Anyone who still denies that Australia’s taxpayer-funded broadcaster has become little more than a hopelessly-biased, inner-city left-wing collective, is either willfully blind or hopelessly ignorant. If nothing else gives the ABC’s bias away, consider the fact that its own management has to specifically and repeatedly remind its journalists that they have a duty to be impartial.
The ABC has set editorial guidelines for coverage of the looming Voice referendum to ensure its staff meet impartiality standards in an increasingly fraught public debate.
The ABC’s duty to report impartially is not just a matter of journalism ethics, but law. The ABC is required by law — the ABC Act, and its Charter — to be impartial. Something the ABC’s taxpayer-funded journalists repeatedly forget — or ignore.
The ABC has been under increasing scrutiny over its coverage of the Voice referendum as tensions heighten between the Yes and the No sides. Comments made by ABC federal politics reporter Dana Morse on flagship politics program Insiders last week about Australia Day and the Coalition’s “No vote” strategy on the Voice highlighted the challenge the ABC faces.
The only challenge it faces is keeping its luvvies in line.
The broadcaster created a set of specific editorial guidelines in late 2022, shared in an internal document and seen by this masthead. The document, Voice Referendum editorial guidance, was recently re-issued to staff in the lead-up to the vote, which is widely tipped to take place in October. The document updated the ABC’s existing guidelines that cover independence, impartiality and accuracy, among other policies […]
The document reiterates all coverage must meet its Harm and Offence standards, as well as those on accuracy, hate speech and general reporting on Indigenous issues. Management acknowledges the strong and passionate views staff members have on the issue, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous.
In other words, even ABC management admits that its journalists are hopelessly biased.
As for “accuracy”, this is the same ABC that regularly platforms Bruce Pascoe, not to mention giving Marcia Langton a platform to spout such arrant nonsense as that Aborigines have been in Australia for “millions of years”. It also gave its political journalists an uncritical platform to gibber such obvious nonsense as that there is an “ongoing genocide” of Aboriginal Australians.
Morse also labelled the federal opposition’s strategy around the Voice as one that seeks to sow “division and doubt”, in particular relating to Peter Dutton […]
An ABC spokesperson also stood by Morse, saying that suggestions the guidelines were reaffirmed to the reporter after the broadcast were “completely incorrect, the reporter was not counselled by anyone”.
The Age
Of course, she wasn’t: it’s the ABC. Never mind that an impartial, informed reporter would point out that it is, in fact, the “Yes” campaign who are explicitly seeking to sow “division and doubt”, by openly encouraging racist rhetoric.
But that isn’t what passes for “impartiality and accuracy” on the ABC.