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A Trojan horse online

Ray Moynihan

'Do you want advertising on the ABC Web site?' asks the managing director-elect.

The ABC's managing director-elect, Jonathan Shier, has made an enthusiastic public commitment to preserve the ABC's independence and to fight for the organisation. At the same time, he has publicly acknowledged that what the public values above all else is the ABC's independence.

But alongside the emotive rhetoric was a much more hard-edged message from the new MD. Shier wants a public debate about allowing advertising on ABC Online.

On at least two occasions during his first public comments as managing director-elect, Shier specifically floated the idea that the board consider taking ads on the ABC Web site. Twice he expressed strong opposition to the ABC taking ads, and twice he contradicted himself by suggesting the ABC might consider taking ads on its Web site.

ABC Online is fast becoming the core of the ABC's activities. It is the future of the organisation. To introduce advertising online is to introduce a commercial cancer into the soul of the ABC's independence. 'Independence' is about independence from the commercial pressures that inevitably flow with advertising dollars.

In its short life, the ABC's presence in cyberspace has been outstanding successful. With limited resources and a small staff, the ABC's Web site quickly became one of Australia's most popular Internet addresses.

It is not only one of the nation's most visited Web sites, but it has won a swag of top awards, including best media site. This year the ABC's online science presence, The Lab, won the best science and technology site in the prestigious Australian Financial/Telstra Australian Internet Awards. It is succeeding, not just because of dynamic and energetic staff, but because it carries with it the integrity and credibility the ABC has built up in the community through television and radio.

If you want an idea of what freedom from commercial pressures means, think about the way Radio National's the Health Report and commercial TV's Good Medicine cover medical matters. Where the Health Report's Norman Swan will rely on quality science, commercially based medical programs are by definition interested in maximising ratings, making them easy targets for the 'wonder drug' and 'miracle cure', which pop up perennially when companies are marketing new products.

In the United States, there is no properly funded national broadcaster like the ABC. In the area of medicine, there is growing disquiet about the way the manufacturers of new pills and products seem to be able to use the media to help their marketing strategies. Many stories are like press releases, and nightly television news bulletins are dominated by ads for the latest and most expensive prescription pills.

Imagine the glee with which pharmaceutical executives in Australia would welcome advertising on the ABC's Science Web site. Imagine, too, the ABC children's Web site, The Playground, taking ads from a fast-food company.

In a cyber world already awash with advertising, the commercial-free ABC becomes even more important. As traditional forms of media break down into a million different content providers pumping out their material from all corners of the earth, a national cultural institution like the ABC can keep alive the notion of an Australian society.

Commitment to the independence of the ABC is more than just rhetoric. It means understanding the difference between private media organisations and public institutions.

Commercial organisations sell their audiences to their advertisers for money. The ABC audience has already paid, and they don't want to be bought and sold. They come to the ABC to be entertained, but also to listen, to learn, to think and to wonder.

There are those within the senior ranks of the ABC who are keen to move further and faster towards a commercial model, selling more ABC products, doing more deals by selling ABC content. While this commercial activity brings in valuable dollars, it comes at a cost. And the ultimate cost may well be the loss of independence from commercial pressures.

Jonathan Shier has been offered an enormous honour, which will in turn carry enormous responsibility. He has asked Australia whether it wants advertising on its ABC, and he is no doubt waiting for an answer.

An author and ABC journalist, Ray Moynihan has just completed a Harkness fellowship at Harvard, studying media coverage of medicine. This is an edited version of his article in the Sydney Morning Herald, 11/11/99