to them.
At the conference, online journalism guru Jay Rosen spoke about the "digital migration" that is about to take place within media organisations. Some of us will make it over to the other side — and others won't, he said via live cross from the United States.
ABC journalist and MC for the event, Dominique Schwartz, jokingly asked whether we needed a Moses to lead the way. Rosen reckoned no; but in Australia at least it seems that Crikey co-owner Eric Beecher has offered himself up for the role, and — if the conference proceedings are anything to go by — he's been largely accepted by the journalistic masses. Whenever a question arose about what the future of Australian media might look like, Beecher was called on to answer it.
As much as I greatly admire the work that Crikey does, I'd hate to think that it is being seen as the way forward for Australian media. Small online outlets such as Crikey (and including newmatilda.com) pay nowhere near union rates for their content. In championing this model, I'm not sure that many of the journalists present realised they were also putting themselves out of work or onto seriously low wages.
The question that prompted the most soul-searching at the conference, and came up in almost every session, was: Who will pay for "quality journalism" in the future, as the advertising industry turbulently realigns itself in response to a proliferation of new outlets and opportunities?
The answer? Those outlets that are not subject to the whims of the market, of course.
The ABC is no longer the broadcaster as oracle, reckons Mark Scott, they are hosting a conversation. I say leave it to the blogosphere to host a conversation, Mr Scott. You are managing a government-funded national broadcaster — this is as close to an oracle as it gets. Which is as it should be.
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Dear Marni,
Mark Scott needs take some skeletons out of the ABC’s closet before he can embark on his new venture….
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8075&page=0
Surely he jests! I have it in official communications from the ABC after complaints about Lateline and Jones: our journalists suck!
With regard to even rudimentary checking of the veracity of presentations the ABC said: "It appears from your comments that you are suggesting that the ABC’s responsibility in this regard extends to ensuring that the predictions and analysis …….. are themselves accurate. With respect, this is simply not the role of a broadcaster like the ABC."
With regard to balance and impartiality the ABC said: "There was no obligation for this report to include a response from other scientists who might challenge the ….. findings. "
So we [the ABC] will not check any stories or present any alternative views and that’s official!
Get real, the ABC has a left wing political agenda which it pushes down our throats at every opportunity. There is not even the pretence of quality objective journalism at the ABC, fix that first Mr Scott!!
I have been waiting for 40 years for someone in the Establishment to suggest something like this that could give "effective free speech" to educated, humanitarian, informed Australians with something important and useful to say. I made similar suggestions in my over 150 "ignored" suggestions for the Australian 2020 gabfest (see: http://www.australia2020.gov.au/submissions/viewTopic.cfm?id=2015&count=… ).
Mark Scott’s proposal does not have to be "either or" - it can be a very cheap but immensely empowering adjunct to existing ABC services.
There are various models for this already in North America, Asia and Europe.
Thus the Canada-based Media With Conscience News (MWC News) has reader feedback and expert scientific and political articles some top, expert , pro bono publico writers from around the world including top US English and Journalism professors to top US law professors (e.g. Professor Marjorie Cohn, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and the President of the National Lawyers Guild) (see: http://mwcnews.net/HomePage ).
The US Newsvine (recently taken over by MSNCBC) provides another model with articles written by "citizen journalists" , "seeding" of links to important news stories from around the world and moderated reader comment and dialogue (see: http://www.newsvine.com/ ) . This model suffers because of inexpert, anonymous, typically Bush-ite and neocon hyperbole and right-wing, "nationalist" censorship mechanisms.
An ABC version of the best of MWC News and Newsvine could involve 2 simultaneous versions, (a) the QUALITY version in which good quality articles came from non-anonymous, qualified, credentialled community, profession, business, worker, government and academic writers and comments were also non-anonymous and qualified by simple descriptive (e.g. "Professor of Climate Science, University of Melbourne", "Indigenous community leader", "retired plumber"); (b) the open-slather, open-source mechanism with anonymous, uncredentialled writers and commentators and anything goes subject to code of conduct rules.
Unfortunately we live in a society with an entrenched Culture of Ignoring, of Censorship, Self-Censorship and Ignoring.
Thus in the last month I wrote as a serious, 4 decade research scientist to about 3,000 variously eminent and influential Australian journalists, politicians and other citizens informing them of about 20 quite shocking facts (e.g. shocking academic holocaust denial, the climate emergencyignoring that may doom the Great Barrier Reef, horrendous childhood sexual abuse of 1/3 of Australian women, horendous post-invasion excess deaths in Occupied iraq and Occupied Afghanistan) - shocking realities that are resolutely IGNORED by Australian Mainstream media, politicians and academics (see "Climate Emergency, Exceptionalism & Ignoring Downunder. Letter to Eminent Australians over Public Honesty": http://mwcnews.net/content/view/25702/42/ ).
Shockingly, only 0.2% responded positively to my plea to "inform everyone you can".
This is a very serious matter because this present, entrenched Culture of Ignoring represents a major impediment to rational risk management in Australia - unthinkable but real, this Culture of Ignoring is now set to destroy the Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu and our remaining forests - it has already devastated the Murray-Darling. (see Professor Jared Diamnond;s chapter on Australia in"Collapse").
I love my country, have had a very busy 4 decade research career (I still teach university students) and I publish a HUGE amount OVERSEAS at the Science/Society interface in the interests of Humanity (e.g. see: http://mwcnews.net/Gideon-Polya ) - yet, apart from comments like this on articles in New Matilda, and Australian Humanist commentary and articles, I have almost NO voice in the Mainstream media of my own country except for the odd letter published in the Mainstream media, and the much rarer radio broadcast on the ABC.
Can we prove that Australia is NOT the Land of Flies, Lies and Slies (spin-based untruth)?
Why doesn’t New Matilda explore the QUALITY version I outlined above by greatly expanding its present operations along the lines suggested?
Peace is the only way but Silence kills and Silence is complicity.
You will see what you want to see Mr Volvo. What is your definition of objective journalism, Fox News? The Australian?
The difference, desertdude, is simple: I can CHOOSE to pay for the privilege of reading the Australian or the SMH or watching Fox and I can choose not to support the mainstream commercial media but I have no choice in paying for the ABC.
Having an independent, impartial and unbiased media is crucial to successful democracy and the only non commercial media is the ABC. Unfortunately it’s news service is farcical when it comes to this crucial role!
The ABC failed miserably in highlighting the now obvious and highly significant financial crisis. Since reading independent opinions from the CEC (al la Lyndon? LaRouche) early in the year (if not late last year) I only heard reassuring interviews with "experts" on Radio National when eventually things started to fall apart. Yet the CEC opinions referring to an enormous problem of disastrous proportions were reasoned and evidence-based.
Marni Cordell questions Mark Scott’s view that the ABC should be a "town square, where any Joe Plumber can take part in the conversation”.
However to exclude Joe the Plumber from the national conversation is deeply undemocratic.
British anthropologist Georgina Born in her important essay Digitising Democracy argues that in multicultural societies (she includes both the U.K. and Australia) the public sphere function of a national broadcasters, is more important than ever.
She notes that in the United States, where there is no public broadcaster with broad appeal, ethnic and cultural minorities have fragmented, and tend not to engage with one another or the broader community.
It is different in the UK, where she argues that alongside “the universal orientation, the ethical and consensual address of mass channels and impartial news functions” (i.e. the BBC as an expression of the bourgeois public sphere) there needs to be “a rich array of communicative channels for the self-representation, participation and expressive narrativisation of minority and marginalised groups, addressed both to and among those groups and to the majority. In this way the architecture of public service communications will encompass both practices of toleration and the politics of presence, and will contribute to the formation of a more adequate communicative democracy that we have yet seen.”
At a pragmatic level the ABC and the SBS would not survive if they were to be little more than a plaything of the middle class. When the ABC is seen to be not popular enough it is attacked as an example of middle class welfare. For example:
“Taxpayers are not going to fork-out more money for the ABC, unless it caters more thoroughly and distinctively to their needs. ABC funding has been declining in real terms steadily since 1984 under both Labor and Coalition Governments and the reason is clear. The ABC has increasingly catered to a well-to-do elite who have other options available to them and have the wherewithal to purse these options. In other words, it is middle-class welfare. Its budget has been cut accordingly.” (Mike Nahan, Institute of Public Affairs).
Of course Nahan is wrong on the facts. Seventy-five percent of the population use the ABC on a regular basis.
However if the ABC were to move to the other extreme, to become simply a plaything of the middle class, it would not survive. It would not deserve to survive.
A PDF of Digitizing Democracy is available at
http://www.sps.cam.ac.uk/soc/staff/gborn/Digitising_Deomocracy.pdf
Your problem with quality lies right here, in posts. Even should a savvy journalist get an important story right, as soon as it hits the blogosphere the facts sink into a morass of deliberate and accidental misinformation, competing truths and biased commentary.
Surely the ABC is well placed to provide a credible and firewalled news service per its brand and charter, while at the same time providing opportunities for national conversation. The problem only arisies when we mistake one for the other.
Lets face it Marni, we know you can’t afford to pay for user generated content anyway. If you did you would owe Rockjaw, like, millions of dollars. Dr Polya seems to be going for a per-word rate as well.
I think the primary need is for the ABC to get rid of the idea of balance in news and current affairs. In practice, "balance" is a code word for the satisfaction of the propaganda requirements of the powers of the day.
Instead they need go for truth and quality. Such things are nothing more than a joke to commercial media; they are interested in profit alone. Therefore, the field is open for the ABC to establish itself as the nation’s foremost democratic organisation in the eyes of the informed public.
Thanks for your consideration Dr Dog, but I may have to pass on your proposal since it is my policy to receive remittance only in specie, preferably dubloons or pieces of eight and definitely no RBA notes or cheques drawn against suspect banks.
Nice piece. Hits the nail on the head….hope someone sends it around the ABC.
It is hard to remember any other era of public broadcasting where bland journalism has been so elevated. Although the ABC still seems lively compared to SBS which seems to have been totally handed over to zombie cadets.
It seems they are both still pissing in their pants about being called biased. Scott’s net strategy of embracing citizen journalism is just one more way of saying "don’t look at us, we’ve got nothing to say." We’ve got the message for the past 4 years Mr Scott. Get over it guys. Howard’s really is dead. He’s not going to jump out of any cupboards to scare you anymore. Now please get back to work.
One problem with turning the ABC into a forum can be seen by looking at ‘most viewed articles’ on SMH or the ratings of TV shows. They show a worrying obsession with celebrity, sexual trivia and shock and horror over substance.
There still needs to be well funded investigative journalists who know the tricks to winkle out the truth from the spin. Citizens can’t do that. Someone needs to draw the line in the sand and say that the opinion of every vested interest should not get equal time against the well reasoned and researched information. Even after it was proven that there was no link between Saddam an Al-Qaeda, US news outlets reported speeches that repeated the lies time and time again without pointing out the truth. That’s the sort of nonsense that is even sneaking into ABC reports due to the mewlings of the lunar right claiming bias.