GERARD HENDERSON’S MEDIA WATCH DOG – ISSUE NUMBER 2
13 MARCH 2009
JOHN HOWARD’S ULTIMO
The news is that ABC managing director Mark Scott has gone cap-in-hand to Canberra seeking more funding for the public broadcaster. He even took an ABC travelling road-show with him – including Julian Morrow from The Chaser “boys”, broadcaster and leading ABC eco-catastrophist Deborah Cameron, actor Kerry Armstrong, James O’Loghlin from the New Inventors and Play School’s Georgie Parker.
Mark Scott is the most able managing director to grace the ABC’s headquarters in Ultimo, Sydney in eons. At least Mr Scott knows some of the public broadcaster’s endemic problems – even if he is reluctant to do much to resolve the matter. The ABC is not much more balanced or pluralistic than when John Howard became prime minister in March 1996. But it is better managed.
Soon after the Coalition was elected in March 1996, Mr Howard let his opinion be known that a greater diversity of views should be heard on the public broadcaster and that there should be evidence of a pluralism of views among the organisation’s presenters. He even called on the ABC to engage a “right-wing Phillip Adams”. This was a mistake since it fed the ego of the ABC’s man-in-black while achieving nothing. However, at least Howard indicated what his hopes were.
Thirteen years after the election of the Howard Government, the ABC’s main-in-black Phillip Adams is still presenting Late Night Live on Radio National and former Gough Whitlam staffer (his CV does not declare this) Kerry O’Brien is still fronting the 7.30 Report on ABC 1. When prime minister, Howard expressed his displeasure at both. So much for the alleged “success” of Howard in what were termed by some as “the culture wars”.
If there ever was a culture war between March 1996 and November 2007, then Howard led his forces to a stand-off at best. The fact is that Labor’s Bob Hawke achieved as much when prime minister in reforming the ABC as Howard did. Hawke’s criticism of the ABC stemmed from his frustration that the ABC constantly criticised Labor – from the left. Howard was also constantly criticised by the ABC – also from the left. Neither could prevail against the fashionable leftist cliques, or fiefdoms, which run many news and current affairs programs on a daily basis.
The evidence suggests that, in his retirement, Howard embraced the Stockholm syndrome and began to think well of his one-time (political) tormentors. How else to explain his decision to be interviewed for the documentary The Howard Years by Radio National Breakfast presenter Fran Kelly?
During the final years of the Coalition government, Ms Kelly simply could not disguise her opposition to Howard on a range of issues – most notably on Iraq, national security, climate change, the WorkChoices industrial relations legislation, gay-rights etc. Howard’s willingness to be interviewed for The Howard Years led to a situation where most of his colleagues accepted the ABC’s decision that Fran Kelly should be given the job of interpreting John Howard’s period as prime minister. Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop were two of the few Liberals who declined an invitation to be interviewed for The Howard Years.
RADIO NATIONAL BOOKENDS
In the terminology of the cliché, these days (and nights) Fran Kelly and Phillip Adams “bookend” Radio National. Ms Kelly leads off at breakfast and Mr Adams winds up at bed-time. You can go to sleep each night listening to Adams, a self-confessed left-winger, banging on with his left-wing agenda. And you can wake up each morning to hear Kelly holding forth on climate change or getting stuck into the Liberal Party. A few examples illustrate the point.
Phillip Adams Likes Guests Who Agree With Him
On Wednesday 11 March 2009 Phillip Adams welcomed back to LNL Beatrix (call me Bea) Campbell, the well known British leftist. Campbell has returned to comment regularly for LNL on Britain. LNL’s weekly commentator in the United States is Bruce Shapiro – an American leftist. Apparently Dr Jane Connors, the manager of Radio National, regards this as balance in current affairs analysis. The leftist thoughts of Campbell on Britain are balanced by the leftist thoughts of Schapiro on the US.
Last Wednesday Campbell ran the line that all British governments, including when Labour’s Tony Blair was at 10 Downing Street, behave badly in Northern Ireland and are responsible for provoking the Provisional Irish Republican Army of recent memory or such break-away groups as the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA. This is part of the Bea Campbell world-view that the Brits are dreadful colonialists, the IRA always had a case and terrorism happens. Or something like that.
Then it was on with LNL’s idea of the you-beaut debate. Namely, a discussion where everyone agrees with everyone else and a sound ideological time is had by all. There was one such event on 24 February 2009 when Phillip Adams agreed with Richard Denniss (of the Australia Institute) who agreed with environmentalist Nick Rowley who agreed with Phillip Adams about climate change. What intellectually fashionable fun.
It was much the same last Wednesday when – after hearing from Bea Campbell – Adams invited two guests into the studio to discuss the International Commission of Jurists’ report on terrorism, counter-terrorism and human rights titled Assessing Danger, Urging Action. The talent in question was Nicole McGarrity (director of the Terrorism and Law project at the Gilbert and Tobin Centre of Public Law at the University of New South Wales) and Stephen Blanks (Secretary of the New South Wales Council of Civil Liberties).
In introducing his guests, Adams indicated that he supported the International Commission of Jurists’ report. Then the familiar I’ll-agree-with-you-if-you-agree-with-me scenario, which passes for debate at Radio National, commenced. Let’s go to the audio tape:
PHILLIP ADAMS: Now Nicola, do you agree with the ICJ assessment that anti-terrorism legislation has curtailed human rights around the world?
NICOLA McGARRITY: I do. But, I think one of the most important things that the ICJ report brings out is not so much the issue of security laws curtailing human rights. I think that’s an issue that’s been well documented. I think the most important issue that it brings out is this issue of the normalisation of extraordinary powers in two contexts.
P.A.: And giving them to Mr. Plod.
N.M. : Exactly. Basically, well it deals with normalisation in two ways. It says that there are some problems in that terrorism laws, which are brought in as temporary matters, end up staying for much longer than the circumstances demand. And also that once these type of extraordinary terrorism laws are introduced there [sic] sort of slide into being used in other contexts, in other areas of the criminal law, as well.
P.A.: Stephen, from the point of view of the Council of Civil Liberties, would you see Australia as almost a worst case scenario – as we seem to be over-reacting to terrorism?
STEPHEN BLANKS : Well, yes. And we’re unique in the
Western world in not having any legislated or constitutional human rights protections. So we’ve gone down the track of following all the other countries in very extensive anti-terrorism laws that infringe basic civil liberties and human rights and we don’t have any countervailing protections.
P.A.: And you would agree with Nicola that the real problem for us is perhaps the fact that it’s now moving to mainstream policing where it can be used for all sorts of purposes it was not intended to do?
S.B. : That’s right…
And so it went on. And on. With Nicola agreeing with Stephen. And Stephen agreeing with Nicola. And both agreeing with Phillip. And wasn’t your man Phillip just so funny when he referred to Australia’s Federal and State police by the collective term “Mr Plod” [for those of certain age, Mr Plod is the toy-town policeman in author Enid Blyton’s Noddy series]. How amusing can you be?
When introducing his guests in this segment, Adams had referred to Bea Campbell’s previous description of the plight of a human rights lawyer in Northern Ireland. He failed to mention, alas, that Beatrix Campbell’s commitment to human rights causes was a late development in her brilliant career. On 20 October 2007, Neil Lyndon wrote an article in the London Sunday Times about former members of the pro-communist left in Western Europe who had refrained from renouncing their one-time support for Stalinism. The penultimate paragraph in Lyndon’s piece read as follows:
The feminist journalist and author Beatrix Campbell, who is visiting professor of women’s studies at Newcastle University, is honoured with doctorates at British universities but is never called to account for the fact that as a young sub-editor on the communist Morning Star newspaper she took state-subsidised holidays in the odious Erich Honecker’s East Germany and lovingly spoke of that nightmare land as “the GDR” (German Democratic Republic – a formulation in which only the word German was not a foul parody).
On the days when young Bea was a Stasi-lover, no one in East Germany could get away with calling the police “Mr Plod”.
Fran Kelly Likes Guests Who Agree With Her
Just nodded off? Well it’s morning time and Fran Kelly, that other end of the Radio National bookend, is busy interviewing the Opposition – all the while channelling Labor staffers.
6 March 2009. Fran Kelly interviews Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey. She argues with Hockey on the Rudd Government’s policy of cash handouts to stimulate the economy, opposes the Coalition’s policy to cut taxes as a means of stimulating the economy and grills the Shadow Treasurer on emissions trading and industrial relations. Check out the interview on the Radio National website and ask the question: Could a Labor staffer have done a more effective political job in interviewing the Shadow Treasurer? Probably not.
It was much the same on Thursday 19 February 2009 when, in her comfortable chat each morning with The Age’s Michelle Grattan, Fran Kelly could hardly disguise her disagreement with critics of the Rudd Government’s economic policies. Kelly depicted business critics of Labor’s industrial relations policy as “strident” as distinct from the “more reasoned voices” who supported the Prime Minister.
Then Fran Kelly decided it was time to have go at John Howard and the legacy of the Howard Government. She launched into an on-air editorial on the Liberal Party – disguised as a question to Ms Grattan. Spoke the RN Breakfast presenter:
Back to the Libs. There’s a bit of open sniping in the papers today. But all eyes tonight will be on their former leader as John Howard prepares to give Kevin Rudd a bit of a touch-up over the Prime Minister’s attack on neo-liberalism. John Howard, I think, probably has his eyes firmly on his own economic legacy. It is going to be a bit hard to defend letting market forces rip right now, though, isn’t it?
Here Fran Kelly was busy channelling Phillip Adams by asking leading questions to a guest who is expected to agree with her innate wisdom. In this case she was simply running the social democratic and leftist line that the Liberal Party – under John Howard and Peter Costello – let market forces rip. So much so that even Michelle Grattan was somewhat taken aback with Kelly’s stridency. The fact is that, as Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard has acknowledged, Australia had the best regulated financial system in the OECD world when Peter Costello was treasurer. Moreover, in the Howard Government’s last budget, some 35 per cent of expenditure went to welfare and family payments.
However, Fran Kelly apparently believes – following the fashionable leftist line – that the Liberal Party let market forces rip. Yet the Liberals were so lacking in political nous that they allowed Fran Kelly to tell the story of the Howard Government in The Howard Years. If the Liberals had not agreed to Fran Kelly presenting this documentary, it could not have gone ahead – and the ABC would have been forced to find a presenter with whom John Howard and others felt more comfortable. As it turned out, the evident lack of trust between the interviewer and interviewees probably accounts for the fact that The Howard Years broke virtually no new ground and contained virtually no new stories of a personal or political kind.
Barracking On Air – ABC Styl
On 7 July 2008 RN Breakfast introduced John Connor, the lawyer who heads the Climate Institute, as an “independent” commentator. But Mr Connor runs an advocacy group. So how can he be more independent than someone who, say, runs a mining organisation? Then, last Tuesday on ABC metropolitan radio 702, Deborah Cameron described Climate Change Minister Penny Wong’s appearance on Four Corners the previous evening as “flushed and rattled”. In fact, Senator Wong remained calm and restrained in the face of the presenter’s hectoring.
The reference was to Liz Jackson’s partisan Four Corners program titled “Heat on the Hill” which aired on Monday 9 March 2009 where, in the typically fashionable ABC way, the green movement emerged as principled while industry were mere polluters and both the Rudd Labor Government and the Turnbull Coalition Opposition were depicted as lacking principle and courage.
The Kelly/Cameron/Jackson approach suggests that the ABC will continue to criticise both the Coalition and Labor from the left, in a left-green kind of way.
Fashionable leftism prevails in the ABC much as it did when Hawke and Howard were prime ministers. John Howard’s failure in the culture wars is evident today by virtue of the fact that the public broadcaster still cannot find one, not even one, political conservative to present any mainstream program on ABC television or ABC Radio.
Mark Scott’s best chance of obtaining additional funding for the ABC is right now. By the time the next ABC money seeking road show heads for Canberra, Labor will again realise that the ABC bags all governments from the left.
STOP PRESS – CATHERINE DEVENY WANTED
By the way, has anyone heard from Catherine Deveny? Gerard Henderson’s Media Watch Dog could not find her weekday column in The Age on Wednesday or Thursday. She provided great copy for GHMWD’s first issue last week and it would be sad if her inner-city intellectual snobbery was no longer available for media critics – of the watch dog genre.
That’s all for now.
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