The ABC's of impartiality
CMT was in the news this week – rather unexpectedly. Our Double Take podcast interview with the new chair of the ABC, Kim Williams, caused somewhat of a stir – on social media in any event.
In the interview, Williams says the ABC is obliged by law to produce accurate and impartial journalism, and that any ABC journalist who can’t produce public interest journalism according to the principles of accuracy and impartiality might think about another job. When Williams cites the law, he is referring to section 8 of the ABC Act, which prescribes that one of the duties of the ABC board is ‘to ensure that the gathering and presentation of news and information is accurate and impartial according to the recognised standards of objective journalism’.
But mention impartiality publicly, and social media reaction follows. There is the camp that believes that the ABC has recently been failing the impartiality test across all its news and current affairs output, although some in this camp conclude the national broadcaster clearly leans to the left, while others say it leans to the right. Their claims were often attached to calls to sack this, that or another person because of their tone or their reporting. Then there is the camp that holds impartiality is a nonsense, a fiction designed to uphold the status quo. As the Australia Institute’s Greg Jericho argued, referencing his 2019 defence of advocacy journalism, ‘the desire for balance and the desperate need of journalists to appear neutral will be the death of us’.
The feud played out on X over several days – with some questioning whether the impartiality policy applies to everyone who works at the ABC, even the weatherperson. (It does if the weatherperson has anything to say about issues of the day; it attaches to the output rather than the position held.) Others asked whether the impartiality policy applies to the ABC’s social media guidelines, which require staff to be cautious in their public musings so as not to bring the corporation into disrepute and their own impartiality into question. Lawyer Josh Bornstein argued that it is near impossible to define what ‘disrepute’ means and that arbitrary definitions have a capacity to be oppressive, making it impossible to determine which speech on social media is ok and which is not. As we write, the arguments are still raging on X. Kim Williams has a lot to work with.
And so, to our next podcast. Tim Koskie speaks to Sam Koslowski, co-founder of youth news website The Daily Aus, a publication with a large Instagram following. The recent decision by Instagram’s owner, Meta, to stop funding news in Australia for its soon to be redundant Facebook News Tab carries a lot of weight for The Daily Aus, even though it didn’t make a deal with Meta in the shadow of the News Media Bargaining Code. Instagram’s decision last month to stop ‘proactively’ recommending political content posted on accounts that users don't follow may be a portent of things to come. You can hear Sam’s thoughts here.
Monica Attard, CMT Co-director
