ABC must tackle bias
With ABC managing director Mark Scott confirming recently that after a decade in the role he will be stepping down, speculation is rife as to who his successor may be. A number of prominent names have been put forward as potential replacements, including key figures from the fields of business, media and academia.
With ABC managing director Mark Scott confirming recently that after a decade in the role he will be stepping down, speculation is rife as to who his successor may be. A number of prominent names have been put forward as potential replacements, including key figures from the fields of business, media and academia.
Given the scope of the corporation’s many and varied activities, the successful candidate will have to be adept at managing a number of diverse services. After all, there’s far more to the ABC than simply broadcasting the wide range of TV and radio shows we enjoy in Australia’s metropolises. We are talking about an empire that reaches out to rural communities, that provides educational resources for students and teachers, that incorporates a significant online presence and, of course, that airs news, views and current affairs from both home and overseas on our TVs, radios, computers and smartphones.
In short, the job facing the successful candidate is a challenging one, requiring considerable business acumen, creativity and a solid grasp of, and ability to deliver, what the Australian public expects of its national broadcaster.
And one of the things they expect is balanced, unbiased, objective reporting. This, though, is not just a fanciful expectation. The ABC’s own Code of Practice commits it to “accurate and impartial” presentation of news and information.
Time and again, however, it fails.
Earlier this year, the corporation’s editorial integrity became a matter of public concern after Zaky Mallah was allowed to ask a question on the broadcaster’s flagship Q&A program. But for members of the Jewish community, the ABC’s editorial integrity was already in doubt, with a number of reports from Israel not only exhibiting a distinct lack of balance, but in some cases reflecting individual journalists’ personal political opinions.
Readers will no doubt recall February 2014’s Four Corners episode in which the IDF was accused of targeting Palestinian children for arrest in the middle of the night, assaulting them while in detention and forcing confessions from them. The report omitted key facts about the cases it highlighted, relied on unverified allegations from sources with questionable credibility that were subsequently repudiated, failed to give context and, moreover, quoted negative UNICEF findings about the IDF, without mentioning more recent UNICEF findings that actually noted significant improvements in the IDF’s operations.
Fast-forward to July 2014 and the war with Hamas, and there were numerous cases where the ABC’s focus was on Israel’s targeted airstrikes rather than the rockets being fired indiscriminately at Israeli cities from Gaza. In one instance, seemingly oblivious to Hamas’s tactics of using human shields and the IDF’s warnings to civilians to evacuate ahead of strikes, the ABC’s Sarah Ferguson asked Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman Mark Regev: “Do you take enough care to avoid those casualties, ‘cause it appears the answer is no?”
In the past year alone, the ABC has featured no fewer than 20 times in our Media Week column from AIJAC, with the same problems noted in each instance. Whether discussing subsequent investigations into the war, house demolitions, the blockade of Gaza, the Jewish connection to Jerusalem or other issues, there’s a lack of context, a lack of balance, the omission of relevant facts, interviewees with a clear agenda, and little, if any, official Israeli responses or explanations of the matters under discussion.
Throw into the mix, a two-part documentary this July produced by a prominent BDS activist that effectively accused Israel of apartheid, and even included claims that Jerusalem was “being ethnically cleansed” and that the Jewish State was “imposed” and “artificial”, and the ABC appears to be acting, in some cases, as a pro-Palestinian propaganda mouthpiece.
Indeed, just two weeks ago, Leigh Sales introduced a report by Sophie McNeill stating that two Palestinians had been shot while boarding a school bus. No mention was made that they were actually armed and had knifed a man before being shot.
McNeill, meanwhile, focused on settlement construction as the cause for the recent spike in terror, failing at any point to note the now well-documented incitement from Palestinian leaders and in Palestinian media, which has been encouraging stabbings, lauding attackers as heroes and calling for the blood of innocent Jews to be spilled.
Even a Palestinian girl shot dead while trying to stab an Israeli soldier is referred to by McNeill as a “friendly, gifted student”.
This from our national, “impartial” broadcaster.
Four weeks ago, Lord Michael Grade, a former chairman of the ABC’s British counterpart, the BBC, lambasted the corporation he once helmed, over its coverage of the recent terror attacks in Israel. In a letter to the head of news, he slammed the “lack of balance” in a particular report, described one of the journalist’s assertions as “misleading”, and claimed “regrettably, this is not the first time the standard of reporting and impartiality has been unsatisfactory in recent weeks.”
These are all terms that could justly be applied to reports about Israel on our own ABC. But while it is all well and good for a former boss to take a broadcaster to task, what is really required is a current boss who will take the broadcaster to task and ensure that such breaches of integrity and blatant displays of bias are not only not repeated, but also not tolerated.
Let us be quite clear, we are not calling for Israel, its government or its army to be declared sacrosanct or off limits. We merely want factual, balanced and fair reporting that is not skewed by the prejudices of particular reporters or that panders to popular or propaganda-driven misconceptions of the reality on the ground.
To that end, in appointing the new managing director, we urge the ABC board to consider not just how well the potential candidates can manage the corporation from a business perspective, but whether they have what it takes to confront and weed out the bias, and uphold the standards of balance and impartiality that we expect our national broadcaster to embody.
ZEDDY LAWRENCE
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