Blogging academics Joshua Gans of Melbourne University and Andrew Leigh of ANU have conducted a study into ‘media slant’ in Australian political coverage:
Australian journalists are close to the centre of the political spectrum, but their editors are more likely to take a party line, according to new research from The Australian National University.
The study, conducted by ANU economist Professor Andrew Leigh from the Research School of Social Sciences and Melbourne Business School economist Professor Joshua Gans, used a number of different approaches to measure ‘media slant’ in newspapers, radio and television.
Professors Leigh and Gans used three approaches to test for media slant; reviewing media mentions of 100 public intellectuals, rating election stories and rating newspaper headlines. The researchers found that although most media outlets showed no significant slant in reporting, there were some notable exceptions.
“In terms of content, Australian journalists seem to be a centrist bunch”, said Professor Leigh. “Using the first approach, only one out of 27 news outlets had a significant slant. This is ABC Television News, which had a significant slant towards the Coalition in the period 1999-2007. All other outlets (including six ABC radio stations) were essentially centrist.
I can’t say that the findings about the pro-Coalition bias of the ABC television news are greatly surprising to me, though they seem to have ruffled some right wing feathers.
The full paper can be accessed here.
This report confirms my gut feeling about the ABC of late.
However….
1. Despite my gut feelings I’d have to accept annecdotal evidence by the likes of Costello over thi report.
2. I’d take this report a lot more seriously if this was written by some more biased researchers. As in conservative.
3. Is it really that much of a problem if the ABC is anti ALP? Or the rest of the media? I had major concerns about bias while Howard was in power but quite frankly if the ABC and the rest of the media are anti ALP isn’t this a good thing? Won’t the immense scrutiny basically “keep the bastards honest”?
*sniggers*
I read the paper in it’s entirety, and it was a serious attempt to categorise something difficult. Still, like you Mark I found it’s conclusions largely unsurprising.
It will be interesting to revisit this after a similarly long period of Labor rule.
Of course, ‘centrist’ is an interesting term in of itself, where does that lie exactly?
Whatever for? Do you have a serious criticism of the methodology of the paper? It has found what it has found – if you don’t agree you need to indict the method, not just dismiss it in favour of anecdote.
This has to be a joke. Or are we in a paralell universe?
ABC biased to the right-wing? *snigger* To seriously suggest this one would have to be off their rocker. Completely.
Bias is not the same as scrutiny.
I’m hoping that tssk was using a bit of sarcasm there, Mark.
Mind you, we’ve been through this before. His/her notion that consistent partisan reporting by a public broadcaster doesn’t matter is rather bizarre.
Indeed, adrian.
It doesn’t surprise me at all. Anyone who watches the ABC television news consistently would have to conclude they bat for the Coalition – the way they routinely and uncritically pick up right-wing talking points and recycle front page stories from The Australian, the way they promote Howard’s Anzac-Bush-Ocker version of Australiana, their tendency to blandly report Coalition arguments, even when patently wrong, as facts – they’ve been got to. Howard’s stacking of the board has peverted their editorial judgement and clearly made many senior journalists there into paid poodles of the right.
To put my stance more firmly, while I would prefer journalism to be about scrutiny, I’m happier with an anti government bias rather than an unthinking mouthpiece to power.
As with the ABC so with The Australian. I have no problem with them being pro Coalition partisans while the ALP are in power.
Given the sad sorry state of journalism today though (caused in my opinion by journalists becoming lazy and instead of chasing stories ending up just regurgitating media releases and going to the pub) means this report might just be like that of the positions of deckchairs on the Titanic.
Put down the shovel fellers. The methodology of this “study” is (seriously) flawed.
Don’t make complete fools of yourselves, as the *chortle* “Academics” who put their name to the study just did. This is the real world.
The ABC is a lot of things. But biased in FAVOUR of the coalition it most definitely is not.
“Among these, ten public intellectuals are mentioned significantly more often by Labor parliamentarians: Larissa Behrendt, William Deane, Mick Dodson, Gerard Henderson, Michael Kirby, David Marr, Les Murray, Barbara Pocock, Anne Summers and George Williams. Eleven public intellectuals are mentioned significantly more often by Coalition parliamentarians: Marie Bashir, Geoffrey Blainey, Ron Brunton, John Hirst, Helen Hughes, Paul Kelly, Hugh Mackay, Wendy McCarthy, Noel Pearson, Ken Phillips, and Paul Sheehan.”
Mostly that looks right, but there are a few odd ones: Gerard Henderson and Les Murray on the ALP side and Marie Bashir and Hugh Mackay on the Coalition.
I’m a little intrigued by not taking negative references into account. I would have thought that, for example, McGuiness and Akerman are a much better barometer of slant than some of the above names.
What I’ve noticed of late (although this just might be perception) is the way the news stories always have a response from the Coalition…almost like they are some sort of true government in exile. Any ALP story is accompanied by immediate unchallenged opinion by a member of the Opposition.
I don’t remember that happening much during the Howard years (or when it did there was an immediate response from a Gov member.)
Again, perception.
While accepting the “it found what it found” argument, I find the suggestion that the West Australian is slightly (albeit statistically insignificantly) pro-ALP to be somewhat strange.
As Liam said, bias is not the same as scrutiny.
For example as I have e-mailed to certain people at the ABC, there are plenty of areas on which to criticise the Rudd government, but these do not happen to correspond to the latest talking points on the front page of The Australian, as most ABC political correspondents seem to think.
If I want to know what The Australian thinks of Rudd, I’ll buy the paper. I do not tune into the ABC to listen to a regurgitated version, often complete with suitably aggressive attitude!
I agree. Those anomolies alone make it look like the methodology should be revisted.
Well, no, it’s not an artefact of the methodology, but of the data. As Gans points out in Crikey today, it’s not a classification but a fact – that is, these people were mentioned positively by ALP members in Parliament and the coding reflects that. He also notes that all three measures produced very similar findings:
Link to Gans’ piece (paywalled though):
http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/09/03/the-unslanted-state-of-the-australian-media/
I must admit that I haven’t read this paper in detail, so I’m not willing to comment on the methodology myself, but it’s worth pointing out that Gans and Leigh are hugely prolific empirical and widely published economists. They’re not beyond critique, but they know their shit. Whilst the best traditions of science encourage debate about methodologies and conclusions, I think the onus is on those who challenge the methodology to give a solid reason why. Just because it doesn’t agree with your preconceptions doesn’t mean it was a poorly done study.
(FWIW, I’m not a fan of economics, and think it’s at best applied psychology, but this particular studies isn’t terribly economics-like.)
dr faustus, it’s worth noting as well that while they’ve substituted public intellectuals for thinktanks (for reasons explained), essentially it’s a replication of a US study which used the same methodology.
Sure, but the positive mentions in Parliament are not an end inthemselves – they are merely a proxy, and that proxy may not be perfect. As was noted in another thread recently, the “quote someone from your side of politics” is a common technique.
As I mentioned above, on first glance I would have thought that negative mentions actually made a better proxy.
As for the different methodologies producing similar results, the fact is that we are talking very small numbers here. The overall result is that all of the media outlets are pretty centrist, and that is pretty unsurprising, so we all focus on discussing the MoE movements.
I will, however, note that the paper makes the common error of confusing, or at least being ambiguous between statistical significance and real-world significance. The AL’s pro-coaltiion bias maybe be statistically significant, but the magnitude of it is very small, so its real-world significance is low.
There’s a brief mention in the paper of:
“On the other, as exemplified by Hotelling’s famous example, competition can lead to mimicry on the part of firms in the product positioning.”
Does anyone know what this famous example is? I haven’t heard of it before, but wanted to make a (maybe) similar observation in the ‘online news’ thread.
Martin, yep. As the authors note, these things are notoriously hard to measure. I can conceive of various ways you could do such a study qualitatively, and also discuss or track the impacts of bias, but I also imagine that would really set the cat among the pigeons when it came to accusations of observer bias. It would nevertheless be worth doing.
Well ABC TV News never refers the prosecution of the Afghan war as anything other than a good thing. But then again so do many cruise-missile liberals…
Of course, ‘centrist’ is an interesting term in of itself, where does that lie exactly?
Well, not between Labor and the Coalition, that’s for sure. So the study’s claim that Australian journos come out as centrist is pretty accurate, when we remember centrist here means “significantly to the right”.
Judging by Righty complaints about the study – e.g. their astonishment that Philip Adams could be characterised as a bit to the right – the unquestioning acceptance in Australian punditry that the two-party system represents the whole of the political spectrum appears to be speeding our culture’s move to an American-style confusion about what political terms, especially “leftist”, mean.
I’m not an economist and nor do I play one on TV, but I presume it is the linear model in Stability in Competition.
The Labor Party has moved to the right, and the Liberals and the Nationals are on the right, so just how can any journalist ever be remotely near the centre is mind-boggling. Even the centre has moved to the right.
How believable is this research from the university?
The professors tested for media slant. Aren’t they going about it the wrong way.
By testing for media slant they are saying that truth is being written and some of it is slanted.
Should not they get the slant that is being written and test it for truth?
GlenWriter, that would give them a null propositon.
On the issue of references to public intellectuals, I suspect that politicians may do this more with those they perceive to be ‘on the other side’ in order to buttress whatever argument/message they wish to craft from the box or in media.
So, for example, Labor may reference something by Gerard Henderson that makes their case, knowing that Henderson is seen as a Coalition stenographer.
“……see, even their friends think we’re right…..”
And vice-versa.
Thanks Martin B, will have a read.
I thought this was quite nice rhetoric.
I wonder how much of this media/politician interaction consists of mutual referencing. Let’s say a ‘public intellectual’ issues a press release (or, at least, their academic institution does on their behalf) which an outlet finds interesting enough to cover. A parliamentarian reads the story and thinks it’s interesting enough to mention in the parliament.
Would such processes operate to give a boost to some ‘public intellectuals’ by comparison to others who are less well supported? How much reflection by parliamentarians on the views of ‘public intellectuals’ results from the latter’s direct acts of self-promotion through the media?
If the ABC were really batting for the Coalition, the “Save Our ABC” signs would be carried by conservatives.
As Barry Cohen famously said to Phillip Adams: “Oh, by the way, Phillip, of course the ABC has a left-wing bias. Why the hell do you think we love it?”
“If the ABC were really batting for the Coalition, the “Save Our ABC” signs would be carried by conservatives.”
No, most conservatives lack the intelligence or foresight to recognise the value of an independent public broadcaster, while those who think that it’s worth protecting do so irrespective of its current political leanings.
And if you think that Barry Cohen is of the left, your understanding of Labour politics is about on par with your understanding of public broadcasting.
Well it’s good to see empirical inquiry proving as fact what is widely known. And also that journalistic content is at the centre however that is determined (haven’t read the paper). Editors are the Ideological Officers in the media. Or, to put it as Conor Cruise O’Brien did ‘very few editors can afford to ignore altogether the views of their proprietors which are likely to be those of social class from where they are drawn’.
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The Coalition bias in the ABC is interesting tho’ isn’t it.
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Worth reading the paper for. I do hope it’s true. When Howard really started ramping it up on the ABC’s arse, Aunty rolled out the docos on the Queen and World War Bloody Two. Actually there was some excellent oral history stuff but a lot of patriotic gibberish too.
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So the govt channel sings the govt tune. Funny that. I’m beginning to warm to the idea of direct ownership but I reckon the govt’ll sell it as shares. Of course Australian citizens’ll get first dibs. It’s a great country where the government allows those who own something to buy it again.
adrian:”No, most conservatives lack the intelligence or foresight to recognise the value of an independent public broadcaster, while those who think that it’s worth protecting do so irrespective of its current political leanings.”
Bwahahahahahahah
most conservatives lack the intelligence or foresight to recognise the value of an independent public broadcaster, while those who think that it’s worth protecting do so irrespective of its current political leanings.
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I believe if you examine the early history of broadcasting you’ll find that the preference for public broadacsting was asserted by conservatives. Outside America anyway. Just sayin’.
Does ABC News Online not see the irony in trotting out an IPA public intellectual to discredit allegations that ABC TV News is biased to the right?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/09/03/2675819.htm
And if you think that Barry Cohen is of the left, your understanding of Labour politics is about on par with your understanding of public broadcasting.
Or your spelling?
Nick@21: it’s where in a competitive market you maximise your share by locating alongside your competitor/s. Classic examples are the ice-creamm sellers on the beach (they all locate in the middle), or groups of like retailers (in Fortitude Valley Brisbane, for example, it’s the adventure stores).
I haven’t read the paper in detail but based on the report there seem to be two main reasons to question its findings
1) it’s based almost entirely in the period when the coalition was in power so it could be that the ABC is pro-government not pro-coalition. This is consistent with the ABC’s funding arrangements and with Coalition resentment of its pre-1996 behaviour, and
2) for long periods of time in 1996-2007 the people of Australia considered the ALP unfit to govern. The media could be representing this belief by being pro-coalition in that time. A better judge of media bias would be if the measure were adjusted for the popularity of the ALP over that time, in order to assess whether media representation of the parties went against or with popular opinion of the parties.
I suspect the findings wouldn’t change if 2 were incorporated, but I suspect that extending the study to 1983 would indicate the ABC was pro-government.
“Does ABC News Online not see the irony in trotting out an IPA public intellectual to discredit allegations that ABC TV News is biased to the right?”
Yes and it is pretty pathetic to so obviously give Berg such a large say versus Andrew Leigh who was obviously ready and available to counter the pretty poor standard of his argument against the report…..”I don’t agree with the results and I think there’s a deep problem with the results in that it doesn’t really pass the laughter test”.
Gawd, it doesn’t get much more crap than that, though this line came close..”If you as an academic produce something that is so contrary to what absolutely everybody thinks…blah, blah” Got that? academics should never question the status quo. It might lead to a dangerous outbreak of independent thinking like the ABC news has a conservative slant, for instance.
Yeah… I dunno, any study that has the Herald Sun coming out to the left of The Age and Aunty has to have some serious methodological errors IMO.
Not sure where you got that idea R.P. From one of the links it is stated…
“The only newspaper whose mean score is significantly different from three is The Age, which is rated by our coders as tending slightly pro-Labor (2.75)”
I believe The Age has actually swung to the right since the last election- the new rural press management team are right wingers- which would not have been covered in this report.
Academia and Journalism must be in serious decline,even if,you disregarded all the evidence of that of late.The Chinese and Indian Student Affairs etc.and the the the really productive outcomes from both medias-demias to overcome racism,lack of monies of students and a host of other matters that seriously suggest to me,I need a icon that expresses a goodbye wave that means I am getting more than tired!And Hugh Mackay,someone in these study groups has one of those gorilla like arms scraping the ground when he gets a mention.A phoney can never be replaced,that’s why these people become the opinion to discuss.The opinion itself cannot be discussed,because it hasn’t any meaning.Go on!Get any or all of Hugh Mackay’s writings, and try to find anything that is satisfactorily fact,and the basics of even a position in a debating side!?
#4, Steve at the Pub wrote: ABC biased to the right-wing? *snigger* To seriously suggest this one would have to be off their rocker. Completely.
Why? One data point: Here in Canberra, Virgina Haussegger is the public face of ABC TV News. She is also a conservative columnist with the Canberra Times, that paper’s equivalent of Amanda Devine. Joshua and Andrew, whom I’ve read elsewhere, seem plausible sane to me.
If I were conservative I would be quietly smug about the findings. Then I would demand that the ABC drop it’s bias and get even more balanced and more anti left. I see the ABC’s current bias as constant self correction.
Or to put it another way I don’t hear anyone complaining when they slam Kevin Rudd, the ALP etc.
You see it in US politics at the moment as well. When Bush was in power he had to deal with those on the left complaining all the time. Now Obama is in he has to contend with the right AND the left.
I don’t know if this means the left is more critical or it means we eat our own.
Maybe the ABc was trying to stop Ratty from cutting its funding?
When it comes to the basics of political behaviour -self-interest, principle and passion – self-interest wins out 95% of the time – at least thats the impression I got after years of study of Australian political history – and my recent excursions into 18C history and American Revolutionary history have done little to convince me otherwise.
(The above-mentioned descriptive categories were first suggestted by the conservative English political historian way back in the late fifties, early sixties, if I remember the dates correctly.)
Yes, Paul, but then how do you explain the current ABC pushing of the coalition. Perhaps they expect Rudd to be a one term government and normal service to return.
adrian @ 47,
Rudd hasn’t sracked rhe board – yet. Then we’ll sewe what happens.
Yeah the obvious flaw with this study is the use of positive mentions in Parliament as the measure. Nobody would ever think that Gerard Henderson is a left-winger, that’s simply wrong.
To say the Australian is centrist is a laff. They would proudly call themselves right-wing.
Not that I am about to provide a better methodology, but surely there would be something in the wisdom of crowds. What about advertising a survey via all the usual places, blogs and political columns on newspapers, getting a vote on 100 identified intellectuals?
Cheers, phil@vvb!
Spot on, sg @ 39, though both the reporting period and slant versus bias were announced/defined in the introduction.
This shouldn’t be discussed in the present tense.
Does ABC News Online not see the irony in trotting out an IPA public intellectual to discredit allegations that ABC TV News is biased to the right?
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Yeah. This irony tastes good.
SG #39 – Good points.
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There’s no way of determining what the actual patterns of ABC bias are if you don’t examine several political cycles’ worth of news coverage. In the 1980s people thought the Libs were a mess. Did the ABC lean to the ALP then? Did they lean to Fraser in the mid-70s?
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In fact considering the limits of the study one could almost think it was commissioned specifically to thumb the nose at Howard and not to provide useful info. I wish scholars would take on avoidance of political pointscoring projects as a central principle.
Have you actually read it Adrien?
Not yet. But SG has and I have a certain respect for his opinion. However I will read it this week-end. And if I think SG’s criticism is too harsh or incorrect somehow I’ll say so.
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Have you read it then? Is it limited in scope as SG claims?
Yes, I’ve had a quick read through, and I don’t think sg’s points are valid, except for the fact that it obviously covered a period in the past when the coalition was in power.
He/she then extrapolates entirely invalid assumptions based on that fact to conclude that the ABC is pro-government, not pro-coalition.
The fact that the Howard government stacked the Board with far right political appointees is proof enough, if it were needed, that the tendency to favour the coalition identified in the study, continues to this day. In fact, as a once avid listener and viewer of the ABC over a long priod of time, I have no hesitation in concluding that it is actually a lot worse than when this study was conducted.
I think RobWeaver’s point @24 is much more pertinent than the one you raise.
Good to see you’re carrying on the great blogsphere tradition of not letting ignorance stand in the way of having an opinion, Adrien!
Adrian – He/she then extrapolates entirely invalid assumptions based on that fact to conclude that the ABC is pro-government, not pro-coalition.
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I think you’ll find that he – I seem to recall SG is male – doesn’t actually make that conclusion but rather suggests it’s an alternative.
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The fact that the Howard government stacked the Board with far right political appointees is proof enough, if it were needed, that the tendency to favour the coalition identified in the study, continues to this day.
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Indeed. Does the study compare and contrast the invasion of Johhnie’s Western Warriors with the slant of Aunty?
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I guess I should shut-up ’til I’ve read it ‘ey?
Dudes, your presence is needed at IMHAL. There’s a serious dearth of Adrieans over there.
#58 –
maaaaate we’re everywhere maaaaaate
I built a wall to keep these kilt-wearing, over-tatooed, bum-flashing, terminally inarticulate, haggis-eating savages out of my beautiful empire and they name their snotty brats after me! Futete!
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None of you have ever even been to Hadria.
I think the methodology is pretty suss. The issue is not with the measurement of bias, per se, but with the indexation of “public intellectuals” as measured by Parliamentary speeches!!! Think about it for a minute … if you take it to its logical conclusion, “Mr Speaker” is the most important intellectual in the country
Ben @ 62, not sure if I might be missing your point, but:
“The issue is not with the measurement of bias, per se, but with the indexation of “public intellectuals” as measured by Parliamentary speeches!!!”
“Public intellectual” is a somewhat loosely defined term, which we understand to mean individuals who are regarded as authorities on particular policy issues. This might include academics, think tank researchers, authors, and former political advisers. Since we did not wish to create our own ad-hoc list of public intellectuals, we used a list compiled by the Sydney Morning Herald (Visontay 2005a). This comprised Australia’s “Top 100 Public Intellectuals”, though because of a tie, the list included 127 names.
The Sydney Morning Herald’s list of public intellectuals was compiled by asking 100 people “from a broad range of academic, political, artistic, diplomatic, scientific, business and media backgrounds” to nominate 10 people each. These votes were then tallied to produce the final ranking.
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Scanning the list of names on the Sydney Morning Herald’s list, we were somewhat concerned that it might under-represent right-wing public intellectuals. Accordingly, we added to our list all the research staff of Australia’s two largest right-wing think tanks: the Centre for Independent Studies and the Institute for Public Affairs. We show our results both including and excluding these 26 additional individuals.
“To say the Australian is centrist is a laff. They would proudly call themselves right-wing.”
wilful @ 49, worth noting:
In Table 2, we show a number of alternative specifications, which we compare against the main estimate (shown in Table 1). The first check omits public intellectuals who write regular op-ed columns from the estimate of that outlet’s slant. This makes little difference to any outlet except The Australian newspaper, which appears considerably more pro-Labor if its columnists are omitted.
The editorial policy of ABC news has been pretty blatantly obvious for the last 5 or so years.
And that is, as I said, an “editorial policy” and not just a “slant”.
It is purely driven by Coalition “talking points” (can we still call it a Coalition?) and fanciful memes postulated in a newspaper which I am given to understand is known as “The Australian” {I have never actually seen anyone reading this publication).
That magnificent statesman, Senator Santo Santoro, was John Howard’s point man on the evil Marxist ABC. And what did he find?
That ABC newsreaders are masters of supercilious subliminal death-ray thought control.
I never said I’d read it! Quite the opposite!
The pro-Coalition bias of ABC TV is spot on.
There’s probably an obvious reason for this: TV being the most potent medium for influencing voters, ABC TV would have been under the most pressure to distort its reporting to suit the Howard Government (to be fair to the ABC, that pressure was intense).
There’s a particular bias by political reporters when it comes to economic matters. Being from upper-middle class backgrounds, and not having expertise in economic matters, there is a distinct bias to the Right on issues like the deficit.
As has often been pointed out in the US, the class background of journalists mean they lean distinctly to the Right on economic matters, yet because journalists often have socially liberal views, they escape being classified as right-wing. This, of course, is maddening to true Lefties.
I’ve always thought of that “Insiders” should be re-named “What’s wrong with the ALP?” All the wise pundits on the show spend most of their time fretting that the ALP will in any way upset the status quo or do anything radical or – and this would be the biggest sin – do anything that would cost business a cent.
There was a superfluous “of” in that last paragraph.
Does this mean that the Left is now entitled to its own “Counterpoint” on ABC TV to correct the bias and allow some of its intellectuals airtime?
Fair’s fair.
But Ginja, the Left have Phillip Adams. What more could we want?
By the way, Phil makes a good point questioning what a centrist is.
Apparently you’re a centrist if you believe, say, in gay marriage or don’t have much time for racism. You can be fruitier than Ayn Rand on economics – that is, well to the Right of the electorate – but so long as you’re “socially” liberal, you’re counted as a centrist.
For instance, I can’t think of a “progressive” newpaper columnist who hasn’t at one stage rubbished the union movement. I can’t think of too many who’ve written strongly on behalf of progressive taxation. Or Medicare when it was being undermined by Howard.
I honestly don’t know why I watch Insiders – I think I have a perverse fascination with what counts as unbiased journalism in this country.
Today I watched it with a kind of jaw-dropping horror. Who were giving us their pearls of wisdom? Piers Ackerman, Michael Stutchbury, Paul Kelly. And who was there to defend the Left’s corner? Well, nobody of course. This is what counts as unbiased at your ABC. This is John Howard’s version of unbiased. Why don’t we just hand over the ABC to Rupert Murdoch – after all, only his employees seem to make it on to Insiders. And it’s not like this is a one-off for Insiders – it’s the default position of the show.
And the bias doesn’t stop simply with the large number of right-wingers on the show. The Right have commentators really willing to stick the boot into the government. I’ve yet to see a left-leaning commentator – in the rare event they actually make it on the show – really stick the boot into the Coaltion.
There is a serious problem at the ABC.
My Sunday mornings usually involve a breakfast of pancakes with the lady friend – Insiders would only spoil the ambiance. I don’t watch it. I can easily get enraged about something later in the day, if necessary.
Sensible idea, David Irving.
Today’s show really did remind me of “The Two Minutes’ Hate” in Orwell’s 1984.
But I’d like to know why the same old faces are on the show again and again. They must book them for multiple shows.
My problem with the way the bias game works in the media is that respectable opinion starts at the mildest of the progressive centre (and I mean mild) but then seems to stretch right out to encompass the nutty Right. I mean, where is the Left-wing Andrew Bolt or Piers Ackerman on these shows?
That is probably going too far for the ABC, but there are plenty of names that might be interested to appear on the show – Bernard Keane, Andrew West, Robert Manne, Dennis Glover, even a stirrer like Guy Rundle.
The sad thing is, it would actually make for great TV if there were more genuine progressives on the ABC to stir things up.
I live for the day that they put Albert Langer on Insiders, Ginja. I’d pay good money to see that.
I think despite all this it speaks to Rudd’s character and his faith in his abilities that he hasn’t gone in and restacked the board his style Howard’s way. After all, Howard essentially provided the precedent to do so.
The Insiders is worth it when George Mega is on (and was always worth tuning in when Matt Price was on. And David Marr vs Andrew Bolt was always good for the drama if nothing else.
Tssk: I’ve never minded listening to the likes George Megalogenis or the late Matt Price. But they’re not part of the Left. The likes of Andrew Bolt would see them as being on the Left – to them anyone not on the ideological Right is a left-winger by default.
But aside from David Marr, I can’t think of too many left-wingers who have been on the show.
I don’t think that is acceptable. Why does the progressive side of politics put up with this kind of thing? Our certainly opponents don’t.
Very true, Ginja. I think that The Insiders is an experiment by the ABC to see what they can get away wth and re-define the centre, so that anyone not of the looney right is seen as centrist, and anyone who is centrist is seen as left-wing.
You hear it on their news all the time when most political stories begin with the opposition claiming something or insisting on something and the government always reacting and therefore on the back-foot. Thus the way most stories are framed favour the coalition.
You are correct – we should not put up with this kind of thing, bit I think a lot of ‘progressives’ don’t see it as particularly important.
“You are correct – we should not put up with this kind of thing, bit I think a lot of ‘progressives’ don’t see it as particularly important.”
Maybe they just do not think there is much they can do about it.
The “SS” Conservative has been building up steam for quite some time and it not going to be easy to turn it around. For instance, Mark Scott, a former Greiner staffer, appoints Annabel Crabb, who is a fundraiser for the Liberal Party, to a job with Aunty. How do you change that without looking overtly political by just sacking him?
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,26035237-7582,00.html
How do you know David Marr is left-wing? I’m not trying to be snide, I’ve always imagined him as one of those lawyer-turned journalist types (or vice-versa) who didn’t like Howard post-Tampa.
(You can’t get a left-wing stirrer on the show because there aren’t any working in mainstream journalism. Are there?)
I got sick of it after they didn’t swap-out Bolt/Henderson/etc after the 2007 election and replace them with some obviously pro-Rudd people in the comfy chair and put an occassional middle-of-the-road wishy-washy anti-Ruddite on the couch. That would have at least reset the balance of the show in response to the new external political environment.
But they didn’t and I got royally sick of it in early 2008. I don’t think I’ve watched it since.
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Well joe2@77, the very least that people can do is complain directly to the ABC. I know (from experience) that the replies are worthless, but at least it shows them that people are aware of what’s going on.
Writing to newspapers and generally raising awareness is also important.
Who knows, an FOI application regarding complaints might also yield interesting results.
I think it is just pitiful what our public broadcaster has become, and it’s a major issue, particularly when seen in the context of the media landscape in general.
Look, forget about arcane arguments about the validity of the research report. The fact is the ABC has become so browbeaten about supposed left-wing bias in recent years that it has gone over-board on presenting the opinions of the extreme right as some kind of imagined balancing mechanism.
Gerard Henderson and his ilk spend their lives whinging about “trendy lefties” (whatever they are) over-represented in the media. That Henderson and his mates make these complaints using the platform provided by the ABC and Fairfax never seems to strike them as ironic.
The folks at the ABC essentially have bent over and invited the loony right to do whatever they want with them. It is patently obvious. Look at Q&A – the audience is consciously stacked with busloads of Young Liberals. Insiders is essentially a club for grizzled old reactionaries to whinge about “political correctness”.
It’s depressing watching the ABC these days, so subservient it is to a paranoid, unrepresentative far right. The one consolation is hardly anybody outside the opinionista actually watches shows like Insiders.
Supposedly Slimer (Piers) went over the edge on Insiders yesterday and there was something about his comments in the SMH according to the folks at Pure Poison today. Hopefully that will be the end of Piers and his insane ramblings in an attempt to fuck up the ABC. I don’t even bother watching Insiders anymore and I’m almost done with Q&A due to how right-wing they’re becoming which was obviously Howard’s plan from the start.
Mr Denmore, Thanks for another insightful comment just wanted to say I’ve always appreciated your contributions whether on here or in the past on Blogocracy.
Sorry for the dyslexic moment in my previous post.
Darryl Rosin, I don’t take that as snide. David Marr has always been on what I guess you’d call the literary Left – he wrote the book, “The Ivanov Trial” back in the ’80s. He’s not a wet liberal who became horrified by Howard and discovered his inner Leftie. I don’t think he has written a great deal about economic issues – the mark of a true man – or woman – of the Left.
Mr Denmore, you touch on an interesting point about the research. The easiest thing to do is poke holes in a report’s methodology. All sides do it, but the Right does it particularly well – a few years ago “junk science” was the term of choice for anything they didn’t like.
Do as Orwell suggested: look at what is in front of your nose. I see lots of evidence on my TV screen that the ABC doesn’t go out of its way to ensure that left-wing voices get a fair go on its programs – not in the way it accommodates the Right.
Look, forget about arcane arguments about the validity of the research report. The fact is the ABC has become so browbeaten about supposed left-wing bias in recent years that it has gone over-board on presenting the opinions of the extreme right as some kind of imagined balancing mechanism.
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I think the validity not so much of this paper but of research methods inquiring into media bias generally and perceptions inferred therein is central.
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For example the second part of this comment is an assertion about bias. From your perspective it might be entirely legitimate but an Andrew Bolt fan would regard it as rubbish. It all has to do with what one regards as natural and reasonable. There’s a lot of diversity there.
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I’ve only had a cursory look at the paper but I’m already asking two questions. How do you get objective people to rate the bias of the media? Answer: You can’t. John Pilger fans’ notions of ‘right-wing’ will be very different from Piers Ackerman fans’ notions of same. What the former consider right-wing the latter might consider leftist. (cue: David Marr).
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The second is the cliched (yet vital) assertion that we need to ensure our media remains free and fair. It is neither. We have a market press and a government press. The market press will tend to express, generally, the views of their proprietors, the govt press will be answerable to the govt of the day and the citizenry in general.
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What is missing is the distinction between facts and opinion. Increasingly blurry these days. In a newspaper it seems that a fact is any assertion that won’t land you in court. Thus we have the spectacle of the vast bulk of the media being the expression of various views rooted in the credentials of those expressing them. In the govt press there tends to be more facts ironically because those working there enjoy more editorial freedom. At least until Howard.
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However as has been seen when the govt press reveal facts inconvenient to the powers that be or have the temirity to run a programme like Media Watch then they draw a barrage of propaganda from their targets. The resultant cacophany and the circumstances of public broadcasting mean that they must inevitably bend to the demands of those voices.
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The market media can express whatever views they like as long as they sell and don’t alienate advertisers. That people appear to be demanding less actual hard news is telling. That perception is increasingly being mistaken for truth is, likewise. I’d wager maybe this has something to do with the declining capacity to read with skeptical rigour.
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If that goes it doesn’t matter how free your press is.
Adrien, I think you’re touching what I’m getting at.
My problem is that people seem to be selected on these shows to represent the Left even though most of them wouldn’t know the difference between the Fourth International and the Socialist International.
The least represented part of the political spectrum in the media also happens to be one of the largest chunks of the electorate. People who believe firmly in the right to be represented by a trade union, who believe strongly in Medicare and progressive taxation and public education.
Who the hell speaks for us in the media?!!
P.S. I refer not to the John Pilgers of this world, simply the centre-left (emphasis on both centre and left).
Well Ginja I have to say The Insiders was very illuminating last weekend. A lot of talk about how we dodged a bullet regarding unions and a lot of talk about how penalty rates are uncompetitive and out of date.
I’m beginning to see The Insiders as the Coalition Kool Aid I need to drink every week…less of an exporession of ideas and more like an electronic re education camp.
Ginja
The type of Left you are talking about died decades ago. The number of Australians who are left-wing by your definition is so small they constitute a marginal group of mainly middle-aged cranks. They do not constitute a constituency of sufficient size, let alone credibility, to justify the sort of equal ABC air time you demand. Without blogs, most Australins would be surprised that there are still any of them still alive at all.
Branlea, we have so few left wing journalists in Australia because our one sided media management is not prepared to employ them. That is why many of the press, who are actually quite conservative, are misleadingly seen to be in that camp.
joe2
No. As I said, the reason is that there are so very few left-wing people in general, not just journalists, full stop. Socialist ideology died yers ago.
You have just inferred a definition of ‘left wing’ from a few general comments that Ginja made earlier. A bit tedious branlea.
Done a study on that have you branlea? Have any evidence to back up your theory that Australia is the land of the far-right climate denying ‘lunatics’ that the ABC trots out on a regular basis, and inhabit News Ltd publications like the plague?
And how about we forget left v right for a moment, Since when was it in the ABC’s charter that they represent the interets of the coalition at every available opportunity?
adrian, you are dribbling left-wing straw.
joe2. My posts were directed explicitly to Ginja’s claims, which by the way have been echoed by many here, includng adrian.
Didn’t think so.
Ginja – My problem is that people seem to be selected on these shows to represent the Left even though most of them wouldn’t know the difference between the Fourth International and the Socialist International.
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I’m not sure that knowing that distinction is of more than historical interest. Altho’ the Second International as the avatar of a democratic socialist tradition is often over-looked in favour of Karl’s Leninist offspring. What constitutes the Left and the Right changes. Libertarians were once the Left, before that it was Protestants. Before that Franciscans.
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After the Reform Act, class interests re-aligned and Labour increasingly asserted itself. Classic liberals split into the Libertarian and Social Liberal camps that define the ideology today. Tomorrow perhaps the Green movement will split into a conservative and progressive faction.
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I’m kind of disinclined to say we need representatives of each perceived ideology represented in panels like ABC’s Sunday morning bitchfest. We need to return to certain ideas of journalistic quality. John Pilger, for example, is a Trotskyite but he’s also an excellent journalist. The reason he’s marginalized is because he goes outside the circle of acceptable discourse. He talks about Empire. And he asks important people (those who’ll talk to him) hard questions.
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That all said he does skew his reportage with his own perceptions a might too much. But one could hardly say that that was why he isn’t on Outsiders. Andrew Bolt is.
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A lot of it has to do with this country’s culture. Christopher Hitchens was a Trot who talked about Empire a lot. He lives in Georgetown, DC. Pilger has won accolades in the UK. Yet the best we can do is Philip Adams who, as an affiliate of the NSW Right is hardly a radical voice. We do have Antony Lowenstein who provides excellent material for anyone who wants to portray radical journalists as sloppy, self-indulgent, unethical dolts.
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I would suggest a quality radical publication. However in order to be a quality publication certain habits and ingrained notions would have to be dislodged. I’d wager for example that anyone purporting to launch such would probably automatically put Lowenstein on the list. Whereas I’d automatically strike him.
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Perhaps the selection requirement should be merely quality work sans any requirements viz ideology save that of a true radical; as in: someone willing to look at and write about society from the ground up. Those people are rare and can exist all over the spectrum altho’ you’ll get more left-wing and libertarian radicals than conservative ones. Acknowledging that and trying to put it to practise is much easier said than done because, um, it’s a bit too radical.
Adrien, that was just a turn of phrase – although real left-wingers would know the difference between a Trot and a Social Democrat. I was just trying to make the point, as someone wrote on another website, that just because you work for Fairfax or the ABC doesn’t make you left-wing – or even the centre-left (properly defined). And if you’re going have fruits from the far-right on Insiders, why doesn’t my side get a go?
And branlea: I’d suggest you widen your circle of friends a little. Medicare has, from memory, above 80% support in polling. Work choices did in the Howard Government and above half of the electorate would like to be represented by a union. Public education has massive support. The idea that the rich should pay a higher rate of tax than the poor would also have a great deal of support. None of these things died years ago – despite the best efforts of the Coalition. In fact, I think you’ll find they’re all government policy.
And even though progressive taxation was one of demands in Marx’s Communist Manifesto, none of the things I mentioned are specifically socialist.
…I should have said above half the workforce – not electorate – would like to represented by a union.
Phil @2, Ginja @69 and 72, and Adrian @76,
This here thing called the Overton window looks interesting in relation to the point you are making, although I don’t pretend to be properly up to speed on it.
Thanks Helen! That’s almost exactly what I was clumsily trying to put into words.
News Ltd and the ABC are trying to push that window as far to the right as possible. In the ABC’s case The Insiders is just the most obvious and extreme example, but it happens in most of their news and current affairs shows where progressive views are generally marginalised.
Thanks Helen, too.
The interesting thing is that the anti-Left bias in media commentary doesn’t have that much of an effect on the broader electorate.
Look at the media commentary about unions and Work Choices at the last election. Most of it concerned how Rudd needed to pull those scary union officials into line. Yet, out there in real Voterland, people weren’t worried about scary union officials, but they were deeply concerned about Work Choices.
I think the same goes for global warming. It’s my guess that most workers even in industries directly affected by the CPRS think that something needs to be done.
However, I think The Australian, for instance, does have an effect on the political agenda – for politicans timid and silly enough to take The Oz seriously.
But I pose this challenge for anyone out there: name any commentator who is firmly on the Left who has appeared on ABC TV lately.
Speaking of climate change, be afraid, be very afraid.
At least this report my force some to appreciate the magnitude of the problem.
Ginja – although real left-wingers would know the difference between a Trot and a Social Democrat.
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I would say that anyone who isn’t politically ignorant should know that. The Left and Right are aliances of viewpoints and associations. Neither are homogenous. Nor is the arrangement stable. Altho’ certain dichotmies persit in reappearing.
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And if you’re going have fruits from the far-right on Insiders, why doesn’t my side get a go?
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Hear hear.
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And even though progressive taxation was one of demands in Marx’s Communist Manifesto, none of the things I mentioned are specifically socialist.
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I’d say prgressive taxation is a socialist idea. In the sense that socialism advocates certain policy instruments and considers things from a certain view. I’m not a socialist but I think it’s a valid viewpoint and contributes. Those who are socialists really should stop apologizing.
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What’s going on here, Ginja, is surfeit of the Left ascending for the first time in a long while. The media tends to reflect the audience more than anything else. If you don’t believe me have a look at the marketing dictates of Hollywood in the early 70s sometime. And they lag behind. They’re not going to sack Bolt and replace his column with Waleed Ali’s. But if, say, Rudd and Obama’s agenda’s work and they’re re-elected the media’s tune will change.
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It will for reasons of class interest never go too far to the left however.
I wouldn’t disagree with too much of that, Adrien.
I’m a social democrat (a more accurate description than socialist) but if someone wanted to call me a socialist I would lose much sleep over it.
The point is, you don’t have to be a socialist to embrace progressive taxation. Thoughtful conservatives have embraced progressive taxation.
I’ve had this argument too many times with friends, but I think – know – that the differences between Left and Right are real, profound and will continue to be important. Until someone explains to me why people in Mt Druitt vote overwhelmingly Labor while people on the North Shore vote overwhelmingly Liberal, I won’t be convinced that politics has changed all that much at all.
P.S. From memory Marx listed progressive taxation as one of his minimum demands – I don’t think it featured part of his utopian vision which would have done away with private property altogether.
…but I’m no Marxist, so I couldn’t say for sure.
I thnk the differene is that those who mostly espouse a socialist vision tend to think of society as a collective and care mostly about issues to do with equality. Liberals think mostly abut individuals. The political parties tend to share these roles. Socially the Libs are more colletivist than the ALP.
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Conservatives tend to siply be conservative. Therefore conservative people rejected WorkChoices. A regulated labour market has been a traditional part of the culture. But that’s economics. There are other issues.
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And the voting patterns of different socio-economic slices have to do with class interests. I think ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ tend to be categopries that don’t always travel in perfect symmetry with class interests.
I haven’t really noticed a bias from the ABC but you would suspect that it would be more slanted towards the government in power as thats were they get their funding. Not being a reader of the The Australian, could somebody tell me if it has any obvious bias.
could somebody tell me if it has any obvious bias.
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Yes. The Australian is Murdoch’s paper for the Australian intelligentsia. He does this wherever he goes. Most of his newspapers go downmarket. He keeps one ‘posh’. The discourse is catered directly for the ’smart set’ and advocates an orthodoxy that includes free markets, the Anglo-Saxon world’s interests militarily etc.
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All papers have a bias.
Ginja@103
Indeed… the demands for progressive taxation appear in the Principles of Communism of June in 1847 before reappearing in The Communist Manifesto
Indeed… the demands for progressive taxation appear in the Principles of Communism of June in 1847 before reappearing in The Communist Manifesto
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Yet another one of Karl’s stupid ideas.