Save our ABC

In the war on public broadcasting, last week felt like the moment when its enemies simply stopped pretending to care. But, in the middle of the cross-fire, a tweet by ABC 702 presenter Richard Glover suggested a deeper problem.

Increased viewer and listener criticisms prompted Glover to tweet that he’d “never seen this level of abuse” directed at the ABC. He was quickly backed up by television presenters Virginia Trioli and Leigh Sales.

There’s a real fear, Glover says, that in the midst of partisanship, we risk losing the media as public square — a role that, now, only the ABC and SBS can play. Most complaints, he says, centre around just three programs – Q&A, The 7.30 Report and AM, the centre of the public square where the ABC rigorously tracks and enforces balance.

The complaints are largely exclusionary: why this person? Why that view? What are they doing in MY public square?

At the same time, as the faces of the ABC have become more female, it’s attracted sexist attacks; whether on MD Michelle Guthrie for being a Murdoch clone or on Leigh Sales for, well, not being Kerry O’Brien.

But most Australians experience the ABC through radio. Over the past 30-odd years, as ABC radio shifted from light entertainment to news and current affairs, most presenters (like Glover) came from journalism, not presenting.

The programs, particularly breakfast and drive, worked to become the public square for their city or community. That approach has encouraged a deliberate inclusive nice-ness, in direct contrast to the culture of resentment that drives much of commercial talk radio.

The criticisms of this inclusion are weaponised in the more serious existential attacks. In just the past week, we saw a Daily Telegraph “opinion” on SBS presenter Lucy Zelic’s “showing off” in her respectful pronunciation of foreign names; followed by the indecent haste with which News Corp jumped in after the Nauru government refused a visa to the ABC (matched with federal ministers mealy-mouthed assertion that this was just the Nauruan equivalent of “we decides who comes etc”); and then, on Friday, the leak that the ”efficiency” review “to assist” the ABC and SBS announced in the May Federal Budget would be headed by former Foxtel boss Peter Tonagh.

Partly, this is business: the ABC or SBS are providing for free what the traditional media are trying to persuade readers and viewers to pay for. The “efficiency” review — like the competitive neutrality review before it — is just another forum to promote commercial interest.

The challenge for the ABC and SBS is that with paywalls, this terrain of struggle has come to mean news and current affairs.

But as a front in the culture wars, News Corp needs the ABC and SBS as their punching bag of choice where hits advance both their cultural and commercial interests.

Glover’s tweet suggests there are plenty of people on left and right who are keen to agree with them, eager for the ABC to be the anti-News, to be a voice that agrees with them. As Glover said: “No enthusiasm for our attempt at balance; none for our desire to reach out to all, and not be hunted into niche broadcasting.”

A day later, Glover retweeted himself, describing the thread on his post as “amazing, feral, compelling” — saying it effectively proved his point. Plenty of likes and retweets, but almost none of the replies agreed with him.

Last century, the economics of media forced organisations to the centre, guided by balance and fairness. Like the economists’ ice-cream sellers on the beach, you needed to position in the middle to draw customers from both sides. So powerful was the business model, it became an unquestioned ethical principle.

This century, as the media eco-system is fragmenting, the market lies in picking spots up and down the beach and flavouring the ice-cream to the specific needs of the group in front of you. News Corp was the first to recognise this shift and built their business model accordingly.

In this world, the curated public square that democracy relies on demands an independent public broadcaster. As Glover concluded, “My fear: only when it’s gone will they realise what’s been lost.”