Bring intellectual diversity back to the ABC

The great advantage the ABC has over its commercial rivals is its taxpayer-funded status. As a result, the public broadcaster is not just immune to the creative destruction of the marketplace. It also is well placed to provide to the Australian people news and current affairs in a genuinely fair and balanced way.

In recent years, alas, the ABC has failed to uphold its duty to live up to its charter to be even-handed. Sure, there are notable exceptions: Leigh Sales, Lisa Millar, Sabra Lane, David Lipson, Kirsten Aiken, defence correspondent Andrew Greene and Radio National’s Andrew West and Geraldine Doogue come to mind.

Nonetheless, there is little doubt that an entrenched left-liberal world view seriously undermines the ABC’s claim to be an impartial provider of news and current affairs. It’s not so much a party-political bias; the groupthink is better expressed as a cultural liberal ethos, with its unshakeable and sometimes bullying assumptions about how the nation should think and feel.

Take last year’s coverage of the Indigenous Voice referendum, which discriminated overwhelmingly in favour of constitutional change across various television, radio and online outlets. On the once high-profile Q&A panel program, Yes advocates outnumbered No supporters roughly by a ratio of 4:1. In her interview with Voice opponent Peter Dutton last year, 7.30 host Sarah Ferguson chastised the federal Opposition Leader for failing to be on “the right side of history.”

Yet the October referendum failed spectacularly by 60 to 40. In what was one of the biggest political stories of the past decade, Australia’s public broadcaster was tone-deaf to middle Australia’s thoughts.

In his six-year reign, outgoing managing director David Anderson did very little to remedy the deep-rooted problems, which continue to undermine the ABC’s legitimacy. And during his last few months as editor-in-chief, the lack of perspective and balance in the coverage of federal politics have been disturbingly evident.

So Laura Tingle, the 7.30 chief political correspondent, gives her (invariably leftist) views in Australian Financial Review opinion columns and at writers festivals. Earlier this year she made the offensive, and insupportable, claim that Australia was a “racist country” — a nation so racist that people from across the globe, irrespective of their race and religion, have longed to live in it. (Can anyone imagine esteemed journalists Mark Colvin or Maxine McKew letting their guard down during their heyday at the ABC?)

So Anderson rides off into the sunset, leaving his successor to clean out the stables.

To be sure, as anyone who is interested in the public broadcaster’s future recognises, the discontent with its output precedes Anderson’s tenure.

For decades, the ABC’s internal politics have been solidly centre-left. For example, when an investigative documentary or current affairs program — or a drama, comedy or opinion program — has expressed an attitude or tone of voice, it has been more likely a narrow, politically correct one.

Again, with rare exceptions, ABC staffers — from the most junior researcher to the most senior producer — are subject to the same ideological groupthink. It requires courage to air dissent; there is an ABC consensus on key issues such as energy, refugees, LGBT, Black Lives Matter,  anti-terror laws, market reforms and, not least, the US presidential election where one could be forgiven for thinking the corporation is barracking for Kamala Harris.

Nothing surprising about any of this. As Boris Johnson said of British public broadcast journalists two decades ago: “All their instinct and culture is to support state funding over the private sector — which is not surprising, since they are state-funded themselves”.

He further noted: “In any argument they will instinctively gravitate to what they think is the most civilised and liberal option, irrespective of the merits of the case”.

In the Australian context, they are located on a political spectrum running from Matt Kean and Malcolm Turnbull, via the teals towards Tanya Plibersek and Adam Bandt. Yet loud complaints from the public have been routinely — and sometimes contemptuously — ignored.

The task ahead for Anderson’s successor is formidable. How will they start the task of reshaping journalistic output so that there is some semblance of fairness and balance?

A good start would be to embrace real diversity in the newsroom — that is, intellectual diversity — which means trying to find sound journalists who are sympathetic to more conservative or centre-right views and promoting them up the ranks.

Another way to address ABC groupthink is to insist that journalists deliver news instead of opinion. Better yet, encourage presenters and reporters to emulate the likes of Andrew Olle and Tony Jones of yesteryear: well-informed and worldly members of the fourth estate who were intellectually quick on their feet and understood what questions their viewers might want asked.

For some critics, all this may be beside the point. The so-called right in this country knows the ABC is under the sway of leftists, it believes the public broadcaster is incapable of reform and, with digital broadcasting and the internet, it argues for the ABC’s privatisation. (I once made this argument, too.)

However, the ideal ABC — a broadcaster that is genuinely fair and non-partisan — still has merit, especially in these direly divided times, and under the appropriate leadership it ought to try to reform itself. That is an argument that should resonate with instinctive small-C conservatives who value institutional tradition and continuity.

Whoever replaces Anderson should recognise there must no longer be an ABC type, so to speak — the sort of woke left-liberal who has turned Aunty into a political monoculture.

After all, that sensibility dominates across not just local media outlets such as The Age/The Sydney Morning Herald, the Ten Network and Black Inc publications such as The Saturday Paper and The Monthly, but also global brands such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, CNN, MSNBC and the BBC (except the latter’s excellent World Service).

The ABC should be above and beyond all that. In the post-Anderson era, taxpayers expect no less.

Tom Switzer is executive director of the Centre for Independent Studies and a former presenter at the ABC’s Radio National.