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May 29, 2003
Oh well, it was to be expected. The ABC and the Coalition are two differently painted square cultural pegs in a round hole. Their relationship has pretty much been a history of ongoing cultural warfare. This charge of the ABC being blatantly biased and anti-American in its Iraq war coverage does raise the stakes and temperature in the cultural wars.
Richard Alston's specific charges of bias on the ABC's AM programme on Radio National can be found here.The Bunyip approves and reckons that Alston could have gone in even harder in calling the ABC to account.
It is pretty clear that the Coalition Government does not see the role of the ABC as a national broadcaster in terms of being a watchdog for democracy. Factual reporting is what is required. No comment. We the listening public make up our minds based on the facts presented to us.
Its a bit like the way that Gareth Parker presents the issue. Here's Alston's dossier. Read it and make up your minds.
This deep-seated empiricism (only the facts ma, only the facts) ignores the way that journalism is commentary, prejudice and myth. Journalism operates within a global media flow of interpretations and it responds to those interpretations. Hence we have conflicting interpretations trying to make sense of particular events. What Gareth is implying is that that journalism should be about reporting facts and it should not engage with interpretation.
The issue raised by Alston's political intervention is not just faulty journalism--getting the facts wrong---by the AM crowd because of their political bias. There is a genuine issue here. What the Coalition cannot countenance is the ABC use of a critical public reason to expose the media spin around government policy. On the other hand the ABC does see itself acting a watchdog for democracy. Remember how the Hawke-Keating Government went off the planet about the ABC's use of Robert Springborg as a commentator in 1991 during the first Gulf War? They too reacted angrily to the ABC acting as a watchdog for democracy. Many politicians do not like the media acting in a watchdog role. They want lapdogs on a drip feed.
Hence it is an issue about the role of the public journalism of the national broadcaster in a liberal democracy. Should the ABC play a critical role? Should it present commentary from perspectives excluded by the corporate media---eg., the Murdock Press in Australia? Should it present critical commentary that questions competing interpretations of political events?
Update
There is a discussion on the politics of the Alston criticism of the ABC by by Tim Dunlop over at Road to Surfdom. I forgot to link to it yesterday.
And Geoff Honnor has a post here It says that righties have to learn to deconstruct ABC Radio National interpretations just like Lefties have to deconstruct those in The Australian. They need some education to help them do so.
Yep. Its what citizens do. Think for themselves. That political freedom means questioning the habitual thinking of right and left and the centre.
And Scott over at The Eye of the Beholder has a good post that accepts both bias in journalism as a fact of life and the diversity of the media.
Prejudice as bias is a part of everyday life and the media. The different forms of media in rbiing against one another can challenge these taken-for-granted prejudices, and so we get a form of debate or dialogue or conversation going through an exercise in political freedom. That exchange of ideas in the public sphere by citizens is a core tenet of liberal democracy.
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No, the ABC shouldn't present any commentary as national broadcaster at all. It should be privatised.
Political freedom means being able to say what you want. It certainly doesn't mean forcing me to pay for a television station to broadcast views with which I disagree. That is fascism.
It is only because we are used to it that we can't understand how dangerous is the concept of the government running a televison station.