Editorial Inde*pun*dence

 Last week Media Watch broadcast an investigation that alleged ABC Chair Kim Williams used his influence to secure coverage for the comedian Sandy Gutman.

Gutman, who performs as Austen Tayshus and is most famous for an Australiana pun song released before I was born, was touring regional Australia and wanted to promote his show on ABC Local Radio. Finding it hard to get booked, he emailed Williams, whose request to senior management for a review of the matter led to interviews that otherwise would not have occurred, the show claimed.

Williams denied this was his intention and said that he never attempted to override the editorial judgement of local teams.

Media Watch was chiefly concerned with what it identified as a procedural breakdown at the top of the organisation, but this matter also concerns the ABC’s editorial policies. Host Linton Besser noted that Gutman was given 90 minutes of publicity across 11 segments aired over nine months on local radio stations, providing the when, the where, and the price of his shows.

The public broadcaster’s advertising and commercial references standards restrict the placement and prominence given to promotional content. The policies would prevent, for example, a musician from plugging their show in Kalgoorlie when they give an interview to ABC Goldfields, and listeners will be familiar with the spectacle of a presenter making a joke of interrupting an author right as they start to say “wherever good books are sold”.

Keeping the ABC free from commercial influence – and not allowing public dollars to be used for private enrichment – is important, but there’s a disservice in not providing relevant information to the audience.

The public broadcaster should not be running ads from political campaigns or whitegoods stores. But is everything so clear cut? Coverage of an upcoming event happening in a community – a touring band (or comedian), an art exhibition, a festival – is promotional, but it’s also an issue of direct relevance and interest to a local audience. These events are an important part of cultural life, forge social ties and are, I would argue, legitimate local news.

Local news outlets have an important role in building and maintaining community. Through mediated social capital they connect people with each other and help individuals to fulfill their social, cultural and economic needs. Particularly in rural and remote communities they can be the primary source of information about what is happening locally.

When CMT  spoke to regional audiences in focus groups last year, for our third report into Regional News Media, they lamented the lack of arts and cultural coverage in their local media. Participants said that their communities would be richer if they knew about events before they happened, not after, and in both Dubbo and Wagga Wagga, they blamed their local media’s resistance to promotional coverage for low attendance at their town shows.

This might be worth reflecting on at the public broadcaster. The line between news and commercial interest can be blurry, and editorial policies (and management) should support local editors to navigate this for their audiences. Sometimes that will mean giving the time and date of a local comedy show, and sometimes not: the important thing is the independence of that editorial decision, not whether the entertainer knows the boss, or the koala-ty of his act.