Katharine Murphy, deputy political editor
theguardian.com, Wednesday 29 January 2014
Tony Abbott's airing of people's 'feelings' on the ABC may be a subtle warning to the national broadcaster to get back in its box
Tony Abbott has accused the ABC of not backing Australia in its coverage of asylum seekers and the Edward Snowden leaks. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP
It is the era of feelings. Feelpinions require no facts, no research, they aren’t required to make sense, or be logical, and they thunder around the internet and cable television around the clock.
So why should we be surprised that the prime minister has a feeling in his waters about the ABC?
“A lot of people feel,” Abbott told Sydney broadcaster Ray Hadley on Wednesday morning, that the national broadcaster is not a paid up member of team Australia – that it takes “everybody’s side but our own.”
This failure of patriotism is a problem. (Many people feel.) Evidently not the people who tell survey gatherers and pollsters in droves that the ABC is the most trusted news organisation in the country by a considerable margin.
Strangely they don’t share this “many people feel” feeling. They seem to think in a toxic media market, dominated by professional ranters and by one player, News Corp, intent on using its market dominance to pursue bleedingly obvious political and commercial agendas – that the ABC is not only comprehensive and reliable, but essential. It is even more essential in an environment where commercial media is contracting due to cost pressures, delivering viewers and readers less services than it used to deliver.
But anyway, given the inconvenience of these facts, back to the feelings.
The prime minister evidently feels the ABC should put nationalism ahead of public interest. Cut through the crude and reductionist “whose side are they on?” framing, that’s what Abbott is saying. Nation before public interest.
Independent news organisations are of course not in the nationalism business. They are in the public interest business. If nationalism is supposed to come first, whatever the facts suggest, then you are in the jingoism business, or the propaganda business, not the news business.
Governments are in the propaganda business. News organisations are in the cut-through-the-propaganda business.
This is the public interest transaction in a democracy. Tony Abbott, not being a fool, and not being born yesterday, knows that’s the transaction. He knows full well what he’s saying is a distortion and a deliberate one.
So why is he ventilating these feelings?
Well, I have a feeling about the prime minister’s feelings.
I have a feeling the prime minister is warning the ABC to get back in its box. He’s giving the national broadcaster a chance to bland out, take no editorial risks whatsoever, and walk off the field with its tail between its legs. Like good boys and girls.
I have a feeling the prime minister didn’t really want a fight with the ABC, but he’s under increasing pressure from inside his partyroom and from News Corp (which wants the ABC out of digital publishing and out of international broadcasting) and from the rightwing culture warriors to Do Something because they miss the cold war.
At the moment Abbott is substituting feelpinion for action.
But the current jawboning and bullying is serious, and if things escalate, readers and viewers will be the losers.
